New Spells

Perhaps because she had left behind too many wonderful memories during her journey through the dream world, Rosaline fell into a long depressive slump after confirming that she would never see her two friends, Hans and Mary, again.

She no longer had any interest in going out exploring. Aside from diligently studying rune knowledge every day, what she did most was lean back in a chair at the manor, raise her face, and stare blankly at the Black Tower Ruins soaring into the clouds beside her.

Ivette did not try to comfort her much. It was a normal emotional reaction, after all. But sometimes, she would accompany Rosaline to sit beneath the broken dome on the Black Tower's top floor, letting her look out over post-apocalyptic Ish City and feel that unique atmosphere of rebirth after destruction.

And so, four months passed.

As Ish Island moved from late summer into early winter, Ivette finally gained a preliminary grasp of Elemental Decay Completion Technology and began repairing the scrap she had collected, such as elemental capacitors and energy-storage panels.

The restoration process was still quite lengthy, mainly because this technology had far too many details. One careless mistake during the repair could ruin the battery. After consecutively scrapping four or five large energy-storage panels, she finally completed the elemental restoration of one panel and returned it to its original state—it had been pried from beneath a Magitech Motorcycle and held a full 200 Mana Points, nearly one-third of an Ivette.

With that, her original grand ambition could finally be realized.

Yes!

From now on, she could finally use the Electric Net to electrocute all those little thieves stealing her vegetables!

Rosaline was quite resistant to the idea. She thought it was fine to put a barrier around the manor, treating it as protection against Mutants, but electrifying the vegetable garden too would be far too lethal for small animals. She could not bear it.

But a teacher's orders could not be defied. For some time afterward, whenever she saw the charred corpses of little squirrels, stray cats, or birds beside the vegetable garden, she could only sadly bury them and plant a wooden stick as a symbolic grave marker. Over time, symbolic graves appeared in every corner of the manor, making the place resemble a cemetery and leaving Ivette feeling that it utterly ruined the scenery.

Of course, from Rosaline's perspective, there were also many benefits after her teacher mastered Elemental Decay Completion Technology.

The most obvious was that the manor no longer lost power every so often. At night, they could light streetlamps inside the manor and even along the streets of the safe zone outside it. In winter, they even had a space heater to use, instead of having to wear thick clothes and occasionally warm themselves with Mana as they had in the past.

If the dream had not ended so quickly, leaving them no time to save up and purchase more specialized literature, Rosaline even suspected that her teacher could repair high-tech equipment such as magitech mech soldiers and Mechanical Puppets by hand, recreating the pinnacle technologies of Origin Civilization through her own efforts alone.

Yes, she had never doubted that her teacher was an unparalleled genius.

It was another bitter winter, sometime around January or early February, when a rare and violent blizzard struck Ish Island one morning. Gale-force winds swept up countless flurries, painting heaven and earth into a chaotic leaden white.

But for the teacher and student, who could now run the space heater for long periods without worrying about a power outage, the storm no longer held its former threat.

Ivette sat peacefully before the floor-to-ceiling windows in the first-floor living room, enveloped in the warmth blown out by the space heater. White steam rose from the black tea in her bone-china cup. As she watched the snowstorm howl and overturn the world outside, she calmly sipped her tea, looking utterly at ease.

A little later, when Rosaline came downstairs and began preparing lunch for her teacher right on schedule, Ivette suddenly called her over and transferred three brand-new spells into her Magic Guide Terminal.

"Teacher, these are..."

"Three new medium-scale spells. I haven't optimized them yet, but their structures have already been finalized. Your ring still has plenty of unused storage space anyway, so record them first and start mastering them early." Ivette took a sip of tea, her gaze still resting on the churning blizzard outside.

After visiting Origin Civilization once, she had designed these three new spells by combining new ideas and inspiration she had found online. Their specifications were all around 50,000, making them genuine medium-scale magic.

Of course, she could also design higher-specification spells at the 100,000 level, or even oversized spells challenging the million-level threshold.

But there was no point, because they could not be used.

And that brought up another crucial module of the Magic Guide Terminal: the Rune-Point Cache.

This was a special module connected to the Elemental Chip inside the terminal. Like a graphics card's video memory, it directly determined the maximum spell specification a terminal could cast.

The ring Rosaline was currently using was the fully restored Sky Ring y2, which they had commissioned professionals to repair in the dream. It was a high-end magitech ring with 1.2 million units of storage at full capacity, yet its Rune-Point Cache was only 60,000.

So there was simply no need to consider spells exceeding the 60,000 specification.

Even the new high-end ring, Black Tower S3, which Ivette had purchased in the dream before Elemental Decay Completion Technology, had cost her 30,000 credit points and only provided a 60,000 Rune-Point Cache and 1.5 million units of storage. The 30,000-credit tier was already the highest grade among civilian terminals, showing just how strict the technological blockade was across the industrial chain.

Still, that was only normal. If every legally available Magic Guide Terminal on the market could casually cast large-scale spells above the 100,000 specification, then what would military-grade equipment be for? How could there be any distinction, or any way to sell it at a high price?

That was also why spell performance ratings had been so important when they traded with Welder. Most gangs lacked the conditions to cast large-scale spells, so they could only compete over the quality of medium- and small-scale spells.

Because she had prioritized cooking for her teacher, Rosaline did not sit down by the dining table to examine the three new spells until after lunch, when she had washed the dishes and dried the water from her hands with a cloth.

In terms of practical use, the four spells of Ice, Fire, Wind, and Thunder had been refined through countless trials and were already nearly flawless. They were extremely useful and suited the vast majority of combat situations.

Even so, these three newly developed medium-scale spells made Rosaline's eyes sharpen with immense excitement.

The first new spell was—Regeneration Pump!

Simply put, it was a powerful self-recovery spell. Ivette had previously developed a similar Vitality Technique. This was an upgrade built upon that original technique. Besides enhancing the user's recovery ability, it would manifest a regenerative heart outside the body, draw in the blood flowing from wounds, and pump it back into the body, thereby preventing the various forms of weakness caused by excessive blood loss.

Next came the second new spell—Scarlet Armor!

This was a protective spell that enhanced physical defense. After activation, large numbers of dark-red runes would appear across the surface of the skin, greatly increasing the body's resistance. It had extremely high resistance to both ordinary physical damage and special damage from extreme heat or cold, effectively preventing one from being ambushed by Mutants, having one's skin torn open, and dying without even knowing why.

Finally came the third new spell—Muscle Unlimit!

Like Scarlet Armor, this was a self-enhancement spell, but one focused more on offense. After activation, it could greatly increase one's strength and stamina, while even reaction speed would improve. Combined with Scarlet Armor, it could turn the user into a melee mage capable of tearing low-level Mutants apart with bare hands.

Its drawback, however, was that Muscle Unlimit and Scarlet Armor each consumed 20 Mana Points per activation and lasted for ten minutes. For Rosaline, whose Mana Points had only just reached 45, choosing this melee-mage combination would leave her almost unable to use the traditional four spells of Ice, Fire, Wind, and Thunder.

Therefore, she could only hope that her teacher would soon finish optimizing the mana-efficiency ratios of these three spells, while she herself put more effort into meditation.

Once she had enough Mana Points in the future, she could activate Scarlet Armor and Muscle Unlimit while casting the four top-tier spells of Ice, Fire, Wind, and Thunder. Wouldn't that let her roam the island unhindered? By then, she could explore more of the island's dangerous areas together with her teacher.