novelGlobal Chapter 651: Reverse Potion Mastery! The Timeless Genius of King Otto!
Chapter 651: Reverse Potion Mastery! The Timeless Genius of King Otto!
The Flowing Gold pointed a single finger that split the sky. That celestial-tier golden finger broke through the barrier left behind by ancient space and time, and Locke transformed into a torrent of golden-green spirituality, rushing toward the location where King Otto resided.King Otto saw the torrent of spirituality circling above the golden hall that appeared before him, and a strange light flashed in his eyes.
From within that torrent of spirituality, a demon dragon spirituality that was on the verge of taking form crawled out. The demon dragon shot him a hostile glance, but quickly merged back into Locke's torrent of spirituality.
A Second Circle wizard was someone who had broken through the soul's limits a second time. Even within the endless void, such individuals were considered exceptionally rare, and no one could afford to ignore them wherever they walked.
Such a vast and extraordinarily pure spirituality, after breaking through the barrier of time, had not been worn down too greatly, and it reassembled itself into Locke's form.
Even so, blood trickled from the corner of Locke's mouth, and his magic power surged in turbulent waves at that moment.
Forcefully breaking through the barrier had, in its own way, been an enormous drain on him.
However, the spiritual drain incurred in the process could be entirely covered by the boost in spirituality gained from the pseudo-Second Circle breakthrough.
In any case, even if he didn't use it to offset the cost, that portion of elevated spirituality would evaporate and disappear on its own after he fell back to his original magic level.
Locke assessed the damage to his spirituality and discovered that the second time he had temporarily reached the Second Circle, the quality of his spirituality was even higher than it had been the first time.
This was primarily because the Grand Magic he had constructed the second time was more refined and coherent than the previous one.
Moreover, he had fused his Tyrant Hummingbird Sea Gold Sand into the spell model of the Lunar Mirror, granting his Lunar Mirror a certain degree of offensive characteristics.
At the same time, this Grand Magic differed from the previous one in another way. Since he had been actively exploring historical truths, he had instinctively integrated a portion of history magic spell models into it, using them to stabilize his spirituality after he broke through the barrier.
As a result, within the spell model of the Lunar Mirror, he had incorporated certain core spell models from History Reenactment.
Even so, despite the considerable improvements made in this second construction of the Grand Magic, it could, to some extent, be considered average, or perhaps even slightly above average. Yet Locke still had many dissatisfactions with it.
This Grand Magic had not reached the level he had envisioned for it.
At this moment, Locke turned his gaze toward King Otto.
King Otto acted as though he hadn't noticed the demon dragon spirituality from just moments ago. "You are the emissary of the Black Sun Tower, no, you are the one who sought to have a conversation with me?"
"Is this... the past?"
King Otto swept his gaze across Locke's eyes.
The two of them were separated by seventy thousand years, yet through the magic of the founding ancestor of archaeology, they had managed to meet here.
King Otto said, "You look very young."
Locke raised an eyebrow. "I could come back in ten years. Your Majesty."
King Otto smiled. "You have a sense of humor, far more so than those court wizards of mine. It seems that wizards of later generations are quite different from the wizards of my era, who were almost exclusively high nobles and princes. Their temperaments were far more rigid."
"I can see that you come from an era entirely unlike the present one. In you, I can see a vitality that does not exist in this age, and I can sense a kind of power that is completely different from the wizards of this time."
Locke said, "Very few wizards in the world seventy thousand years from now hold positions as nobles or princes."
A subtle shift crossed King Otto's eyes. "Seventy thousand years? That really is quite a long time. No wonder the Expungement Curse placed on me by the Black Sun Tower has weakened by seventy thousand years from now."
"Power and strength have been separated, have they? Never mind. At this point, it no longer matters to me. Wizard of later generations, I know why you have come here. I can feel the Expungement Curse drawing near."
"There is not much time."
"I can more or less guess your purpose in coming here. I can hand you the formula for the Zero Potion, or perhaps, it is my only choice at this moment."
King Otto waved a hand, and the lid of the bronze ritual cauldron immediately floated upward. A blank spirituality rested inside it.
Locke asked, "What should I do?"
King Otto said, "Place the artifact in your hand into my Bronze Cauldron!"
Locke did so at once.
In an instant, the iron sphere and the blank spirituality merged into one, then fell right to the center of the Bronze Cauldron, and in the next moment, the iron sphere became embedded within it.
