Chapter 877 - 6: Manually Crafted Second Magic!
The sunlight outside the window is just right.
The trees near the teaching building cast patches of shade, the midsummer sunlight filtering through the gaps in the leaves, sprinkling mottled spots on the ground the size of copper coins. The sound of cicadas fills the entire summer, seemingly unable to bear the unbearable heat.
Summer is scorching, the sun blazing high, the air so hot that it feels suffocating.
Yet there is a different kind of energy, as if the blazing sun and the cicadas were meant to make up the summer.
"Parallel worlds..."
Playing with the green gemstone in his hand, Gu Mo leaned his chin on his hand, looking somewhat nostalgically out the classroom window. Despite sitting near the middle, it didn’t stop him from seeing the students running and shouting on the distant sports field.
He was finally sitting in a classroom again, like an ordinary student—
A middle-aged female teacher on the podium held a test paper, adjusted her glasses, and wiped the sweat from her forehead in the sweltering weather.
Having just explained a problem, she didn’t even pause to take a breath before moving on to the next one. Casually picking up the blackboard eraser, she quickly erased a large section of densely written chalk to create a blank space on the other side.
Then the chalk hit the blackboard forcefully, accompanied by a crisp knocking sound, scribbling down the slightly messy yet vigorous chalk characters.
Scratch, scratch, scratch—
Below the podium, the students bent over their desks, writing rapidly, the tips of their ballpoint pens pressing hard onto the paper, making a continuous rustling sound.
Most of the students were engaged in the same activity, and what would normally be a subtle noise became quite obvious when all combined together, echoing throughout the classroom.
"..."
"..."
In this background environment, Gu Mo glanced around, capturing the faces of those who seemed long forgotten, then his gaze slightly moved upwards to the slogans hanging on the blackboard without a word.
"Treasure Sword sharpens through grinding, Plum Blossom fragrance comes from bitter cold," "Battle the College Entrance Exam, Change Destiny," "Effort Leads to Success, Persistence Ensures Victory," "Countdown to College Entrance Exam ×× Days"...
Looking at these hanging red banners, he couldn’t help but feel a bit nostalgic.
The grand ocean-like mind and the deep abyss-like thoughts couldn’t help but ripple, stirring up memories from a long time ago. The feelings from his once-mortal days surfaced with that faded time, tasting slightly of nostalgia and a mix of emotions.
Taking a light breath, Gu Mo looked down, pondering over the green gemstone in his hand, carefully feeling the vast powerful energy within.
No doubt, this was one of the parallel worlds of the real dimension.
He accurately observed the infinite, parallel worlds through the unfolded high-dimensional horizon, but observing is one thing, intervening is another. Wanting to move between parallel worlds, purely relying on the information he observed, and his personal experience with the Second Magic—
These naturally aren’t enough and can only serve as references for deducing skill prototypes.
However, the related skills themselves have not yet been truly analyzed and mastered, so to truly traverse between parallel world lines, one still needs to rely on the power of the gemstones.
Even though in the process of exploring and utilizing the power of the Time Gem, his comprehension of the Time Domain is rapidly improving, progressing by leaps and bounds... after all, with the super computing power brought by the True Body Machine God Avatar on the path of Mechanical Ascension, plus having the actual Infinity Gem in hand—
There are computational resources if needed.
There are research samples if needed.
Under such sufficient and favorable conditions, if the advancement were as slow as the analysis of the Third Magic, it would indeed be unjustifiable... but ultimately, it belongs to the domain of "magic", and it’s truly not easy to reap fruits.
......
——"Second Magic · Parallel World Interference: 89/100"
......
However, on the system skills page, the accumulation progress of proficiency clearly indicates that his attempt to recreate the Second Magic project is astonishing in progress.
Almost 90% of the work is completed, and the last step isn’t far away.
In complete contrast, however, is the Third Magic, established much earlier than the Second Magic, yet the progress towards the successful condensation of the Skill Badge is still like downloading a large file from a certain cloud drive at a speed of just a few K or a few dozens of K.
......
——"Third Magic · Soul Materialization: 65/100"
......
To be honest, if the system couldn’t clearly show the degree of mastery over a new advanced ability, quantifying the process of analysis, learning, and mastery into a visible form, Gu Mo would doubt whether recreating the Third Magic was a waste of time.
Just like the former Einzbern Family, no matter how much manpower and resources were invested, it seemed forever impossible to truly recreate a miracle.
In the end, everyone thoroughly despaired, leaving or giving up, with only the puppets continuing their operations day after day.
