Necromancer, What the Hell Is Summoning a 055? Section 31

Their gazes were a mix of envy, jealousy, and resentment, along with some disdain that seemed to say, "Just as I thought."

Chen Mo braced himself and stood up. "Instructor Morton, I've run into a problem. When I try to use Psionic Diversion to divide something five ways, I can't pinpoint the diversion points accurately. I've spent a lot of time on it, but I still haven't managed to solve it effectively."

"You're rushing things!" Morton frowned slightly and habitually tapped the smooth lectern. His tone was mildly admonishing. "The basic skill for Psionic Diversion is a two-way diversion! You should master that first..."

"Instructor Morton, I've already done that!"

"Heh, there's a difference between completing something and truly mastering it. Without endless practice, how can you become genuinely proficient?"

Morton stepped aside to clear the space in front of the lectern and gestured. "Come on up and demonstrate. I'll explain exactly where the problem is."

Chen Mo walked up to the front.

Chapter 50: Diversion Sacrifice

The next few minutes became a sight the apprentices of Glimmer Group Three would never forget for the rest of their lives, and one they would boast about to others on countless occasions in the years to come.

Chen Mo constructed his spell model steadily and smoothly. Although it seemed to contain some extra psionic channels whose purpose was unclear, the overall time he took was still far less than what these mid- and low-level apprentices needed.

In the first act, after spending just a few seconds locating the points, two slender, concentrated beams of psionic energy precisely divided the main model into four.

In the second act, Chen Mo chose the significantly more difficult six-way diversion. He added several auxiliary lines to the main model in succession, including straight lines and arcs, and finally completed the six-way diversion in about three minutes.

If Morton could still barely keep up with the earlier demonstrations, he was already completely unable to understand Chen Mo's three-way diversion. In any case, after a dazzlingly intricate series of divisions, Chen Mo precisely located four points and divided the main model into three.

By the strictest standards, the division still had a tiny margin of error, but it was a slight difference that only Morton, who had spent years immersed in spell models, could detect. To the naked eye, it was already a textbook three-way diversion.

A deathly silence fell over the room.

Morton's mouth fell open to an astonishing extent, wide enough to fit an entire giant running bird egg from the Taiya Plain.

The other students of Glimmer Group Three huddled in the corners of the classroom, exchanging terrified and bewildered looks.

Or trembling with fear!

Chen Mo had no idea how heaven-defying his demonstration was.

The truth was that even his instructor, Mage Morton, whose rank was not high but whose fundamentals were exceptionally solid and who was known as the "human spell-engraving plate," was proficient only in two-way and four-way diversions.

As for odd-numbered diversions, especially those above five, the vast majority of mages never practiced them at all, because the effort was grossly disproportionate to the results.

If a fireball could easily be split four ways, why not just cast another if that wasn't enough? Why go to all that trouble to split it five ways? It wasn't as if they belonged to the legendary Five Fireball Cult!

It was like practicing cooking: everyone else cut a potato twice and got four pieces, while you insisted on making a perfect "seven swords descending the mountain." In the time it took you to practice that, others could learn more than a dozen elaborate dishes.

As for using geometric theory to simplify the process, that was even more of a fantasy.

On the Starry Continent, education was a privilege reserved for the few. Even for those lucky enough to receive it, subjects like arithmetic and geometry were far from a priority.

Only mages of Solar Corona rank or above who had reached the threshold of advancement would devote time and effort to more detailed study and research, in an attempt to construct more complex spell models and break through.

For apprentices and low-rank mages? They lacked the means, and there was even less need! More practice was enough. Even an illiterate person could paint a beautiful hollow-lettered slogan on a wall after practicing hundreds or thousands of times. Practice made perfect, and that was enough!

For precisely that reason, Chen Mo's mastery of three-, four-, six-, and eight-way diversions after just one night of practice, and his continued dogged struggle with five-way diversion... made everyone present, including Instructor Morton, clearly realize one cruel fact:

This guy wasn't even competing in the same race as them!

They were running on foot, and though they were a few hundred meters ahead, the guy chasing them was riding a horse-a damn silver-winged pegasus, complete with wings.

Morton decisively ended the subject.

"I... can't teach you anything in this area either. But I don't recommend spending too much time on it."

"Being able to perform a four-way diversion is enough. You might be better off focusing more on cultivating your own fundamental strength and making the most of your time to improve your mental power and mana."

"All right! Thank you, Instructor!" Chen Mo humbly accepted his advice and readily followed it.

For the rest of the day's lessons, Morton taught listlessly, and the group members studied absentmindedly. A limp sense of helplessness hung in the air.

