Chapter 21: I Am a Spellcaster (Part One)

“The conditions for a Corrosion Jackal to spray acid liquid are a strange rhythm and a drastic fluctuation of mental power, along with consuming sulfur. Different amounts of sulfur will lead to differences in the quality and quantity of acid liquid sprayed. Too much or too little is ineffective. The optimal amount is half a kilogram.

This strange rhythm and drastic fluctuation of mental power must be the main cause, and sulfur is an indispensable supplementary material.”

The next day, Ace imitated the Corrosion Jackal’s set of mental fluctuations and even tried holding sulfur in his mouth, but he still could not trigger the strange rhythm and could not spray corrosive acid like the dog. Simple imitation cannot succeed; dissection is necessary, Ace wrote in his experiment diary.

On the third day, Ace dissected one of the jackals. In his experiment diary, he meticulously recorded and sketched the jackal’s organs and found a mysterious pattern on the jackal’s throat. When Ace tried to touch the strange pattern with his mental power, the pattern suddenly absorbed Ace’s mental power, and a familiar rhythm appeared. “Poof!” A little black smoke emerged.

Ace tried using sulfur in conjunction with the activation, but the effect was unsatisfactory. Acid liquid did appear, splashing everywhere and almost corroding his hand. After several attempts, the effect did not improve significantly. Ace speculated that directly triggering it through the throat might not be appropriate.

Ace excitedly recorded in his experiment diary that he tried to sketch the pattern on parchment. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. After many attempts, he found that when the pattern he drew was very similar to the one on the throat, it would naturally disappear. Why is this?

After a night of tossing and turning, Ace came up with a possibility: this pattern represents supernatural power, triggering a mysterious rhythm and achieving acid liquid spray through sulfur. Painting it probably requires a supernatural item or something tainted with the supernatural.

On the fourth day, Ace tried using the jackal’s solidified blood but found it did not work. He then bled a living jackal from its limbs and found it was still ineffective.

After careful thought, he decided to use the living blood from the jackal’s throat for painting. The two slaves watched Ace torment the jackal, covered in the jackal’s fresh blood, with eerie expressions on their faces. They immediately turned ashen and trembled uncontrollably, their legs shaking.

Ace used an earthenware pot to slowly collect the living blood from the jackal’s throat. The jackal died struggling from the pain. Ace turned and glanced at the two slaves whose legs were shaking. They immediately wet themselves. Ace was speechless. Is it really that terrifying?

He ignored them, waved the two slaves away, and returned to his room to try painting the mysterious pattern from the throat. This time he succeeded. The mysterious pattern was successfully drawn on the parchment. Just as Ace was lost in fascination looking at the mysterious pattern, the parchment began to spontaneously combust. If he hadn’t thrown it quickly, it would have burned his finger.

“Supernatural, supernatural, supernatural!” Ace paced restlessly. “That’s right, parchment is not a supernatural material. It seems I need more than just the living blood from the throat; I also need its hide.”

Ace took out the jackal hide he had roasted dry a few days ago and tried painting with the living blood. He found that only the white fur section beneath the neck could successfully hold the mysterious pattern without spontaneously combusting.

He carefully cut a rectangular piece of the white fur. Holding the white fur with the mysterious pattern in his left hand and the sulfur in his right, he tried to activate the mysterious pattern with his mental power.

The mysterious rhythm appeared, the sulfur vanished, and acid liquid splashed out from his left hand.

“Success!” Ace roared in excitement to himself.

He now conducts his experiments on the mountain behind the estate, only returning when it is dark.

Continuing with multiple experiments, the range of the acid liquid splash was not far enough, only two or three meters. He flipped through the records in his experiment diary. The conditions for the jackal to spray acid liquid were three: drastic mental fluctuation, a mysterious rhythm, and sulfur. Perhaps he should approach it from the mental power angle.

His mental power could interfere with matter, so it most likely had supernatural attributes. This time, he did not directly inject mental power into the fur with the mysterious pattern. He tried to control his mental power, tracing the pattern.