Locke said, "Your Majesty, what just happened?"
King Otto looked at the Bronze Cauldron and said, "The artifact can fuse with this portion of the Zero Potion I have refined. The two become one."
"It reshapes spirituality. Therefore, the framework of this cauldron I painstakingly crafted can be reconstructed from the flow of information in this past into a blank vessel, and then be taken back with you."
"Although everything here belongs to the past, the iron sphere in your hands is an object from the future. Though there is only one such object, for a master-level potion master like myself, it is more than enough."
Locke raised an eyebrow. Only a Third Circle potion master could call themselves a master-level potion master.
King Otto tossed the Bronze Cauldron to Locke. "This is for you. This is the Bronze Cauldron Soul Artifact, which I completed after seeking out a great number of alchemists."
"By the time it fully takes shape, it should be a Second Circle soul artifact, one of the finest crucibles available to a potion master. Moreover, every time you use it to formulate a potion, the cauldron will absorb the residual spirituality that dissipates from the potion."
"And undergo a subtle evolution."
"In other words, this is the prototype of a soul artifact capable of growing all the way to the Third Circle."
Locke looked at the Bronze Cauldron in his hands, which had shrunk to the size of an incense burner, and hadn't expected he would receive such a treasure.
"But Your Majesty, what I came for was the formula of the Zero Potion."
King Otto said, "Young friend from later generations, there is no need to be in such a rush. To formulate the Zero Potion, one requires at minimum an expert-level standard in potion mastery, and also a Second Circle level of magic."
"Your current level of magic is indeed sufficient to hear this safely. Listen carefully, young one. I may have been a failed king, a failed ruler of this era, and I acknowledge that."
King Otto waved his hand, and a map composed of spirituality appeared in midair.
The map was shaped like a maple leaf.
The territory of the Heliothos Imperial Court occupied nearly seventy percent of it.
But Locke frowned as he looked at the map. "Your Majesty, is this the map of the wizard world? But why does it look like something a dog has been chewing on? It is riddled with jagged, broken edges."
"Broken?" King Otto turned to look at the maple-leaf-shaped map in midair and let out a small laugh. "Ever since the Imperial Age came to its sudden collapse, the wizard world has looked like this. The wizard world was shattered when the Imperial Age fell, and throughout the Era of Stars, it suffered repeated blows."
"My dream was once to usher in a brand-new era for the wizard world, to restore the glory of our Imperial Age, and to reclaim our lost territories. Those lands that had long since broken away from our world."
"Before the Heliothos Imperial Court, during the Era of Stars, there were three other magical kingdoms of comparable size and scale. Together, we had nearly achieved complete unification of the wizard world, but in the end, we fell short."
Locke said, "What a pity. Your Majesty, when I was earlier exploring the ancient tomb of your wife, the Loom Princess, I kept encountering a particular piece of information: that the Era of Stars had four great problems. I also heard mention of three hundred million magical kingdoms."
"Now that I know all of this, I have many questions I wish to ask you. It is rare to have an opportunity like this to speak with someone from the ancient past, and it is truly invaluable to me."
King Otto looked at him with surprise. "My wife's tomb? You wouldn't happen to be a grave robber from later generations, would you?"
The Loom Princess, who was hiding behind the throne in the golden hall, immediately wore a peculiar expression, as she personally heard a wizard say that he had come from her ancient tomb, traveled back to the past, and was now meeting her face to face.
It was such a strange feeling.
Even she could not be certain whether this was truly the past or merely some kind of reenactment of the past.
Locke coughed once. "No. In the future, I am a botany wizard, a breeder, a potion master, and also an archaeology wizard."
"I conduct research in the field of ancient breeding studies. This time, I collaborated with three archaeology professors to jointly explore abyssal ruins."
"The duty of an archaeology wizard is to unearth secrets that were long since forgotten by the past, so that later generations will not forget the painful lessons recorded in history, and to dig up ancient secrets and knowledge that have been buried, allowing them to be revived in my era and to develop new vitality."
King Otto gave a nod. "Ah, I understand now. Very well, indeed not a grave robber. It is just that I'm afraid I will have to disappoint you, for there is not much I can tell you."
King Otto said, "Don't let my position as ruler of the Heliothos Imperial Court fool you. I was a king who almost ushered in the Mortal Age. But my knowledge is quite sparse."
