Chapter 726 - The Contents of the Manual
Chapter 726 The Contents of the Manual
Teleporting back to Delpon, Roland was a bit gloomy.
Although Jabezo was indeed a terrible person, the conflicting emotions shown by that old woman made him feel a little pity for her.
Seeing how upset he was, Andonara inquired what had happened.
Roland told her the story.
After listening to it, Andonara also sighed and said, “That woman is quite pitiful. On one side is her beloved husband, on the other side are the philosophy and beliefs that she has practiced all her life. She could neither hate nor love.”
“Enough about these irksome things, that Demigod Mage gave me a manual of magical insights before he died.” Roland took the manual out of his Backpack, then frowned. “Teleporting back in a rush, I forgot to go collect some pink flowers from the meadow. Wait.”
Roland then teleported again to the Croatian Plains and gathered many flowers.
He divided them into three portions, one for Andonara and one for Vivian.
The other portion was reserved for himself to make potions for unlocking the manual.
Suddenly, a dozen round fruit bats flew in and transformed into a woman.
Christina looked at him with a bitter gaze.
Having no choice, Roland took three flowers and gave them to her.
Then the vampire girl left happily.
Things like magic locks were typically hard to handle for those who didn’t know about them.
First, boil the pink flowers to make a juice, then infuse thunder magic into it, and finally soak the manual.
After about half a minute, a strange magic power dissipated, and the book, which was originally covered with blue patterns, turned into an ordinary manual.
Roland went back to his lab and opened it slowly.
After he read a dozen pages, he closed the manual.
“Awesome.”
In this manual, what was written was not any magic insights, but the study of the Divine Spark.
This was what Jabezo spent fifty years writing down after he broke free from the sealed land.
The ancient script used was over three hundred years old and was probably lost by now; fortunately, Roland knew Character Proficiency.
The first few pages were exposition and conjecture on the nature of the Divine Spark.
This was followed by the study of creating a virtual Divine Spark.
In Jabezo’s train of thought, to create a virtual Divine Spark, a great amount of magic power was required.
But after being knocked down from the Demigod state by Mystra, his magic power capacity dropped quite alarmingly, and with the seal’s power remaining, this experiment progressed slowly. The only way to do this was to break it down into steps and experiment slowly.
The first step was to use a large amount of magic power to build a “shell” of the Divine Spark.
Because it would be a virtual Divine Spark, such a shell was not hard to make.
With magic power as the base, supplemented by one’s own will as the substrate, imagine an emotion, a characteristic as a primer for the virtual Divine Spark.
The manual said that it was best to choose a non-main god’s Divine Spark, meaning that it was best not to have any ideas of life, light, death, and other main gods’ Divine Spark.
Even if it was a virtual Divine Spark—a fake
-once it was made, it would attract the attention of the gods.
Because they were so powerful, it was easy for them to feel the fluctuations of a Divine Spark similar to their own.
Jabezo also said in the manual that it was best to virtualize those evil gods in the Astral Plane.
For example, hunger, tyranny, greed, and such negative Divine Sparks. Although this might shift one’s alignment, at least one wouldn’t be targeted.
The evil gods in the Astral Plane were now at an extreme disadvantage, with the lawful gods overwhelming them. Moreover, the environment of the main plane was relatively peaceful now, with very little warfare, and the place in the Astral Plane they were in was too far away from the main plane, so it was quite difficult to get negative power.
However, if it was a virtual Divine Spark, it could directly attract the negative energy of the main plane.
On this plane, it was still very easy to find misery. Even if it couldn’t be found, for the time being, one could still create it.
Roland was itching to try it.
Jabezo tried to create a virtual Divine Spark step by step at the Master level, but he probably didn’t succeed, or else he wouldn’t have been taken out so easily by Roland.
If Jabezo could do it, Roland reckoned that he could too.
Besides, extremely high magic capacity was a requirement that Roland could easily meet.
So he teleported to the desert where no one lived and spent a day building a pretty huge underground lab.
Then he took out a few blue magic bricks.
According to the book, he first turned the square bricks into a large amount of pure magic, then absorbed them and built a blue energy ball with a radius of about three meters, then closed his eyes and channeled his spirit into it.
He imported the feeling of food.
Kung pao chicken, boiled cabbage, pork meatballs, sautéed vermicelli with minced pork, dry-fried bean curd, soup dumplings, and all kinds of noodles and meats.
Roland had always been an ordinary person and ate ordinary, home-cooked food.
But even that level of culinary quantity was enough to keep him thinking back for two or three hours.
The thing to end it all was naturally soft drinks.
Once he had fully channeled his spirit into it, he felt a bit dazed.
He sat down, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and then looked at the ball of energy that had turned from blue to a rainbow-colored halo in front of him, and smiled quite happily.