As for their fellow student Chen Mo, he didn't worry about it for a moment and quickly returned to his normal routine of cultivation, cultivation, and more cultivation.

Kato had personally tested the potion Instructor Morton had given Chen Mo. It restored one well and had no obvious toxic side effects. In Kato's words, it just tasted a little worse, like rotten tree roots mixed with dirt!

That minor flaw was no problem at all. Chen Mo added another important item to the equipment pack he carried every day.

Morton had intended the potion to help Chen Mo ease the enormous mental strain of long periods of meditation and relieve the pressure, so he could get a little more rest.

But as Chen Mo saw it, rest? What rest!

He had originally needed five or six hours of intermittent rest every day to keep cultivating, but now he only needed three. If he spent the time he saved resting, wouldn't he have drunk the potion for nothing?

Of course he would keep grinding!

He added another hour and a half of meditation and spent all the remaining time practicing Psionic Diversion!

After confirming that his four-way diversion technique was proficient and stable enough not to cause any accidents, Chen Mo took a short rest, spent a fortune renting a private skill practice room, and activated the summoning altar once more.

Four-way diversion meant that the unwieldy summoning ritual, which had originally needed to be sustained for a long stretch in a single attempt, was ingeniously broken down into four independent, lightweight miniature magical frameworks. This was tremendously significant for Chen Mo-he had finally escaped the long wait of "guarding a stump for a rabbit"! Whenever Blue Star "stocked the goods," he only needed to find a quiet corner and could "pick them up while he waited" at any time!

The letter to his family had been written long ago. Before sending it, he read it through carefully once more, weighed every word as he changed a few turns of phrase, and added a few more bits of nagging that had come to mind over the past two days.

Next, he checked the items he had already packed to send home.

Wrapped at the very bottom were the magic badges taken from Mountain Vine Squad.

Previously, because of his lack of magical knowledge, Chen Mo had held magical items in deep awe. He hadn't dared take Little Goldie's magical equipment for fear it might bear some kind of tracking mark, nor had he dared send the other magical items in his possession to Blue Star, afraid they might bring some mishap upon his family.

Only after gaining a relatively complete introduction to the fundamentals of magic from Morton did he begin trying to send these magical items home.

Besides the magical items, the most valuable things among the materials were several kinds of magical materials and potions he had obtained from Instructor Morton.

Next came a large stack of memory cards, filled with all the environmental data and recorded images he had collected on the Starry Continent during this period, along with the accompanying handwritten daily records and study notes, densely covered in writing.

Chen Mo had recorded everything from his lessons with the instructor in exhaustive detail, including every slightest insight he gained through cultivation. He wasn't simply being diligent; more importantly, he wanted to send these techniques and insights home.

Seeing that there was still a little transfer capacity left, and that he had been unable to go out shopping lately, Chen Mo followed his principle of "waste not" and carefully added some dirt and gravel he had gathered from a corner of the practice room, finally packing the transfer space of this diversion-style summoning altar completely full.

After confirming that the private practice room's door was securely locked, Chen Mo once again entered the long, complicated spatial coordinates that carried the trajectories of the stars.

Hum...

A faint spatial fluctuation flashed. With only a quarter of the altar's transfer capacity after the diversion, he successfully sent a new "gift package" from another world, weighing about 1.8 kilograms, to distant Blue Star.

Hmm, still less than a single lunar soil sample collection...

A rapid series of buzzing alarms suddenly sounded once again in the special combat readiness office of the Compassionate Voyage Project Office at Changle Palace.

Chapter 51: Design Assignment

For Eastern Xia's Compassionate Voyage Project Office, their sole reason for existing at this stage was to await an answer from the Wanderer across unknown dimensions.

The moment Deputy Director Lin Xiangdong saw the data stream appear on the screen, he was delighted at first, then felt his heart tighten.

He was delighted that the Wanderer had finally made contact. More than forty days and nights had passed since the last sacrifice, and according to what the Wanderer had said before, even the recovery period after his first use of a stimulant potion had not been this long.

For those who had been waiting there all along, every extra day had been like sitting on pins and needles, an added torment.

Lin Xiangdong could only hope that the Wanderer had been too busy and had been delayed by something, and that nothing had gone wrong.

Now that a new transfer signal had arrived, the Cihang staff members finally felt relieved.

The worry that followed came from the transfer weight displayed on the screen.

After the last transfer, the Compassionate Voyage Project Office had expanded and renovated the secure chamber and placed a high-precision platform scale beneath the beacon. When the transfer weight appeared, Lin Xiangdong's heart leaped into his throat.