"You appear to have received a thorough education. But as for me, aside from the necessary magical knowledge, I have not had much exposure to anything else. In my era, the difficulty of acquiring knowledge was extremely high."
"Moreover, ancient history and archaeology were not given much weight, and no dedicated magical discipline was ever established for them. So even though I am a person of the Era of Stars, I may actually know less about this era than you do."
"I only know about the stretch of time I personally lived through. The Era of Stars spans a long and distant history, and the specific details are, in truth, beyond my knowledge."
Otto said, "I only know some relatively surface-level things. For instance, before my time in the Era of Stars, there were three magical kingdoms that reached a scale comparable to the Heliothos Imperial Court: the Aachen Imperial Court, the Regensburg Imperial Court, and the Lianfeltier Imperial Court. I have only heard of their names and reputations, but their histories have all been buried in the past."
"The Era of Stars is a long-spanning age, and even within this era alone, multiple cycles have already passed."
"The three hundred million magical kingdoms of the Era of Stars ranged from the smallest, which was the territory of a single First Circle wizard, to the largest, which was the territory of a Third Circle wizard."
King Otto said, "What was your education like?"
Locke paused for a moment, then said, "Later generations have a complete academy system. During my apprenticeship, I received instruction from many renowned teachers..."
He gave a brief account of it.
King Otto seemed quite interested in the academy system and asked one more question before sighing and saying, "In the Era of Stars, learning magic was still conducted through the master-and-apprentice system, or through self-study using grimoires."
"The academy system of the Imperial Age had gone extinct by the Era of Stars. The transmission of knowledge could almost only be sustained through scattered oral instruction passed between individual wizards, and even wizards who wrote books became fewer and fewer."
"It was an era of knowledge famine."
"Each of us wizards could have only one teacher. Once a teacher, forever a father. A wizard, over the course of an entire lifetime, acquired the vast majority of magic through reading ancient grimoires on their own. How fortunate that in your era, the acquisition of knowledge is so effortless."
"You received a complete education during your apprenticeship. It is evident that you at least have a solid foundation, one that wizards of this era simply do not possess."
King Otto said, "Most wizards of this era, constrained by their circumstances, ended up learning in patchwork and haphazard ways, picking up pieces here and there, forming no coherent system. But the patent and academic paper systems of later generations eliminated the situation where every wizard only swept the snow in front of their own door."
King Otto smiled and said, "I had a friend whose family had conducted unique research on the Fireball Spell and developed three entirely new apprentice-level spell models for it. They then treated this as a family treasure, kept it in absolute secrecy, and never told anyone. Later, everyone in his family died in a war, and so those three apprentice-level spell models for the Fireball Spell were lost forever."
Locke looked surprised. "Even spell models for the Fireball Spell had to be hidden and concealed?"
King Otto smiled and said, "What an extravagant thing to say. The abundance of knowledge in later generations truly leaves me in awe."
"Never mind spell models for the Fireball Spell. Even a mortal chef adding an extra spoonful of salt when cooking could become a secret never to be passed on."
"If there were no paper and patent systems, everyone would only hide away knowledge that was uniquely theirs. Even if it meant letting it sit there unknown to anyone, sealed away in the past, left to rot, they still would not tell a soul. But the paper system of later generations, the kind of system you described, makes a wizard, upon discovering something new, desperately eager to announce it to the world. That is commendable."
"I can see from this the universality of knowledge exchange in later generations." King Otto said, "That must be a great era where even an ordinary wizard has the opportunity to become a high-Circle wizard. It is my misfortune not to be able to see the wizard world seventy thousand years from now."
"But meeting you is my fortune. Person from later generations."
King Otto said, "It seems there is one thing I was worrying about unnecessarily."
Locke asked curiously, "What is that?"
King Otto said, "It is the misconception that only I can do it. For a long time, I felt that I bore a great responsibility, that the future of civilization rested on my shoulders. Every step I took was lonely, heavy, and full of pain."
King Otto maintained his human appearance through illusion magic, and the eyes of that middle-aged man revealed loneliness and despair.
"After so many years, I had actually forgotten that I am, in the end, just a... person."
"Saying these words now, I feel not sorrow but a kind of fortune. Person from later generations, have you ever considered how agonizing it must be for one person to shoulder an entire era?"
"No one to rely on, no one to confide in. I ruled alone for thousands of years. The weight of the era pressed down on me, carried by me alone. If the Mortal Age had arrived, that would have been my future. And yet I now find myself grateful that perhaps my failure was, for me, actually a kind of fortune."
