I Am a Spellcaster (Part 1)

"The conditions for a Corrosive Jackal to spray acid are a strange rhythm, drastic fluctuations in mental power, and the consumption of sulfur. Different amounts of sulfur result in differences in the quality and quantity of the acid sprayed; too much or too little will not do. The optimal amount is half a kilogram.

"The strange rhythm and drastic fluctuations in mental power should be the primary causes. Sulfur is an indispensable supplementary material."

On the second day, Ace imitated the Corrosive Jackal's entire pattern of mental fluctuations and even tried holding sulfur in his mouth, yet he still could not trigger that strange rhythm or spray corrosive acid like a dog. It seemed mere imitation would not succeed; dissection was necessary, Ace wrote in his experimental journal.

On the third day, Ace dissected a jackal. In his experimental journal, he carefully recorded and sketched each of the jackal's organs, discovering mysterious patterns on its throat. When Ace tried touching the strange patterns with his mental power, they suddenly absorbed it. A familiar rhythm emerged, and with a "Puff!" wisps of black smoke rose.

Ace tried activating it with sulfur, but the results were far from satisfactory. Acid did indeed appear, splashing everywhere and nearly corroding his hand. After several experiments, there was no major improvement. Ace guessed that directly triggering it through the throat might not be suitable.

Ace excitedly recorded this in his experimental journal. He tried tracing the patterns onto parchment; sometimes they would appear, and sometimes they would not. After repeated experiments, he discovered that whenever the patterns he drew became extremely similar to those on the throat, they would naturally vanish. Why was that?

After tossing and turning all night, Ace thought of one possibility. These patterns represented transcendent power and caused the mysterious rhythm, which used sulfur to achieve acid spraying. To draw them, one would probably need something transcendent, or something tainted by the transcendent.

On the fourth day, Ace tried using the jackal's coagulated blood, only to find that it did not work. He bled the limbs of a living jackal and found that it was still ineffective.

After careful thought, he decided to use fresh blood from the jackal's throat for the drawing. The two slaves watched Ace torment the jackal in every conceivable way, his entire body covered in the jackal's blood and a strange expression on his face. Their faces turned the color of gold paper, their legs shook, and they trembled like leaves.

Ace used a clay jar to slowly collect the fresh blood from the jackal's throat. Unable to bear the agony, the jackal died amid its struggles. Ace turned and glanced at the two slaves, whose legs were quivering uncontrollably. They immediately wet themselves. Ace was rather speechless. Was he really that frightening?

He paid them no mind, waved the two slaves away, and returned to his room to try drawing the mysterious throat pattern. This time, he succeeded. The mysterious pattern was successfully drawn onto the parchment, but just as Ace was engrossed in admiring it, the parchment began to spontaneously combust. If he had not thrown it away so quickly, his fingers would have been burned.

"Transcendent, transcendent, transcendent!" Ace paced irritably. "That's it. Parchment isn't a transcendent material. It seems I need not only fresh blood from the throat, but its hide as well."

Ace took out the jackal hide he had dried over the past few days and tried drawing on it with fresh blood. He discovered that only the white section of hide beneath the neck could bear the mysterious pattern without spontaneously combusting.

He carefully cut away the white hide and trimmed it into a rectangle. Holding the white hide painted with the mysterious pattern in his left hand and sulfur in his right, he tried activating the mysterious pattern with his mental power.

The mysterious rhythm appeared. The sulfur vanished, and acid splashed forth from his left hand.

"It worked!" Ace roared in exhilaration, all alone.

He now went to the mountain behind the manor to conduct his experiments, only returning after nightfall.

After many more experiments, he found that Acid Splash did not reach far enough—only two or three meters. He flipped through the records in his experimental journal. There were three conditions when a jackal sprayed acid: intense mental fluctuations, the mysterious rhythm, and sulfur. Perhaps he should start with mental power.

