Outside the rift, before Yun Jin had finished clearing the outskirts of the altar, Merlin stood in silence.

  He gripped his staff like a brush and drew a perfect circle into the dirt. Then he pointed to the center.

  The ground shifted.

  From a single point, the earth rose like the base of a tree. The circle he drew became the foundation, the circuit. Roots spread outward from it—into mud, into stone, into packed dirt. The network expanded in a perfect radius nearly thirty meters wide.

  I should be able to sustain this size.

  Merlin smiled to himself. His control had grown.

  Due to his condition, casting high-level spells was always a risk. A single miscalculation could carve chunks out of his life force. Spells that would drain normal mages might kill him outright, since everything he cast demanded triple the mana cost.

  The only exception was summoning.

  Even then, the price remained steep. While the cost to summon remained the same—or just slightly higher—the upkeep was multiplied. Each second drained mana at three times the usual rate.

  But there was a catch.

  The summoned creature also received three times the mana it would normally need. In turn, it became three times as powerful—same body, same form, exponentially greater force.

  The problem was longevity.

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  He couldn’t keep them around long enough to matter.

  That had changed.

  After learning Qi breathing from Yun Jin, and blending it with his own approach to magical control—plus a few secrets left behind in his grandfather’s records—Merlin had developed a new method.

  His theory: golem crafting.

  Instead of channeling mana through a summoning link, what if I follow Qi flow principles? If I bind it directly to myself, no mana is lost in transfer. Zero waste.

  He thrust his staff forward. Five spell circles expanded outward, one after another. They spun across the surface of the circuit, locking into place.

  “Activate!”

  The ground lit up.

  The spell stamped down, pulsing into the dirt. Light surged across the lines, and the circle began to float. At its center, soil, stone, and mud began to rise—breaking apart, condensing, and slamming into a forming core.

  “It works!”

  Merlin grinned and rushed toward the rift, the glowing [Core] following close behind.

  As he stepped through, the materials followed. Inside the rift, the pieces pulled together faster. Arms took shape. Legs. A torso. A head formed last as Merlin leapt up and landed on its back.

  The creature stopped growing once it reached fifteen meters tall.

  A complete giant.

  But it wasn’t shaped like a regular summon. The mana inside did not flow through a shared link. It did not rely on Merlin’s control at a distance.

  This one was different.

  The golem’s energy was now directly connected to his own mana stream. He had to stay in contact with it to maintain the bond, but that was the tradeoff.

  Because with this trick, he had reduced the cost of sustaining the summon to half.

  And with Qi breathing, he could now regenerate mana fast enough to keep up with its needs.

  In short, he could keep the golem active indefinitely.

  This was his own work.

  His new trump card.

  Golemancy!