Wizards: Starting with Synthetic Gems

Chapter 12 One year and three months

The arrival of the Augustinian family was just a minor incident, and Locke quickly returned to his daily studies.

Time flies, winter turns to spring, and Locke has spent one year and three months at Aurelian Academy.

In Locke's dormitory, Locke had already finished reading all nine books by the Vine Hand.

Inside the dormitory, a pot of mandrake placed on the windowsill has grown, from a seed into a green vine about three meters long.

Under Locke's daily mental nourishment, this vine has acquired some magical properties and can even express some simple emotions.

For example, when the air gets cold, the vine's leaves will curl up slightly, just like a person who has caught a cold and is hugging themselves together.

If the plant is dry, the vines will gently tap the window with their leaves to remind Locke to water it.

Today, Locke looked at the last page of the ninth book in the Vine Hands.

That was the final step in completing the Vine Hand, allowing the Mandela Vine to fully mature, leave the soil, and be grafted onto one's own spiritual power.

In this way, the Mandragora can be carried at all times and can be activated and used by spells at any time during battle.

Like a vine pet.

Locke placed the ten stones, each engraved with ancient runes, around the mandrake flowerpot in two circles, and then gently chanted an incantation.

At the same time, the mandrake vines that were originally climbing on the window seemed to make a move; the leaves began to tremble, and the vines themselves slowly crawled on the window.

Locke held a flower in his hand, while his mind raced, recalling the usual dangers and possible side effects of the final step: the mental grafting.

Locke said, "The spiritual grafting is the final step of the Vine Hand spell. The cultivated mandrake is removed from the soil and, through a ritual, connected with my magic. My magic nourishes the mandrake, so that I can control it and better modify it to attack my enemies."

"According to what I read in the book, the Wizard Cole of the University of Verdandia, who invented the Vine Hand, proposed a hypothesis—the Wood Element Particle Plant Hypothesis. In this hypothesis, there were originally no wood element particles in the world, but after a certain plant was born, this plant, by taking root in the soil and water, combined water element particles with earth element particles, thus forming composite wood element particles."

Locke thought to himself, "Therefore, there were originally no wood element particles in this world, which is the basis of plant magic. It was the plants that were born, and thus the plants produced wood element particles."

"Unfortunately, it seems that until two hundred years ago, Wizard Cole had not found the plant that he hypothesized had given birth to the first wood element particle. So this hypothesis is just a hypothesis, and there is not enough evidence to prove his point."

"But this assumption is one of the foundations of all the spells developed by the magic vine wizard Cole. Therefore, to use the vine hand, it is necessary to transfer the dense wood element particles from other places to my mandra vine."

"And the place where wood element particles are most concentrated is the plant itself."

"Therefore, the medium for this spell is some kind of plant; otherwise, if I cast the spell barehanded, I would be the one paying the price with my life force. My own arm and my own muscles would wither away..."

Locke quickly went through all the key points written in the nine books in his mind.

This was the first time he had truly cast a spell, the first time he had truly used magic independently.

Strangely, Locke wasn't as nervous as he thought he would be. Instead, he was calm and composed because this spell was something he had been reviewing and pondering day and night for the past two years.

He was extremely familiar with every step.

Dean Tunguska also warned the three of them that Corfu is not like the Wizarding World; magical resources are very scarce, which means that it would be difficult to find a doctor to treat injuries caused by magic.

In the past, there were examples in the academy of promising wizards who died because of their own carelessness, which led to the backlash of their own spells.

Locke transferred the life force and wood element particles from the flower in his hand to the mandrake vine. The flower in his hand withered quickly, while the mandrake vine rapidly grew new green leaves, becoming more mature and approaching adulthood.

Locke held the obsidian ritual knife and carefully carved Ogan script on the trunk of the mandrake.

Through this rune, he will officially graft his magic power onto the mandrake that he has modified with his magic power, making it as much as his own arm.

Ogan Ancient is an ancient magical rune used for universal plant magic.

This is why, before learning the Vine Hand technique, you need to take a prerequisite course: a course on the general basics of plant magic.

Because this mandrake had been nourished and transformed by his magic for so long, his magic had strengthened its branches and leaves, enhanced its spirituality, and optimized its essence, the mandrake did not resist much.

But Locke still needed to concentrate all his attention on inscribing the Ogum runes; there were a total of sixteen Ogum runes to be inscribed.

Even the slightest error in the inscription could, at best, destroy the mandrake itself; at worst, cause the caster to suffer a magical backlash, being overwhelmed by a massive influx of wood elemental magic, turning every cell of their body into wood, transforming them into a wooden puppet. It's a relatively common experimental accident for wizard apprentices researching plant magic to be turned into wooden puppets by a backlash.