"But after conversing with you, a person of later generations, I suddenly realize that I had fallen into the delusion that the entire world could not do without me." King Otto burst into laughter. "With that, even my last lingering worry has been set aside."
"Since the future can be so brilliant and so wonderful, I can leave with a peaceful heart."
"My attachment to the world has been released. What remains is only a small measure of personal vanity regarding my own achievements." King Otto said, "I actually know very little about the Era of Stars. It was an era of knowledge famine, and I could only hear scattered, secondhand information. So I cannot help you very much."
"As for the Four Great Problems, one of them is the problem of immortal dictators, an imperfect immortality created by necromancy."
"That one was resolved by me. I can say so outright. As for the remaining three, all four great problems are concepts that transcend magic. The moment I mention them, they provoke a reaction. And the power I have now, and the power you possess, are insufficient to withstand those three problems. So it is better that I say nothing of them."
King Otto said to Locke, "Thank you, person from later generations. Now, let me tell you the most important invention of my life."
"This is a discovery on par with a kingdom domain."
"I said I was a failure as a king. That I acknowledge. But as a potion master, I was a success. In the original course of history, this great invention of mine certainly would not have changed anything."
King Otto tightened his fist. "But person from later generations, you come from the future, from an era where you have experienced all great inventions and know that they will surely receive the recognition they deserve. So you would certainly agree that something like this should never happen. This is a new theory in potion mastery equivalent in level to an initial-tier kingdom domain."
"It is just that I have run out of time to refine it into a new system."
"Listen carefully."
Behind King Otto, figures in the shape of humans composed of spirituality appeared. These figures were remarkably lifelike, with veins, muscles, and bones woven together from spirituality and air elements to form a complete human shape.
Locke thought, "Even an initial-tier kingdom domain is something equivalent to the level of a Grand Magic. It is the core of a wizard in this era."
"And King Otto actually claims that the new theory he developed as a potion master is something comparable to that."
"However, King Otto is one of the Four Great Kings of the Era of Stars, so his words should carry an extremely high degree of credibility."
King Otto said, "Look, this is a simulated human body I constructed using spirituality and air elements. Before me, public spirituality was considered impossible. Yet I discovered that it was possible to refine blank spirituality from all things in existence."
"And furthermore, a wizard could both make use of this blank spirituality and safely separate from it. The absorption and use of spirituality is not an uncommon concept in potion mastery."
"There are many potions in potion mastery that involve a wizard absorbing and making use of a certain spirituality contained within a potion."
"What is truly valuable is my concept of public spirituality."
"In fact, within the currently existing body of potion mastery, there are already potions that allow one wizard to obtain the spirituality of another, causing the spirituality of both parties to undergo temporary or permanent fusion, not merely surface-level absorption."
"And after the fusion, the spirituality can still be safely separated."
Locke, as a potion master, raised a reasonable question. "But spirituality is a composite of a wizard's traces of existence across past, present, and future, along with their comprehensive accumulated power. Spirituality is profoundly mysterious, and even high-Circle wizards of my era have not fully deconstructed it."
"Moreover, if it is not a case of one spirituality devouring another, but rather two spiritualities fusing together, does that not mean that one person's soul can fuse with another person's soul?"
"Two people would overlap in their very existence. Yet based on the non-fusion property of existences as understood by ghost studies, this should be impossible."
"Every person possesses a unique spirituality. The general process is that one's own spirituality absorbs the spirituality of other things. Even when corresponding traits are acquired, it is simply one's own spirituality growing and receiving a corresponding supplement and transformation, not a collapse of the boundary between one's own existence and another person's existence, resulting in fusion."
King Otto said, "Some things need not be fully understood in order to be used, and their mechanisms can still be taken advantage of."
"Moreover, there is already such a potion within potion mastery, and that is the love elixir."
"Let me ask you: what is the principle behind a basic love elixir?"
Locke answered quickly, "The fundamentals remain the same regardless of variation. A love elixir works by causing the person who consumes it to emit a certain special scent, or to produce special changes in their magic pressure fluctuations, which causes other wizards or mortals to fall in love with the consumer."
King Otto said, "Very well. Then what is the fundamental principle behind a higher-tier love elixir, the love potion?"
