Chapter 197: Inversion Circle

Even though large-scale construction of brick houses in the territory had commenced, and despite all the previous tents being replaced and large numbers of wooden huts being demolished and rebuilt in batches, Pittman’s residence was still that wooden hut he had since the very beginning. —— This had nothing to do with the little old man’s laborious style of work (in fact, he didn’t have this attribute at all), nor was it Gawain targeting this little old man’s indecency; it was simply due to a considerable amount of Druid spells being related to the organic environment. Druid spell laboratories required large amounts of wooden base to serve as magic-conducting materials, and wooden houses were also more convenient for them to reform and catalyze using magic. Thus, this wooden hut remained in use till today, and it seemed Pittman satisfactorily planned to continue using it like that.

In reality, although the wooden hut was still wooden, through Pittman’s magic transformation over the past few months, it had a completely changed look —— those felled wooden boards that had originally lost their vitality gained a certain kind of “activation” under the permanent infiltration of Druid spells. Vines, branches, and leaves grew out from the gaps between the wooden boards. While making the wooden hut even tighter and more solid, they also greatly beautified its appearance. And the interior of the wooden hut became warm in winter and cool in summer due to the effects of natural spells. Gawain believed this was a rather comfortable lodging.

Otherwise, that old rascal — who peddled ointments all day long and scrounged for free meals everywhere, drinking and playing cards, with no ends to his bad habits — would’ve long approached him for a change in housing… Pittman wasn’t the kind of fellow to willingly be poor; otherwise, he wouldn’t have gone so far as to becoming an antique appraiser because being a Druid wasn’t profitable…

Walking into this already renewed (and taking on a new look every day) house, Gawain caught the old Druid who had his head bowed and was busying about beside the laboratory bench at first glance. The latter had clearly already noticed the arrival of the feudal lord but still didn’t lift his head. “Lord, please hold on for a moment. I’ll be done here right away. —— Spell experiments cannot be interrupted. The equipment is slightly worn. I’ve got to watch them carefully to—”

At the side, Amber exposed him without the slightest hesitance. “Stop pretending. That pile of vessels of yours hasn’t started reacting. —— Such a respectable style of being engrossed in academic research and responsible to the truth! Being too occupied to attend to the feudal lord doesn’t suit you.”

Gawain heard the truth exposed by Amber midway, though feeling touched due to Pittman’s rigorous and earnest working attitude. He instantly examined Pittman from top to bottom with doubt, and the latter straightened up from beside the laboratory bench. He scowled and glared at Miss Half-Elf. “I just wanted to cheat and get some experiment funds. Do I have it easy?! Whose side are you on?”

Amber rolled her eyes. “Duh, I’ll be on the side of whoever pays me.”

“Cough, cough”, Gawain quickly cut off the topic of conversation that was about to digress with a dry cough. “I’m here to look at your experiment results. ——You seemed to have settled the most critical step for the mass production of potions?”

Pittman put down his old and worn alchemy tools that he used to cheat for funds upon hearing him. He straightened up triumphantly and led Gawain towards another alchemy platform on the other side of the laboratory. “Come look at this first!”

Gawain walked over curiously. He saw a series of connected flasks, retort, condensing tube, distillation kettle, and other equipment placed on the alchemy platform. All these were commonly used items when metallurgists concocted potions. Although they were rather complicatedly assembled together, there was nothing too special compared to when Pittman concocted the potions previously. What was truly particular was the complex magical runes carved on the surfaces of two of the vessels, as well as an unfamiliar rune formation in the middle of the platform.

Gawain could be sure that there were no such structures on normal alchemy platforms and alchemy vessels.

“What are these?” Gawain asked curiously.

“This is the ‘Druid theurgy circle’ used to replace the spellcaster’s participation.” Pittman blinked and said rather proudly.

“Druid theurgy circle?!”

“Yes.” Pittman nodded. “As you know, the biggest problem we encountered when we wanted to mass-produce Druid potions previously was the necessity of a spellcaster participating in the last step of ‘enchantment’. Only Druid spells could catalyze these potions.”

At this point, Pittman paused before going on, “Druid spells were born from the ancient nature theurgies, entirely different from the present conventional magical system, so there isn’t a set of perfect ‘spell mold – rune formation’ corresponding conversion system. In other words, many Druid spells cannot be converted into magic circles. This led to the inability to rely on carved magic circles on external materials to replace the spellcaster like how we did with the Magic Web or heat-ray gun… Thus, this restricted the mass production of alchemical potions because the number of Druids is limited, and the total magical power of an individual is also limited.”

Gawain looked at this little old man whose usual performance was rather frivolous in surprise. “So you successfully converted Druid magic into magic circles?”

“Strictly speaking, it’s the ancient Druid theurgy circles —— the ‘theurgy circles’ back when the Druid faction was still the Sect of the God of Nature and Druid magic was still theurgy,” Pittman clarified in a low yet solemn voice. “For this, I went through large quantities of ancient books and records. —— I spent a total of one hundred and twenty gold coins buying the books, and the total cost of the errand fee from asking someone to buy the books is—”

“It’s not suitable to talk about this in such a solemn atmosphere. I’ll reimburse you later.” Gawain cut him off directly. “But I remember that the Druid theurgies have all become invalid. Those ancient theurgy circles could actually still be used?”

“Of course they cannot if they are being used directly, but look at these runes… Don’t you find them familiar?”

With such a reminder, Gawain then noticed that those magical patterns on the surface of those vessels and the alchemy platform were indeed a little familiar. Regarding the combining of the elemental runes and sacred symbols together, there was an even stronger feeling of déjà vu…

A few seconds later, it then suddenly struck him what this was: in the ruins in the mountains, in the shadow realm, that large fused magic circle used to confine the flesh of the gods! That magic circle had been drawn by combining elemental runes and sacred symbols!

