Wizard: My career panel has no upper limit

Time continues to flow.

To outsiders, it's just a matter of turning a few pages in the calendar.

For the bloodline within, countless dawns and dusks have slipped through their fingers like flowing water.

In the third month after its release (outside of time), the bloodline society underwent its first major structural transformation.

The cause was a chance event.

While a bloodline was digging a new water source upstream, a stone hammer broke through a layer of rock.

Beneath the rocky crust, there was a fist-sized piece of pyroxene.

Sunlight streamed into the pit from behind him, falling on the surface of the pyroxene.

The next second, the entire pit was engulfed by a dazzling golden-white light.

He instinctively raised his arm to cover his eyes, but at the same moment he felt a warm current flowing into his arm.

The stellar fragments emitted a violent resonance under the stimulation of intense light.

The feeling was extremely intense, several times more intense than standing in the midday sun.

This news caused a stir in the settlement no less than that caused by the merger of the Cold Nights.

The descendants began to consciously search for and mine pyroxene.

The initial method of utilization was simple and crude: swallowing directly, allowing the minerals to come into contact with stellar debris in the digestive tract.

The effects were immediate, but the costs were equally obvious.

Some individuals, due to excessive or rapid absorption, experience an overheating of the body, exceeding its heat dissipation limit, as if they are being ignited from within.

Ron gave this symptom a clinical name: sunburn injury.

"This is the inevitable pain of technological development."

“When any tool is first mastered, it goes through a cycle of ‘abuse—injury—learning—standardization’.”

The key is whether they can learn from their failures, rather than being defeated by them.

The answer will be revealed later.

One bloodline changed everything.

Unlike α-0217, whose talents are more focused on language and perception, this individual's talent is "hands-on".

He likes to tinker with things.

From the very first day of its awakening, it has shown an unusual sensitivity to the properties of materials.

Other bloodlines could only see the difference between hard and soft stones, but he could distinguish dozens of subtle differences through touch.

After the "sunburn internal injury" caused by pyroxene appeared one after another, this individual began to use an extremely systematic approach to trial and error.

Pyroxene is ground into powders of varying coarseness.

The powder is mixed with different proportions of soil, water, and plant juice to make pastes of various textures.

Then, they experimented on their own bodies.

Observational records show that he tried at least seventy different recipes on himself.

Most of them ended in failure, with skin allergies, local burns, cracking and peeling of the ointment, and a variety of other problems.

Until the seventy-third time.

That recipe used extremely fine pyroxene powder, ochre clay from a specific soil layer, and the juice of a succulent plant that grows by a stream.

When the three are mixed in roughly equal proportions, they form a cream with a delicate texture and excellent spreadability.

After being applied to the skin, it did not dry out or peel off as quickly as previous failed products.

Conversely, under continuous sunlight, the ointment slowly hardens, eventually forming a thin, translucent crystalline layer on the skin's surface.

This is the special defense that was later named "Pyroxene Armor".

Its effects are astonishing—the bloodline that activates the pyroxene armor has nearly doubled its light energy conversion efficiency compared to when it is not wearing it, and there is absolutely no risk of "sunburn internal injury".

The hardness of the pyroxene armor far exceeds that of the bloodline's natural skin, making it strong enough to withstand the slashing of weapons from its own kind and heavy impacts.

From then on, the Bloodline Civilization had its first full-time craftsman to receive an exclusive title—the Light Craftsman.

The mining, processing, and distribution of pyroxene led to a clear division of labor within the bloodline society.

The craftsmen are responsible for making armor and other tools from the pyroxene, and they also build houses and walls in their spare time.

The miners primarily search for new pyroxene veins, while also gathering some berries and firewood.
The warriors are responsible for patrolling the borders, hunting wild animals, and driving away any stray mutant beasts.

At the heart of it all is α-0217, the leader and medium.

He sat under the Echoing Tree, his palms against the trunk, listening with his eyes closed.

………………

The development of public servers has entered a stable phase, and now we just need to wait for time to pass.

Ron finally had some free time and was able to return to the Blood World to continue another research project.

The twilight of the chaotic world will never fall, nor will it ever rise.

This gave him a secret sense of comfort from time to time during the first few months.

Time loses its most obvious scale here; you can't judge how much of a day has passed by the changes in the sky, you can only rely on the consumption of magic to sense the clock ticking.

In a sense, this is no different from working on experimental squares on a small chessboard.

The laboratory is located on the fourth basement level of the Dawn Tower, one level deeper than the main experimental area on the third floor.

This location was specifically prepared for the study of the red hook.

Digging down one layer means isolating the magical disturbances transmitted from above, and also means that any energy leakage will not easily affect the surface.

