A mage? A spell engineer!

Chapter 121 A Prototype of a Dangerous Spell

The panel has returned. It's absolutely gorgeous!

From Rorschach's perspective, it was no longer a cafeteria table, but a complex spellcasting table.

At the center of the desktop is a blank magic circle, awaiting the filling of spell cells. In its upper left corner lies a closed spellbook—the very form Rorschach first encountered the panel, only then it was open. In the upper right corner are three circular slots, each with a complex pattern:

The first boy was seen when he was promoted to intermediate mage. It was a magic loop inside the magic guild emblem, with blue, purple and red light flowing in the lines. A six-sided amethyst was placed in this slot.

The second one was very familiar to Rorschach; it was the totem that Rorschach had been studying recently, symbolizing Dryaz, with alternating green and blue fluorescent lights, and a deer skull placed in this slot.

The third slot is strange. Rorschach can't see the pattern, so you can't say it's unlocked, but you can see golden light, exuding a holy aura.

Why does this golden light remind me of the god of light and order? Rorschach shuddered.

Staring at the counter in the restaurant all the time wasn't a good look; to others, he'd just appear as a weirdo staring at a newspaper page for ages without turning it. Luo Xia hurried back to his dorm, reopened the newspaper...

"After the big update, it's back to a fantasy style, but it still feels flashy and overly ornate."

As if sensing Rorschach's thoughts, the spellcasting table flickered, then flickered again, and finally shattered into points of light that reformed to form a CAD-style interface: a low-key yet luxurious dark theme and matte texture, a simple and elegant flat design, and clear lists and windows, much more intuitive than any "magic book".

The window flickered one last time, as if it had given up the struggle and stabilized. Luo Xia inexplicably felt that the panel was now very aggrieved.

Aside from the spells returning to a list-style sidebar, the bottom bar still displays the spell entries, while the top bar now includes three runes, the last of which is a cluster of golden mosaic tiles. These should correspond to the previous three fantasy-style slots. Rorschach tried it out; the three runes couldn't be dragged and had no additional annotations.

The central operating area is no longer a bounding box, but an area containing only guide lines. These guide lines are different from the default orthogonal grid used in computer graphics software; they are a polar coordinate network with the intersection points at the center.

There's no instruction manual? That's so user-unfriendly! Rorschach couldn't find a place to complain either, so he checked the spells he already knew.

Starting with the fireball spell that began in the dream, Rorschach opened it. "Magic Control" was at the core, and then "Elemental Conversion" and "Projectile" were on the same ring. The boxes for the three entries were connected together by an orange pathway.

Rorschach observed carefully that the three simple diagrams and connecting lines began to slowly twist and transform, creating overlapping curves and straight lines. Eventually, the geometric units filled the magic circle to form a magic array.

A spell circle appears for the [Fireball] spell.

Hiss—Luo Xia felt that he had suddenly lost a lot of energy during the transformation. Not only was he much tired, but his temples were also throbbing. This feeling was like having just finished a math test and just breaking free from a state of intense concentration and mental strain.

So this is processed using my own brain? Luo Xia thought this function of the panel was very useful, but somewhat unfair.

He drew the magic circle on the panel onto a scroll, then left his dormitory. Rorschach now needed to verify something.

"You want to buy the [Fireball] scroll?" The alchemy shop in the Tower of Stars is similar to that of the Magic Guild. In addition to general consumables, it also sells alchemy potions, scrolls, and oh, the hottest item right now: Hercules Energy Potion.

"Yes, not learning to roll up scrolls." Rorschach pointed to the nameplate on his chest: He's a faculty member!

The shop assistant still hesitated: "Sir, the [Fireball] scroll is a controlled scroll with lethal and destructive properties. It needs to be registered, and you must guarantee that you will not use it."

Any professor here is far more lethal and destructive than Zhang Juanzhou, including Rorschach himself. However, he was feeling a bit dizzy and didn't want to use the panel to draw any more spell arrays—who wants to take physics and chemistry exams immediately after finishing advanced mathematics? "I need it for research; I'm using it in the practice room of the Tower of Stars."

