Chapter 598: Specialized Tasks for Specialized Personnel, Decompilation

Watching the projection on the First Floor Hall, Xia Duo's expression was calm; he turned to look at the other projections. Aside from those currently in class, the remaining Apprentices, even while working, were quietly discussing the sudden changes at the Tower of Time.

Seeing that people were constantly regaining hope for Magic, Xia Duo finally revealed a satisfied expression. In the past, the Tower of Time had been far too harsh on Apprentices; even if one wanted to "harvest leeks," one had to wait for the leeks to grow large enough to harvest more!

However, Xia Duo's insistence on focusing on cultivating Apprentices was not to harvest leeks, but for development, for a win-win situation!

Selfish motives certainly existed, but they did not harm the interests of these Apprentices; on the contrary, these Apprentices would have their fates changed by Xia Duo's decisions and possess a broader future.

Having viewed every projection screen, aside from a few involving Intermediate Mages obscured by Spells, Xia Duo had already seen the feedback from the majority of the Tower of Time's members.

It did not differ much from what he had previously expected, and the overall situation remained under control.

……

"Tower Spirit, did anyone leave me a message?" Xia Duo asked suddenly.

At the morning's general meeting, he had said that those who wanted to serve in the newly established Audit Department or Apprentice Management Office could contact him; several hours had already passed since then.

If anyone truly wanted to join the new departments, they should have made their decision by now.

"Agent Xia Duo, there is one message."

"Who?"

"Mage He Sai."

He Sai?

An image of a kind, slightly plump middle-aged man appeared in Xia Duo's mind; it was indeed Mage He Sai. Xia Duo had known him since he was an Apprentice and had dealt with him a few times, but back then Xia Duo was still an Apprentice, and he could only keep his distance from Mage He Sai's goodwill.

Later, after he became an Official Mage, their interactions increased, and their relationship was quite good, only slightly more distant than with Dien and the others who had been familiar with Xia Duo since his Apprentice stage.

He Sai wanted to join the new department?

"Tower Spirit, what is He Sai's message?"

Hearing the command, the Tower Spirit immediately transmitted He Sai's voice message. Xia Duo suddenly realized, "As expected, he wants to enter the Apprentice Management Office, no wonder!"

His initial acquaintance with He Sai was when he was exchanging Learning Scrolls at the Material Management Office. At that time, He Sai had specifically reminded him not to be overly obsessed with the effects of a Spell, but to deeply understand the Principles within it.

In subsequent chance encounters, Xia Duo had also noticed the other party giving reminders to Apprentices in various ways, having a bit of a "fondness for playing the teacher" in him.

Now seeing that he wanted to enter the Apprentice Management Office, it was not exactly unexpected.

It was just that Xia Duo already had plans for the personnel of the new departments. Saying at the meeting that they could contact him was actually just testing everyone's attitude toward the transformation; not opposing it was one kind, and actively embracing it was another.

Regarding He Sai, Xia Duo decided to arrange him into the Apprentice Management Office. Although it was outside the plan, with so many Apprentices, Xia Duo did not mind having one more teacher.

……

After finishing the messages, Xia Duo began to continue organizing the previously unfinished list of books for exemption. This needed to be completed as soon as possible, but the subsequent adjustments to the book content would not require him to do it personally; he could hand it over to the members of the Progress Society, and he only needed to perform the final audit.

Until evening, after deleting and revising several times, Xia Duo transferred the list to the Progress Society. Then, he checked the message situation again and found that, besides He Sai at the very beginning, two or three other Mages had left messages one after another.

They all wanted to serve in the Apprentice Management Office, and Xia Duo was similarly prepared to follow the same handling method he used for He Sai, placing them into the Apprentice Management Office.

It was quite unexpected that not a single person chose the Audit Department. This was a department with real power; with the Tower of Time as a backing, were they afraid of retaliation from those Intermediate Mages?

However, no one signing up also saved Xia Duo quite a bit of trouble. His original plan was to find a few stewards proficient in arithmetic from the merchant associations of Hans and Silaiwen to be specifically responsible for handling the various affairs of the Audit Department.

Let professional people do professional things; this was Xia Duo's consistent employment philosophy.

But having Official Mages work under ordinary people was still a bit too advanced for the current Tower of Time.

……

After dinner, Xia Duo received an invitation from Niya to conduct the first bridging experiment for the 【Fielder Spellbook Decryption Project】. In the more than a month of exchanges before, the two had already gained a full understanding of the Fielder Spellbook.

They had also formulated a detailed decryption plan, but due to the fact that the experiment required on-site operation and the two living in different places was very inconvenient, it had been dragged out until now.

Xia Duo was very expectant about Fielder's Spellbook. After receiving Niya's invitation, he did not choose to walk, but directly had the Tower Spirit teleport him to Niya's private Laboratory.

At this moment, the light in the Laboratory was bright, and the Magic Array on the spacious experimental table had already been activated. When Xia Duo arrived, Niya was crafting the Mithril Component needed for the bridging experiment.

Watching Niya's earnest and focused appearance, Xia Duo said with a smile, "Why the sudden need to conduct the bridging experiment? I thought you would be returning to Seventon!"

"……"

Hearing the familiar voice beside her and thinking of what the two uncles had said at Saixili's house at noon, Niya's heart suddenly became chaotic, and the Mithril Component that was originally taking shape instantly scattered into a patch of Mithril droplets.

Fortunately, this degree of repetition would not affect the quality of the Mithril. Niya steadied her heart, entered a focused state again, and turned a deaf ear to Xia Duo's voice.

On the other side, Xia Duo did not notice Niya's mistake. He went about his own business at the other end of the U-shaped experimental table, took the lead box containing the Spellbook out of the Dimensional Bag, and then carefully opened it.

A light yellow Spellbook was lying quietly inside, with "Fielder's Arcane Staff" written on the cover in Netherese and Elf scripts respectively.

This was the protagonist of tonight.

Xia Duo glanced at Niya, and seeing that she had not yet finished crafting the Mithril Component, he first began to set up for the subsequent bridging experiment—

A small wooden support was taken out of the Dimensional Bag by Xia Duo and placed on the experimental table. Immediately after, Xia Duo took Fielder's Spellbook out of the lead box and embedded it into the wooden support.

It looked as if it were suspended in mid-air.

Afterward, Xia Duo continuously added more wooden structures around this seemingly suspended Spellbook, a bit like the scaffolding when building a floor on Earth.

In fact, these wooden structures were indeed "scaffolding."

The bridging experiment required destroying the physical form of the Spellbook, but at the same time, in order to avoid triggering the Spellbook's protection mechanism, the integrity of the Spellbook's functions had to be maintained.

So-called "bridging" was actually using external Mithril Components to replace the physical form of the Spellbook's main body that was being destroyed.

And the process of bridging was actually the process of decryption—

When a certain part was replaced by an external Mithril Component, the reaction produced contained the information of this part. Whether it was equivalent or inequivalent, it counted as information leakage.

However, only equivalent substitution counted as true decryption; inequivalent meant that a portion of the information had been permanently lost.

This was actually similar to a Programmer on Earth cracking software source code.

What Xia Duo and Niya had to do was to continuously perform partial decompilation on the Spellbook until all elements were fully resolved.

As for elements higher than the 5th Ring level, they used the Ascending Ring principle within the Spell Principles to perform reverse analysis. For this part, neither Xia Duo nor Niya had absolute certainty.

In short, decrypting a Spellbook, or rather decrypting a Magic Item, not only had difficulties at the level of Principles and operations, but it was also a systematic project with a heavy workload.