Chapter 71
"Dear friends, I think you're a little curious about covenant spells, but you must control your curiosity. Attached is a discussion by Mage Emerson on what age apprentices should be able to summon the water lord. Although I once said I didn't believe his argument, I'm still giving it to you as a reference.
I have some good news to tell you. Swis and I have confirmed that the author of "Book of Elements: Scroll of Water" and "Endless Water Realm Fantasy" is the same person. Although you suggested it could be plagiarism or a rewrite, the similarities in the data are too high, so they must be written by the same person. This is amazing! We've admired Esselt Aebi for almost eight years, but even my sister didn't know his true identity. I never expected that I would meet you and discover his real identity in just a few months. Sashara Canyon, our magic theory teacher's favorite author is her. She even said she wouldn't go to the tower to study because Esselt doesn't accept disciples. She's quite stubborn."
The two papers in the attachment are made of different materials and written in different styles. Together, they roughly discuss the magical power apprentices can achieve when they enter advanced school after receiving training starting from primary school. They also discuss how, under this condition, the average spell strength can summon a normal water lord.
Even if a student has great magical power and their spell strength can reach great depths, if they are too young and don't have strong magical support, they will fail to summon a powerful water lord that can exist in the mortal realm due to insufficient power. So, in principle, the later, the better.
Glancing at her notebook, Sylas counted. She already had... six lines. So, there should be two more lines somewhere. Judging from her experience of using ancient Saiti language spells for about four years, they should be the last two sentences...
The only clue she had was... the paper written by the teacher herself. But she couldn't just ask her for it or look in front of her. That would disrupt the illusion of tranquility.
With that in mind, she quietly made her way to the shelf where she kept the journals. The book she accidentally got wet yesterday was slightly out of place, as she had hastily wiped it down and put it back on the shelf - a little crooked.
Sylas stood back where yesterday's incident occurred, pondering the trajectory of the water droplet. Something felt off - why did only that one droplet splash all the way to the bottom? She bent down to touch the book and suddenly saw a flash of golden light in the corner of her eye.
She looked down at the ground. There was a small copper arrow embedded in the stone floor, perpendicular to the direction of the bookshelf. One arrow pointed to the left and the other pointed to the right, with a thin copper wire pointing towards the aisle in the middle.
It was strange. It was pointing at the book.
Sylas looked to the left and right. She conjured a water ball in her palm and threw it at the copper insert. Unexpectedly, the water ball split into two in mid-air, symmetrical and hit both sides.
Sylas threw another one and the same thing happened. She tried to push a small whirlwind along the wire, but the wind just passed by.
Completely symmetrical... Sylas didn't know when this little thing appeared or why it separated the water. It wasn't difficult for an elemental mage to embed something like this, but a pre-made metal piece couldn't be created using magic. It must have been there for a while. But could the strange trap attached to it be a clue?
Sylas slowly walked forward following the direction indicated by the copper wire. The image of the copper piece was incomplete - it seemed like it was missing half. Sylas walked to the middle of the opposite bookshelf and discovered, just at the right spot, another copper piece embedded in it that looked exactly the same and completely symmetrical. She quietly threw a water ball at it, and the water ball split into two identical halves again.
These two copper pieces inexplicably indicated a symmetrical line, but it only worked with water balls. She looked at both sides in confusion and unexpectedly saw Xerath's serious profile from the gap in the book.
Her first reaction was to shyly avert her gaze, but this area felt strangely familiar to her. "Hmm?"
This is the section for entries starting with 'A', and the missing book... Sylas picked up the adjacent book and saw that the missing one should be Am134, "Book of Elements · Scroll of Water."
This is definitely not a coincidence. She stood on the line of symmetry and automatically looked in the opposite direction to Xerath. Surprisingly, the books here were also taken away, leaving empty holes that allowed her to see through, passing through a distant bookshelf, and finally being stopped by a stack of books.
Sylas walked over. These few books could already be considered the most obvious clues, but this is the historical geography area where Sylas rarely goes, so of course she wouldn't have seen these books scattered around.
The top book had a bookmark sticking out, and Sylas picked it up and opened it. At first glance, that page didn't seem particularly special, with only a sentence and a faint pencil line underneath.
"Not here."
After reading that sentence, Sylas felt a strong sense of disappointment. Was Xerath joking or teasing her? She could still see Xerath's focused profile through the perfectly carved hollow in the layers of bookshelves, and suddenly an idea popped into her mind.
