Chapter 516: [ Learning from scratch ]
“Yep,” Laura nodded. Then she looked and saw the books and scrolls spread on the ground.
“Oh?” Allen lifted his head from his book and shifted his gaze upwards. If it were the normal him, one or two retorts, three to four teasing or statements of over excessive self-consciousness taking the form of words, but it was such a pity, Allen felt pleased from Laura’s excessive flattering.
Under Allen’s gaze, it only then did Laura realize how embarrassing her words must have sounded.
Blushing red to the tips of her ears, she twitched her ears nervously.
“… …” Lifting his head, Allen gave a yawn before getting up to stretch his body.
"Well, if you praise me that much, how can I not feel happy?"
"R… Really?"
Allen laughed heartily.
“Master, what are you always researching?” Laura asked, curious and full of interest. With Allen’s current power, things and information recorded in the books was nothing for him. Most of them are even weaker and inferior to some secret books from the God continent. Laura just can’t understand what would good would it bring to Allen—in fact, it’s more or less just a waste of time, is what she wanted to say.
Obviously, she didn’t dare to say such things in front of Allen. However, she just can’t help but feel curious about it.
Hearing Laura’s inquiry, Allen’s lips arched into a grin. Even with his current power, Allen didn’t forget his study of magic and techniques he had found and picked up in both God and Divine Martial Continent that might be able to advance his power. He tilted his head back at her in question.
“Why is it…?”
Dragging out a table and chairs from the nooks in the mountains of books, they then had the breakfast that Laura had brought. While savoring tea after the meal, Allen who had pretty much returned to his usual self, answered as his gaze turned towards the mountain of books and the pile of documents that had scattered around the entire place.
He was reading books from last night up until now, creating a small mountain of books. In fact, he had just woken up, took a bath and started to continue reading. Allen, who hung the soaked and spoilt headphones around his neck, raised his head and murmured,
“What, does it look like something other than magic?”
“I… think so, but I don’t understand what meaning drawing that picture has,” Laura asked. Magic Circle for Allen was really unnecessary. With his powers, with just a snap of his fingers, a large magic circle would surely appear mirroring the image in his brain.
Thus, it’s importance is not really that great for Allen…
Then, why is he still trying to replicate the old ways…?
Allen smiled wryly, “This is called Dark Arts… well, they are also called dark magic. It can help me understands more about the power of darkness…”
“The power of darkness?!” At this, Laura’s eyes went wide.
“Yep,” Allen nodded. This was the books he had written through copying his memories—Solomon’s Memoirs—although he can remember everything but it’s not to the point of greater understanding. After all, it wasn’t him who had studied those arts.
Memories were memories; they were different from the actual experience. It was similar to watching a recording, it wasn’t an experience he had created himself. Thus, it was a bit lacking in understanding!
And so, he copied everything into a book—and with the Evil cultivation techniques and methods within the Castle’s Library, he compared those arts to each other.
“Demonic, Evil, Wicked, Sins, Necromancy, Drain, Soul… every bit of information has some form of relation to the Cultivation Arts… it was actually quite interesting~”
“However,” Allen grabbed a nearby Scroll made out of animal skin, probably beast skin. Rough…
He spread it open and took a glance and said: “This is an obviously outdated practice of Dark Magic. If categorized in the magic of the Ancient, it is but a mere level 1 shadow magic blueprint—very rough, undeveloped, off the mark, low standard, and incomplete.” He started complaining and mocking the level of the magic arts.
“Incomplete…?”
Allen nodded with a helpless sigh, “Look at this, this is wrong, that is wrong, wrong, wrong….. All wrong!” He quickly made a dozen red circles on the scroll: “Diagram errors, runes overlapping, confusing logic, absurd ideas….. beginner’s mistakes all over the place. Is this really a Dark Magic ritual? This is simply a perfect collection of mistakes. Even though it’s already an ancient one, probably right now, it was already being perfected to but at that time, I just couldn’t help but think, if someone used this in its time, probably, it would only do more harm to the conjurer rather than make use of it. This was really a suicidal practice…!”
Allen muttered amused as he quickly made a dozen marks and left relevant notes in the blank spaces.
“Look at this,” Allen pointed at the magic circle he was drawing on the ground.
“This is a magic circle I made. It’s a summoning magic circle based from the books they had experimented on while adjusting it using Solomon’s Memories...”
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
“This is… Summoning… Magic Circle?” Laura tilted her head in confusion.
It seemed like it was a thing she hadn’t seen before. Well, Allen guesses that were normal after all, aside from what Allen had thought her, Laura has some little understanding of how magic works from ancient times…
“Yup,” Allen nodded and crawled towards it. “It was still a bit incomplete but if I do this and this, and this…” In only a few minutes, just a few short minutes!
… Allen had completed a brand new magic circle on the ground!
The newly formed magic circle was more than half the size of the original. The runes were neat and orderly arranged. Every rune looked like the precise result of a thousand trails. Every stroke in the on the ground was wonderfully artistic.
As a whole, it gave a sense of perfection, of nature itself.
If someone says that the one he had made before with just a simple adjusting could make people dizzy and uncomfortable, then this new circle gave them the same enjoyment as of looking at a magnificent art made by a master artist. Two polar opposite experiences.
When Laura looks at it, her beautiful eyes widened in surprise.