Gawain revealed a surprised look. “It’s the skill dug out from the ruins?”

“That’s right.” Pittman nodded. “The various kinds of magic circles that you discovered in the ruins at that time have been copied down, but regarding the theurgies, Madam Heidi was stumped studying them, so she got me to help. —— Although Druid theurgies are already lost, as an ancient occupation that attaches extreme importance to legacy, we kept those sacred symbols as pure academic materials the whole time and handed them down. Madam Heidi got me to help with identifying the meanings of those symbols, and through this process, I discovered a daring endeavor of the Gondor Empire…”

“Daring endeavor?” Gawain frowned. From Pittman’s tone, he got a sense of foreboding that this probably wasn’t any simple secret.

Of course, this could also possibly be the little old man’s new attempt to cheat for funds. If that was the case, it’d be even easier to resolve: giving him a beating would be enough. —— He was a 700-year-old coffin spirit and a 7-million-year-old satellite spirit. No matter who he beat up on this land, he wouldn’t have to worry about being criticized for being disrespectful to the elderly…

Of course, if someone insisted on saying that him beating up an old man was considered child abuse, then he could only accept it.

Fortunately, Pittman really wasn’t cheating for funds this time. “They were attempting to ‘search for the interface of divine power’.”

As he spoke, the little old man pointed to those magical patterns carved on the vessels and alchemy platform. “Unless religious doctrines are strictly adhered to, divine power cannot be used by humankind. This is considered a shackle universally acknowledged by the world, but the Master Mages of the ancient Gondor Empire were clearly intending on doing something revolting. Their objective behind designing such a fused magic circle was to bypass some kind of ‘prohibition’ set up by the gods, so as to utilize the powers of the gods through the forces of magic. Judging from the clues you found in the ruins, they had evidently succeeded, or rather, a portion of their work was successful —— they found the ‘access point’ of using magical runes to control theurgies. Although given our current technology, we are unable to restore the original set of the complex fused magic circle, nor are we able to create a source powerful enough to drive it, we can still draw lessons from the reasoning of rune arrangements…”

Not only were the contents of Pittman’s speech astonishing, they also seemed rather promising, but Gawain could not help but feel uncertain. “I remember someone had once attempted to use the forces of magic to utilize theurgies, but it all failed. A priest of the Holy Light was even devoured by the Holy Light as such… Are you sure there are no risks to this technique?”

“The risks definitely exist. All magic has risks, but controlling the risks is a compulsory lesson for us.” Pittman nodded. “I also know about those failures you mentioned. We’ve discussed them the previous time. At present, in my opinion, their failures are actually having gone the wrong way.”

“Gone the wrong way?”

“That’s right, gone the wrong way. Those people who attempted to use magic to control theurgies but failed were merely forcefully replacing the symbols in theurgies with elemental runes through the translation of elemental language and the method of substitution. It is just like forcefully replacing every individual word in the elven language into those with similar meanings in humankind’s common language and attempting to translate an elven book using such a method. Although all the individual words have been changed, due to differences in language and morphology laws, the product of such replacement can only be unreadable rubbish.” Pittman shook his head. “Whereas the Master Mages of the Gondor Empire have done much more brilliantly. They realized that they could not ‘translate’ divine power using humankind’s ‘language’, so they created a kind of ‘interface’. This interface did not try to forcefully translate the symbols in theurgies but drew theurgy circles. Then it would set up magical runes used for control at every critical position and use materials that are both spiritual and magic-conducting to serve as ‘transfer mediums’ at the input and output stages. Through such a method, they indirectly changed divine power from a ‘rigid energy’ that can only work through strictly adhering to religious doctrines into a ‘flexible energy’ like magical power that can be easily used by mortals.”

For some reason, when Gawain heard Pittman’s description about forcefully using elemental runes to replace theurgy symbols, what emerged in his mind were the two words, ‘machine translation’.

Was this the otherworldly version of machine translation making people miserable…

Gawain shook his head, casting those unreliable associations about ‘machine translation’ out, then looked at Pittman, and asked, “So, you’ve grasped the skill of such ‘interfaces’?”

“I cannot say I’ve completely grasped it. After all, what you had copied back were only some magic circles, and not the Gondor Empire’s primary research data. I still have to properly dig into those magic circles before I can figure out the specific theory behind such interfaces.” Pittman was not careless in such areas that involved professionalism and risks and answered honestly. “Right now, I’ve only found some ways of utilizing it and attached it to the Druid’s ancient theurgy circle.”

Pittman stroked his beard when he came to this point, a smile appearing on his face. “Strictly speaking, what I’m doing on the Druid theurgy circle is the opposite of what the Gondor Empire Master Mages had done —— they were drawing powers from theurgies, but the Druid theurgies had long become invalid, so the theurgies are no longer able to release energy to the outside. Therefore, I reversed this process, using magical power to ‘charge’ the theurgy circle, thereby allowing the latter to operate. Of course, there is a measure of waste in this process, but it isn’t too big. Under the support of the new Honeycomb Magic Web, the energy waste caused by such inverse change can totally be accepted.”

The old Druid lifted his hand and pointed to a certain corner of the set of apparatus on the alchemy platform. “You should have noticed already. It has an interface to connect to the Magic Web left. So, we just have to connect it to the Magic Web, and the power of the Magic Web would convert into energy for the theurgy circle through this ‘divine-power inversion circle’ on the alchemy platform and as a result, catalyze the potions in these two vessels, just as if there’s an ancient Druid priest casting spells on them, turning the ordinary herb juice in the vessels into magic potions…”

After ending the explanation, the old Druid exhaled deeply and turned to Gawain. “Lord, this is the avenue for mass production that I found.”

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