Evan approached one of the sturdiest dummies, then prepared to attack. He rarely fought predominantly using his legs, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t do it.

Evan sighed, and the next moment his right leg was a blur. His blow hit exactly the neck area and blew the dummy’s head into many shards. Evan then took a step back, did a 180-degree turn, and took a straight, horizontal kick to the chest.

There was a small electrical explosion, and the dummy was shattered.

“Vortex Boots of Thunder completely lives up to its name. Not only did I get tremendous speed, but also incredible strength.” Mumbled Evan and walked over to the almost destroyed dummy.

He put his hand to the surviving parts and infused some mana. Then, miraculously, the dummy came back again, and the cracks and missing parts were fused and repaired. This dummy was worth more than one million gold coins, and the price was justified not only by its durability but also by this miraculous property.

Then Evan canceled the spell and kicked the dummy again. This time the speed of the blow was noticeably slower. Moreover, now he could not break the head apart with a single blow. There were many cracks in the neck, but the dummy remained intact.

Evan did a few more tests before moving on to learn the next spell, which was Lightning Arrow of Darkness. Like the last one, this spell was also a spell of mixed elements: lightning and darkness.

<I already have some experience learning such spells, so the process should go a lot faster this time.> Evan thought and opened the spell book.

The biggest difficulty in using Lightning Arrow of Darkness was that this spell had to be cast in two stages. Moreover, after the first stage, the mage had to make the two elements become one whole without destroying the structure he had created during the first stage.

Evan read the spell book in just a few hours. He had to stop at some points and reread it, but it made sense to him for the most part.

“Okay, I hope this works out,” Evan muttered, and his Warp spun.

The energy of darkness appeared in his hands. First, he had to create a bow of darkness. That was the first stage of the cast of this spell. Unfortunately, even that Evan couldn’t do it the first time. The darkness fell apart and dissipated.

Moreover, even a week later, he could not create a bow. There was no secret hidden in this process. Evan was doing everything right, but he needed more practice. He had too little control over the darkness, which made him unable to give that energy the shape he wanted.

After another week, Evan finally created a bow, but the first stage was much easier than the second. Now Evan had to create a lightning arrow and combine it with the dark energy. The second stage was far more difficult than the first.

“Phew, I spent so much effort and time creating the bow. Okay, half the work is done.” Evan muttered and tried to create an arrow.

The mana transformed into lightning energy and slowly turned into an arrow, but at one point, there was a glitch, and the arrow exploded, destroying the dark bow in the process. Moreover, the explosion was powerful enough to toss Evan aside.

He wasn’t hurt, but if he had used more mana and the blast had been more powerful, Evan might have suffered some bruises and burns.

“Damn, this spell is pretty dangerous. It only gets harder each time, but also stronger.” Mumbled Evan and cast the Lightning Arrow of Darkness once more.

After weeks of trial and error, Evan finally cast this spell.

His Warp spun, and the darkness quickly turned into a bow. Then a lightning arrow appeared in his hands, which slowly began to absorb the energy of the darkness from the bow.

Evan fully completed the cast of the spell, all that was left was to draw the bowstring and fire the shot.

Whoooosh.

Evan aimed and released the arrow. It turned into black and blue lightning and instantly reached the dummy. After that, there was a loud explosion. The explosion was powerful enough to shake the tower and crack the training room.

Dust and small particles of broken stone sprinkled on Evan from above. Evan hadn’t calculated the power of second-level spells. He hadn’t expected that even his training room couldn’t withstand a non-direct hit from one of the spells.

<Damn, it was just a shockwave, but the whole tower shook. If I’d shot an arrow at the wall instead of the dummy, I’d have blown part of the tower and the lab apart. I can’t take any more chances like that.> Evan thought and headed upstairs.

He hadn’t originally wanted to reinforce the tower’s frame, but now he thought differently. If he was attacked by a genius mage on the stage – Two-Pointed Star, hundreds of formations would not protect the tower.

His enemy would penetrate all layers of barriers and destroy his tower in just a couple of attacks. Evan couldn’t let that happen.

Second-level spells were indeed an order of magnitude stronger than first-level spells. But, Evan’s situation was unique. First, thanks to Mammon’s Gaze, he could choose spells of the immense potential that he knew originally.

If a mage didn’t have a tutor, he couldn’t know how powerful a particular spell was in the long run. Information has always been one of the greatest powers in this world, as has luck. These two concepts did not give a human power directly, but sometimes information and luck were more important than anything else.

Evan also had a purified Warp that increased the power of his spells. He was far superior to most mages on the stage – Two-Pointed Star. Only genius mages with the best equipment and the strongest mentors could compete with him.

But, right now, Evan wasn’t interested in how strong he was compared to the other mages on his stage. He had more important things to do.. And for starters, he was going to fortify his tower and find a suitable place for field trials.