The Month of Lingering Rain had given way to the Month of Wildfire.
Finally, at the beginning of the month, Angor reached the bottom line for studying Narda’s Vision after memorizing all kinds of material properties and reactions. Just as Sunders said, even if he had learned enough, this level-3 cantrip was not easy to grasp.
A spell was a way to express magic while using the mana pool as its core, mana as its energy, and knowledge as its structure. It worked by levering and interfering with reality.
Simply put, a spell consisted of three elements, mana pool, mana, and knowledge.
The same went for Narda’s Vision, in which case, “knowledge” was the most important element of all three. After knowing the correct knowledge, the user also had to use certain calculation processes to connect the knowledge points in order to figure out the nature of an item.
The “calculation”, which was called Narda’s Law, was the core algorithm of Narda’s Vision.
It was invented by a Mystery Alchemist in ancient times. Here, the law also referred to the cantrip model, which Angor had to construct in his mindspace.
The cantrip was called “Narda’s Vision” or “Alchemist’s Eye” because the cantrip could only be channeled through one’s eyes, unlike most other spells, even though the cantrip did not have eye-enhancing features.
The books described the cantrip in complicated manners, but using certain concepts he learned from Earth civilization, Angor managed to simplify the nature of the cantrip as “building a server in his mind”, which was used solely for carrying out Narda’s Vision.
When he recognized several basic properties of an item, this “server” could help him list out all possible variations of them as well as what these properties might achieve when combined together, and after “filtering out” incorrect answers, the final result that suggested the true nature of the item would remain.
Since there were countless types of materials and potential effects in this world, the ancient alchemist created this cantrip so that whoever wished to examine new items did not exhaust their brains.
Angor’s next task was to build the “server”, naming, the cantrip model of Narda’s Vision. As far as he could tell, this model was harder to construct compared to most level-3 cantrips. He had to start by placing the starting point in his mindspace and see whether the following lines he drew were absolutely correct. With enough luck, one might succeed after several months of work. Otherwise, it might take several years if things didn’t go very well.
However, Angor didn’t have to worry about building models since his hologram tablet always did a perfect job at it.
The axes of the universe had divided his mindspace into several measurable sections. Using this as a reference, his tablet would help him work out all the coordinates for the model in no time.
[Calculating: Model “Narda’s Vision”]
[Estimated time: 41 hours, 42 minutes, 51 seconds]
Angor saw the device working steadily and sighed in relief—forty-two hours wasn’t a very long time for figuring out a spell model at all.
After leaving the tablet to work on its own, Angor kept on reading about more alchemy reactions and materials he didn’t know.
Using Narda’s Vision to tell the properties of something was similar to “identifying”. However, the cantrip would not guarantee a definite result. It only worked better as the user gained more knowledge. If an item involved something out of someone’s expertise, then they wouldn’t be able to use the cantrip to reach a reliable answer.
In other words, successfully learning Narda’s Vision was not the end of it.
All alchemists must never stop learning new things. As they knew more and more, their Narda’s Vision would also grow to be more effective.
...
When the countdown timer reached zero, the tablet displayed 27 variations of 612 sets of coordinates, which were nearly 20,000 coordinates in total. These were the optimal results worked out by the tablet, which would help Angor build the perfect “server”, but he still had to see which variation suited him best.
Ordinary alchemists would use a result immediately when they got one since it would take them long enough. However, since Angor could get so many results easily using his tablet, he planned to choose the best one.
But even if he could use the coordinates, such models of a level-3 cantrip required a ton of mana to complete. Angor was devoting all his time to building models, but he found his progress to be terribly slow.
His first attempt took him about ten minutes. It failed and exhausted most of his mana reserve.
The second try went down the drain.
The third, the fourth...
He would immediately meditate to recover mana after each attempt. And after several days, he managed to build the first variation in his mindspace under five minutes.
He took a very brief moment to admire the “server” running in his mindspace.
As long as the server was up, it consumed more of his mana by the second. He quickly looked around and wished to find an item to test the spell.
He considered and took out Prelude to Rebirth from his bracelet.
As he gazed at the revolver with glowing eyes, he saw digits and data emerging from it, which were either rearranged or removed by Narda’s Vision. In the end, only five sets of data remained in his view.
He memorized the data he saw and shut down the “server” in his mind.
Since the model of Narda’s Vision was extremely hard to build, most alchemists would spend a spell slot to make the “server” permanent in their mindspaces so that they didn’t have to recreate the model every time they needed an item examined.
Angor wasn’t going to do such a thing. While it was true that preparing the model would always take him some time, he was confident that with the help of axes of the universe, he could get more proficient at it. Besides, this cantrip wasn’t meant to be used in battles and emergencies anyway.
The cantrip returned five results regarding the revolver, which all suggested the same crafting materials and magic array. However, the basic effects of the item displayed by the results were slightly different.
The difference wasn’t big. While the results all said that the item was used for killing undead creatures, they had varying opinions regarding the effectiveness of the weapon, such as how many souls it could attack each time.
Negligible.
However, none of the results could determine the “special effect” of the weapon.
Prelude to Rebirth could have turned out as a Mystery item if Isabelle did not take half of the Mystery spirit in the weapon away. And even so, the weapon still retained a special effect.
Angor wanted to examine Prelude to Rebirth just so that he could see what this effect was. Therefore, he was disappointed to see that all five results were being ambiguous about this.
“Using unknown energy to inflict a contagious poison effect that worked solely against undead creatures.”
“Erase negative energy from undead creatures and make them pure again.”
“Reverse the dark energy inside undead creatures and allow them to gain intelligence.”
Angor couldn’t tell which one was right. Perhaps none of them was.
The results were “possible effects” gained based on what Angor had learned up to this point. It was obvious that he had not learned enough to distinguish the special effect of Prelude to Rebirth yet.
However, his attempt wasn’t a total failure. At least the basic effects told by the results were correct. While the special effect remained a secret, at least he knew there WAS a special effect in his revolver.
If he would sell the revolver at an auction, the appraiser only had to say that the item “can eliminate undead spirits in a large area and possesses another special property waiting to be uncovered”, then the buyers would get crazy about it.
For now, Angor gladly convinced himself that his very first try at Narda’s Vision ended up as a success. Almost.