From Hogwarts to Strixhaven.

Chapter 413 How to Put an Elephant in a Box
"...Does this problem have anything to do with the treasure chest?" Xie Nian looked at Ivy in confusion. At this moment, the latter was checking the empty treasure chest in his hand over and over again.

"Try to associate it." Ivy urged with a smile.

"Uh... do we need to kill the elephant first and break down its skin, fat, muscles, bones, and internal organs?" Xie Nian gave an answer that fit her status very well. "To be honest, I'm very experienced in breaking down prey... maybe too experienced."

"It only takes three steps to put an elephant into a box." Ivy raised a finger. "The first step is to open the box."

The empty box placed on the ground is already open, so this step can be omitted.

"The second step is to put the elephant into the box." Ivy raised his palm and clenched it in the air, as if he was really holding up an elephant.

Responding to his gesture from afar was a stone statue in the hall. After shaking off some dust, the statue of a wise man with a hood and arms outstretched slowly rose into the air, passing through the hall in front of everyone's astonished gazes, bypassing the anti-magic field emitted by the two Whispering Flowers, and steadily landed right above the open box.

Ivy turned his empty palm over and waved it downward slightly. The stone statue, whose base alone was twice as big as the box, fell down and was about to crush the ordinary treasure box.

Before Xie Nian had time to feel pity for the "treasure" that Ivy mentioned, he saw the huge stone statue turn into a wooden bowl in the blink of an eye, and then paused in the air for a half a moment before falling into a box that contained nothing else.

The sound of wooden bowls and wooden boxes colliding echoed in the hall. No one expected that such a huge stone statue could actually be put into the box.

"Then the third step," Ivy came to the treasure chest and reached out to close it, "Close the box."

"Mystra, by the way..." Gale muttered to himself, "This is incredible! That box can hold objects much larger than itself!"

"And it only takes up a very small space." Ivy smiled proudly, "This means that we can take all the things that we would have thrown away in the past because of weight issues."

"Great!" Xie Nian cheered and ran to the side of the mediocre treasure chest. She was the most active person in plundering the battlefield after the war, and she was also the one who was forced to give up the most things. Now that she had this treasure chest, no matter what she wanted to bring, she could get what she wanted.

"Ugh——" The evil thought of wanting to pick up the mediocre treasure chest failed, and instead he dodged it. At this moment, he was rubbing his waist and gasping for breath.

"Why is it so heavy!" Xie Nian glared at Ivy unhappily, "Didn't you say there was no weight problem?"

"This... really surprised me..." Ivy was used to the convenience of the Book of Destruction, and subconsciously thought that ordinary treasure chests had similar storage capabilities, but now think about it, the Transfiguration in the DND world rarely has the ability to directly change mass. A treasure chest with a not-so-strong magic aura can hold items several times larger than itself, which is already very remarkable, and we can't expect it to ignore the quality of the items.

"Don't worry, I have a solution." Ivy cast the spell again and took out the stone sculpture that had turned into a wooden bowl from the box. Just because DND magic can't do it doesn't mean that no other magic can do it.

In the world where Ivy came from, making an object lighter and making it float was just a first-grade course.

The world-traveling magical beast master likes to pack his companions and their habitats in a suitcase, the immortal alchemist carries an idyllic farm with him, and Ivy has plenty of ways to transform a mediocre treasure chest into what he wants. It just takes a little time.

"I said I'm an inventor, right?" Ivy held the mediocre treasure chest in his hand. "The owner of this tower has given me a lot of new inspiration. Let's restart the tower and see what great inventions she has!"

"The power room of the elevator is obviously below," Gale stuck his head out from the terrace to take a look. The end of the brass pipe was the foundation of the tower on the island in the lake. "If we want to restart the tower, we must start from the power room. I just don't know if the tower is built on a magic network node or driven by something else..."

Not everyone could understand the communication between the mages. Ivy's other companions had become immune to the two's obscure conversations and were now gathering in the hall looking for a place to set up tents and bedding.

Only Minsara's advisor still stretched his neck, wanting to learn some profound magical knowledge, especially when this knowledge was related to how to build a wizard tower of his own.

Ivy quickly reached a consensus with the Archmage of Waterdeep City, so he turned around and ordered, "Gail and I will go down to activate the power room of the tower. When we are not here, don't think about climbing up from the outside, and don't touch anything except this floor, okay?"

"If you are willing to take me with you when you hunt for treasure..." Xie Nian began to bargain.

"Deal." Ivy agreed immediately.

The island where the tower's foundation stood was not very big, but it could at least accommodate a garden.

The Mystra priest named Lenor planted a whispering tree here. Although it was not comparable to the one the team had seen before in scale, at least it also had bright blue flowers hanging from its treetops.

"Although I can't cast spells near the Whispering Flower, its fragrance at least makes me feel less uncomfortable..." Gale lay on the Whispering Flower and took a deep breath, then sneezed several times in a row, "It's even sweeter than honey... Do you think there is a kind of bee that can make honey from Whispering Flowers?"

"If you grow a Whispering Tree that can bask in the sun, maybe there will be some." Ivy walked towards the wooden door of this floor. "The Underdark is full of mushrooms. Why would there be such a desperate bee that would come here to live?"

"Maybe I can also consider breeding a kind of bee that feeds on mushroom spores..." Gale glanced at the door lock. "Lenore or Lightning El at least remembered to lock the door when they went out. Do you need to get the evil thoughts off it? She is the best at dealing with locks."

"Please, Gale." Ivy looked back at Gale in disbelief. "We are wizards. Shouldn't we consider using magic first?"

"Oh, yes! Knocking!" Gale hurriedly added, "I usually keep my house keys with me, and there is nothing in my magic tower that needs special protection, let alone opening a lock that does not belong to me..."