That’s just how it is. The real despair doesn’t come from anything else; it’s simply from not seeing positive feedback, not knowing if you’re making progress, not knowing if you’re wasting your time doing something akin to Sisyphus pushing a rock up a hill—
Even the Gods believe there is no more severe punishment than engaging in such futile and hopeless labor.
Thus, Sisyphus’s life slowly withers away in a task that is ineffective and hopeless... It’s an extremely despairing situation.
Fortunately, Gu Mo is different because the mechanism of skill practice mastery makes this process quantifiable and visible. He understood from the start that he wasn’t engaging in futile efforts, until the possibility of recreating magic truly existed, but at the end of the road, he could indeed pick that precious fruit.
Though the process is very lengthy...
The speed of progress is truly slow...
If it weren’t for the qualitative improvement of the computational capabilities recently, the progress bar now probably wouldn’t have accumulated more than half of its current state; it’s genuinely heart-wrenching to watch. But considering the abundant and significant rewards, considering the soul’s transformation into an ever-moving mechanism, obtaining an endless magic power source, it’s an important step towards advancing the Spirit to a stellar scale...
Then—
All of this is absolutely worth it!
Gently clenching the emerald Time Gem, it seemed as if the infinite branches of the time tree were reflected in Gu Mo’s eyes... The initial change altered everything, the subsequent second acknowledged more, and the Second Magic affirmed the possibility of Parallel Worlds, those innumerable "IF" routes are precisely the extension of an infinite future.
Hence, although the Second Magic is said to interfere with Parallel Worlds, it also encompasses the operation of time.
Conversely, from the aspect of time operation, one can enter the domain of Parallel World Interference, that’s the logic.
"The world line fluctuation is minor, yet within this parallel world line, I’m still in high school?"
Looking down at his outdated school uniform, Gu Mo pondered rather wistfully.
But it’s just the appearance; when he appears in the current parallel world line, it means the temporal counterpart known as "himself" has been unified as one entity... In this same ordinary, unremarkable world, a fantastical being has flown in from another timeline.
And such things can be foreseen to continue happening in countless parallel world lines...
Furthermore, if he truly completes the Second Magic, it would mean gathering the power of infinite parallels and, with the Second Magic’s "maintaining identity in parallel worlds" characteristic, there will no longer be any counterparts of him in all parallel worlds, only a single existence.
Gently clenching the Time Gem in his hand, he had no nostalgia for this period, directly unleashing that tremendous energy.
World line fluctuation rate...
From an almost indiscernible number far beyond the decimal point, the number representing this fluctuated slightly...
Parallel world leap—activate!
......
...
The impact of time and space naturally arrived; within microseconds, time, space, lines, everything in the material world begins to disassemble and then reassemble. As if the entire world shattered and then appeared again, he found himself on an unfamiliar street.
All around were no longer the familiar scenes of classrooms, schools, playgrounds...
It was autumn winds and falling leaves, the atmosphere bleak, pedestrians hurriedly passing by on the street, many shops already closed, and a layer of dust accumulating on the mannequins in the windows... The city still seemed like the same city, but it gave a drearily bald impression, although the era is clearly very close.
"During wartime... economic turmoil..."
Standing on the street, Gu Mo frowned slightly. He dispersed some Spiritual Power, scanning over the planet’s atmosphere, intercepting radio waves in the air, while simultaneously decoding the wavelength messages projected by countless people’s superficial thoughts, instantly gaining insight into the world line’s developmental direction.
It’s almost the brink of the Third World War...
Though each country ultimately restrained themselves, however the distance to a full-scale outbreak of nuclear war, and human civilization regressing directly back to the Stone Age truly seems just a little bit away...
Now is the post-war period, with only a few days since the war’s official end, no wonder such a desolate scene.
Just a small fluctuation of the number so far behind the decimal point, and the rate of world change can almost be ignored, yet it signifies such a dramatically contrasting alternate world line, just a sliver away from diving straight into a global wasteland era under the test of nuclear flames?
What if the world line fluctuation rate were more than ten percent, more than several tens of percent... What kind of dramatic, vastly divergent world would that be?
He appeared thoughtful, slowly walking to the front of the glass window of a nearby shop, staring at the swiftly opened skills information page on the system panel.
—Skill mastery has clearly increased a notch.
—Currently, the progress bar for Second Magic officially breaks through the 90-point milestone.
Smoother than expected; Gu Mo immediately perceived that pure computation, analysis, simulated deduction had minimal returns, so now he attempts to continue gaining experience through practical operation. Even if only by sheer quantity piling, ten times, hundred times, thousand times, ten thousand times...
He will tirelessly fill the last part of experience—
Thus achieving the accomplishment of manually completing Second Magic!