Chapter 3257: The Limits of Manual Spellcasting, Passing the Torch

Xia Duo gathered these Alliance Mages for no other reason than to assist him in completing a large-scale spell—the 【Peak-Severing Spell】, a spell newly invented by the Seven Towers in just the past few years.

When he originally created a War Spell Platform like a Floating City, the Seven Towers also wanted to follow suit quickly, but the Seven Towers' approach to building a Floating City was not to transmute materials, but to directly sever a mountain peak and invert it to serve as the base for the Floating City.

Doing this could effectively save time, and there was no risk of the transmuted materials being reversed; for instance, the azure-colored stone used in Xia Duo's Chang'an City, which was transmuted from pure water, remained in a state of physical instability for at least several months.

During this period, anyone who cast 【Dispel Magic】 on the stone could potentially turn it back into water, and this was an ancient Transmutation spell derived from Xia Duo's analysis of the 【Sarrukh Mage-Serpent Statue】 (which was actually a fossil).

It was far more powerful than the spell effects of the current era; the vast majority of modern spells used for material transmutation could not achieve permanent transmutation, and even if they could, it would require decades or even centuries of settling.

For example, the stone bridge to the west of Savile Town was originally created through spell transmutation, and its seamless, monolithic form was proof of this; that bridge took nearly thirty years to truly stabilize and would no longer turn back into its initial raw materials because of a single 【Dispel Magic】.

If it were just a bridge, thirty years wouldn't matter much, as few people would be interested in a bridge enough to specifically attack it, but if it were a Strategic Weapon like a Floating City, it would always be in the sights of various nations.

This naturally included the enemies of the Netherese Mage or the Seven Towers.

Therefore, Xia Shao could fully understand the Seven Towers' approach at the time, but doing so would undoubtedly set a bad precedent; in the future, as Mythals became popularized, I fear every major Arcanist would want to build their own Floating City.

By then, there wouldn't be enough mountains in the Netherese Mage's territory to cut, and such destruction of the natural environment is easy to initiate but extremely difficult to repair.

The Alliance Mages and Evereska Mages Xia Shao chose this time were each at least Elite Mages, and they were all mages under the Elven Magic System, making them easier to achieve a state of coordination than Netherese Mages.

And now, even 11th Circle or 12th Circle spells are not the limit of manual Spellcasting; even using the method of coordinated Spellcasting, it is possible for a single Spellcaster to complete these spells.

And the 【Peak-Severing Spell】 was also obtained this time.

So, just looking at how many apprentices a Netherese Mage takes in cannot explain how open-minded that person is; perhaps their apprentices are just their Spellcasting supply packs!

This also means that equivalent Spell Circles cannot be increased without limit; at least at the level of manual Spellcasting, there exists an operational limit that can be roughly estimated.

The 【Peak-Severing Spell】 is the same; it can be increased according to need.

Xia Shao is not currently pursuing the absolute limit, but he has allocated over 70% of the Spellcasting tasks to other mages; this is a relatively reasonable ratio, equivalent to reducing the Spellcasting difficulty by nearly half.

What Xia Shao is preparing now is an equivalent 11th Circle spell; the Magic Net cannot directly provide the Magic Net Strings used to construct an 11th Circle spell, so it needs to be expressed equivalently through the tenth layer of elements.

After briefly testing the coordination effect, during this process, Xia Shao had already used the Computing Power Pool to complete the decomposition of the 【Peak-Severing Spell】 and set up sufficient redundancy.

In the most extreme cases, the leader of the coordinated Spellcasting can allocate over 90% of the Spellcasting tasks to the assistants, while they only perform the work of series connection and summarization, which can truly save a lot of energy, thereby allowing for more experiments.

Xia Shao certainly made compromises, such as providing spells for transmutation materials that were more advanced than those currently on the Main Plane, so that the Seven Towers could complete the infrastructure construction of the Floating City.

It is similar to how 11 can be written as 10+1, but elevating a spell by one circle beyond the limit of the Magic Net makes the Spellcasting difficulty far harder than a normal 10th Circle spell.

And the coordination effect of this group of Elven Mages truly exceeded his expectations; as long as no one deliberately sabotaged it, this joint Spellcasting would definitely succeed!

Furthermore, during this period, he had no time to pay attention to matters outside of Spellcasting, which did not fit his plan, so he could only ask others for help.

However, if it were machine Spellcasting, then such a limitation would not exist.

If one wants to increase the ratio, then the leader and the assistants need to be very tacit.

It is just that Xia Shao is now asking Alliance Mages and Evereska Mages for help, whereas the vast majority of Netherese Mages have their apprentices help their teachers voluntarily from the apprentice stage, and after they take on apprentices themselves, they start having their apprentices help voluntarily again.

Added to the assistance of the Spirit Thought Network and Mind Link state, Xia Shao dared to set the outsourcing ratio at 70% for his first Spellcasting; if it were a group of Netherese Mages, he would not have dared to do so.

This is not a conventional spell; before today, Xia Shao had not even thought that he would one day use this spell, but such a need had indeed arisen.

Therefore, Xia Shao and others at the time persuaded the Seven Towers to stop, citing Sustainable Development; this matter was complicated and not just as simple as attacking the Seven Towers or Sustainable Development, as it also involved the ownership of the Sweet Water Three Planes and even the legitimacy of the Seven Towers' Executive; in any case, the Seven Towers eventually compromised on this, abandoned the mountain-severing plan, and returned and repaired the severed mountain peaks.

This spell is undoubtedly a 10th Circle spell, reaching the limit of the Magic Net, but this is not the limit for the Spellcaster; above this, there can be equivalent 11th Circle or even higher spells.

Generally speaking, 70% is already a state where the teacher and student are quite tacit, and the biggest shortcoming here lies in the fact that the apprentice's own Spellcasting ability is very limited.

As long as there are enough people helping, while doing a good job of coordination and arranging redundancy, he can easily focus on matters outside of Spellcasting; currently, most high-level Netherese Mages use this mode for their daily experiments.

And if triggered through a War Magic Artifact, while relatively rigid, the power of the War Spell itself exceeds what an individual Spellcaster can resist; generally speaking, one can only use a War Spell against a War Spell.

Depending on the spell, the difficulty might only increase by three times for low-difficulty ones, and more than ten times for high-difficulty ones.

……

But in the future, the equivalent Spell Circle will almost certainly exceed the limit of manual Spellcasting, and by then, war might truly be decided by a single weapon.

In such a situation, even if it is a War Spell triggered by a War Magic Artifact, as long as the opponent does not have an equivalent existence, it is no different from one cast manually; both are crushing-level existences.

Take War Spells, for example; if it is manual Spellcasting, while it is more flexible, the prerequisite is that a group of mages must first undergo long-term training, and the cost is extremely high.

For Xia Shao, with his current Spellcasting ability, he could indeed complete this 【Peak-Severing Spell】, which he had never even practiced before, by himself, but it would only consume a massive amount of his energy.

It just focuses on passing the torch.