Chapter 173: Magic Scroll Crafting

Another type of material is quite ordinary; it is just Refined Parchment, soaked in a special potion so that it does not spring back when rolled or unrolled. Of course, using ordinary Parchment is also fine; it is just not very convenient when rolling or unrolling, but otherwise, there is nothing to it.

In fact, using wood, rock, metal, Gemstone, cloth, or liquid to carry Magic is all possible, but Xia Duo is not yet prepared to spread his operations too wide.

A Magic Scroll is a type of Magic Item that is relatively easy to get started with, has extremely wide applications, and is not high in cost, making it very suitable for Xia Duo.

The only drawback of a Magic Scroll might be that the vast majority of Magic Scrolls are one-time products; using a Scroll is practically throwing money away.

In many cases, having money really allows one to do whatever one wants; conversely, the more powerful a person is, the easier it is for them to make money. Xia Duo has already realized this.

If he were truly an Ordinary Apprentice, would Lady Patti still hire him as a Private Mage Consultant for 200 Gold Coins? Not being held accountable for his previous "impersonating a Mage" would be considered lucky enough.

Returning to the Spell Laboratory, Xia Duo placed the ink, Parchment, and Mithril Pen onto the workbench one by one. For his first time crafting a 1st Circle Spell Scroll, Xia Duo chose the Spell Laboratory where the Magic Net environment is stable.

This is an essential novice cost; once he is proficient, he cannot keep doing it in the Spell Laboratory, as cutting costs is also an essential step for a novice to move toward maturity.

During his time as an Apprentice, Xia Duo had crafted 0 Ring Light Scrolls and even made a small profit, but he gave it up later because he felt it was not worth it.

Now that he is crafting Magic Scrolls again, Xia Duo actually feels a bit nostalgic!

When he first crafted the Light Scroll, Xia Duo had not yet come into contact with Arcane Geometry and had not thought deeply about the patterns drawn on the Parchment.

But now, Xia Duo already understands why those shapes are the way they are and not something else; he even knows the range of error tolerance within them.

This is like asking an ordinary person to draw a regular heptadecagon with a ruler and compass; some people know that the sides of the shape are equal and can draw it, but they cannot draw it accurately.

Others even directly deny the possibility of drawing a regular heptadecagon with a ruler and compass, concluding it is impossible based solely on intuition.

The former Xia Duo was someone who assumed Magic Scrolls could be crafted but could not find the root cause, while the current him already knows the significance of every single line on the Scroll.

And based on the geometry Knowledge he learned on Earth, he can even draw these shapes more easily than a Netherese Mage, and without any extra auxiliary tools.

Because, there is Magic, after all. With the help of Prestidigitation, Xia Duo already possesses a set of drawing auxiliary tools that will never be lost.

While researching the conversion of Steam Ray, Xia Duo had already considered the entire drawing process; now he only needs to follow the steps.

Entering the Spellcasting state, with a thought, a blue auxiliary line appeared on the unfolded Refined Parchment, followed by one after another, until the paper surface was covered with dense blue straight lines and circles.

And Xia Duo had to choose 42 specific points among these intricate lines, connect them with straight lines or arcs, and then remove the auxiliary lines.

Finally, what appeared before Xia Duo was a complex planar Spell structure.

At this step, the Scroll cannot yet be called a Magic Scroll; it is just a piece of Parchment with strange patterns drawn on it. If it were an ordinary person, they could also reach this step after training.

And what follows is something only a Spellcaster can do—endowing it with Magic.

Or to put it more colloquially, linking the Magic Net to this planar Spell structure. Without the Magic Net, there is no Magic, and thus no Magic Scroll.

"It must succeed!"

Xia Duo held his breath. Any action involving humans is never one hundred percent accurate; all Xia Duo can do is try his best to increase the success rate.

Whether it is the prior preparation or the Spellcasting process, he does his best to be careful and rigorous.

Hum—

The Magic Net before him began to aggregate, entangle, bend, and overlap under Xia Duo's will, following every Spellcasting element of Steam Ray to construct a three-dimensional Spell structure.

If it were normal Spellcasting, it could be triggered at this step.

Crafting a Scroll requires the next step: converting this Magic Net-woven Spell structure into a planar structure. If crafting an Ordinary Scroll, an encryption conversion would also be required after this step.

However, this was Xia Duo's first time crafting a 1st Circle Scroll, so he did not perform the encryption conversion. (Encryption conversion also includes the patterns on the Parchment.)

In other words, if his Scroll were successfully crafted and taken by someone else, the secret of Steam Ray would not be kept.

This is a Learning Scroll, which is even simpler than crafting an Ordinary Scroll, but because it contains complete Magic elements, this type of Scroll is actually something few people are willing to craft.

Xia Duo, not needing encryption conversion, directly overlapped the Magic Net-woven, planar-converted Spell structure with the patterns on the Parchment.

At this step, if the error during the previous drawing process was too large, it would be an immediate failure.

If it was within the tolerance range, there would be a high probability of success. Xia Duo used a very precise drafting method, so naturally, there would not be a large error.

However—Spellcasting itself also has errors, which is why actual Spell effects have fluctuations.

This time, Xia Duo's Spellcasting error was too large; the extremely accurate Scroll pattern instead became the shortcoming affecting success. In the process of linking the Magic Net to the Parchment pattern, the Spell spiraled out of control without warning.

But this Spell did not trigger after all; it only caused the Magic Net to vibrate, but it was quickly suppressed and stabilized by the Spell Laboratory.

If he were outside, Xia Duo would inevitably have a headache. And if it had spiraled out of control after the Spell was triggered, he might have been hit by his own hand.

As the "culprit" of the Spell's loss of control—that extremely accurately drawn Scroll pattern—the ink on it had now blurred into a mess.

The originally very regular and exquisite Spell pattern had turned into a very abstract, unrecognizable shape, and the ink was no longer entirely on the surface of the Parchment but had permeated through the layers.

This piece of Parchment was completely unusable.

This failure did not discourage Xia Duo. When he crafted the Light Scroll, he was in the Apprentice Dormitory, without such a smooth Mithril Pen or a calm and stable Magic Net environment.

Even so, he eventually succeeded in crafting the Light Scroll.

Having failed only once now, it was entirely within his expectations.

However, thinking about the wasted Parchment and ink, Xia Duo still felt a bit of heartache.

Refined Parchment costs 1 Gold Coin per sheet, and Red Stone Ink costs 20 Gold Coins per bottle. A bottle of ink here is not as much as on Earth; it is just a small bottle.

It is about the capacity of two bottles of eye drops, and drawing once takes nearly half a bottle. If the failure rate is too high, one should not count on making money from this craft.

(End of chapter)