She put down the book and lowered her head to walk back from that cubbyhole.
One, two, three, ..., thirty-one, thirty-two.
Thirty-two, thirty-one, ..., three, two, one.
She paused and looked at Xerath's writing desk, then walked straight towards it.
Xerath was still looking at her homework. When she saw Sylas coming over, she politely asked her with her eyes what happened. Sylas shook her head gently and silently took a book from the top of a stack of notebooks on her desk.
This stack of notebooks and the earlier stack were arranged exactly the same, and they had been like this the whole time that Xerath was away! She only discovered it when the teacher came back!
This was an ordinary notebook that Xerath had bought many of because she needed them at any time. It had a plain leather cover. Sylas touched the cover with her hand and softly summoned the nearby wind to disperse the illusion. The light-colored leather slowly burned and peeled away, revealing a dark-colored cover inside with gold-embossed title, "Guild's Year 538 Graduation Thesis Collection".
Xerath's thesis was on the first page. Sylas flipped through two pages and found the book Virgil had mentioned.
With little effort, Sylas found what she should be looking for, "...and the covenant spells with the water lord leave a mark on the soul, just like the ordinary demon beast covenant spells do, because of '...and I treat them as a friend, providing them the convenience of freely entering and exiting the two realms.' These two sentences have the same effect as..."
There was a scroll next to it that had the demon beast covenant spells. What was very interesting was that its structure was exactly the same as summoning covenant spells with the water lord, except the subject and object were completely different, and there weren't many adverbs.
She looked up in shock. Xerath propped her chin up with her hand, and her faded eyes had a playful look. Her eyes squinted slightly, and a faint smile curled up on the corners of her mouth.
Ignoring this overly tender expression, she still asked like she had countless times before, "My little beast, what did you discover?"
Sylas suddenly blushed and found the courage to meet Xerath's gaze. "I-I think I found the spell!"
"Are you going to show it to me?"
"Um..."
"You intend to, right?"
Astonished, Sylas jumped up and then, as if making a decision, turned around and ran to her seat to grab her notebook. She flipped to the first page and pointed to her notes and annotations, speaking rapidly and urgently.
She described her process of deducing the structure of the spell, and meticulously explained why each noun needed such complex modifiers and adverbs. She shared her understanding and hypotheses about these structures, all the way to the last two spells Xerath had given her, where she got stuck.
"Um... I... I think these are the final two lines, because... they are very similar to this 'contract spells.' It's almost identical. I believe this contract spell must have a combined feature of a contract spell and a water elemental spell, so my hypothesis should be correct. Even if it's wrong, it's probably just a mistake in selecting the modifiers."
She tried to stand tall and make herself look more convincing.
Xerath didn't immediately respond, still looking at her and saying, "You should understand that if the spell is wrong, it could have serious consequences."
"Obviously, I understand."
"Are you planning to use this spell?"
Sylas paused for a moment, thinking it was an assignment. As long as she showed it to Xerath, she would say whether it was right or wrong.
But her teacher seemed to have different plans.
Faded flames flickered in her eyes, a hint of contempt hung on her lips, her eyes narrowed slightly, challenging and confident that Sylas wouldn't dare to accept the challenge.
Sylas quickly realized that this was just one step in Xerath's game. How should she answer to get the correct solution?
The faded flames seemed to illuminate her inner fear. Xerath asked in a casual tone, "If it weren't for me, if you discovered this spell on your own without any experienced wizards—because obviously, no one would support an apprentice who hasn't even been to primary school using this spell—would you test it and face the consequences?"
"I..."
Sylas said one word, her throat feeling choked. Despite her excitement, her mind calmly ran through the spell step by step.
Different mistakes in the spell would lead to different consequences. The most common one was structural errors that caused the elements to not work properly. However, this was the least likely part to go wrong: Sylas deduced the entire structure of the spell based on the water elemental spell, and just now, another summoning pact spell confirmed its correctness. Additionally, a twin's educational children's encyclopedia also validated the length and completeness of the structure.
"Tear open the crack leading to the Elemental Realm of water," this is a commonly used spell phrase. Although there is no concrete evidence in any article to prove its existence in the water lord summoning covenant spell, there is no problem or flaw in placing this sentence at the beginning, from a syntactic, grammatical, or spell format perspective.