“Bang!” The tracing failed. His mental power scattered and rebounded, and his brain felt like it was severely pricked by a needle. His next attempt brought a splitting headache. Ace had no choice but to rest properly and wait for his mental power to recover naturally.

On the sixth day, he tried tracing again. This time he was very careful. Although he failed, he was not harmed by the scattered mental power. After several attempts, Ace discovered that the mysterious pattern had a special internal structure. After deconstructing the pattern, he divided it into three simpler patterns.

He tried to directly create one simple pattern using mental power. This time he succeeded. The pattern seemed to trigger some kind of rhythm. Nature seemed to respond to him with a certain power. He felt his mental power suddenly fluctuate significantly, and his overall mental power seemed to have increased slightly. This is a pattern that can mobilize a special power from nature and can enhance mental power to some extent, he wrote in his experiment diary.

He tried the other two patterns. When not combined with the first pattern, the other two patterns had no effect. When combined, one pattern directly shot the sulfur in his hand away, and the other instantly turned the sulfur into acid liquid. It did not splash but directly burned his hand.

Ace ignored the pain in his hand and persisted in creating the combination of the three patterns in the air using mental power, without the aid of the fur. Acid liquid splashed, and the attack distance reached nearly 7 meters! Then, a violent headache struck, and he had overused his mental power again.

This time, it took him two full days to recover. In the following days, Ace conducted various experiments. He found that tracing the pattern directly without fur assistance consumed about three times the mental power. He could only perform the acid liquid splash four times with mental power alone. With the help of the fur, he could perform it nearly 13 times. Any attempt beyond that would result in mental power overuse.

He tried using the pattern that mobilized the special power of nature alone. He found that it could quickly enhance his mental power and his perception of the special power. Using it on ordinary fur for a while allowed the mysterious pattern to be drawn on that fur, but it was not permanent and would fade after some time.

He then tried to improve the crafting process of the patterned fur. He ground the throat into a paste, mixed it with the living blood, and blended it thoroughly. When tracing the pattern onto the fur with the blood mixed with the ground throat, he simultaneously injected mental power. Finally, he fixed the patterned fur into a hard card. With the aid of this hard card, the acid liquid splash distance reached 7 meters, and the overall corrosive effect was close to the effect achieved by tracing the pattern in the air.

“The experiments on the Corrosion Jackals are basically complete. It is time to summarize the experiments,” Ace mumbled to himself. He had not showered for several consecutive days. His body was covered in the jackal’s blood, his face was haggard, and he exuded a sense of horror that made one’s scalp crawl.

Ace had a slave heat bath water. He took a comfortable hot bath, returned to his room, lit the oil lamp, and began to write furiously in the dark. This made him feel as if he were back in his past life, writing a thesis after an experiment, which was both a summary and an honor.

He shook his head, casting aside the memories of his past life, and began to write three words on the parchment: Spellcaster, with the smaller subtitle: A Systematic Study of the Corrosion Jackal.

“Abstract: This paper primarily describes the experiment and conclusions regarding the Corrosion Jackal’s acid liquid spraying ability and attempts to define the phenomena observed.

“The Corrosion Jackal is a standard low-level Monster , which likes to eat sulfur and can spray acid liquid 3 to 5 meters away. Its power is roughly equivalent to a Noble who has awakened bloodline power. Through this experiment, the author successfully discovered the secret of the Corrosion Jackal’s acid liquid spray and successfully mimicked and improved the acid liquid spray, which the author names Acid Splash. The experiment’s design is…

“Therefore, we can conclude the following: the mysterious pattern is, in a sense, a supernatural language. The author names this language Rune.

“The mysterious rhythm of nature caused by the mental power tracing the Rune brings forth supernatural power, which then expresses the meaning of the Rune, causing the supernatural phenomenon to appear. The author names this rhythm, learned from the Monsters, Magic, and names the supernatural power Mana.”