Structurally speaking, this is a rather prudent choice.

"Lord Nigel."

One afternoon, without even looking up, Ron tapped the test strip on the red checkmark in his hand: "Is your notebook almost full?"

The young marquis, seated in his designated seat, paused slightly.

He looked to be about twenty-five or twenty-six years old, with his dark hair neatly combed and his cuffs always buttoned up.

The nobles of the Heart Clan have always been particular about their appearance, and Nigel Valentine was especially thorough in this regard, seemingly regarding "property" as armor against external uncertainties.

“This is the third one.” His answer was brief and restrained.

"The records are so detailed." Ron finally looked up and glanced at the black leather notebook:
"I imagine it must have been quite a struggle for your Grand Duke to read this."

Nigel did not answer.

This is his consistent style: he always remains silent on any issues that may involve internal information.

Ron didn't intend to force him to answer; he just said something casually and then turned his attention back to the holy artifact in front of him.

The red hook floats quietly in the fixing ring of the testing frame, and its appearance is inconspicuous.

It was just a metal component, about the length of an arm, bent at a thirty-degree angle, with no decoration on its surface.

But Selna's heartbeat remained inside.

He wrote this feeling down in his research notes that day, using extremely careful wording:
[Non-aggressive, no obvious rejection reaction, contains emotional fluctuations similar to 'guilt'.]

Speculation: The creator of the sacred artifact was in a state of extreme lucidity, yet tinged with despair.

He drew a thin line in his notes and wrote a small question mark in the margin.

To whom should I apologize?

why?
There are no answers to these two questions, at least not yet.

But Ron is the kind of person who will sit down next to a question mark and wait patiently for a long time.

The discovery came without any warning.

It was an ordinary afternoon. As usual, Nigel sat in the corner, opened the first page of his fourth notebook, and prepared to start a new round of recording.

Ron was scanning the resonance data of the red hook with a spectrum analyzer, while a slow-paced piece of music played in his ears.

During long periods of focused work, appropriate background noise can actually help with concentration.

Then, the spectrum analyzer reading jumped.

It was just a tiny moment, so minute that it could almost be classified as an error.

But Ron stared at the thin line for a while, then turned the music off.

"Your Excellency Nigel, could you please leave the laboratory for ten minutes?"

“I cannot accept this…” The young marquis frowned.

"I will not do anything to the sacred artifacts that is outside the scope of the agreement."

Ron turned around and met those cautious eyes:

"I just need some completely undisturbed time to confirm a reading, and I will give you the complete test record once I'm done."

"Ten minutes will be enough."

If it's just ten minutes... Nigel closed his notebook, nodded to him, and turned to leave.

After the door closed, Ron turned back to the instrument, focusing his senses on the frequency band where the anomaly had just occurred.

That is the deepest layer of the entire resonance matrix.

There, he found a sequence that was unlike anything else.

The other function is "application," which is the execution part of the Red Hook's working principle, responsible for converting Selna's lingering resentment into an effective hedging signal, and then pushing it into the user's bloodstream.

But that sequence has the exact opposite function.

They are "records".

Each time the red hook is used, how many people use it, and how frequently are they used...

All this information was recorded into that sequence, accumulating generation after generation to form a massive database spanning thousands of years.

Ron stood before the data, a strange feeling rising within him.

When Selna was making the Red Hook, she probably knew from the beginning that it was just an emergency measure.

This is a research notebook spanning eight thousand years.

The person who wrote the notes didn't use paper and ink; instead, they used the bloodline history of the entire chaotic world.

Regarding that batch of frequency data, Ron wrote the following in his research notes:

"The red hook is an 'emergency tool,' not a 'treatment plan.'"

"Selna probably knew this when she forged the Red Hook. She..."
There wasn't enough time to make something better, so this unfinished product was left to those who came after.

That recording system was probably the most honest way she could apologize.

She left behind enough data so that the next person wouldn't have to start from scratch.

"The problem is that it took eight thousand years for the 'next person' to appear."

He closed his notebook and sat at the table for a while.

He already had a very clear intuition about what a large amount of frequency data meant.

The tendency toward berserk states varies subtly and consistently in frequency across different vampire clans.

This discovery lingered in his mind for several days, gradually developing into a hypothesis with an increasingly clear outline:

Strings made of different materials will produce different vibration frequencies when subjected to the same tension.

A steel string makes a steel string sound, and a gut string makes a gut string sound; even though they are both middle C, their timbres are completely different.

The tendency of vampires to go berserk essentially follows a similar logic.

