Wizards: Starting with Synthetic Gems

Chapter 812 The Idea of ​​Atavism

Locke produced his library card, and after Lana the Witch looked at it, she gave a strange look. "Come with me, Locke Augustine."

"I haven't seen such an interesting young wizard as you in a long time."

"However, our Rose Council's library is different from the libraries of Bonifacius University and Mount Golden Crown. Without connections, you will find it difficult to move around here."

The witch Lana turned around and gestured for Locke to follow.

Locke naturally chose to follow, since all the wizards in the library were looking at him strangely, and having a familiar Sun Ring wizard leading the way made things much easier.

The witch Lana led Locke to a human wizard in the free area of ​​the second ring road. The human wizard, Bill, was a tall, thin man with a buzz cut, wearing a black wizard's robe, and as thin as a bean sprout.

Wizard Bill looked at Locke in surprise and said, "An outsider wizard? That's quite rare."

He looked at the witch Lana and asked, "And who is this...?"

The witch Lana raised her chin and crossed her arms. She was wearing a wizard's robe decorated with pale blue roses (Ocean Princess) on the shoulders, and she looked extremely beautiful.

"He's kind of an admirer of mine. If he needs anything, please try your best to fulfill his request."

Wizard Bill bowed to Witch Lana.

"I understand, Ms. Lana."

The witch Lana looked at Locke and explained, "In the Rose Council's library, if you ask a generalist wizard what specific magic book you want to search for and tell him the relevant keywords, he will often give you two different answers."

"If you encounter a wizard who isn't part of our small circle, you can just give a perfunctory answer. After all, only generalist wizards possess such a vast amount of data, and only they themselves know whether they actually have it or not."

"Therefore, if you don't have a knowledgeable scholar here, you'll have to find some magic books yourself."

Locke suddenly realized what was going on. He turned to look at the wizard Bill, only to see that the tall, thin wizard Bill's expression remained unchanged, just looking at him with a faint smile, as if what the witch Lana had just said had nothing to do with him.

Locke bowed to the witch Lana and said, "Thank you."

The witch Lana nodded.

"It's nothing to me. I just find it amusing that you actually dared to come to our Rose Council's library. Locke, good luck. By the way, I'd like to see your Ecological Alliance type spell; just show me its effect."

Locke smiled wryly; the other party had still noticed that he had taken a different path from them.

Locke did not refuse. He took his hands out of the pockets of his wizard's robe, opened his right hand, and a beam of bright moonlight appeared in his hand.

As a Sun Ring Wizard, Lana the Witch understood it immediately.

"I see, so it was through the moonlight of your immense magic? Interesting, but it's not relevant to me. Besides, physical ecological corridors can establish much more powerful biomass exchanges."

Locke nodded in agreement.

"Yes, but Lady Lana, all I need to do is establish connections with other forests."

The witch Lana flipped her slender left hand, and a sacred path formed by trees on both sides appeared. This ecological corridor of the sacred path collided with the moonlight in Locke's hand, and the sacred path in Locke's hand was easily destroyed.

Lana the Witch smirked.

"Sure enough."

“You see, ecological corridors protected by divine protection have great resilience, while ecological corridors without divine protection are easily destroyed by people.”

A golden halo lit up in Lana the Witch's left eye. She saw through Locke's true nature and saw a vast forest within him, with a full moon above it, connecting with four other forests through its light.

She looked surprised.

"A very interesting magical power. But it is still too fragile and immature. If you encounter a true sage, you will suffer greatly."

As expected of a Sun Ring Wizard, Lana the Witch pointed out Locke's current ecological corridor problems with ease, demonstrating her insightful and comprehensive understanding.

His ecological corridor is like an egg without a shell, too fragile.

Locke seemed to be deep in thought, then bowed to the witch Lana and thanked her, saying, "Thank you for your guidance. However, I believe that my path is not wrong, but compared to you, I still have a lot of room for growth."

A look of surprise flashed in Lana the Witch's eyes.

Given her personality, if Locke had actually accepted her opinion and changed course, she would have immediately adopted her usual approach to disciplining students. However, Locke's insistence on his own ideas made her think more highly of him.

The witch Lana laughed, "Perhaps that's true. I must apologize for stopping you from pursuing this path when you were at the Crystallization Wizard stage. At the time, I thought you weren't ready. But now it seems you certainly are."

The witch Lana looked at the wizard Bill and said, "Look, this is the attitude of a true wizard. This is the thirst for knowledge! I would be at ease if my students had half of his independence."

“They all really wish they could become another version of me, but they lack the wisdom to learn from me.”

