Wizard: Starting With Synthesized Gems

Chapter 664: Constructing a Legendary History!

Five days later, Locke had used the Queen's Chessboard to extrapolate the primal force level structures of the seven key natural magical force structural components contained within the special ancient flower root, and through the Queen's Chessboard had confirmed their key mechanisms of action and formation.He had also obtained the primal force level information of this ancient flower root, which meant he could now print a model of this special flower root using the modeling machine and obtain the relevant plant essence.

Locke looked over the data before him and could not help but marvel at the immense power of nature. "This special flower root contains a unique structure called the [Glandular Root Pouch]. The root surface is covered in purple vesicles, and within them is a mixed liquid composed of seven types of natural magical force structural components. When this liquid is secreted outward, it undergoes seven different reactions with the sand and soil, and the substances produced by these seven reactions then interact with one another, ultimately giving rise to an extremely complex chain reaction, which causes the sand to become soil."

"A single Queen's Chessboard is simply not enough to fully analyze it, or perhaps I just don't have enough time. Unless I could use the Queen's Chessboard day and night for several consecutive months, it would be difficult to see this chain reaction mechanism in its entirety."

But the operating cost of the Queen's Chessboard was considerable, and even with someone providing it to him at cost, continuous use for half a year was simply not a realistic prospect.

"This special ancient flower root is nothing short of a miracle of nature." Locke said, "The reason wizard magical heavy industry so easily produces severe pollution is, first, that it does not conform to the laws of nature, since perfect conformity is of course impossible, and many things simply must be produced quickly."

"Second, it is that for wizards, everything is connected, and pulling one thread moves the whole fabric. Wizards cannot guarantee that their experiments have accounted for every angle, which makes it very easy for massive pollution to be generated during the production process."

"And yet the great power of nature has given rise to this ancient flower root, a natural converter of soil."

Locke remarked in wonder, "The ancient flower is only a First Circle magical plant, and yet using only the energy utilization and conversion efficiency of a First Circle magical plant, such a tiny flower somehow surpasses the conversion efficiency of a whole stretch of wizard factories."

Seen in that light, a single ancient flower was essentially a wizard conversion factory that was not especially large in size, yet extraordinarily high in efficiency.

Locke said, "At the Second Circle stage, I can look for an opportunity to fully analyze this ancient flower root under better conditions. But at this stage, I can already use the Queen's Chessboard, the Three Grand Magic Mirrors, and the modeling machine to make use of its plant essence and modify my magical plants."

"All I need is to obtain its plant essence."

"The structure of this special flower root is itself a form of energy-locking structure. These glandular root pouches can store energy in the short term as a temporary energy buffer, releasing it when energy is scarce, and storing it briefly when energy is abundant."

"Ordinary magical plants store energy through organs such as tuberous roots, rhizomes, and starch granules. With the exception of those that have specially adapted, virtually all magical plants lack dedicated short-term energy storage structures, possessing only long-term storage organs. So plants can only borrow certain plant structural organs as a makeshift substitute for temporary energy buffering, such as the vacuoles of leaf mesophyll cells..."

"But this ancient flower root has a dedicated organ specifically for short-term energy storage. This is presumably because converting sand into soil requires a very large amount of energy, which ordinary common plant organs are incapable of providing. It was therefore naturally necessary for evolution to produce a temporary storage organ capable of increasing the instantaneous energy output rate, namely these glandular root pouches."

Locke reflected, "From analyzing this ancient flower root alone I've already gained a great deal. It's a pity I don't currently have sufficient resources or ability to analyze it completely. For the Tier 1 funding project, focusing solely on the glandular root pouch structure within this ancient flower root would be more than enough to get the application approved and the project concluded."

"As for the more complex chain reactions formed by the seven types of natural structural component substances, that can wait until after I've become a Second Circle wizard."

Locke was also uncertain whether a Second Circle wizard would have the resources and capacity to fully explain such a complex reaction mechanism.

After all, with dozens of reactions mixed together, the variables would simply be too numerous, and they would all be interfering with one another.

The intermediate products would be nearly impossible to capture.

And that was without even accounting for the extremely complex process of converting sand into soil that these reactions involved.

For now, he could only publish first on the new energy-locking structure and the seven natural magical force structural components he had identified.

Locke looked at the ancient flower before him. "Through the Queen's Chessboard's extrapolation, I've confirmed that this artificial false flower was designed with a built-in self-destruction threshold."

"Once its numbers reach a certain level, they will all perish collectively."

"And moreover, this ancient flower, through some special mechanism, will constantly stir up the desires of those around it, then feed upon those desires. If the numbers grow too large... it would cause tremendous ecological destruction in its own right."

