Ancient Wizards: A Little Progress Every Day

into the night.

The warm light emanating from the constant-temperature magic circle inside the Icethorn Manor Castle faintly illuminated a corner of the vast room.

Dago sat at a heavy desk, with exquisite tapestries and oil paintings hanging on the wall beside him, and the sound of wind and snow pattering through the huge French windows in front of him.

By the light of the illumination crystal, Dagger slowly examined the contents of the box Avery had given him.

That contained all the detailed information about the Huntington family's "bloodline modification" technology.

"Everyone imagines 'bloodline modification' to be far too mysterious and profound."

Dago pushed aside a pile of rune-recording stones in front of him, looked out the window at the howling wind and snow, and gently rubbed his temples with his fingers.

The origin of Ice Fortress's "bloodline modification" technique comes from the technology developed by the Ice Prison Palace in the far north through the endless soul corruption of the greedy demon Mamentos.

By harnessing the calming elements of ice energy from the bloodline of ice-type magical beasts, the body and soul are acted upon, much like a soul seal, serving as a soul sedative to prevent the soul from being corrupted by the Great Demon of Greed.

In essence, this method uses the soul and blood of magical beasts to condense the physical body's magical seal [the Cold Element], thereby resisting the invasion of spiritual emotional energy on the body and soul.

However, it cannot be condensed as a normal soul imprint, and its power will be consumed—after the [cold element] energy in the body is exhausted, it is necessary to collect new monster blood souls and condense it again.

Since the [Cold Element] is not a true sign, but a heterogenous sign formed from the blood and soul of a magical beast, its crude embedding into one's mental state inevitably pollutes one's mental and spiritual power.

The consequence of spiritual power being polluted is that the soul contains more impurities. At best, it makes further cultivation difficult; at worst, it can even cause the soul to decay and one's strength to regress.

Although this problem has been largely solved through countless generations of optimization and adjustments, it still needs to be addressed.

Each modification will inevitably leave some impurities, and after two or three embeddings, it is difficult to avoid being affected.

The major wizarding families of Ice Fortress collectively state to the outside world that each wizard can only be modified once at most.

The box Avery gave me contained a three-dimensional graphic of the Body Sign [Cold Element], which was recorded on a blank runestone.

Dago picked up the runestone and carefully examined the entire physical seal. Its overall shape resembled a twisted, vibrating drop of water, and every energy pattern within the drop was filled with a mysterious and cold aura.

"It cannot be condensed as a soul imprint; I wonder if it can be enchanted onto magical artifacts?"

Dago thought casually, memorizing the image of the physical body's magic seal, and then picked up the introductory material about the Huntington family's "bloodline modification".

The method was simple and crude: they attempted to directly apply the extracted monster blood to the physical body in order to achieve the effect of bloodline modification.

Transplanting the bloodline of magical beasts into the human body has always been a popular topic in wizarding physical modification.

With the support of the [Cold Element] sign pattern, the Huntington family made good progress in the early stages of their research, and they thought of keeping the bloodline of magical beasts in the human body in the form of runes.

When needed, this "physical seal" can be activated like a soul seal. Because it is a direct fusion of bloodlines, the power a wizard gains is far greater than that obtained through simple bloodline modifications in other wizarding families.

However, after activating the bloodline seal, controlling the rampaging demonic beast bloodline within the body became a major problem.

The residual monster blood within the human body uncontrollably causes the recipient's body to develop in the direction of a "monster".

The wildness and bestiality of magical beasts that remain in their blood can even affect their consciousness. Even a formal wizard can inadvertently become a "beast" controlled by instinct.

The early Huntington family conducted extensive human experiments, first on commoners, then on wizarding apprentices, and finally on full-fledged wizards.

However, the wizards of that time had a certain bottom line. When it came to human experimentation with formal wizards, the subjects were usually selected from their own family members or prisoners of hostile forces.

The Huntington family's current decline is largely due to two reasons: investing a large amount of resources in bloodline modification experiments and conducting human experiments on its members.

This research did not see a breakthrough until Avery took over the family business.

"According to Avery's understanding, true bloodline modification should be the process of fully analyzing a powerful bloodline and then modifying one's own bloodline accordingly, thereby replicating some of the powerful characteristics that exist in the bloodline."

