Adam placed his hand on the head of an avatar, and all his other avatars immediately stopped their activities. A massive amount of data began to merge and travel upwards, eventually reaching Adam's own mind.
This process of collecting data took a very long time.
Adam had two major objectives before he left this world: to understand and confirm Gauss's Law and Gauss's Law for Magnetism. He had already confirmed Gauss's Law, but was still working on the law for magnetism.
Before leaving the Mage World, Adam had figured out the experimental methods and shared them with his avatars. Over many years, these avatars continuously performed balance experiments without stopping.
They functioned almost like machines, keeping on with their tasks as long as they had materials and no outside disruptions. Even when experiments failed, they would just record the results, analyze them, and then try a different approach.
In this case, avatars were more effective than hiring experimental assistants.
After numerous failures, the balance experiment finally succeeded in an ether environment, leading to the creation of the Ether Coulomb's Law. This law accurately described the force between stationary electric charges in an ether environment: the force between two charges decreases as the distance between them increases.
Gauss's Law was based on this principle. Thus, after developing the Ether Coulomb's Law, deducing Gauss's Law became easier.
This achievement was a critical part of forming Maxwell's equations.
The process of data transfer felt like Adam was personally conducting the experiments. Once he had fully absorbed this information, a soft magical breeze began to swirl around him.
Slight elements of magical essence gathered and flowed into his soul. Without any dramatic effects, the transition from level one to level two was smooth. Adam simply needed to continue his meditation practice to reach the magical strength of a level-two mage.
Validating these two laws made Adam's magic more structured and powerful. For a simple comparison, if Adam could previously exert ten units of power with a bit of magic, he could now exert fifty units.
However, that was just one aspect. Adam still lacked a crucial element of a mage's power: the Elemental Trueself.
The Elemental Trueself was extremely important. It was not only a way for elemental mages to transcend the limitations of their physical bodies, but it also allowed them to apply their knowledge more directly. The strength of magic in the Elemental Trueself state was far greater than in their physical form.
Once Adam successfully proves the existence of electrons and forms an Electron Trueself, his minor spells would be as powerful as his current strongest attacks.
All the avatars shared the knowledge of the original Adam.
Based on his research, they used the rune system to create a new spell, inspired by the principle of the Faraday cage. This spell, called "Static Shield," created a space where the electric potential was the same everywhere, making the electric field inside it zero.
This spell was simple enough for an apprentice to use, but its impact is huge. The creation of Static Shield makes old electric magic in the world of mages outdated.
The laboratory's achievements over the years didn't stop there. After almost completing Maxwell's equations, the avatars suspected the existence of electromagnetic waves and started experiments to prove it.
Using materials in the laboratory, they made induction coils and found electric sparks. They then focused on studying these sparks in detail.
They designed a simple oscillator and did experiments every day. The data showed that things weren't going well at first. For ten years, the results didn't match the theory of electromagnetic fields. But the avatars kept going, recording every small change, and finally, they observed electromagnetic waves moving through space.
Adam valued this discovery even more than his own advancement to level two. If he continued these experiments and figured out the frequencies of different electromagnetic waves, it would help him a lot in understanding and separating radiation from living things.
This breakthrough by the avatars could make Adam's work on verifying electrons much faster.
Also, discovering electromagnetic waves could be really useful in alchemy. Adam might even make a lot of money from this discovery.
He didn't rush to do more research. He knew that experiments take time and most big discoveries come from lots of tries and unexpected findings. The excitement of research and learning was in this uncertainty - no one knew for sure if they were right or if a strange idea might turn out to be true.
After moving up to the next level, Adam told his avatars to keep experimenting. He then went to see Lina and the devil.
Lina was still bound by the pact with the devil. The first thing Adam needed to do was to transfer and change this contract.
Lina was a real, living creature, unlike the devil. The devil could hide in Adam's mind after they made a master-servant pact, but Lina couldn't do that.
To make forest elves into a group of slaves, Adam needed a special pact. Using this pact, Adam only needed to connect with the leader of the slaves. Then, by controlling this leader, he could control the whole group.
The cost of such a pact was very low, but to keep the slaves, one needed a stable place provided by the Second Element Tower.
This kind of space could support different creatures, and it became more valuable as it got bigger and had more features. A place big enough for thousands of forest elves could be very expensive, although Adam was quite rich now.
Also, he hadn't received the money for his last mission yet.
Adam thought he might need to sell something, as he looked at Lina.
'I'm an Explorer,' he thought. 'Until I reach a higher level, I don't need to fight in wars. For my missions, I just need a few skilled, strong helpers. I don't need so many slaves.'
Lina felt scared under Adam's look. She moved back a little and asked quietly, "Master, what should I do now?"
