He used the water creation spell every day, and as he practiced more and more, he became increasingly proficient with this little spell. At first, he could only gather a wooden spoonful of clear water at a time, but now he could gather half a bucket in one go.

“At the very beginning, I could only gather a single, slightly larger water droplet when I was learning... Logically, my mental power shouldn’t have improved this quickly, so this effect must be because the water element here is abundant.”

As Ethan became more skilled with the water creation spell, he not only had enough clean water to drink, but could even take a simple shower every few days, making the dull and monotonous life at sea a little less unbearable.

As for that book on the basics of mental power, it started with methods for mental training and meditation—which sounded mysterious. In fact, Ethan stared at it for ages at first without understanding what it was talking about, and for three days straight he couldn’t make sense of the very first paragraph, which made him seriously doubt his own intelligence.

It wasn’t until three days later, when he accidentally activated his mental power while reading, that he finally discovered the “correct way to open” this introductory article. Otherwise, he would still be stuck in self-doubt.

“Could this be a test that Eleanor left for herself?”

After finding the right approach, Ethan had one more thing to do each day: after practicing the water creation spell, he would meditate to recover his mental power, and then use his mental power to read that strange introductory article to strengthen his mind.

And as his mental power slowly improved, he gradually uncovered some of the hidden information in the book.

According to the book, no matter what school a mage belongs to, mental power is the core of spellcasting. The strength of one’s mental power directly determines the strength of a mage’s magic, their control over magic, and so on.

In fact, a mage with powerful mental strength can even inflict deadly harm on an enemy without using magic—however, very few mages actually attack enemies directly with mental power, and the book gives a brief explanation for this.

Because mental power is so important, it is almost directly connected to a person’s “essence”: things like the soul. Attacking an enemy with mental power is equivalent to exposing your own “essence” to the enemy, making it easy for some enemies to exploit this vulnerability and cause great harm.

Therefore, when casting offensive magic, mages generally prefer to control other energies—that is, what’s called magic power.

Magic power is just a general term; it doesn’t refer to a specific energy. According to what Ethan learned from the book: water element can be used as magic power; fire element can also be used as magic power; arcane energy is, of course, magic power; even extreme energies like holy light and fel energy are considered forms of magic power in the eyes of mages.

So the scope of magic power is very broad, and which type one can use or is skilled at depends on individual aptitude and training.

Take Eleanor, for example—her use of magic power is quite varied. According to the movie plot Ethan saw in his previous life, Eleanor even drew a large amount of negative energy from some rather dark planes to maintain her existence and spellcasting. This is typical mage behavior—as long as it’s energy, it can be used as magic power.

But all of this is premised on having sufficiently strong mental power. Otherwise, even if you find unlimited unclaimed energy, you’re not qualified to wield powerful magic.

In Ethan’s view, the theory emphasized in this book is that magic power is a tool, and mental power is the hands that use the tool. Hitting someone directly with your hands might injure your hands, so self-preserving mages avoid this self-harming approach, and attacking with a tool minimizes the risk.

As for the knowledge of brewing, generating, extracting, and storing magic power, Ethan knows these things exist, but this hefty introductory book doesn’t provide any details. It seems to assume he’s not qualified to know these things yet.

“Is this book looking down on me?”

Casually putting the hefty book away, Ethan stopped thinking about all that messy knowledge. He just needed to have a general understanding. According to the book’s theory, he couldn’t even perfectly control the minimum amount of magic power right now, because his mental power was only barely stronger than an ordinary person’s—he simply didn’t have the qualifications to become a mage.

So, if he wanted to become stronger, what he needed to do now was honestly train his mental power, and only consider magic power after his mind became stronger.

“Huh? Is that a storm?”

After dozens of days at sea, this was the first time Ethan saw something other than endless ocean in the distance.

Those endless black clouds and the rain pouring down like a city wall fully demonstrated the power of nature to a “rookie” like Ethan.

“This is bad, I need to turn around quickly.”

Seeing this, only a fool would keep going forward. With his little broken boat, he didn’t even need to enter the storm’s range—just getting a bit closer, the waves several meters high could capsize his boat.

Just as Ethan was about to turn the boat around and quickly leave, he seemed to faintly hear someone calling for help.

“Was that my imagination?”