"Yet the prototype of this plant, or rather the prototype of this ancient flower root, must be a plant the Black Sun Tower discovered in certain regions."

Locke thought to himself, "But if such a powerful plant exists, why has it not spread throughout the modern magical world?"

"No, that doesn't make sense. This is not a normal magical plant at all."

Locke swept a hand, extracting only the root projection from the ancient flower's historical projection within the primal force current, and used the modern magical crystalline Queen's Chessboard to forcibly simulate the spirituality of the root's prototype, in order to reverse-engineer the original characteristics of the magical plant it had been modeled on.

What he saw was that this special ancient flower root, when extrapolated through the Queen's Chessboard's primal force current, pointed uniformly toward the root undergoing severe self-destruction after approximately one hundred generations.

This plant would vanish entirely in an instant.

Locke said, "The prototype plant, in its original world, very likely underwent self-extinction. And it also failed to pass down this portion of special plant essence through the wild."

Locke reflected, "Thinking carefully about it, this plant truly is not a normal magical plant. If it went on converting soil indefinitely, it would lead to soil hyper-enrichment, which would paradoxically cause ecological extinction, and would also produce a greenhouse effect."

"Therefore, this prototype plant must have occupied a role in its original plane as a kind of special pioneer plant. It came swiftly and departed swiftly."

"It would simply leave behind a specific, reshaped environment, and then self-extinguish. This was very likely a magical plant evolved by some powerful special plane as a defense against its own desertification."

Locke swept a hand, and the phantom image of the ancient flower appeared before him.

"Every part of this false flower was drawn by the Black Sun Tower from various outstanding magical plants and incorporated here. It is therefore a convergence of many exceptional magical plants. And yet... the result of bringing so many exceptional magical plants together in one convergence is... a kind of degradation."

To some degree, both the spiral angle of the ancient flower and the prototype plant of the special root system were individually superior to the magical plant characteristics of the ancient flower as a whole.

"Why did the Black Sun Tower not use a breeder's methods to reshape and make use of these special magical plants they had obtained through their dominant position in the wizard world at the time?"

"Applying breeding techniques would clearly have allowed them to make far better use of these special magical plants. Instead they employed a jumbled assortment of techniques that actively degraded each of these magical plants' individual strengths when combining them into this artificial composite."

"I could simply say the Black Sun Tower was deeply foolish. But as a botanical wizard, an archaeological wizard, and a breeder, I cannot reduce this strange phenomenon so crudely to a matter of personal shortcomings."

Locke thought to himself, "There is definitely a secret hidden within all this."

He snapped his fingers, and the historical projection of the ancient flower before him vanished. The ancient flower seed was gathered back into his astral ring.

"Well. These things can be researched slowly over time."

"Next, it's time to use the Queen's Chessboard mechanism I've discovered to compile the historical records inside my Suzerain's Book into a proper history."

"I have one day of usage time remaining. This was an opportunity I paid three hundred magic crystal cards for, after all. I should make full use of it."

This was no small sum.

Were it not for the fact that he had a steady flow of projects, he would not be in a position to burn through such large amounts of money so freely.

But then again, when it came to research, spending money was always part of it. The more funds one had, the faster the work could progress.

Locke placed his Suzerain's Book on the Queen's Chessboard, and immediately vast quantities of historical record spirituality were extrapolated outward. Currents of spirituality flowed around Locke himself, and Locke moved his palms to continuously draw out the results of the extrapolation.

Through extrapolation, he could identify the connections between different scattered historical records, and then link many fragments of scattered material together into a single coherent thread, like individual pearls being strung together on a silk cord.

"Although archaeological wizards still rely on textual analysis and philology to organize historical records, to be frank, using the Queen's Chessboard is... much faster, and it comes with its own unique advantages."

Locke's expression was peculiar.

Because the Queen's Chessboard could extrapolate the future at the primal force level and seek out connections between things, many of the gaps in historical records would be automatically filled in by the results of extrapolation during this process. Many details would have their possibilities drawn out involuntarily, and connections between small details across different historical records would be revealed.

For instance, Locke had previously used the Queen's Chessboard to arrive at his conjecture that the wizard-king of the magical kingdom had transformed himself into a lich.

This had then been corroborated by the banners of the magical kingdom seized by King Otto's mortal king armies during the Era of Stars, and furthermore, Locke had himself witnessed in the Historical Milestone Curse projection numerous liches bearing the magical kingdom's emblem being paraded through the streets.

This served to clarify the chronological order between the magical kingdom and the Mortal Age, and also corroborated the ultimate fate of the kingdom.