The "frequency" of the cardiac clan is biased towards low-pitched, long-wave vibrations;
The Ya clan's style, on the contrary, is short, dense, and regular;
The Claw Clan lies between the two, yet possesses the most complex overtones.

Each individual's frequency is subtly offset from that of the Grand Duke, which is how the same piece of music is interpreted by different musicians.

The Red Hook works by "full-band counter-current". It suppresses any tendency toward frenzy at any frequency with the lingering resentment of Selna, which is indeed effective, but also crude.

A thick blanket can press down on three different keys of strings, which can indeed make the sound disappear, but it also completely suppresses the vibration space of the strings themselves.

It makes sense that vampires who use the red hook for a long time gradually become emotionally dulled.

"Precise hedging".

He wrote these three words in his log and then drew a simple harmonic diagram next to them:
"For a specific frequency, the corresponding reverse vibration should be used to resolve it; it should not be forcibly terminated by a heavy, all-encompassing pressure."

This is the logic of a music tuner.

He wrote a line of small print below the harmonic diagram:
"If this can be achieved, vampires of the rank of Count and above may also be able to obtain effective healing methods."

When Nigel had filled one-third of his fourth notebook, he sent a report to Alkadi.

This time, he added a personal comment at the end of the report:
"Lord Ralph's research approach is extremely rigorous, and there is no sign of any misuse or attempt to maliciously decipher the sacred artifact."

My personal suggestion: Moderately relax information controls in exchange for deeper cooperation.

Alkadi wrote only one word on the report, the ink flowing cleanly without any pauses:
"permit."

Six months later, the research entered the crucial data integration phase.

Ron traveled back and forth between the Chaotic Blood World and the main world several times, bringing back a batch of experimental results obtained with the help of the small chessboard.

He then called Cedric into the lab alone.

"sit."

Ron pushed the prepared research framework document over: "I'll draw three red lines for you."

Cedric didn't look up, but he stopped turning the page.

"First, no human experiments involving our bloodline are permitted."

If the research progresses to the stage requiring live verification, those prisoners of war can be used, but all records must be documented in writing.

Cedric nodded, as if taking notes.

"Second, it is forbidden to disassemble the core structure of the red hook or to maliciously tamper with it."

"This is the bottom line for the Heart Clan and other conservative vampires, and it's also our reputation. Do you understand?"

"clear."

"Third, all research data must be backed up three times simultaneously."

One copy remains in your hands, one is given to Silas, and one is sent to me.

Any form of hoarding, regardless of the reason, will result in your immediate dismissal.

He didn't say "what will happen after he is dismissed," but the solutions are self-evident.

Cedric paused for a moment, then said, "I accept all three."

“Okay.” Ron stood up, closed the folder, and pushed it in front of him.

"Silas will be your deputy. He also has the authority to stop any actions he deems excessive, and you must accept that."

After thinking for a moment, he added one last sentence:
"This project has no deadline, but it does have quality requirements."

I don't need a quick answer, I just need the right answer.

After saying this, Cedric visibly breathed a sigh of relief.

Ron noticed this but didn't say anything.

He didn't know Cedric very well, but he knew that the man had spent twenty years in the Central Lands with a timer stuck in his throat before coming to Twilight City.

It was a twisted hunger, not fundamentally different from some of the people he had met in the Black Mist Jungle when he was young.

He memorized this psychological profile and then left the laboratory.

Silas was waiting at the door: "Are you done talking?"

"That's all."

"Is there anything in particular I should pay attention to?"

"Keep a close eye on him."

Silas nodded: "Don't worry, I've worked with this guy for quite a while. I can tell whenever his eyes look off."

Ron patted his old friend on the shoulder and turned to leave.

………………

The project has a name.

Cedric named it the "Red String Project".

In the explanatory document submitted to Ron, he explained it as follows:

"The reason why the Red Hook is effective is that it uses Selna's grand will as a heavy hammer, using force to pressure and emotion to overcome emotion."

We don't have that kind of heavy hammer, nor should we; this is a solution belonging to her era.

What we need is something else: a thin string, to replace crushing with resonance, and flooding with precision.

The name "Red String" signifies the use of a thin string instead of a heavy hammer.

The naming is excellent; Cedric truly understood the research framework he left behind.

However, the subsequent progress of the "Red String Project" caused the participants to experience a rather long and arduous period of suffering.

In the past few years, there has been almost no progress.

Ron anticipated this when he handed over the framework.

Each step of this type of research is an independent challenge.

Cedric experimented with countless different combinations of materials.

Metals were prioritized: various rare metals and their alloys, as well as composite materials with different enchantments, all failed.

They can resonate, but cannot stay stable at a specific frequency; they begin to drift after each injection of magic.

Ores are in the second batch.

