This wizard only wishes to be a teacher

Lucien had not upgraded directly, but first checked the new bond effects.

This bond related to witchcraft was much harder to acquire than expected.

Originally, according to Lucien’s assumption, this bond should have been successfully unlocked after Carly had mastered the Bloodline Magic "Falling Moon," but the unlocking of this bond ended up being later than Lucien had estimated. Moreover, from the description on the system panel, this bond had only unlocked the initial stage, and there was clearly room for further improvement.

"The bond effect is actually effective for the Formal Witchcraft ’Frost Blade Dance,’ reducing the condensation time of the frost blade by 10%? It’s just unknown what changes will occur after the bond’s upgrade or if the ’Moon Blade’ skill will play an important role in Carly’s future bloodline evolution path?"

After checking the bond effect, several guesses quickly emerged in Lucien’s mind.

However, these guesses in Lucien’s mind still needed to be verified, and soon he emerged from this brief reflection.

"Mentor Lucien?" Seeing Lucien come back to his senses from his pondering state, Carly looked at him, her expression somewhat anxious yet also concerned.

After all, every time Mentor Lucien seemed to be deep in thought during the teaching process, it appeared he was contemplating something related to teaching and enhancement.

"It’s nothing..." Lucien hesitated slightly, but looking at Carly, he thought it best to give her a reminder.

"It’s just that when you later become proficient with your Bloodline Power, try not to neglect the use of the ’Moon Blade’ series of moves... This way, I will also teach you the witchcraft rune models related to the ’Moon Blade’ series, which you should study in comparison. I don’t require you to use the rune models when fighting with the Moon Blade, but at least you should understand them thoroughly."

"Yes!" Carly did not ask why immediately but after agreeing, she became quite curious about Mentor Lucien’s serious attitude at that moment.

"Mentor Lucien, can you tell me the reason?" Carly fluttered her large eyes, slightly tiptoeing to make her face a bit higher from the ground.

"Emmm... It’s just a speculation I have for now, but I’m not very certain, yet learning a bit more won’t do you any harm," Lucien thought for a moment but still gave Carly a somewhat vague answer.

Carly nodded thoughtfully, firmly committing this matter to memory.

After all, from previous experiences, whatever Mentor Lucien said and explained was correct, which made Carly develop an inexplicable trust in Lucien.

...

"Finally, it’s time for the system upgrade."

In the evening, when Lucien returned to his room, he immediately opened the system panel and initiated the system upgrade.

[System Upgrading...]

[5...10...75...97...]

The progress bar on the system upgrade panel gradually filled up, and after a crisp notification sound, the system upgrade was declared completely finished.

[System Upgrade Complete]

[Congratulations, host has gained {Binding Student Qualification} *2]

[Reverence Value System Upgrade Complete]

...

Looking at each detail that had changed due to the system upgrade, Lucien quickly inspected the system panel and soon found the changes after the upgrade.

The first was two additional student binding slots, which meant that apart from Carly, there were two more people to fleece—ah, to meticulously instruct.

Aside from the binding student slots, the largest change in this system upgrade was a significant upgrade to the Reverence Value System.

To put it simply, the upgrade mainly consisted of two points.

The first was that Lucien’s reverence values were no longer limited to those provided by the bound students alone but could also be provided by other wizards or Wizard Apprentices, although the reverence values supplied by these non-bound students were much lower per occurrence than those offered by students like Carly through the apprentice binding.

For instance, if Carly and her group provided 100 points of respect value to themselves, then a non-bound student could only provide less than 10 points of respect value.

However, Lucien understood that non-bound students greatly outnumber bound students, and under the sheer numeric superiority, these non-bound students would provide an impressive amount of respect value.

The second point was that Lucien’s respect value was deeply tied to his spiritual power.

In simple terms, with the system’s respect value, Lucien could directly use these respect values to "temper" his spiritual power to accelerate the upgrading speed of his spiritual power. Similarly, modules that required payment of respect values, such as the previous identification module and teaching module, could now be paid for with spiritual power as an alternative, somewhat akin to casting magic.