With the aid of the Queen's Chessboard, Locke rapidly organized his historical records. Because the majority of the material pertained to the Era of Stars, his Suzerain's Book took shape as a relatively rudimentary Brief History of the Era of Stars.

Locke looked down at his Suzerain's Book, and saw that the title on the cover had indeed changed to this name.

Second Circle level archaeological magic required one to transform one's blank Suzerain's Book into a Legendary History. This was one of the key conditions for advancing archaeological magic to the Second Circle, but constructing a history required at least one piece of legendary historical material to underpin it.

Of course, the wizard also needed to become a Second Circle wizard themselves.

At this moment, his Suzerain's Book had not yet truly become a Legendary History, because he had not yet completed the compilation of his archaeological historical records.

Locke estimated his progress and thought to himself, "I was too optimistic earlier. Three days of Queen's Chessboard usage is nowhere near enough."

"If money were no object, I'd genuinely like to spend twenty days out of every month inside the Queen's Chessboard. At this rate, I'll need at least ten more sessions before I can complete even a rough draft of the Legendary History."

Locke furrowed his brow. "For me, archaeology is only a minor discipline, so I can't pour this many resources into it."

"The way to cut down the time... is to scale back my ambitions."

Locke swept a hand, and the title on his Suzerain's Book changed. Instead of attempting to outline an ultra-condensed history of the entire Era of Stars, it now read A History of the Development of the Heliothos Imperial Court.

This reduced the volume of data he needed to organize and the amount of history he needed to extrapolate to the absolute minimum.

Locke estimated again. "By this projection, I'd only need to use the Queen's Chessboard seven more times. But that's still too many. Even using the Queen's Chessboard as a substitute for textual analysis and philological research is already cutting corners."

"But I have an even more expedient method."

"After all, a Legendary History is different from a permanent defensive field or a Grand Magic in that it doesn't touch the wizard's soul. If I want to revise it in the future, I can make sweeping changes with a little time and effort. So there is absolutely no need, at this critical stage of advancing from First to Second Circle, to chase perfection or set overly grand targets."

"A civilizational development history is still too large a scope. It would easily leave my knowledge fragmented. I'll narrow the target again."

Locke swept a hand, and the title changed to A Political History of the Heliothos Imperial Court.

He thought it over carefully and felt that even this goal was too broad. When studying history, one must not set too large a target.

Advancing to the Second Circle was the only thing that mattered.

The shorter the period of study, the better, as that made organizing materials easier.

Locke swept a hand, and the Suzerain's Book's title became King Otto's Thirty Years of Governance!

He thought it over again and still felt it was not quite right, so he had no choice but to apologize to the man who had been something of a half-teacher to him in potion studies through the Reverse Refinement Method.

He changed the title of the Suzerain's Book to A Brief History of Ancient Plants.

This subject was one he had been reading about and reflecting on whenever he had a free moment all along. In the tomb city, he had spent considerable time researching it, and furthermore he had an entire collection of magical plant seeds from the Era of Stars in his possession.

He had even borrowed the Hibernation Cabinet for its sake, which had allowed him to publish his article.

This was a field in which he was both knowledgeable and skilled, and one that could form a natural synergy with botany, breeding studies, and potion studies, allowing him to fully leverage the accumulation he had built up over time. It also further reduced the research difficulty and complexity he would face.

Locke smiled with satisfaction. "Like this, I'll only need to use the Queen's Chessboard three more times to complete the compilation and organization of the history. Senior Sister Shirley is a Divine Master, so she probably has little exposure to the Queen's Chessboard. Next time I see her, I should recommend this method to her."

"If I do get to see her again."

"Using the Queen's Chessboard to help me organize historical records at the primal force level still requires my own effort, but it greatly improves my efficiency." Locke said, "What a pity that most archaeological wizards have probably never even heard the name of this device."

Locke had originally considered narrowing his research scope even further, perhaps to a single rebellion event, in which case it might not even require another session with the Queen's Chessboard to complete the Legendary History's construction.

But he realized that doing so would make it impossible to complete the Legendary History's construction, because the historical records used would be too sparse, and the concentration of the negative energy particle field information would be insufficient.

At its core, both the Suzerain's Book and the Legendary History were not true history books in the ordinary sense, not ordinary history textbooks, but rather negative energy particle fields.

Historical records determined the size of this particle field, while the history determined the internal microstructure of this particle field.

So if Locke made his history too small in scope, the spell model of the Legendary History would simply be impossible to construct. That was not an outcome he wished to see.

No matter how much he cut corners, there were limits to how far he could go.