But in fact, there may be more bizarre situations. The book mentions that a wizard apprentice wrote a symbol wrong when inscribing the Ogan tree script, which caused what should have been a grafting to become a fusion between the wizard and the vine.

However, fusing magical plants with oneself is a very high-level plant magic, a field that can only be studied by at least a first-ring wizard.

Therefore, the final result was that the third-class wizard apprentice turned into a humanoid plant and lost his self-awareness.

Finally, he was taken back by Wizard Cole and conducted some research on content that was omitted from the book.

About half an hour later, as Locke carefully inscribed the last Ogan rune, his body suddenly trembled. At the same time, the mandrake in the flowerpot matured rapidly under the infusion of life force. Then, with a 'crack', its main body broke off from the root, and the three-meter-long vine broke in two from the root.

The roots, about half a meter long, still stood at the bottom of the flowerpot soil, but they withered and turned yellow very quickly, losing all vitality.

Meanwhile, the sixteen Ogan runes on the two-and-a-half-meter-long Mandrake vine lit up with a mesmerizing green light, signaling the completion of the plant magic.

Locke whispered a spell.

Then, the vine, like a snake, began to writhe on the ground, nimbly climbing up Locke's legs and then his body, trying to crawl into his sleeves. However, because the cuffs of Locke's white wool school uniform shirt were too small, it gave up after several failed attempts.

It wrapped around Locke's right arm, and the excess part wrapped around the base of Locke's shoulder and hung on Locke's body.

Locke sensed that the mandrake had fallen into a slumber. After all, it was difficult for a wizard below the first level to use plant magic to make a magical plant move normally.

That would require a lot of mana.

In severe cases, it can even backfire on the wizard, causing them to sacrifice their own life force and wither away part of their physical body.

Therefore, one can only revive the mandrake by reciting a spell and offering a plant when facing an enemy, so that it can attack the enemy the moment it is revived.

Locke let out a breath of stale air, then walked to the table and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the handkerchief on it, but a happy smile appeared on his face. "Finally finished."

He closed his eyes, and the moment he completed the Vine Hand spell, he became a third-class wizard apprentice.

He closed his eyes, and vaguely, he seemed to see a bright, illusory star before him, which was revolving around his spiritual core. At the same time, within that star were sixteen Ogan tree runes, forming a magic model.

The book says that a single use of a single tree rune for a first-level plant magic spell requires at least a hundred runes, and the complexity increases dramatically. However, this is just a trick, so only sixteen Ogan runes are needed to complete a semblance of a spell.

Locke picked up a daffodil from the desk, then chanted a spell. The daffodil in his left hand withered and died at an astonishing speed. At the same time, the mandrake wrapped around his right hand reacted quickly, extending five vines that attacked the enemy like a plant hand, piercing the dormitory wall and leaving five holes in it.

Then, the mandrake suddenly exerted its strength, and its five branches, like a human hand, grasped and worked together, carving a hole in the wall with a loud bang.

After doing all this, the mandrake withered and quickly retracted to its right arm, continuing to lie there.

Locke stared at the scene in disbelief. "This power is greater than anything described in the books."

"Firstly, it's because written descriptions are limited, so it's better for me to use it directly, which is more concrete. Secondly, it's probably because my Vine Hands are quite well-made, so their power has increased a bit."

Locke looked into his room, which was filled with deep blue gems and those that had been used up.

These deep blue gems can filter out one's mental energy, making its fluctuations more stable. As a result, the accuracy of one's inscription of the Ogan Tree runes is about 30% higher than that of an ordinary wizard apprentice.

That's why his vine arms are so powerful.

This is the function of the Horadric Cube.

These deep blue gems are so useful and are consumables, so if I were in the wizarding world, it would probably not be easy to buy them. It would require a lot of resources, which would probably be difficult for a small wizard like me with no background to access.

Locke glanced at the many deep blue gems he had wasted, and considering Dean Tunguska's appreciation for scarce magical resources, he suddenly felt that he had been somewhat extravagant.

“In three months, the wizard ship from Aurelian Academy will arrive.” Locke took a black trench coat from the wardrobe and draped it over himself to cover his right hand, which resembled a mandrake, a pet vine. “I’ve now become a third-class wizard apprentice. I need to tell Teacher Tunguska, Cord, and Patty this good news.”

"There are still three months left, and I'd better not waste them. I should ask Professor Tunguska what I'm still lacking."

After all, the more outstanding he is, the more room he will have to choose his favorite academy when he boards the wizard ship.

(End of this chapter)