Genius Mage in a Cultivation World

Chapter 2 - Desert

"I'm alive!" It was the first thought that Layn had when his body formed once more. The emotions behind it were so strong, that he even end up screaming this sentence out loud…

Only to realise that due to the roaring of the wind, no one could hear him at all.

"Huh?" Under the immense force of the winds, Layn wasn't even able to turn his body around. According to the plan, he should reappear roughly twenty years in the past, above the lake near the capital city. Taking the slight miscalculations in the formula of the gran arcana into account, there was a chance he would end up to five miles away from the casting place.

But that was location difference, not heigh change. Appearing so high in the air wasn't a part of Layn's plan by any means!

"Shit, I need to do it after all…" Tightening his jaws, Layn felt the magic coursing through his only partially formed body. Right now, every single bit of magical energy was precious. If he recklessly used his formative magic energy, his future potential would be wasted!

But there was no point in having huge potential as a corpse. Making up his mind, Layn used the fundamental magic to force his body around.

"Wha…" Gazing down into the land far below, Layn felt his mind suffering from a shock. No matter how much he screwed the formulas, he shouldn't appear so high in the skies! And what was the deal with the desert below him stretching as far as he could see? Royal capital laid on a vast plain, not this kind of barren land!

'Heck, I will think about that later. For now, safety first.' Reprimanding himself in his thoughts, Layn focused on crafting magic. Slowing down his descent was beyond the scope of simplistic fundamental magic. Thankfully, doing so wasn't all that costly in terms of mana usage.

"Hernloc." Chanting this single word in his mind, Layn forced the image of a relatively complex magical formula to appear in his mental vision. Pouring a small bit of the mana that still gathered to reconstruct his body properly into this mental image, the archmage allowed nature to do the rest.

With the magic flowing through the multi-dimensional labyrinth of runes and geometrical formations, Layn felt the spell coming to effect only when half of the distance from the merciless surface was already gone.

As if falling into a huge, soft pillow, Layn's body stopped accelerating towards the ground. Soon, his hectic fall turned into a gentle glide through the air. Using the moment high in the air, Layn looked around. Before he would lose this advantage, scouting his position had almost absolute priority.

'Something went wrong with the gran arcana… Too many things don't add up…' That was the only logical conclusion that Layn could create on the spot. Rather than arguing with the facts, the archmage preferred to make the most out of the situation he was in.

"An oasis? I'm surely in luck, huh? Wait, am I seeing right?" Talking to himself in a silly attempt to push the worries aside, Layn focused on the area that piqued his interest… Only for the nearby sand dunes to hide it from his eyes.

"Eh, I guess nothing can be done about that. At least I know where to go. Its something." Even with all the knowledge that Layn had, surviving on the desert without ample preparations was… Unlikely to say the least. While he could still reach the civilisation by resorting to morally questionable means, it would take an enormous toll on Layn to do so.

Once Layn appeared just several feet above the ground, his delicate spell crashed against the ground, disappearing in the process. Expecting this outcome from the very beginning, Layn allowed the gravity to do its work, softening his drop by bending his knees upon landing.

"Okay, that's it for the energising part. Time to… have some rest." Instead of hurrying towards the oasis where he sensed the presence of other humans, Layn sat down on the hot sand. With the fresh water in the oasis just around the next dune, even if those people would leave, his chances of crossing the desert still skyrocketed.

And right now, it was of absolute priority to let his body finish forming.

Even though fundamental magic was nearly costless while the basic spell that Layn used was considered to be one of the lighter ones, Layn could still see the wounds on his potential. The mana that was supposed to shape the fine details of a part of his was missing, disturbing the otherwise wholesome flow of energy within.

Fixing those imperfections was still possible, even if it would require enormous amounts of magic energy later on. But to a degree, it didn't matter. Even without a mirror or water to see it with his own eyes, Layn could feel that at least this part of the gran arcana worked.

After enclosing the energy of the magical nuke, the insane formula of the grand spell used that energy to forcibly bend the laws of the universe. By itself, doing so was insanely easy, possible even for Layn to do so in his free time. The problems arose when the matter of moving through the fissure in the spatial laws surfaced.

Nearly all the energy that the gran arcana consumed was used to first decode the information of Layn's body, then to send just this information alone through the fissure, before using the energy on the other side to reconstruct his body from the magic energy alone. That was the only way in which the absolute rule of time could be challenged.

And just as planned, Layn's body returned to how it was twenty years prior to the moment of casting the gran arcana. Freshly in his twenties, Layn could feel the energy of youth coursing through his veins. But the fact that he could feel the power of his body also meant something else.

Raising his eyes towards the dune behind which the oasis hid, Layn's lips formed a gentle curve.

"Let's see whether they will be able to tell me where the heck I ended up!