After all, up to this step, it was already considered half-successful.
He wouldn’t have imported some evil god’s Divine Spark. There was a ton of fun, positive things to do in this world, so there was no reason to be a bad guy. Only if he were sick in the head.
In this world, there was no god of food anyway.
It was probably because the vast majority of people had little concept of gourmet food.
After nearly half an hour of rest, feeling that his magic power had almost regenerated, Roland stood up again and began to use his mental energy, compressing the ball of energy in front of him.
At first, the speed of compression was fast.
In less than half an hour, it went from a three-meter radius to a three-meter diameter.
But as this ball of energy got smaller and smaller, the compression became more and more difficult, and it took ten hours after that to compress it to a meter in diameter.
But this wasn’t enough. It had to be compressed further.
All that was left was simmering it on low fire.
Because it had to be compressed to at least about five centimeters in diameter to be considered successful.
The subsequent compression was all measured in days.
For the first ten days, it was compressed to thirty centimeters in diameter.
Ten days in between, it was compressed to ten centimeters in diameter.
In the end, it took another twenty days to compress it to five centimeters in diameter.
In reality, in terms of a virtual Divine Spark, the smaller the better. Preferably, it would be compressed to under a centimeter in diameter, but that was unlikely.
At least not with Roland’s current capabilities.
It was completely impossible to do; compressing it to five centimeters in diameter would be the limit of a Master.
Legends could probably compress it to three centimeters, and two centimeters for Demigods.
Roland looked at the energy bead that had turned into a multicolored ball of light in his hand, and after examining it quietly for a moment, he then tapped it onto his forehead.
As soon as the bead touched his skin, it sunk eerily into Roland’s brain.
It was something made of his mental power and wasn’t going to do him any harm.
The moment the ball went into his head, Roland subconsciously trembled.
It was just as satisfying when he trembled on Andonara.
After his body shivered for nearly half a minute, Roland then suppressed his physical instincts and began to experience the effects of this bead.
First of all, all his attributes went up by about five to ten percent.
The second was that he started to feel very hungry.
He kept looking for something to eat.
Taking some random rations out of the Backpack, he ended up getting nauseous and wanting to vomit just after taking one bite.
He spat the jerky in his mouth onto the ground—what was once palatable was now unpalatable.
After thinking about it, Roland opened the system interface and found that there was indeed an additional message in his character panel.
Food Law (Virtual Divine Spark): Your insane obsession with food gives you the wherewithal to touch the power of the laws. Although not a true Divine Spark, it can still be truly beneficial to you.
Gluttony: It is more pleasurable for you to ingest gourmet food than to mate with a woman.
Picky: Food with a gourmet degree lower than five cannot enter your stomach and you will vomit it out. This is true in cases of extreme hunger as well. So, even if there is food in front of you, you are in danger of starving to death.
Ubiquitous Gourmet Food: Food made by you, and by those who believe in you, increases in deliciousness. Also, your followers can borrow the magic power in your body to unleash some of the divine spells you have developed.
Number of believers: 0
Set divine spells: None (4)
After reading these lines, Roland fell into deep contemplation.
The first phrases were all well understood, but what did this “set divine spells” mean? And what did the number at the end mean?
Could he set four divine spells?
Roland thought for a moment as he tapped on the option to set up divine spells, and then a large list of spells unfolded before him, all of which he had learned and could use.
After watching the dazzling names of spells floating in front of his eyes, Roland thought for a moment before dragging in the spell Unhindered Communication.
As a result, a pop-up prompt came from the system.
Insufficient points.
Oh… it considers magic strength, got it. Roland then put up the Language Proficiency in the divine spells.
This time it succeeded.
But there were only two points left.
After thinking about it, Roland put in a level-one Healing, which also passed.
There was still one point left.
After a moment’s consideration, Roland put in the level-one Detoxification as well.
It also passed.
The next step was to get someone to use those spells.
Since it was a Divine Spark, he should find someone to believe in him.
Roland teleported back to Delpon.
He pulled Andonara quietly into the bedroom, closed the door and windows, and then made a soundproof barrier. Andonara blushed slightly as she took her clothes off.
Roland made sure the door and curtains were closed before he looked back—and was speechless. “No, I have real business.”
Andonara walked up to Roland and wrapped her smooth arms around his neck, saying in a flirtatious manner, “Damned man, every time you say you’re going to do the business-can you say it differently and be a little more romantic!”
“It’s really business.” Roland subconsciously wrapped his arms around Andonara’s waist, then slid his hands down and pressed them against her hips.
“I know it’s business.” Andonara’s eyes were full of mischief, sweet and alluring like honey. “Are you on top or am I on top this time?”
Roland kissed her forehead. “I said it’s business. I want you to try to become my believer!”
Now question marks were written all over Andonara’s face.