Damian looked at the manual in his hands, a thought crossing his mind. In an instant, he teleported into the hidden Wizard Tower.
Arriving in the circular hall on the first floor, Damian called out to the tower's artificial intelligence. "Zero, can you parse the spell models from this Magic Stone Engraving Technique?"
Tower Spirit Zero scanned the book in Damian's hands. "There is an intact magic stone engraver in the Alchemy Workshop. The device can parse the spell models from the text, and you can also use it to physically engrave the magic stones."
"Shall I create a new project in my database and extract the engraving blueprints for the Flame Blast and the Grip of Thunder?" Zero asked. "Once the matrices are recorded, I can activate the magic stone engraver to independently mass-produce stones holding those two spells."
"Record them," Damian ordered. The sub-spirit previously responsible for the Alchemy Workshop was currently offline, which was why Zero was asking to store the data in its own primary database.
Damian walked up to the second floor. As he entered the Alchemy Workshop, the magic crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling instantly flared to life, bathing the room in a soft, warm glow.
Zero projected glowing indicator arrows on the floor, guiding Damian to the magic stone engraver. The machine was sleek, minimalist, and primarily cast in pitch-black metal.
As Zero booted up the device, rings of flowing light illuminated the instrument's edges.
"Analyzing... Reverse engineering the Flame Blast spell model..."
Damian had never formally studied magical engraving. If he had to manually dismantle and analyze the complex spell models hidden in the book's diagrams, he wouldn't even know where to begin. Fortunately, with Zero and the magic stone engraver doing the heavy lifting, he could bypass the learning curve entirely.
The parsing process was incredibly fast. Before long, Zero projected a complex, glowing 3D model of the Flame Blast in front of him.
Damian pulled out a quick-scribe quill and some parchment to record the intricate matrix. Because this was bound into a rune stone, it operated on Damian's unique Runic Magic system rather than standard wand-waving.
The Flame Blast was classified as Tier 2 Runic Magic, requiring the precise condensation of 72 individual Runic Scripts. It summoned a highly compressed ball of fire that caused a devastating explosion upon impact.
After meticulously recording the model, Damian looked up. "Continue parsing the Grip of Thunder."
"Analyzing... Reverse engineering the Grip of Thunder spell model..."
Moments later, Zero projected the second matrix. The Grip of Thunder was also Tier 2 Runic Magic, requiring 68 Runic Scripts. When triggered, it released a cage of violent lightning bolts that strangled and electrocuted the target.
Counting the Great Lightning Summoning he had used previously at the Helgo Sea, Damian now possessed three Tier 2 spells.
However, Tier 2 Runic Magic required a massive amount of scripts—all of them over fifty. Guiding that many runes into a stable spell model took significant time. Back at the Helgo Sea, it had taken Damian nearly fifteen agonizing seconds to cast his lightning spell.
To reduce casting time, Damian currently relied on enchanted artifacts like his finger bone ring. The alternative method was mastering High-level Meditation Technique.
Practicing these advanced mental arts allowed a wizard to permanently carve spell models directly into their sea of spirit. This not only expanded their raw magic capacity but drastically reduced casting time, functioning similarly to wandless, non-verbal magic.
This realization made Damian increasingly desperate to get his hands on an High-level Meditation Technique manual. Unfortunately, such texts were strictly controlled by major wizarding factions and rarely appeared on the black market.
For a mere Wizard Apprentice, buying one through the Court Wizards required an astronomical amount of contribution points. Even a seasoned squad captain like Link hadn't saved up enough yet. However, once a wizard passed their exams and became a Formal Wizard, the price of those manuals plummeted by eighty percent.
Pulling his thoughts back to the present, Damian pocketed his quill and parchment. "Zero, list the materials required to manufacture runestones for the Flame Blast and the Grip of Thunder."
"Calculating material loss... Calculating magical power consumption..."
A holographic list materialized in front of Damian. He rubbed his chin, scanning the text. He understood the physical materials required, but the magic consumption metric Zero used made absolutely no sense to him.
He pulled out a fully charged magic stone from his pouch and held it up. "Zero, establish a new power measurement metric: the 'Degree'. Let one Degree equal the total magic capacity of this standard magic stone. Recalculate the consumption costs and show me the current reserves in the Wizard Tower's core."
After quickly explaining the concept of decimal points and percentages to the tower spirit, the holographic list refreshed.
The new data was much clearer. To produce one Flame Blast runestone, the machine consumed the physical blank stone plus 0.2 Degrees of magic drawn directly from the Tower's core. The Grip of Thunder cost the exact same.
Currently, the Wizard Tower's core held 16,453 Degrees of magic—the equivalent of over ten thousand fully charged magic stones!
Of course, this didn't mean Damian practically owned ten thousand stones; the stones themselves were alchemical vessels that required raw physical materials to craft.
What truly shocked him was the final statistic: those 16,453 Degrees represented only 0.0001% of the Tower's maximum storage limit. The core could hold hundreds of millions of Degrees of magic!
Curious, Damian used his mysterious metal disc to siphon energy from its red crystal into its blue crystal. Instantly, the massive power core at the bottom of the Tower lit up. He had successfully transferred the unknown energy straight into the Tower's reserves.
However, after transferring enough energy to power a teleportation jump, the Tower's reserves only increased by 100 Degrees.
Damian rubbed his temples, feeling a headache coming on. "Zero, how much magic does it cost to produce a single assistant golem in the Alchemy Workshop?"
"Producing one assistant golem requires 10,000 Degrees of magic," Zero replied smoothly.
"Ten thousand?!" Damian's eyes went wide. He hadn't expected the cost of a single construct to be so absurdly high. A sense of dread washed over him. "Does maintaining the golem also drain power?"
"Booting up the production forge requires a massive surge of energy, but the resulting assistant golems are highly advanced constructs," Zero explained. "They can perform structural maintenance, operate the Alchemy and Potions Workshops, manage the Grand Library, and tend to the Bio-Workshop. Daily upkeep for one golem only requires 0.1 Degrees of magic."
Damian breathed a massive sigh of relief. The daily upkeep was incredibly low and entirely manageable.
"Are there any other ways to passively recharge the Tower's core?" he asked.
"You can construct a Void Energy Collector to siphon Void Power from outside the planetary plane," Zero answered. "Furthermore, the Gap World is currently saturated with Void Power. It bleeds from the corpse of the dark god slain by the Ancestor of Time. However, I lack the blueprints for the Collector in my database. It is likely stored within Tower Spirit Three's memory banks."
Damian's expression tightened. "When Void Power becomes physically visible, what color is it?"
"Manifested Void Power is red," Zero confirmed.
Damian finally had his answer. The mysterious red energy his metal disc had been feeding on all this time was Void Power—an energy drawn straight from the Endless Void beyond their reality.
Damian read through the newly projected lore files Zero brought up. The Endless Void was inhabited by terrifying Void Creatures. They were hyper-aggressive, cosmic parasites that existed only to invade, consume, and annihilate entire planes of existence.
The 'dark god' from the other world hadn't been a god at all. It was a Void Creature, and the desolate Gap World was simply the rotting corpse of a plane it had successfully devoured.
[75 STONES] - Unlock1 Bonus Chapter
[150 STONES] - Unlock 2 Bonus Chapters
[300 STONES] - Unlock 3 Bonus Chapters