Rorschach handed over his identification, and the shop assistant took it and began registering it: "I'm sorry, Master Rorschach, we are just following the rules. You are too young. I thought you were an apprentice who wanted to buy it. In short, it's 62 roe."

The Tower of Stars controls the use of Fireball spells, while the Imperial Royal Magic Academy encourages its students to learn offensive spells, resulting in a large number of "evocation-based barbarians" like Yuan Rorschach, who are extremely useful in the army.

The scrolls were expensive. Rorschach paid and reserved a practice room with the tower spirit. It was class time, so the large practice rooms were being used for teaching and practice, but the small practice rooms were still available, so Rorschach went straight in.

First, comparing the purchased scrolls with the ones Rorschach drew himself, the geometric units are basically the same. With Rorschach's current level of expertise, he can fully understand the function of each geometric unit and the overall design concept. However, he can still see that the difference between the two lies in the different relative sizes of the excitation unit and the energy conversion unit, as well as the differences in the relative positions of the various geometric units.

The scroll that sparked the purchase, a fireball gathered above the parchment as the magic circle charged, grew to a certain size, and then flew out to hit the practice target.

Rorschach observed its size and speed, estimating that it was slightly above the passing grade in the Imperial Academy's assessment.

Surprisingly, the materials used in this roll were quite good. After being activated, the circuit remained intact, with only the core area showing signs of overload burning on the parchment surface. According to the boy's judgment, it could be used once more.

Try your own. Rorschach charges the second self-made reel, and the ether instantly fills the circuit. The fireball condenses much faster than the first one, and its color is closer to yellowish-white than the first one's overall orange-red.

When it was fired, it not only destroyed the target, but also smashed into the wall of the practice room and exploded. The heated and expanded gas turned into a hot wind that blew across Rorschach's face.

The practice room was too small. Looking at the protective magic array that was being activated layer by layer, Rorschach judged that if the self-made scroll was charged enough, its power would be comparable to the effect he could cast. However, the raw materials for the self-made scroll had not been specially treated, and the parchment became brittle and burned through and shattered along the magic path.

"Mage Rorschach, please control the power of your spell and take care of the tower's facilities. If the testing environment is not suitable, please conduct the test in an open and deserted area for safety reasons." Because he had penetrated two layers of protection, Rorschach received a "yellow card" warning from the tower spirit.

The magic circle constructed by the panel could restore its normal spellcasting effect. Having verified this, Rorschach began to experiment with other functions, deciding to construct a new spell.

The core is still "Magic Control" as the starting point. In the first ring, Rorschach puts "Disintegration (purple)" and "Frequency Vibration (blue)," the latter of which comes from the communication spell. Then, in the second ring, he puts "Projectile" to connect all the diagrams.

Rorschach had previously noted that the "primary decomposition technique" seemed to be stuck at the "primary stage." On a decomposition scale, it could only sever the intermolecular interactions of matter, similar to macroscopic shearing, and divide an object into multiple pieces, but it could not tear chemical bonds or break apart neutrons and protons.

From a metaphysical perspective, it has no effect on substances or biological tissues that show signs of spellcasting or have strong vitality; it can only bully things like flowers, plants, and pieces of meat.

Rorschach had an idea for the second perspective: whether it is ether or the so-called "life force", the premise of resisting decomposition is that these energies move in a certain order within the target being decomposed. It is very likely that this "orderly movement" hinders the decomposition effect.

Therefore, following the approach of [Anti-Magic Scream], Rorschach planned to disrupt the order of the target's ethereal movement while "decomposing" it, relying on the random "frequency vibration" that accompanied the magic power to complete the task.

"well?"

However, when he finished constructing the spell and began to cast it, he sensed that the ether he had condensed trembled and collapsed, and nothing else happened after that.

Sorry for being late, I caught a cold again and spent the whole morning in bed before finally starting to write. Please take care of yourselves, dear readers!

(End of this chapter)