Chapter 11: Constant Spell and Magic Net

Naimi Xisi's dragon claw crossed the cave's boundary, but nothing happened. The magic seal that had once remained here has vanished.

One must know that the red‑robed mage originally constanted the Eight-ring Protective Spell 【High Seal Gate】 here; only the Great Disintegration Technique, which attains the Nine-ring Protective Spell Tier, can break it! 【High Seal Gate】 repels all creatures, and neither Dispel Magic nor any spell can breach it; with its constant effect, the seal was supposed to endure forever.

A Constant Spell, as the name suggests, is a highly advanced casting technique. As the name implies, any constant spell can persist indefinitely so long as no external force breaks it.

The energy source of each Constant Spell resides in the Magic Net that exists in the void; supported by the Magic Net, every Constant Spell continuously displays the performance of its peak era.

There are two prerequisites for constanting a spell.

First, the Spellcaster must possess extremely profound arcane knowledge and have a crystal‑clear understanding of the principle of the spell to be constanted.

Second, a Constant Spell requires 【sacrifice】 as its seed—that is, an offering. Whether it is the offering of a large number of precious magical gems, or of soul‑bearing flesh and blood life, or even of a manufactured Magic Item, all satisfy the offering conditions.

As for the object of the offering, it is naturally the Magic Net that exists within all things.

The so‑called Magic Net has, since antiquity, actually had two explanations.

In the myths of the Feren Continent, at the moment of creation, there were two great goddesses named Saar and Sulen. They respectively represented the world's darkness and light.

Saar and Sulen should have been as close as sisters, but divergent paths turned them into each other's arch‑enemies; from the dawn of creation to the beginning of antiquity, the two goddesses have been locked in mutual conflict.

Until the final great battle, Saar and Sulen fell into an unprecedented hot war, each sparing no effort to defeat the other and plunge the opponent into eternal slumber.

The result of that war was that each goddess had a core of her body stripped away and was gravely wounded; Saar retreated into hidden darkness, while Sulen degenerated into the present moon goddess — Selennye.

But that was not the end; the two essences of darkness and light underwent a marvelous chemical reaction, fusing into the great entity called the Magic Net, which permeates all things and provides all beings with a channel to control supernatural energy.

Finally, from the Magic Net emerged a mighty divine power, the predecessor of the Magic Goddess now widely revered by mages — Mistra I, the forerunner of Mistra III.

Of course, myths are still myths. Though this view is popular among the followers of Saar and Selennye, the overwhelming majority of deity worshippers and historical scholars label it — a pile of dog shit.

Although the origins of most deities remain mysterious, gods from beyond the Feren Continent are not a new phenomenon. In fact, of the gods now scattered across the starry sky, over half have been added within the past few thousand years.

And Saar is a foreign god whose existence is doubted by many scholars.

Since antiquity, this mysterious goddess hidden in darkness has sparked scholars' curiosity; they have scoured various folk histories and countless ancient ruins, ultimately reaching a conclusion.

Saar is an outright foreign god, and according to records, worship of Saar on the Feren Continent began only about two thousand years ago.

Naturally, the so‑called creation myth cannot hold up.

Moreover, information about the Magic Net and the Magic Goddess has been refuted by many renowned Archmages.

Even the Magic Goddess's most favored elect, the greatest mage on the Feren Continent — Ilminster, has publicly declared that the Magic Net is a natural phenomenon existing on all planes. Deities may be great, but this ancient existence that spans millennia could not possibly be man‑made.

With advances in arcane research, another mainstream view circulating among mages holds that the Magic Goddess Mistra can only represent the Magic Net that exists in the world where Feren resides, namely the universe of the Tianyu Realm; she is a miracle born from human belief and partial manifestations of the Magic Net under some unknowable interaction.

This also explains why many mages who have traveled across numerous worlds have never encountered a deity like Mistra representing the Magic Net in any other world.

Since the Magic Net is so great, even surpassing the existence of deities, it naturally will not tolerate a thief who eternally siphons its power.

Constant Spells are the crystallized wisdom, or perhaps the loophole, that mages have devised. By mimicking ancient shamans' rites, they treat the Magic Net as a tangible entity and offer sacrifices to it, thereby obtaining a continuous energy supply.

Of course, the Magic Net is not easily deceived; the more powerful the spell, the steeper the sacrifice cost. The gem value required for an Eight-Circle Spell may reach several hundred thousand gold coins.

The red‑robed mage could not possibly have spent that many gold coins on the foolish task of safeguarding a treasure worth millions of gold; this Eight-ring Constant Spell likely consumed a great amount of life as its price to manifest successfully.

But now, the 【High Seal Gate】 that should have endured eternally has vanished without a trace.

He first dismissed the speculation that a Nine-ring Caster had come here and remained ever since; a tiny Cold Iron Vein is hardly worth the presence of a being like a Nine-ring Caster.

Even a red‑robed mage, an Eight-ring Caster, only applied a layer of protection before returning to Sai Er; moreover, given the signs that no one has returned to mine for over a hundred years, the other party either forgot the vein's existence or has already died.

"Could it be a Dead Magic Zone?"

Naimi Xisi muttered, beginning to wonder whether this was a barren land that forbids magical energy, but the small trick he casually performed showed that this was not the Dead Magic Zone he had guessed.

The history here stretches so far back that in the span of a hundred years nothing is truly known to have happened; Naimi Xisi could only set the matter aside for now.

"Tie Xiu, you and Ogel, take the Hyena Werewolf down to check the situation,"

Obeying Naimi Xisi's command, more than twenty monsters entered the five‑meter‑wide opening, while Naimi Xisi stood in place waiting.

After a long while, the pitch‑black opening still showed no sign of movement; Naimi Xisi couldn't help but feel a slight foreboding, but soon a question arrived in his mind from the Hyena Werewolf controlled by Mind Power.

"Living beings? Gray dwarves?"

Naimi Xisi raised an eyebrow; indeed, there was a discovery.

According to the information relayed by the Hyena Werewolf, the vein appears to host a community of over twenty Gray Dwarves, seemingly having lived there for a long time.

Because of the Hyena Werewolf's and the Ogre's formidable deterrence, these Gray Dwarves, though they drew weapons to resist at first sight, dared not act rashly.

The Hyena Werewolf's question was precisely to ask its master how to deal with these seemingly unappetizing creatures.

(End of Chapter)