A mage? A spell engineer!

Chapter 399 The Court of the Illusory Realm

Rorschach decided to take Caroline to the "burial place of clones." He didn't need to hold anything back from his teacher; after all, in Istani, the two had a "life-or-death bond."

With his clone lying in that space as an anchor, getting up there became easy. Rorschach, imitating the various altars recorded in the ancient books, set up a ritual in the empty warehouse.

After drawing the symbol pointing to himself, Luo Xia put on his favorite things. He thought for a moment and placed a soft drink in the southeast, and gold coins, crispy pork knuckle and "Principles of Alchemy (Draft)" in the other positions.

The last offering wasn't something I liked, but rather something I hated. However, Rorschach hadn't finished writing it before his doppelganger went to sleep in the heavens, so it was a way of putting an obsession to rest.

Caroline walked over and saw Rorschach's arrangement, somewhat surprised: "What god are you planning to pray to?" She looked closely at the offerings: "Without minerals and spices, how are you going to set out food, drink, and money? Will this even work?"

She didn't say it aloud: "The god you're looking for seems rather poor and lowly."

Thankfully, the teacher didn't say it aloud, otherwise it would have been a soul-crushing blow to Rorschach. He explained to Caroline, "Actually, it was my alter ego that was being sacrificed. It's currently lying at its destination, a vesicle between the material and symbolic realms."

"Oh, so this is the space you mentioned in your letter. Judging from your ritual, its entry method is similar to the divine kingdoms of the past?"

"It should be, but before the clone enters, it is a chaotic area where there is no one and no distinction between heaven and earth. You will know the specific situation when you go there."

After the alchemical potion was applied, a spacetime vortex appeared, drawing Rorschach and Caroline into it. It's said that objects are stretched infinitely when they approach a black hole, and Rorschach was experiencing this firsthand.

Once the pulling sensation subsided, they arrived at the foot of a "golden tree".

This "Tree of Law" is slender and has not many branches. The gradually illusory crown at the top supports the hole that was once blasted by the clone. The sky is not high and distant, and the hazy starlight through the crystal wall seems to be within reach.

The ground beneath my feet was covered with golden sand, which was originally metamorphic dust, but after settling, it was touched and transformed by the roots of the "Tree of Law" and stained with golden yellow.

Caroline's attention was completely drawn to the Golden Tree: "Rorschach, you said before that the chaotic space only became divided into heaven and earth after it appeared. Isn't that the World Tree from Northern mythology?"

"Where can you find a World Tree this tiny?" The "sapling" is now only about the thickness of a bowl, on par with roadside trees, and even the black dragon's teeth are stronger than it.

Caroline maintained her view: "The world isn't that big anyway."

Theoretically, Rorschach and Caroline were standing on Rorschach's clone, but when he entered this space to attempt synesthesia, he received no feedback. This result was somewhat expected.

The two strolled through it, which was only the size of a football field. At the edge, the fine sand formed from metamorphic dust rose and fell, preventing them from getting close to the edge of the space.

"You want to place the Tower Spirit's main body here?" Caroline asked Rorschach for confirmation. After receiving an affirmative answer, she tried to take out the tools from her material bag, but found nothing.

"No need for testing. First of all, we can be certain that this place is more of a symbolic realm. If nothing unexpected happens, our bodies will probably still be lying in front of the altar. At the very least, the ritual is not perfect enough, only allowing spirits to enter."

Luo Xia was about to say that the clone came in as a whole person, but then he realized that the guy had fallen from Thoth's divine kingdom and crashed in hard, so it couldn't be considered a normal entry.

This was the outcome Luo Xia feared most—this place leaned towards the symbolic realm, making it difficult to transport the Tower Spirit's true form in. If they followed the old path of using clones, the risk was too great; who knew how many dangers were lurking in the eerie temple?

Caroline, meanwhile, was contemplating how to meet Rorschach's needs. She searched her mind for knowledge related to the Symbolic Realm—what she had learned from the Tower of Stars, what she had seen in the Magic Academy's library, and what she had heard from her peers.

"What God thinks exists." Caroline suddenly uttered a phrase from the scriptures, and then said, "This is the most common power of God in His Kingdom. Perhaps the materialization of imagination is the manifestation of God's power, and also the inherent nature of the symbolic world."

"If you are familiar enough with the institution that houses the tower spirit, why not try to imagine and visualize it here?"

Rorschach did as instructed, and he began to try to "3D model" in his mind. The shape of the computing core gradually became clear, as if it had some special characteristics in this space. When Rorschach conceived the idea, memories related to it began to emerge, allowing him to smoothly draw sufficiently clear details.

However, nothing happened. When Rorschach opened his eyes again, he and Caroline were silently facing each other under the tree.

"Can't you remember?"

"No, it's going smoothly; details from my memory keep coming back. But as you can see, I haven't been able to visualize it." Rorschach wondered if some specific magic was needed.

Caroline pondered for a moment, then thought of another approach: "Have you seen the blueprints?"

"Of course. I brought the blueprints back." Rorschach began to try to visualize the blueprints. Memories flooded back, but this time, fine metamorphic dust and sand began to float and deform in front of him, forming thin pages of blueprints.

This time it was a success. The blueprints retained the golden hue of the sand, gleaming brightly. Once all of them were realized, they began to fold and deform, forming the shapes of parts and spherical shells.

"As expected. In the original layer of the symbolic realm, the registered spells and divine arts are all 'perfect prototypes,' and what we are facing now should be the perfect prototype of the computational core."

At first, Rorschach attempted to represent man-made objects. The parts made by craftsmen always had tolerances and the materials always had defects, but only those abstracted from drawings could be recognized by the symbolic world.

Reality implies flaws; only the illusory can achieve perfection.

The golden tree sent down tendrils, and roots sprouted from the ground, connecting to the core. Seeing this, Caroline led Rorschach back to the material world: "Next, we need to separate the Tower Spirit from its original vessel and place it in a new body."

Their consciousness plummeted, the ground turned into quicksand that swallowed them both, and when they opened their eyes again, they were lying on the cold cement floor of the warehouse.

Rorschach quickly got up and then helped Caroline up.

The tower spirit cannot be ascensed immediately, as there are still many jobs in the factories that require its support.

As a result, all factories received a notice that "the system is being upgraded and all units are suspending operations." The workers were delighted to have a sudden day off, and the aircrew also suspended their training and patrols.

After confirming that the last boiler had cooled down and the last puppet had been stored, Rorschach severed the connection to the Tower Spirit Core and carried the heavy metal sphere to the center of the altar.

The core, which had been functioning normally under Rorschach's magical infusion, lost something as the ritual began, and slowly stopped turning its gears.

"Based on the similarity rate, after the Tower Spirit enters the container of the 'Perfect Prototype,' it can descend into a vessel made in the material world based on it." Rorschach and Caroline stared nervously at the metal sphere. As time slowly passed, the gears inside the core suddenly began to operate again, making a regular clicking sound.

Then, something was spat out from the vortex and entered Rorschach's body—his soul was whole again.

The next day, Hannah began practicing her spellcasting. At the same time, in a ethereal place, a "small tree" reaching for the sky and earth flashed through a beam of light as she cast her spell.

(End of this chapter)