Adam bought the contract from the Mage Network and got permission to use it in the world of mages. Then he told the devil, "End your pact with her."
The devil did as told. Lina felt free at first, but then she felt scared and weak because of the power coming from the Tower. Without Adam's help, she would be in big trouble here. If Adam hadn't gotten permission before, she would have been in danger as soon as the pact ended.
Then, Adam and Lina went to a storage area in the Tower. Adam chose a hundred forest elves with the best potential, half men and half women. He made them stronger and brought them up to level-two.
The others were listed for sale, probably for a good price.
Lina looked sad but knew she couldn't change what Adam decided. She watched as her people were taken away, trying not to see their scared faces and hear their cries.
After all the forest elves were gone, the storage space was empty. Adam told Lina to stay there for a few days.
Then he went to Sophia, who was shaking and crying. He signed the Summoning Contract with her, and took her away.
In the laboratory, Sophia was curled up, crying and calling out. She was very scared of this place. She was afraid of the group of identical 'big dragons' and even more scared of being left alone.
Adam did not try to make her feel better. He told her, "You need to learn to live with your new situation. From now on, you have to be useful, or," he stopped, trying to think of a word that would scare her. Sophia's understanding was not fully developed; she could not grasp very difficult words. He chose a simpler warning, "Or you will not get any food."
Sophia looked at Adam with a confused face, her eyes filling with tears again. After a while, she asked sadly, "What does it mean to be useful? Since you have changed, we can't be mates. Does that mean I am not useful now?"
Before the devil could make a joke out of it, Adam kicked him out of the room and ordered, "Go to the Mission Hall. I need a mage with a level-four body-fining mage, a Transformer."
When the devil left, Adam explained to Sophia, "I don't need you to be my mate. I need you to become stronger."
She cried harder, her tears falling to the floor. "But I can't fight. I can't beat anyone. I am afraid of bad people," Sophia said with a shaky voice.
Thinking of her mother made her even sadder, and she began to cry loudly, "Mommy said I would learn when I grow up, but I think even then I won't be able to fight the bad people."
Adam realized he couldn't expect the young dragon to become strong by herself. He hoped the skilled Transformer would have a way to give her fighting abilities.
He had no time for her tears, so he used a spell to make her sleep. Then he went to organize the radioactive minerals and samples of creatures that live in radiation.
He put aside the radioactive minerals for now, as he didn't know enough about nuclear science yet. Adam didn't have any proven knowledge at the atomic level.
He placed the creatures that live in radiation in the deepest part of the laboratory. There, he instructed machines to build a room almost completely closed off, made entirely of ether crystals.
The room was filled with various magic arrays for protection, and a lot of equipment for observing and analyzing. If everything went as planned, this room would be where Adam focused his research before his next mission.
Adam also asked for two advanced alchemy machines to make sure he could control several level-four radioactive creatures after he broke Mage Stanley's seal.
The next day, the devil brought a skilled body-refining Transformer who agreed to help to Adam's laboratory.
Adam greeted her, "Good day, Mage Meredith."
Meredith was an extremely beautiful level-four mage, slender and perfect in shape, very different from the muscular or intimidating body-refining mages Adam had seen before. She had a unique and unforgettable presence that was even a little overwhelming.
When Adam first saw her, his heartbeat faster, but he quickly focused on thinking logically and did not show any embarrassment.
The devil, on the other hand, seemed to be behaving better, keeping its head down and not daring to look up.
"Hello."
"Where is the little dragon? I heard she has a special body related to elements. I've seen many dragons in different worlds, but none with such a gift," Meredith asked, laughing lightly. Her smile was very charming.
As they walked, Adam said, "She only has a kind of elemental body. In her original world, she could control elements very well, but here, she's not much different from other creatures, except she's smarter, and she can't use her powers on her own."
"That makes sense. The magic in this world is too strong, so it holds back the abilities of creatures from other worlds. But if she is really talented, things will be very different after we change her."
"Is that her? She's so cute," Meredith said, her eyes brightening when she saw Sophia sleeping on the floor. She touched Sophia's scales gently, "Such a pure soul, it's sad, she's even scared in her sleep."
She seemed to really like Sophia and asked without looking back, "How do you want to change her? Do you have a plan?"
"She's a frost giant dragon, so she's all about ice. She can work with me, but ice is not as flexible as water. My first wish is to change her element to water."
"That's easy to do. Quite simple, actually."
"The second thing is Elemental Trueself. I'm not sure what we need for that, but I hope she will have a true elemental body after we change her."
"That's also possible. I have materials that can do that."
"The third thing is that her natural abilities are too weak. I want you to put some strong magic patterns inside her."
Meredith turned around and asked, "That can be done, but how will you solve the problem with energy? Magic patterns without power to use won't make much of a difference."