Ivy's spell worked quickly. The lock of the wooden door made a click, and then Ivy stretched out his hand and pushed it open. The power core of the tower was indeed on this floor. As soon as they entered the door, the two mages saw a huge boiler covering a large area and many thick pipes extending upwards.

This power room also served as Lenore's laboratory. Many alchemical equipment made of metal were piled up in the corner, and various raw materials were crowded in the not-so-spacious room, leaving little space for the two of them to stay.

"Oh..." Gale exclaimed as he looked at the structure of the boiler, "Is Lenore really a priest of Mystra? This looks more like the behavior of a Gond believer..."

"She is studying the Whispering Flower," Ivy grabbed a notebook in front of a pile of glassware used for distillation and extraction, and read as he flipped through it. "'In this paper, I will also try my best to explain how I use the anti-magic properties and the magic absorption ability of the Whispering Tree Flower as energy to create items'... that's it. It seems that she left in a hurry and didn't have time to write a book about her great theory."

"This machine is powered by the Whispering Flower?" Gale picked up a dried blue petal from the boiler. "It's incredible... It seems that we only need to throw the Whispering Flower into the boiler to restart this tower. I'll go outside and pick one."

For any building, the base structure must be built first, and this tower is no exception.

Unlike the upper floor which had no stairs, Ivy found a wooden staircase structure in the power room that connected to the elevator above, and also saw a hidden basement under the stairs.

When Gale returned to the power room with the Whispering Flower, he discovered that the stone wall on the left was actually a secret door, and Ivy was walking down from below holding a book.

There was also a bunch of various things floating behind him, including staffs that looked like they had been idle for a long time and were covered in dust, magic scrolls that were still in good condition, dried mushrooms of various shapes, and many books that had been covered in dust for a long time.

However, in the Whispering Flower's anti-magic field, the floating objects were restrained by gravity again and fell to the ground in pieces.

"Sorry, what a coincidence..." Gale, holding the Whispering Flower, did not stop and continued to move forward, because he knew that as long as he got out of the anti-magic field, Ivy would be able to make all these little gadgets float again.

As the bright blue flowers were put back into the boiler, the Whispering Flower's anti-magic field was reversed, and its original effect of absorbing magic power turned into releasing it for the use of the entire Arcane Tower.

The surging energy flowed upward along the copper pipes, lighting up all the intact facilities in the tower one by one.

The adventurers who were camping in the hall noticed that the blue arcane light illuminated the surroundings, and they realized that the entire tower had come alive again.

Xie Nian was the first to rush into the elevator, eager to press the button.

"Hmm..." Kalak cleared his throat. "I remember Ivy said that we can't mess with the things in the tower, otherwise someone won't be able to get the magic gadgets."

Ivy did say so beforehand, so Xie Nian could only try his best to restrain his impulse.

Fortunately, she didn't have to wait long. The elevator, which had been in the hall for a while, went down with the sound of gears turning.

"It looks like they are planning to ride this thing up here!" Xie Nian was very interested in this mechanical structure driven by magic, and was full of anticipation to experience new things.

But she soon began to be disappointed.

Because the lift platform was in disrepair and running too slowly, there was also the sound of friction from metal parts that lacked lubrication.

"My head is starting to hurt..." Xie Nian muttered, holding his head, "I really want to cut open someone's stomach and use his liver to cool down my brain..."

"I feel the power of Mystra on this staff. It should be able to enhance the caster's arcane ability... but it belongs to a priest, so perhaps a blessing spell must be used. If Shadow Heart can abandon Shar, it should be able to stimulate its power." Gale was studying the treasure that Ivy had dug out from the basement. When he looked up, he saw the Son of Baal slowly descending from above. "You don't look good, Evil Thought."

There was a faint red light flashing in Xie Nian's eyes. She shook her red hair and smiled: "It's not too bad. The elevator is too noisy... By the way, what treasures did you find?"

"These are all things used by mages." Gale pulled out a scroll from the one floating beside Ivy. "But magic scrolls can be used by anyone. This one is for you. It's the acceleration spell, something that all melee adventurers dream of."

Xie Nian took the scroll and stuffed it into the small bag behind him. He turned to look at Ivy who was holding the book: "What about you, Ivy? What new discoveries have you made?"

"It's a pity that the priest who built this tower left his church because of bullying." The book in Ivy's hand is Lenore's diary. Most of the records in it are about the characteristics of magic in the Underdark, and a small part is about her understanding and memories of her past life. "She stayed in the Underdark for three years, and then left here for the Church of Mystra in Baldur's Gate. After that, there was no news."

"Lenore is a true genius. She uses the Whispering Flower's anti-magic field to power this tower. If we can miniaturize this device and reproduce the Whispering Flower's ability to absorb magical power with another spell, we might be able to create a construct that is not restricted by the source of magic power." Countless inspirations were emerging in Ivy's mind.

He spent a long time studying constructs, but apart from creating some disposable small autonomous constructs, he did not make many breakthroughs in this technology. He could neither keep them away from the source of magic power that powered them, nor allow these constructs to gain real wisdom and life.

But now, he seems to see a new path.

"You want to use a device to integrate the effects of anti-magic field and reverse anti-magic field power supply at the same time?" The Archmage of Waterdeep immediately understood Ivy's idea. "You are too ambitious! That is not something that can be done easily! It will take years or decades, or even a lifetime... Even if it is you, it is absolutely impossible to complete the research in a few months! A few days is not enough! We don't have time to wait for you to complete the research here!"

"Of course I understand." Ivy smiled. "Remember that mediocre treasure chest? Now I just need to find a way to modify it so that it can reduce the weight of its contents. As long as I move all the things that need to be studied away, I can start working in the camp, right?"

(End of this chapter)