He had personally witnessed and studied many inheritors of this bloodline, and their characteristics were distinctly different from Karl's.
Henry looked at this gifted yet enigmatic apprentice.
His heart was filled with both a passion for research and a faint, rising worry.
The path Karl was on seemed to be one that no other sorcerer had ever explored—a solitary and unknown road.
And whether he, as a mentor, could provide the correct guidance on this path, he wasn't sure...
Time flew by in focused study.
Karl spent a fulfilling and efficient half-month at the academy, following Henry's teachings.
This day, with the morning mist not yet fully dispersed, Karl was on the academy plain near the forest.
He took a deep breath and began to test his speed, his leg muscles tensing.
The ground blurred beneath his feet, the wind whistled past his ears, and the trees became flowing green streaks.
He ran around the forest, needing only to lightly tap the ground with his feet to leap a considerable distance.
When he stopped, two shallow furrows were plowed in the mud beneath his feet.
His breathing, however, remained steady; he was indeed much faster than a leopard, but far from reaching subsonic speeds.
Next was the biological force field.
He picked up a pebble, held it in his palm, and squeezed hard; stone chips rattled down through his fingers.
But the part that touched his palm remained intact, as the biological force field could protect objects it touched according to his will.
Karl picked up a dead branch again, this time deliberately controlling the field to extend, and the branch snapped in his fingers, showing the field could be controlled appropriately.
Then came the flight he had been longing for, but this test was not very successful.
He concentrated, sensing gravity, imagining it as a tangible entity; his feet slowly left the ground, swaying precariously dozens of meters up.
He tried to use the force field to propel himself, drifting unsteadily forward at a speed slightly faster than a person walking.
Maintaining this anti-gravity state was extremely mentally taxing, and soon he stumbled back to the ground, leaving deep footprints in the mud.
"It seems the biological force field isn't strong enough yet…" Karl thought.
Additionally, there was Heat Vision.
He focused his eyes on a nearby tree trunk, his vision gradually becoming transparent, allowing him to see the decaying wood grain inside the trunk.
He could also see the borers eating the internal tissue, and even the hibernating snakes coiled in their underground dens.
His eyes turned a molten red, and the familiar burning sensation came from behind his eyeballs as he tried to focus and emit heat.
"Sizzle!!" Two arm-thick lasers directly pierced the tree trunk; his gaze shifted, cutting through two more trees.
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After a few seconds, the Heat Vision stopped, and he sensed that a little less than half of the solar energy in his body was depleted.
"This state, somewhere between X-ray vision and scorching, is a bit difficult to control precisely and consumes a lot of energy," Karl muttered to himself.
The Freezing Breath, however, was simple.
He went to a pond and blew into the water.
The surface immediately froze over with a thin layer of ice.
He touched the ice with his fingertip, estimating the temperature to be around minus twenty to thirty degrees Celsius.
It was useful for slowing people down, but not powerful enough to instantly freeze someone into an ice sculpture.
Then, he amplified his hearing; the flapping of distant crows, the whispers of students inside the academy castle, and even the conversations of villagers several miles away simultaneously flooded his ears.
This time, he didn't feel the stinging sensation like when his abilities first awakened.
Karl calmly filtered out the noise until his hearing returned to its normal range.
His other senses were equally acute; he could smell the decaying leaves in the soil, and he could see every particle of dust floating in the air.
He could also taste the salt carried by the wind, which was from the Skellige fleet that had passed two days ago.
Finally, there was the Steel Body.
He drew the steel sword he had brought out earlier and lightly ran it across his arm.
The blade and skin made a grating sound, sparks flew, but not even a white mark was left.
So, Karl added a little more force.
With a "clink!", the sword suddenly snapped, and fragments clattered to the ground.
Karl glanced at the hilt, which was only a small fraction left, a slight smile on his lips, and tossed the hilt away...
Henry's original study plan for Karl was relatively relaxed.
The original plan was to teach Karl one new spell every two or three months to ensure his foundations were solid.
However, he soon discovered that his plan simply couldn't keep up with Karl's learning speed.
Especially after that first successful spellcasting, accompanied by the anomalies Karl experienced.
Karl's learning ability and memory seemed to have undergone a qualitative leap.
A thick tome, hundreds of pages long, filled with complex diagrams and profound theories, might take an ordinary apprentice weeks just to read through.
To fully understand and memorize it, it was common to spend half a year or even longer.
But Karl, in less than two minutes of rapid flipping, could close the book.
Not only could he answer questions about the book's contents fluently, but he could even effortlessly recite the entire book to him backward from the last page...
This almost miraculous learning ability made even the well-traveled Henry exclaim in continuous amazement.
Stroking his beard, he half-sighed and half-mocked himself, stating, "I've lived for nearly five hundred years, and I've seen powerful geniuses with strong memories."
"But an existence as terrifying as you, I truly have never seen. Perhaps I've taken on an apprentice who should only exist in mythical stories…"
Karl soon discovered that when he used his own solar energy to cast spells, the cumbersome incantations and complex hand gestures became entirely unnecessary burdens.
As long as he clearly understood the energy circuit structure of a certain spell, he only needed to move the energy with his mind.
It would then operate autonomously according to the predetermined path, instantly completing the construction and release of the spell—in other words, instant casting.
Karl also told Henry about this.
When he proposed to Henry that he wanted to abandon incantations and gestures, Henry's reaction was firm opposition.
Henry frowned, admonishing him in an unchallengeable tone, "Nonsense! Karl, magic is a precise discipline."
"Incantations and gestures are the most stable and safest guiding methods verified by our predecessors over hundreds of years."
"You are not skilled enough… rashly abandoning the basics makes successful spellcasting impossible!"
Until… Karl, in front of Henry, neither chanted a spell nor made any gestures.
He simply calmly raised his hand, and with a "poof" above his palm, a stable burning fireball instantly condensed.
Then, with a slight thought, the fireball dissipated, and a miniature electric arc began to dance at his fingertips.
Seeing this, Henry's subsequent words abruptly stopped.
He opened his mouth, looking at Karl's effortless demeanor.
In the end, he swallowed all his words of dissuasion, which turned into a long sigh filled with complex emotions.
Since then, he never again raised an objection to Karl's "unconventional" spellcasting method.
Instead, he began to pick up his research into the theory of whether dark matter could be controlled.
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