Chapter 17: The Requirements of Spell

Xylos inspected his right most screen as a progress bar appeared.

He thought back to his first battle; it always bothered him how weak his spells were.

It felt like a situation where one would have all the latest hardware parts for a computer but when they try to run a video game it would instantly take up 99% of the CPU and RAM and still display pixelated images on the screen.

All the variables, classes, and functions were accounted for and it compiles without any issues but the moment the program starts running it slows down to a crawl and outputs the wrong or incomplete result.

Xylos looked at the decompiled spell and his head started swimming after a few minutes; the spell was extremely specific from the angle of the cut, the radius of the bubble, how many times to cut it, when to separate into another bubble and lots of other trivial things.

Lots of things seemed redundant, but from the program he found something interesting.

This function described exactly what happens when one of the Cutters encounters a specific material. It was constructed by a series of IF switches that applied to each part of the body of the creature.

He pulled up his combat program and noticed that he didn't have anything that describes what happens to the target.

Suddenly, everything made sense. In order to fully display the effects of a spell, one had to describe what they expect to happen to the target.

What he was doing before was sending out a packet but not expecting any response in return. As a result, it has little or no effect on the target, or would only work as how the target would expect.

It was also the reason why the shield and spear showed disproportionate effects because they adjusted the attributes of the target. The shield simply added a reverse acceleration to the object and the sword added piercing and a strong bleed effect to any object that touched the tip.

He quickly set up an experiment. First, , he created a simple program called "Cut(target tar)" It was simply

Then, he locked on to a leaf on the ground; it took about 10 seconds gather enough data to create a unique identifier for the leaf.

Then, he set the target to the leaf and compiled it. Under the spell list, the program "Cut(leaf_1)" appeared and beside the program was the "Run" button and the Mana Capacity (MC) requirements and Mana Pool (MP) cost.

The Mana Capacity was something that he created to make sure he doesn't exceed his core load. His current maximum Mana Capacity was 1000, and it recovers at a rate of about 1 per minute. If a spell takes 40 MC to run it would take at least 40 MP to use and would reduce his core MC by 40 points. He would start to feel sluggish at 0, start losing core essence at -250, and completely disappear at -500 MC. His MP was capped at 10x the amount of his MC, any higher and it would require MC to maintain.

The simple spell-program "Cut(leaft_1)" only costs 1 MC and 2 MP. When he ran it, the leaf evenly split into two pieces. He set the target to a rock the size of a football and the cost jumped up to 10 MC and 20 MP. He set it to a nearby tree and the cost jumped up to 100 MC and 200 MP. He targeted one of those living trees and the cost jumped up to 1000 MC and 2000 MP! He targetted the vines on the tree and it reduced to 10~500 MC and 20~1000 MP depending on the length of the vine he wanted to cut in half.

The experiment was enlightening, but the he thought about all the changes he needed to make on his first combat program and knew that he won't be able to fix it anytime soon"

While Xylos was experimenting, Vivi used some sort of tracking magic to track a plant that they needed to activate the teleportation array. Based on the riddle, it was either a Venoblossom or Lurblossom, both plants "dons its flowery dresses, turns on the lights, and draws its audience into a silent neverending show"

The Venoblossom would poison its prey and put it into a deep sleep where the beast would hibernate until it starved to death beside it. The Lurblossom would cause any creature that looks at it into a trance and lure them close enough so it can swallow it whole or slowly eat them piece by piece if they are too big; all the while the creature is completely oblivious to what is happening to them.

Following a trail, they soon encountered the Lurblossom. It looked like a large crystal lotus blossom with multifaceted surfaces reflecting a dazzling array of colors that seem to draw in...

A loud slap resounded through the area as Xylos was jolted out of a trance; the sting of the hit still warm on his face.

"Why did you do that?" Xylos said

"To break you out of the trance," Carly said.

"Yes, but why a slap? Any sort of stimulus would have worked."

"Would you prefer to be stabbed?" Carly said as she raised the stabber.

Xylos definitely didn't want to be stabbed, so he remained silent. "When did she become so hostile? Are all females in this world demanding and violent?" Xylos thought as he paused and gathered target information on the Lurblossom. As long as he looked away from the flower while the data was being compiled he won't be drawn into a trance. He made it a habit during the trip to acquire target information on any new things that he saw in the forest; each attempt could take up to 5 minutes depending on its complexity. There might be a chance that they will be of some use when they encounter something dangerous.

Levin tapped his feet as he watched Xylos do his thing for the nth time. The trip to the first item took about 3 hours. If they weren't stopping every few minutes to wait for Xylos to record information, they could have made it this location within an hour.

"Why are we waiting here again?" Levin telepathed to Vivi, "What could be different from this location and the place we were 1 minute ago?"

"We need to be patient. It isn't easy to remember the path that we took. I've set up a beacon at the teleportation array but I would only be able to sense the general direction. For Xylos, he seem to have a map of how to get from A to B as long as he been to that location before with surprising accuracy. He might be pausing every once in a while to update that map. You don't want to get lost here in the middle of the night right?" Vivi responded.

Levin sighed and watched patiently.

"All good," Xylos said as he completed a comprehensive entry of the Lurblossom; he might not be able to create an exact replica of it but if he studied the programming of the reflective crystals he might be able to reproduce the luring effect in the future.

Levin was elated and started preparing a large wind spell but then a loud rumble reverbrated throught the ground; something gigantic was heading toward the Lurblossom.