The wizard Bill maintained his smile, but the thought of the witch Lana's unpredictable moods suddenly made him feel a little scared.

"Yes, Ms. Lana."

The witch Lana seemed to have her own things to do and left the library quickly.

After she left, Wizard Bill finally let out a sigh of relief.

Locke looked at Wizard Bill with a puzzled expression and asked, "Wizard Bill, you seem very afraid of the Witch Lana. She seems very kind."

The wizard Bill wore a complicated expression.

"That's not the case. It's just that you haven't spent much time with her, so you have a biased view of her."

"If you spend enough time with her, you'll surely feel afraid too. Alright, Wizard Augustine, what kind of documents are you looking for?"

Locke became serious and stated the two key points he needed: mainly the mechanical analysis of the foot's force on the wizard's shoes, and information related to imaginary roots.

The wizard Bill's expression remained unchanged. He was not a magic weaver, so he felt no pressure about telling Locke about magic weavers.

"Wow, so many keywords! If it were someone else, I would just give a perfunctory answer and randomly find a few books for you. Wait a minute, I'll seriously use the [Memory Palace] to find some for you."

Locke nodded.

Clearly, the internal cliques within the Rose Council's library are even more pronounced.

There are still quite a few 'lone wolves' on Mount Golden Crown, but it seems that without joining a team, it's impossible to get anywhere in this Rose Council.

This may be related to the fact that the Flower Language Masters Association and the Magic Weavers Association have become small cliques.

Essentially, this is directly related to the character, number, and ideas of the high-ring wizards at the top of this discipline.

After Locke obtained the pile of documents, he found a place where a magical bouquet of flowers was placed. The fragrance emanating from the bouquet could actually clear one's mind and speed up one's thinking.

Locke sat down on the sofa and began to read.

First, the witch Lana reminded herself that the ecological corridor of her forest alliance needed protection, but she didn't have a good way to improve it in the short term.

Because this Forest Alliance Spell involves the very foundation of one's own power system.

And this fundamental improvement, even in the smallest way, requires a lot of resources and time, and perhaps a lot of experiments.

Three days later, Locke discovered that the Rose Council was actually going in a similar direction to Mount Golden Crown in terms of breeding science.

Boniface University's breeding program is primarily geared towards urban greening, while the magical plants bred by Golden Crown Mountain and the Rose Council are undoubtedly geared towards agriculture.

Whether it's crops or the cultivation of numerous magical rose-like plants that support the tertiary discipline of rose language, all of these magical plant breeding practices belong to agriculture.

It's just leisure agriculture.

Essentially, they are all high-value agricultural production.

"The Rose Council and Mount Golden Crown are essentially two high-value-added agricultural universities."

Locke pondered, "No wonder there's a conflict between the Rose Throne and the Red Dragon Throne."

"The foot stress analysis of these wizard shoes is something I had never considered before, namely the comfort of people wearing wizard shoes. It's just a detail, but if I do this detail well, it can make my product even better."

Locke copied down some key points that he needed and continued to ask Wizard Bill for more information.

Two weeks had passed, and now almost half a month had gone by. Most of the wizards in the Rose Council were too busy to notice him, but a small number of wizards, especially the magic weaver wizards, had obviously heard about Locke.

The wizards whispered among themselves, speculating about Locke's purpose.

The Moon Ring Wizard Holm stood on a high building, looking down in the direction of Locke. His face was grim, clearly not expecting to see the young wizard who had been giving him a headache lately in the Rose Council's library.

Who the hell let him in?
Holm wore a very forced smile.

Meanwhile, the magic weavers around him were whispering among themselves, "This guy is obviously trying to learn from us. Even though it's some free information, it'll be difficult for him to get his hands on it. The key thing is, he must have pulled some strings to get Bill to be so open and honest with him, serving him so diligently."

Is this still the same Bill?

A magic weaver looked dejected.

"That cunning Bill, last time he even extorted 100,000 magic stones from me just to get him to do his research properly. That guy won't do anything without a reward."

"How could a foreign wizard like Augustine make Bill so obedient?"

Another magic weaver spread her hands and said, "How would you know? This guy is indeed incredibly powerful. He's even managed to get by in our Rose Council."

"Who can go and find out what he's planning to do here this time?"

One of the magic weavers spoke up, "I've inquired about it. He said he's going to look up information here to see if he can find a way to mass-produce imaginary roots." Holm couldn't help but chuckle.

The magic weavers exchanged glances and immediately relaxed.

“Even the breeders at our own Rose Council’s Breeders Academy aren’t that skilled. What use would it be for him to look up these free materials? They’re all old research from fifty years ago.”