Several of them exhibited better frequency stability than metals.

However, the conductivity is too low, the signal strength is insufficient, and it is diluted and dissipated almost immediately after entering the bloodstream.

The third batch consists of organic materials, ranging from plants to animals.

Then there were the less common mixed sources, which led to several energy leaks during the experiment.

Nigel's notebook has a section called "Items Damaged in this Experiment," and after each incident, he would submit a complete record to Alcadi.

Alkadi's instructions became increasingly brief over time.

The initial response was: "Continue to observe and be careful."

The next question was: "How's it going?"

Later it became: "Still not done?"

Cedric himself was well aware of the stagnation in progress and would often pace back and forth alone in the laboratory.

He felt like an insect trapped in a glass bottle, constantly turning around after hitting walls at every corner, but never finding a way out.

The breakthrough occurred late one night, without any warning.

That day, Silas had already packed up and was ready to leave; he had even put on his coat.

Then they heard the door next door being suddenly pushed open, and Cedric came out with a frighteningly excited look in his eyes.

"Draven, I have an idea, a very dangerous idea."

Upon hearing this, Silas hung his coat back on the hanger, while Nigel, who was dozing off in the corner, silently opened his journal.

Cedric went to the blackboard, erased what he had written a week ago, and began to draw.

"The core of the Red Hook strategy is 'hedging,' right?"

He pointed to the blackboard:

“Selna uses her will to suppress all chaotic frequencies, and this principle is correct; we have always recognized this principle.”

"But...we keep making fundamental mistakes."

"We are trying to replicate Selna's will."

“How could this possibly be copied?” he continued.

"How can the true emotions left behind by a powerful soul that has existed for thousands of years be simulated with alchemical materials? This is a wrong path from the very beginning."

Silas frowned: "So what you mean is?"

Instead of 'copy,' use 'replace'.

He added a word next to the column on the right side of the blackboard:

"We don't need Selna's will; what we need is any emotion strong enough to be the opposite of madness."

“For example…” he carefully chose his words:
"Rationality is the opposite of madness. It is like a lake against a raging torrent, not using force to suppress the fluctuations, but using stability to eliminate them."

Silas stood there, his gaze fixed on the blackboard, going over the chain of reasoning again and again:
"If this idea holds true, is there a more direct application layer?"

“Yes.” Cedric’s eyes lit up, and he added another line to the blackboard:

"The current harmonizing potion is ineffective for earls and marquises, for reasons we have discussed before."

Their bloodline stability is far superior to that of ordinary vampires, and the potion's penetration power simply doesn't have enough time to establish an effective concentration. But if…

He underlined that line of text:
"If we transplant the principles of the Red Hook into the existing potion framework, we can enhance the potion's penetration and depth of effect on high-ranking vampires..."

This approach no longer involves creating a difficult and expensive replica.

Use the red hook as a reference point to upgrade something that already exists and has been proven.

The approach has shifted from "copying miracles" to "learning from principles," which is a fundamental dimensionality reduction.

“I need to report this to Ralph,” Silas said, his tone calm, yet carrying an expectation he himself wasn’t fully aware of.
"We cannot proceed until he confirms it."

“Of course.” Cedric leaned against the blackboard. “I’ll wait for his reply.”

The reply arrived two days later.

The letter was short, but every line was clear.

The line of thinking is correct, but the focus on "pure rationality" needs to be revised.

A hedging strategy devoid of any emotional foundation is tantamount to replacing madness with another form of 'abnormality'.

Essentially, it's just exchanging one extreme for another, and in the process, you'll also lose some of what you originally had.

This is isomorphic to the problem with the red hook; we shouldn't repeat the same mistake after changing the name.

[Correction direction: Retain the most basic emotional foundation within rationality.]

Just like the core principle of blending medicine, it transforms it into a state that can coexist with the host.

Harmony works because it does not demand "elimination"; it accepts the existence of something and establishes a balance with it.

The new potion for high-ranking vampires should, while counteracting their frenzied behavior, preserve the integrity of their normal emotional pathways.

[Regarding the source of materials for "emotional crystallization": we are considering using modified mineral salt.]

Experiments at the observatory have demonstrated that mineral salt, under specific conditions, can bear and rewrite 'obsession' and stabilize it.

Using mineral salt as a physical carrier, a 'harmonious rational' signal is injected and then converted into a blood-borne formulation.

This approach is worth pursuing, and subsequent research can be conducted in this direction.

Cedric read the reply once, and then read it again.

Then he placed the letter on the table: "We're both wizards, so why is there such a big difference?"

Silas shrugged. "Otherwise, how could he become a full professor at such a young age?" (End of Chapter)