She dared to swear to God, that this was the most beautiful magic circle she ever had seen in her life, complex yet at the same it had a mysterious power to captivate people. Simply a cartoon-like perfect piece of work!
No!
Not even those seen in great animes and cartoons can be compared with this magic circle. Even though Laura could not understand the content, but from a structural and artistic point of view, it was way ahead of those made fiction in works of animes and cartoons in tvs.
“Beautiful…” Laura became more captivated the more she looked at it. She unconsciously started bending over, almost lying on the couch in front of her.
Her heavy bust tightly pressed against her collar, exposing her round curvaceous cleavage. The tightly encased bust raised two peaks, leaving a deep trench down the middle, enough to excite the imagination of any man.
Allen’s gaze landed on the heaven’s speak that Buddha probably hadn’t yet to reach and seen and his lips arched in an amused smile. A tinge of lust flashed across his eyes before his mind slowly calms down.
Laura did not notice that she was exposing too much nor would she probably care if she had though, and thus stayed captivated for a whole 5 minutes. She raised her head and spoke: “Master, I cannot understand this at all, but your work is very beautiful.” Her voice had undisguised awe and worship on them.
Allen shrugged, “Basic Level of Summoning Magic Circle—this is after I have rectified the original design and completed the subsequent parts.” He said to the adorable missy: “But being limited by the original design, the original Solomon would surely throw me a book in anger if I was seen tinkering on it. It’s too low level and not the least bit useful. So do not say to anyone that I made something like this,” Allen chuckled lightly.
Although he seemed arrogant about it but with Solomon’s level in terms of dark magic, it was probably not something worth saying it.
In fact, what Allen had currently made was not just a simple skill like telekinesis or necromancy, it could even be said to be that this kind of practice, drawing magic circle was the oldest way for magicians and wizards in ancient times. Thus, doing something so simple as this, even if he doesn’t want to do it but was a really valuable experience for him.
Ordinary and trash as it seems, every great thing start from them.
Crude, simple, trash, broken, full of mistakes and worst and worst of problems, there might be but for Allen, it was a great experience in studying it. Although he had memories, skills, and experience of the great Dark Magician and Wise King; Solomon, experiencing it himself and studying it from scratch was still much more valuable than just relying on his predecessor’s works.
You would know that corned beef is made by grinding beef just by seeing it and eating it but you would never know the process it was made. It was much more complex than solving 1 + 1 = 2.
“What does this do then, master?”
“This,” Allen smiled as he placed his hand at the outer core of the magic circle. “This one causes a flash of lightning, if you pour mana into it, this is what happens.” It was really simple.
“Eh, uhm.”
Laura probably didn’t expect him to use it here and let out a panicked cry. Even so, Allen touched the circle and some small sparks scattered around with a crackle. Laura seemed to blink in disappointment after bracing herself.
“That… is lightning?”
“Yeah. Well, it soon disperses into the atmosphere, so it doesn’t really look like it.”
“Hahh…”
Allen let out a laugh at her not completely satisfied response. “This is the most basic summoning magic circle, I was fiddling with it a little… however, when I do it like this,” Allen’s red eyes flashed and black haze appeared on his hand when he put it on the outer core of the magic circle—Bangggg!!
“Kyaa!!”
A large lightning bolt struck the center of the magic circle. There were no black clouds, much less they were inside the castle, so a lightning bolt was impossible to appear. This sudden lightning bolt startled Laura and her body jumps a little, her slender arms encircled Allen’s neck in panic.
But what caught Laura’s attention was that at the center of the magic circle, covered by smoke and dust was a skeleton hand coming from a dark void. It seems to be struggling to get out.
“Ma, master that…!!?”
“Relax,” Allen shrugged and place his hand out the outer part of the magic circle, causing a lightning bolt to appear. This lightning bolt struck the skeleton hand and the opened void disappeared in thin air, leaving only a small skeleton hand.
“That was the most basic magic circle that summons lightning. However, after I fiddled with it with necromancy, something would come out… and since the magic circle was made of lightning as a basis, I dare say, that should be undead with the power of lightning… a Lightning Lich!”
“An undead…?”
“Yeah,” Allen grinned. Necromancy was one of the basic magic spells in Ancient Dark Magic. A Magic Law to control, manipulate and use of life and death.
“Truthfully, when I studied all of them one by one from scratch, I then realized that all the formula for every natural law has a relation to each other… Lightning can create undead, even though one of undead’s weakness was lightning itself… just water can have the property of fire, and light can have the property of darkness…”
For Allen, whether it was a hard and profound method or spell or a simple magic technique, there was absolutely no difference to him. Using Solomon’s memories, he could find the solution in an instant, like someone that practiced this a thousand times and had already known all the answers. He completed each exercise at a lightning pace. However, even still, his proficiency in doing and conjuring magic circles was slowly getting faster and more precise than ever before.
These flawless runes and formations, those extremely sophisticated arrangements and profound combinations were beautiful works of art, definitely not possible from a random scribble.
As she was looking at Allen fiddling and reading on the looks and scrolls scattered on the ground, Laura found that watching Allen working was akin to watching an artist painting. The whole process was free and effortless, filled with an aesthetic prowess.
Neither sluggish nor dead. Each stroke was precise as if imbuing nature itself.
Laura was so absorbed into watching, she felt like she was enjoying a feast for both her eyes and her brain.
An hour and a half had gone by unnoticed; more than 100 books and old scrolls were neatly stacked on the ground beside them.