Dago also agrees with Avery's point of view. In his opinion, what is the difference between the Huntington family's previous actions and simply drawing a vial of blood and injecting it into someone, then expecting that person to get the mutation they want?

It's purely a game of luck! There's absolutely no scientific basis for it!

Of course, while Avery's point of view is correct, he cannot actually do what he describes.

Deciphering the essence of a bloodline is beyond the capabilities of a third-ring wizard. All he can do is continue to "gamble" based on the Huntington family's experiments.

But Avery was wise; he improved the Huntington family's "bloodline modification" process by breaking down the activation process of the "physical seal" and setting up a gradual release process from less to more, from weak to strong.

The first step is to release a tiny, extremely small amount of the magical beast bloodline into the test subject. Once the test subject has almost completely integrated with and adapted to the power of this bloodline, the amount released is increased, and this process continues indefinitely.

If any uncontrollable situation arises during the process, it can be stopped in time, and the "modification experiment" will be terminated at the current step.

"This method sounds much more reliable."

Moreover, Avery was quite clever in that she stopped looking for test subjects within the Huntington family and stopped capturing civilians and wandering wizards.

Through his white glove, Mrs. Darren, he used the allure of "bloodline modification" itself to recruit powerful, legitimate wizards to become his experimental subjects.

This not only reduced a lot of trouble for myself, but also greatly expanded the scope of the experimental subjects to the level of second-circle wizards.

Benson, the second-circle wizard whom Dago had met before, was a typical example of someone who voluntarily participated in the "bloodline modification" experiment.

Avery also summarized and proposed his own ideas at the end of the document.

For the Huntington family's "bloodline modification" method to succeed, several requirements must be met—

First, the bloodline being transplanted must be pure enough. Low-level magical beast bloodlines are too mixed, and the more mixed the bloodline, the more difficult the bloodline fusion process becomes, and the more uncontrollable the result. Therefore, the purity of the bloodline is very important.

Second, the recipient's body must be strong enough. The stronger the body, the stronger its own bloodline, and the more it can withstand the fusion and modification of different bloodlines.

A weak body will only be assimilated by the blood of powerful monsters, heading in a direction of deformity and grotesqueness from which there is no return.

Third, the recipient's will must be strong enough. Only a strong enough will can withstand the wildness and bestiality within the blood of the monster, avoid being devoured, and better control the changes in their own body during the bloodline fusion process.

Only if these three requirements are met can this experiment have even the slightest chance of being completely successful and achieving true bloodline modification.

Dago gently put down the documents in his hand, his eyes flickering slightly. Possessing the [Ice Flame Blue Demon Body], he was quite satisfied with the latter two of Avery's three requests.

"If the bloodline of the three-ringed ice serpent that Avery mentioned earlier, which awakened a trace of the ancient winter dragon bloodline, is pure enough, then I am the most perfect bloodline modification test subject to date."

Of course, this was only the most perfect compared to the previous test subjects. Dago was not sure whether his self-proclaimed strong willpower and physical strength could truly meet the transplant requirements of the "Ancient Winter Dragon Bloodline".

It might not be nearly enough.

In any case, it would be too risky to conduct such an immature "bloodline modification" experiment rashly, and Avery probably thought the same way, otherwise he would not have thought of seeking his own opinion.

However, due to the rarity of the "Ancient Winter Dragon Bloodline" and the heavy responsibility he bears as the sole inheritor of Mapel's mission, he does not want to give up this rare opportunity.

"Actually, it's not that we can't give it a try."

Dago stared blankly at the raging snow outside the window, lost in thought.

"Even if I can't completely transform it, the benefits of transforming a part of it would be enormous. Moreover, I have the Divine Tree within me, which allows me to refine my bloodline a second, third, or even more times."

"I must use the physical seal [Cold Element] to suppress the invasion of the power of despair, otherwise, when it gets out of control, I will become the common enemy of the wizarding world."

"However, the key is that Avery really has to get the blood of the 'Ancient Winter Dragon' for me. I hope I have that luck."

Dargo composed himself, put all the Huntington family's technical data on bloodline modification back into the metal box, and then took out a bunch of magical artifacts that Avery had given him in the studio.