Spellcasting Tools (Lower)

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Returning to his room, Merlin hurriedly pulled the cloth strip from his bosom and quickly unfolded it, revealing a hard object stained with black mud inside.

Because it was completely caked in mud, its actual appearance was unclear. Merlin used clean water in the room to gently wipe away the dirt on the surface of the hard object.

Soon, the treasure—now washed once—gradually revealed its true face. It was a pendant; the small pendant took the shape of an inverted triangle, and in the center of the inverted triangle sat a red gemstone the size of a soybean.

Under the dim candlelight, the red gemstone flashed with a brilliant glimmer.

However, Merlin paid no attention to what kind of gemstone was embedded in the pendant. Although rubies were precious, they were far less valuable than a spellcasting tool. What Merlin truly cared about was whether this pendant was a spellcasting tool.

Thus, Merlin swiftly used his Mental Power to directly envelop the pendant.

"Whoosh."

In the blink of an eye, Merlin felt a terrifying vortex attempting to pull his Mental Power into the pendant. A surge of joy welled up in Merlin, and he no longer resisted the pulling force as his Mental Power was drawn straight into the pendant.

Within the perception of Merlin's Mental Power, the interior of the pendant was an entirely enclosed space, filled everywhere with small, enclosed compartments—there were nearly thousands of small compartments, and within each compartment, some profound and arcane rule seemed to exist.

Inside some of the small compartments, there were wind elements that remained quite active, yet these compartments appeared to have suffered some damage due to certain reasons, causing those wind elements to rush out from within the small compartments.

Perhaps this was the reason for the strange winds appearing outside the castle.

What an amazing spellcasting tool!

Merlin withdrew his Mental Power, his heart deeply shaken.

Those small compartments inside the pendant already exceeded Merlin's current understanding, but he could roughly guess their function: they should be used for storing spells.

Much like certain spell scrolls, powerful Spellcasters could use special manufacturing methods to engrave spells into a spell scrolls. Once holding a spell scroll, even if one's strength was not formidable, one only needed to gently trigger it with Mental Power to activate the spell within the spell scroll, thereby erupting with terrifying might.

An ordinary spell scroll could store at most a single spell. Once the spell scroll was initiated, the spell within it would be released. Therefore, spell scrolls belonged to single-use consumable spellcasting tools.

However, the pendant in Merlin's hand could store far more than just a single spell. Those terrifyingly numerous small compartments inside the pendant were actually places to store spells, with each individual compartment capable of holding one spell.

Merlin carefully counted with his Mental Power: the small compartments inside the pendant totaled one hundred and fifty-eight. In other words, this spellcasting tool was capable of storing a full one hundred and fifty-eight spells.

A spellcasting tool like this could be called terrifying; ordinary Spellcasters probably could not forge one at all.

Merlin flipped the pendant over and saw several characters carved on the back—they were actually in the Morta script.

"Bell."

The characters carved on the back of the pendant were "Bell", which clearly was a name. Old Man Aita's spell notes had mentioned that, according to the ancient custom of Spellcasters, whenever they forged a spellcasting tool, Spellcasters would carve their own names upon the spellcasting tool.

Therefore, this "Bell" should be the name of the Spellcaster who crafted this pendant.

I wonder if this "Bell" is still around?

Merlin murmured softly. Although judging by the appearance of the pendant, many small compartments had automatically shattered, causing some wind-element spells stored inside to be automatically released—which in turn caused that strange wind outside the castle—this pendant should therefore be several hundred years old, or even older.

Such a long span of time surely meant ordinary people would have long since died, but Spellcasters were different, especially some powerful Spellcasters who could survive for two or three hundred years.

As for whether there were Spellcasters who had survived for hundreds or thousands of years, Merlin naturally did not know, and Old Man Aita did not know either. After all, Old Man Aita could only be considered a mere entry-level Spellcaster; how many hidden matters of Spellcasters could he possibly understand?

This pendant was crafted by "Bell", so Merlin simply decided to call the pendant the Bell Pendant. As for whether "Bell" was still around or not, Merlin did not care; what he cared about was whether this spellcasting tool was still useful.

Thus, he quickly extended his Mental Power into the pendant. This time, he carefully inspected those small compartments. Out of the total one hundred and fifty-eight compartments, the majority were already empty and completely damaged.

Some of them were likely due to someone having already released the spells stored inside the Bell Pendant once, causing damage to the small compartments within the pendant, while others had become naturally damaged simply because too much time had passed.

Merlin carefully counted, and the small compartments inside the Bell Pendant that were completely undamaged numbered only eighteen. This meant this spellcasting tool might still be able to store eighteen more spells.

It can still store eighteen spells... that is enough!

A secret joy stirred in Merlin's heart. He had originally thought this spellcasting tool was completely useless, yet he had not expected it to still have uses. However, whether it could actually store spells still had to be tested before he could know for sure.

Having made up his mind, Merlin extended his Mental Power back into the pendant. Among those damaged small compartments, there were still some spells that had been stored at unknown times. Because too much time had elapsed, the small compartments were broken, and countless wind elements were gradually flying outward, ready to suddenly erupt at some point.

Merlin would not allow such uncontrolled circumstances to happen, so he directly used his Mental Power to trigger the damaged small compartments inside the Bell Pendant.

"Buzz, buzz, buzz."

Immediately, gusts of howling wind appeared in the room. These were the residual spells remaining inside the Bell Pendant; their destructive power was not great, so they caused no actual damage.

Even so, leaving the room in a complete mess was inevitable.

After Merlin disrupted all the residual spells inside the Bell Pendant, he began to ponder the matter of storing spells within the pendant. Merlin currently possessed only a single spell, which was the Fireball, yet due to special reasons, Merlin could also cast the Greater Fireball, whose might approached a First-Level Spell.

If he were to store spells, without a doubt, he should store the much more powerful Greater Fireball so as to maximize the function of the Bell Pendant to its absolute limit.

Yet this involved a problem: could the Bell Pendant withstand a Greater Fireball that infinitely approached a First-Level Spell?

Merlin was currently unable to make an accurate judgment and could only try it first to find out.