His mental power could interfere with matter and most likely possessed transcendent properties as well. This time, he did not directly inject mental power into the hide bearing the mysterious pattern. Instead, he tried controlling his mental power and tracing along the pattern.

"Bang!" The tracing failed, and his mental power scattered and rebounded. It felt as though his brain had been viciously stabbed by needles. When he tried again, his head nearly split apart with pain. Ace could only rest properly and wait for his mental power to recover naturally.

On the sixth day, he tried tracing it again. This time he was extremely careful. Though he failed, he was not injured by the scattered mental power. After several attempts, Ace discovered that the mysterious pattern had a special internal structure. After deconstructing it, he divided it into three simple patterns.

He tried directly constructing one simple pattern with mental power. This time, he succeeded. The pattern seemed to trigger some sort of rhythm, and nature itself seemed to return a certain power to him. He felt his mental power suddenly fluctuate drastically, and overall, it seemed to have grown slightly stronger. This was a pattern capable of mobilizing a special force from nature and, to some extent, strengthening mental power, he wrote in his experimental journal.

He tried the other two patterns. When not combined with the first pattern, neither had any effect. Once combined, one directly launched the sulfur in his hand outward, while the other turned the sulfur into acid. It did not splash; it directly burned his hand.

Ignoring the pain in his hand, Ace persisted in using mental power to trace the combination of the three patterns in midair without the aid of hide. Acid splashed forth, and its attack range reached nearly seven meters! Then a violent headache struck—he had overused his mental power again.

This time, he rested for two full days before recovering. Over the following days, Ace conducted various experiments in succession. He discovered that directly tracing the patterns without hide as a medium consumed roughly three times as much mental power. His mental power could only cast Acid Splash four times, but with the aid of hide, he could cast it nearly thirteen times. Any more than that would result in mental power overuse.

He tried using only the pattern that mobilized nature's special force, and found that it could rapidly strengthen mental power and one's perception of that special force. After using it on ordinary hide for a period of time, that hide could be painted with mysterious patterns, though they would not last and would disperse after a while.

Afterward, he tried improving the manufacturing process for patterned hide. He ground up the throat, mixed it into fresh blood, and blended it thoroughly. When tracing the patterns onto hide with the fresh blood mixed with throat fragments, he simultaneously injected mental power. Finally, he fixed the patterned hide into hard cards. With these hard cards, Acid Splash reached seven meters, and its overall corrosive effect came close to the effect of tracing the patterns in midair.

"The experiments on the Corrosive Jackal are basically complete. It's time to summarize them." Ace muttered to himself. He had not bathed for days, and jackal filth and blood covered his body. His face was haggard, and his entire being gave off a terrifying aura that made one's scalp prickle.

Ace had the slaves prepare bathwater and took a comfortable hot bath. Returning to his room, he lit an oil lamp and began writing furiously beneath the night sky. It brought him back, in a daze, to his previous life—after completing an experiment, writing a paper, both a summary and an honor.

He shook his head, casting aside memories of his previous life, and wrote three words on the parchment—Spellcaster. Beneath them, in smaller writing: A Systematic Study of the Corrosive Jackal.

"Abstract: This paper primarily describes experiments on the Corrosive Jackal's acid-spraying ability and their conclusions, while tentatively defining the phenomena that emerged during the process."

"The Corrosive Jackal is a standard Low-level Demonic Beast. It enjoys consuming sulfur and can spray acid three to five meters away. Its strength is roughly equivalent to that of a noble who has awakened bloodline power. Through this experiment, the author successfully discovered the secret behind the Corrosive Jackal's acid spray, and imitated and improved it. The author hereby names it Acid Splash. The design of the experiment is..."

"Thus, we may draw the following conclusion: in a certain sense, mysterious patterns are a transcendent language. The author names this language runes."

"The mysterious rhythm of nature triggered when mental power traces runes brings forth transcendent power, which in turn expresses the meaning of the runes and causes transcendent phenomena to appear. The author names this rhythm learned from Demonic Beasts magic, and names this transcendent power mana."

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