"You won't find anything useful in old papers and archives."

The wizard Holm's smile vanished, and he snorted coldly, "What a pipe dream. I think this guy has gone mad because he can't seem to break through that technical hurdle. Let him be."

"Anyway, he only has half a month left. If he's smart enough to focus on exploring the magic weaver techniques from fifty years ago, he might be able to improve the technical details of his clumsy wizard shoe toy."

"In this way, his 13th-rate little wizard shoe shop alliance can survive."

Supervisor Holm glanced at the magic weavers around him and said in a low voice, "Soras's bare feet are still the pride of the Rose Council. Everyone, please attend the themed event six months from now."

"Only with the strong support of our alumni and colleagues can Solas keep leading forever."

Some of the magic weavers present nodded in agreement, while others looked troubled, and a small number of them even showed signs of anger.

The Rose Council's shoemakers are divided into two factions.

One faction stood with Solas's bare feet, while the other sided with Meloch's magic steps.

The way to distinguish between the two is very simple: just look at whether they are wearing products from Solas Footwear or Melochy Magic Steps.

The Rose Council's breeders looked at them with dissatisfaction, saying that even their academy's breeders didn't have this ability.

However, many of these people were Lana the Witch's students or subordinates, so they didn't have any objections to Locke at the moment. In any case, Locke not only had no conflict of interest with them, but also seemed to have a good relationship with Lana the Witch.

Therefore, these breeders glared angrily at the magic weavers who had spoken.

……

On the second floor, in the lobby, Locke sat on an exquisite white-gold sofa, reading a magic book amidst the wonderful fragrance of flowers. It must be said that the Rose Council's library had many problems, but it had one very good advantage.

It's the fragrance of flowers that permeates this library space.

It's so beautiful.

The sense of smell seemed to conjure up a beautiful picture before one's eyes; the Rose Council truly possessed an impressive academic standard at this aesthetic feast.

Locke looked at his notes. His main body was reading them, while his clone was in Golden Crown Mountain, using two laboratories in the Dune Plane to decipher the spell model of the Spectral Lich's ritual magic.

Locke looked at his notes, slightly troubled, and said, "I still have no clue about the non-contact approach method for imaginary roots, but I do have some ideas about a half-finished project that Professor Sophia gave me."

Previously, Sophia's senior brother gave her a sample, which used the yellow mushroom extract to transform golden foxtail grass and green foxtail grass into [golden wheat].

Golden wheat was one of the symbols of the boundary between day and night, but it is now extinct.

Locke saw in this project the advantages of Sophia as both a potion maker and a breeder; she was clearly trying to use potion-making techniques to breed magical plants.

That's why this project came about.

Although it's a semi-finished product, she has already managed to use yellow-skinned mushroom extract to induce atavistic characteristics in two types of foxtail grass.

The Starry Sea believes that even if a magical plant has evolved, it will retain a large number of past plant factors because the plant factors in its plant essence are redundant.

This is probably to cope with certain variations, or in the event of a major environmental change, so that the corresponding plant factors can be found in the plant essence library of redundant factors.

In short, if that's the case, the Witch Sophia has put forward two points.

Firstly, since a magical plant can retain many plant factors from the past, there must be a way to awaken those dormant plant factors through magical power.

Secondly, since those excess plant factors still exist in the plant essence, it means that there must be one or more mechanisms that exist together within a magical plant, suppressing the expression of those redundant plant factors, thus keeping the magical plant in its current state.

She then discovered that the yellow-skinned mushroom extract could disrupt these inhibitory expression mechanisms through multiple mechanisms, thus allowing the plant factors of golden wheat hidden inside the two foxtail grasses to appear.

Admittedly, they no longer possess the complete plant genes of golden wheat, but...

Breeders also use the finite element method for breeding.

By simply cutting off the scattered plant elements of specific Golden Wheat using a magical magnetic field and through artificial design, it is possible to revive Golden Wheat in the modern magical era.

Of course, this is just a dream goal at the moment.

Moreover, it's impossible to piece together a complete set of Golden Wheat plant factors from those two types of foxtail grass. The workload is simply too enormous; it would be difficult to complete such a large undertaking without the participation of hundreds of formal wizards.

Locke flipped through the magic book. He hadn't taken the project seriously when he first got it, but now he understood.

Golden wheat exhibits a form of atavism, a result of atavistic evolution.

My own Evolution Moon is a powerful magic based on evolution. If I could add another evolutionary form of magical plant to my Evolution Moon, it would definitely be of great benefit to my powerful magic.