Could the Wanderer have been injured, or encountered some extremely urgent situation and needed reinforcements?

He couldn't even spare the time to follow the disinfection procedures strictly. He grabbed a mask, fastened it over his face, and charged through the heavy isolation door of the secure chamber.

Fortunately, it was a false alarm.

The rigorous emergency-response drills they routinely conducted now proved their worth. The entire Compassionate Voyage Project Office sprang into rapid motion like a precision gear train, transmitting instructions to every endpoint.

The message that he was safe flew to the desks of Eastern Xia's two leaders with the highest priority. Materials from across the worlds were distributed to the key research institutes, material allocation orders were adjusted in an orderly fashion, and each task was systematically broken down, assigned, and communicated.

The most critical part of this was to analyze those "bizarre requests" from another world that were at odds with the physical laws of reality, as well as the deeper potential needs that even the "Wanderer" himself might not have clearly understood, turn them into specific technical projects that real-world technicians could understand and carry out, and assign them to suitable organizations.

Soon, Xu Yanfeng, the engineer responsible for optoelectronic vision systems at the Aviation Optoelectronics Research Institute under Eastern Xia's military-industrial Eastern Industrial Group, received a top-level encrypted document from the military.

The person delivering it was a young field-grade officer. After the relevant confidentiality agreements had been signed, the officer handed the chief engineer the design assignment.

"This is nonsense!" Xu Yanfeng had only skimmed a few pages before he put the document back on the desk.

"Young man, I don't know where your superior came from, but he certainly doesn't understand technology in the slightest."

"An amateur telling a professional what to do. Ridiculous!"

"A head-up display-what are its key parameters? Field of view, virtual image distance, brightness and contrast, resolution and refresh rate, latency, eyebox range, solar load, mounting position... where are all those parameters? Without them, you must be joking!"

"What about the application scenario? The platform it has to match? The performance requirements? There's nothing! You want me to design it blind? If that isn't nonsense, what is?"

The head-up display Xu Yanfeng referred to, also known as a HUD, was a projection display technology first used in fighter aircraft. It projected important parameters into the pilot's field of view directly ahead, so the pilot didn't have to look down at the instrument panel.

In the civilian sector, the technology was also widely used as a replacement for vehicle instrument displays and was already fairly mature.

Precisely because it was mature, Engineer Xu was furious at these baffling design requirements. These bureaucrats really weren't willing to put any thought into it at all!

The young field-grade officer gave a textbook salute. "Engineer Xu, I must remind you that this is a design assignment issued by the military, not a statement of design intent. Its authority is equivalent to a military order!"

Xu Yanfeng froze.

He took a deep breath, straightened his glasses, and read the "design assignment" through carefully.

"I... if I understand this correctly, you need a head-up display small enough to wear on the chest and almost impossible to notice from its appearance; it must project a clear image in all conditions, visible only to the primary user; the virtual image distance must be adjustable over a wide range at the user's discretion, not only up and down, but also quickly farther away and closer; and when it moves, it must be smooth, stable, and precise..."

"And the core feature built into it is the ability to freely switch between and project a set of geometric shapes???"

"Forgive me for being blunt, but this design concept is absurd. For a single user, couldn't you just provide a VR headset? Or use 3D projection? At the very least, you should tell me a focal point for the virtual image. With nothing to go on, do you know how much extra work this will create?"

"Even a military order can't be this nonsensical. Please tell those big shots not to pretend they understand what they don't. If they really don't know how to express it, tell me the application scenario, and I'll assess how to design the relevant parameters."

"Instead of having them come up with a bunch of baffling design requirements on a whim and give us only this much time!"

Clearly, Xu Yanfeng was already doing his best to suppress his anger. He put the document back on the desk again, thought for a moment, and offered another explanation in a milder tone. "Comrade, science must respect objective laws. We can't just do as we please. Unless you designate this task as an Eastern Xia key scientific research and engineering project, I can't spend valuable time on such an absurd project."

"Our new generation of aircraft is still waiting for its upgrade!"

The young officer nodded. "All right, then please wait a moment. It'll be an Eastern Xia national-level key scientific research and engineering project shortly!"

More than twenty minutes later, a letter from the Eastern Xia State Strategic Development Commission reached Xu Yanfeng. The bright red seal made the middle-aged engineer's eyes ache a little.

The vice president of the Eastern Industrial Group, who had come running over, saw the bewildered look on his face and patted him on the shoulder.

"Old Xu, this is an urgently transmitted copy. The original is already on a plane and will be delivered to you as soon as possible. Believe me, I wouldn't joke with you about this."