This change was a mixed blessing for Lucien. The advantage was that with the help of the system’s respect value, his power increase was basically like switching on an accelerator. He only needed to continuously reap respect values to steadily enhance his strength, which was particularly beneficial for him as he was currently in charge of Greybone Academy.

The downside, however, was that using spiritual power in place of respect value to pay for the identification and teaching modules would impose certain restrictions on Lucien’s use of these modules per instance. Whether it was the identification or teaching module, their implementation consumed a considerable amount of spiritual power. Even with Lucien’s far superior spiritual power compared to other Formal Wizards, continuously deploying teaching aids or identification modules was quite challenging.

Overall, this system upgrade which brought a significant upgrade to the respect value system was actually a good thing for him.

Lucien gently closed his eyes, feeling the slow and steady increase of spiritual power within his body.

This was not the effect of the Meditation Method, but instead the tempering of his spiritual power by respect values at this very moment. Lucien only needed to gently close his eyes and use his spiritual power to sense those respect value "little hammers" lightly tapping and tempering his spiritual power, and he could feel each Wizard Apprentice who had contributed their respect values to him.

These apprentices, who had contributed a significant amount of respect values, were essentially the first beneficiaries of the recent educational reforms at the academy. At this moment, the respect values they offered to Lucien, who had driven the reforms, became the fuel for accelerating his power improvement.

"Perhaps, this is mutual assistance and unintended good results," Lucien thought with a smile in his heart. He had never intended to exploit anything from these poor, weak apprentices, but perhaps sometimes, the rewards would return to him in some special way.

...

"Instructor Xiyani, this is my contribution for this month." Inside Xiyani’s laboratory, Donn respectfully placed ten magic stones on Xiyani’s lab table.

"Oh, I see. But let’s wait a moment," Xiyani, a male wizard with somewhat messy hair and a somewhat unkempt appearance, said.

He glanced at the somewhat constrained Donn, nodded lightly, and then took out a contract from a drawer beside him. It was the apprentice contract signed by him and Donn when Donn entered school.

"According to the new rules set by Dean Lucien, the contracts previously signed by apprentices can be terminated through a redemption method. Of course, if you’re still willing to continue as my student, we can also sign a new contract according to the rules..." Xiyani took out a piece of parchment from one side, his voice sounding somewhat lazy.

Donn, somewhat cautiously, picked up the old and new contracts and began inspecting them nervously.

Initially, Donn thought the new contract would contain some harsh terms, but surprisingly, the content of the contract was unexpectedly generous.

Without the mandatory monthly "contributions" or the strict requirements for cooperating in experiments, although there were still some requirements, these were light tasks like cleaning the medicinal garden or cultivating a certain special herb...

This made Donn act without hesitation; he almost immediately signed his name on the new contract and stamped it with his Spiritual Imprint, thus transferring his apprentice contract from the old version to this new contract.

Watching the compliant Donn in front of him, Xiyani remained silent, but his heart was somewhat uneasy.

In his view, he had been generous to his apprentices compared to other Formal Wizards. He mostly chose death row inmates or slaves for the extremely risky experiments.

During his years as an instructor at Greybone Academy, only two apprentices had died in experiment accidents, and those were due to uncontrollable factors.

Yet, even so, Lucien’s "educational reforms" still burned him.

"Forget it, if it’s a bit troublesome, so be it. I don’t need any apprentices anyway, the worst it can get is a bit more troublesome with future drug trials," Xiyani muttered to himself, quickly dismissing the matter.

As an excellent Pharmacist, Xiyani was not lacking in magic stones, perhaps this was why he was relatively mild towards his apprentices.

But Xiyani’s indifference did not mean that other Formal Wizards felt the same.

For some Formal Wizards, teaching apprentices was a "good business," an important part of their numerous sources of income.

But now, this vital part was shaken. Even though the affected interests were just a small fraction, quite a few Formal Wizards now reacted intensely to Lucien’s protective policies, like cats whose tails had been stepped on.