Clearly, the Witch Sophia abandoned the project halfway through, realizing that while it could be completed, it wouldn't be as valuable to her as she had imagined.

But from another perspective, it's as if she had done all the preliminary work and then dumped the project on herself when it was almost ready to yield results.

The difficulty of completing the [Ageless Evolution] during the Evolution Month has been greatly reduced.

Locke pondered, looking at the spellbook: 'The reason Sophia stopped was because she realized that while the Yellow Potion, made with Yellow Mushroom Extract, could disrupt the expression mechanisms of inhibitory factors in soaked magical plants, she couldn't control exactly which inhibitory mechanisms were disrupted.'

This resulted in the reversion of a magical plant to its ancestral form being entirely random. Realizing this, she decided that continuing would be pointless, so she stopped and published related articles. After all, just reaching this point was enough to warrant publishing some articles.

Locke pondered, "But she's different from me. The foundation of my first major magic is evolution. If I could create a kind of atavism on par with surging evolution, it would be a huge boost to my power."

"However, the Rose Council's method for dealing with color mutations in the same type of rose-type magical plant has provided me with a solution. Completely random mutations can cause a plant's genetic makeup to become chaotic, leading to its self-destruction, or turning atavism into simple degeneration."

Locke looked at the spellbook in his hand. The Rose Council had extensive experience in using potions to mutate the color of rose plants and produce different enchantment effects.

These potions also have various side effects, and may even cause random color variations and confusion in enchantment effects.

Their treatment method involves soaking in a low-concentration solution followed by precise trimming.

Even by reducing the range of flower color variation through low-concentration soaking, and by manually using various equipment to remove the dangerous plant factors that are expressed, we can gradually eliminate the plant factors that we don't need.

Locke saw technology from fifty years ago, but that didn't matter; he only needed to learn from the ideas and their experience.

Unlike these wizards, his Moon of Evolution had a spell model with extremely large magic runes, which he had traded from the wizard Edgar.

It means a dazzling display of lights and fireworks.

"As long as I use the Moon Cultivation Method to make the spiritual sequence of the magical plant manifest, and then fine-tune the spell model of the Fire Tree Silver Flower, I should be able to reduce some of the plant factors in the magical plant."

Locke looked thoughtful.

"Using this method, it is very likely that it will be much faster than the Rose Council wizards using various devices."

I must thank the Catherine witches again for arranging my entry into the Dune plane and discovering the special stone spirits.

The Moon Cultivation Method is incredibly useful to me.

Locke pondered, "In this way, I might be able to directly achieve atavism by soaking in a low-concentration potion and removing the artificially removed parts. Teacher Sophia has already cleared away most of the obstacles ahead for me. For the remaining part, I just need to conduct more experiments and accumulate experience, and I should be able to overcome it."

"Okay, let's put this aside for now. We'll use Group 2's lab to do some experiments on this later to see if we can achieve [atavism]."

"My main goal now is to figure out how to reduce the production cost of imaginary roots."

Locke looked up and found himself standing in front of a wizard in the crystallization stage.

Locke asked expressionlessly, "Is there something you need?"

Wizard Michael coughed awkwardly. "Hello, Mr. Locke, I am the chief designer of the first ring of Solas's Lightfoot, at least for now."

Locke's eyes turned strange.

Wizard Michael placed a magic drawing in front of him. "I want to tell you that the Black Hummingbird is an excellent wizard shoe, arguably the best performing first-ring wizard shoe in Cloudze Wetlands. But it's not the best first-ring wizard shoe yet."

"This is a drawing of the magic pressure on the soles of a first-ring wizard's feet."

He turned and left quickly, as if he had done something wrong.

Locke picked up the guy's magic painting, raised his eyebrows, and a slight look of surprise appeared in his eyes.

"Hmm? Has the Shoemaker's research on wizard shoes reached this level of detail?"

This is actually a set of pictures.

Above is a diagram showing the distribution of magical pressure on the soles of the feet of forty-seven common first-ring wizards. It indicates the pressure exerted by the magical pressure on the soles of wizard shoes, and then specifies the shape and size of the wizard shoes to fit the magical pressure on the soles of these wizards' feet.

Locke said, "This guy... he's exactly what I need right now."

Locke's eyes brightened slightly.

"By the way, I can look up the records of the Rose Council's failed projects over the years; perhaps there are some that I can use. Just like what I did in the Six Towers Land."

At this moment, Wizard Michael turned and ran to the library entrance, his eyes somewhat confused, unsure if he had done the right thing.

He simply wanted to make a truly perfect pair of wizard shoes.

(End of this chapter)