Locke paused and began to think. "The love potion is rather special. One collects the hair of the person that a particular wizard truly loves, extracts their spirituality from it, and combines it with other ingredients to produce the love potion."
"After the consumer drinks it, in the eyes of that wizard, the consumer becomes the wizard's beloved. True love is produced between the two of them. Although, the true love has simply been transferred from one pair of lovers to a new pair, consisting of the consumer and that wizard."
Locke realized something. "The love potion does indeed make use of another person's spirituality. And drinking the love potion does not mean that one's own spirituality absorbs that spirituality in a devouring manner, because if that were the case, it would be impossible to transfer that wizard's true love for another person over to oneself."
"So it is simply a matter of overlaying the other party's spirituality on top of one's own spirituality."
Locke came to the realization swiftly.
The love potion was also a potion that could be formulated at the crystallization stage of the First Circle, though its difficulty of formulation, among First Circle potions, could stand as an equal to the luck potion.
Even with his current level of ability, using the Primordial Fire, he would still need to spend a period of time studying and practicing before he could successfully formulate a bottle of love potion.
"The love potion uses Philosopher's Rose nectar, which has the special effect of intertwining two different spiritualities together."
Locke came to a realization. "So the inspiration for the public spirituality and the Zero Potion formula came from this ancient potion recipe, the love potion?"
Indeed, continuing to think along that direction, one would realize that a mere love potion, a potion regarded by wizards as little more than a pitiable method for those who wished to obtain another person's true love through improper means, actually harbored immense potential for application in other fields.
The true love potion, this potion that pilfered another person's spirituality and integrated it with their own, did indeed carry a rudimentary form of public spirituality.
However, there was still a considerable distance between this and truly realized public spirituality.
First, it was not a matter of two spiritualities adhering to each other, but of two spiritualities genuinely fusing together, and after the fusion, deliberately separating them again. Without that deliberate separation, the result would be no different from absorption in terms of outcome.
Though in terms of personal enhancement, there might be some difference.
Furthermore, public spirituality also required the blanking of spirituality.
But the reason spirituality was so difficult to blank, or why blank spirituality was so hard to find occurring naturally, was precisely because spirituality itself was a composite of the existence of all things and their various inherent attributes.
If it were blank, it would mean non-existence. And if it did not exist, how could there be spirituality at all?
Much like how there would not be a trace of spirituality within a vacuum.
Therefore, the four words "blank spirituality" were themselves contrary to logic.
This was most likely also the reason why, over tens of thousands of years, only King Otto had ever started from the love potion as a foundation and found his way to the formula of the Zero Potion.
King Otto said, "You actually thought through it seriously. It seems that even you can see that, thinking from this direction, something can indeed be worked out."
"That is correct. This is the starting point from which I invented the Zero Potion formula. But I later arrived at something better and more complete."
Behind King Otto, the human figures composed of spirituality and air elements began to interact internally. "I have a different understanding of potion mastery. Unlike the mainstream understanding of potion mastery, I believe that potion mastery is a discipline of fusing and refining various forms of spirituality."
"When viewed from this angle, whether it is magic or the human body, some form of potion-mastery reaction is occurring every moment."
"By the same logic, using the methods of potion mastery, one can simulate and create a human being."
"Traditional potion mastery holds that through a series of rigorously processed magical materials, a specific energy or information can be guided and fixed, allowing the one who consumes the potion to obtain that energy or information."
"But reversing this, is it not possible to use a human being to create the blank spirituality we desire? A human being we create, one that possesses no attributes of existence, no self, not a true person at all, but defined entirely by the means of potion mastery, would produce a spirituality that is blank!"
"This human being is the crucible, the furnace. Magical materials are fed into it, and blank spirituality is extracted from within."
"This is what I call the Reverse Refinement Method!"
"Conventional potion mastery begins by refining potion ingredients into a finished potion, which is then consumed by a human body. My Reverse Refinement Method begins by using potion mastery to simulate a human body, and then refines blank spirituality from within that body, producing the Zero Potion!"
Locke blinked. Good heavens. King Otto truly deserved his reputation as the greatest rebel of all time throughout the ages.
This was a complete inversion of all established order, turning every single step of potion mastery on its head.
Any ordinary wizard would have been utterly at a loss.
And yet he had actually found a way to make it work.
Locke let out a wry smile. "I have a feeling this thing can be developed further, and that it will be quite dangerous. I have a high chance of ending up in a wizard prison."