Chapter 15

Gao De returned with the three spell formulas, arriving back at the medicine garden just in time for the evening meal time.

Suppressing the urgency in his heart, he went to the dining hall and struggled to swallow the classic two-piece set he was already tired of eating and which tasted poor: rye bread + pea soup, before finally coming to his workshop.

The evening was the apprentices' cultivation time, which could be freely managed, and no one would come to disturb him.

Gao De took out the three spell formulas from his bosom, and after a moment of thought, he first opened the spell formula for 【Acid Splash】.

What met his eyes was a spell model composed of a line diagram, with nine nodes on it. The structure of the entire spell model looked like a three-dimensional constellation map at first glance, and underneath was the official introduction to the spell.

The introduction to the spell effects on the yellow parchment Yomu gave him earlier was excerpted from this.

The right page was a partial enlargement of the spell model and a detailed textual explanation.

Turning to the next page, there was another partial enlargement and the corresponding textual explanation.

The spell model for a cantrip itself is not complicated, and since there is no need to take a corresponding potion, the content of the potion formula is also omitted, making the entire spell book only five pages long.

It was only a few minutes before Gao De had simply gone through it.

Of course, this was not enough.

The first step in building a spell model is to memorize the spell model.

A normal magic apprentice would be stuck for a day or two at this first step.

Gao De's own memory was extremely outstanding, and the memory of his predecessor was not bad either; it seemed that 1+1 was greater than 2, causing his memory to go directly from outstanding to superb.

In less than half an hour, he had already firmly memorized the spell model for Acid Splash in his mind.

Subsequently, Gao De put away the Acid Splash spell formula, closed his eyes slightly, and quickly entered a meditative state.

The cultivation of these five days made Gao De increasingly proficient at entering a meditative state.

His spirit was immersed in the world of the spell star sea.

Deep in his dark consciousness, there were countless stars wandering, beautiful and gorgeous.

To build a spell model, one needs to use one's own spiritual intent to guide and link these stars, let them stay obediently in specific positions, and then link them into a spell model through the connection of spiritual power.

Once the spell model is built, the magic user can let mana pass through the model, turn it into the corresponding spell, and release it.

It's just that these stars are always moving in a non-random way, and wanting to guide and fix them in a linked structure at fixed distances and orientations is by no means a simple matter.

The construction of the 【Acid Splash】 spell model requires a total of 9 stars, which is not many, but not few either.

In fact, 99.9% of cantrip spell models do not exceed 10 stars.

Gao De began to try to build the spell model with his spiritual power according to the spell model diagram and specific route recorded on the 【Acid Splash】 spell formula.

He randomly locked onto a star, his spiritual power like a hunting snake, approaching silently.

As the distance got closer, Gao De's spiritual power swept forward suddenly, firmly locking this star, which was originally wandering irregularly, in place.

It went very smoothly, and no accidents occurred.

With his current spiritual power, controlling one star would not lead to mistakes.

But a star does not stay obediently just because it is locked; it will continue to struggle and resist. That is to say, before the spell model is built, Gao De needs to use his spiritual power to constantly balance the stars.

Once any star is not controlled well and deviates during the process of building the spell model, then all previous efforts are wasted, and everything must be started over from the beginning.

As the saying goes, everything is difficult at the beginning, but for building a spell model, it is exactly the opposite; the simplest part is precisely this first star.

Because next, Gao De will have to firmly press down on this first star while dividing his spiritual power and attention to lock and control the second star.

Until the final step, which will be to control the ninth star while simultaneously pressing down on eight stars, the difficulty of which can be imagined. And this is just a cantrip; the spell models for higher 1st-circle and 2nd-circle spells will be built from hundreds of stars, which is terrifying just to think about.

It is no wonder that the two most important indicators for a magic user are mana and spiritual power: without mana, you cannot cast spells; if your spiritual power is not strong enough, you cannot build a spell model at all; without a spell model, even if you have a body full of mana, you still cannot cast a single spell. Both are indispensable.

However, this is not a problem Gao De needs to consider at the moment; what he needs to do now is to control the second star.

He tried to divide a strand of spiritual power, just like before, to control another star that happened to be wandering near the first star.

It's just that this second star doesn't just need to be kept still; it also needs to be moved to a specific position relative to the first star.

Gao De took a deep breath, and the spiritual power wrapped around the first star extended outward, becoming a straight star track, connecting directly to the second star until the two stars were connected together.

Subsequently, according to the spell formula, Gao De controlled the second star and began to move, using the position of the first star as the starting point.

"Forward one, right one and one-third, up one-fourth..."

For any object to move, there are only two elements: direction and distance.

There are only three directions for the stars to move: "forward/backward," "left/right," and "up/down."

And distance is expressed directly in numbers, without any units.

Because the distance between each star in a spell model is fixed in proportion.

For example, if the distance between the second star and the first star in a certain direction is two feet, and the distance between the third star and the second star in a certain direction is four feet, then changing them to four feet and eight feet will not affect the construction of the spell model.

So the "one" in "forward one" is actually a ratio. The actual distance set by each person when building the spell model is different, but the ratio is the same, thereby ensuring the uniformity of the spell model.

The star track formed by spiritual power connecting the two stars also constantly extended and lengthened as the second star moved.

Finally, the second star reached the position it should be in.

Gao De made a one-time effort to capture the third star near the position of the second star, also using spiritual power to form a star track to connect the second star and the third star, and then controlled this third star to start moving, using the current position of the second star as the starting point.

There is nothing else in the spell star sea except stars, so there are no reference objects, let alone a ruler.

But the position between each node of the spell model requires absolute fixation and precision.

Looking at it this way, just grasping the distance of each star's movement is already a task as difficult as ascending to heaven.

But the fact is the opposite; in the process of building a spell model, the simplest thing is actually controlling the distance of the star's movement.

Because the spell star sea is located deep in everyone's consciousness, and in their respective conscious spaces, everyone will have a precise intuition comparable to a machine for real attributes such as distance, size, direction, mass, etc.

The real difficulty in building a spell model lies in controlling the movement of the stars and maintaining their stability.

This is because whether the stars are moving or stationary, they are constantly struggling, which will bring huge resistance, and the direction of the resistance is constantly changing randomly.

"Forward one-half, right two-thirds, down one-half..."

Similarly, this second star track constantly extended and lengthened as the third star moved.

Gao De's spirit was highly concentrated on controlling the third star.

This third star was also moving at a stable speed.

However, just at this moment, the star track between the second star and the first star suddenly began to shake inexplicably, and the frequency of the shaking became faster and faster.

Subsequently, in the instant before Gao De could react, the star track snapped in the intense vibration. Without the restraint of the star track, the second star began to race through the spell star sea like a wild horse that had broken its reins.

Just like dominoes, the departure of the second star also caused the second star track to collapse, and the third star naturally broke free from control.

The first construction of the Acid Splash spell model ended in failure! (End of chapter)