A week later.
An oddly-shaped windmill stood behind Richard's palace. When a gust of wind blew, the turret on the top of the windmill automatically adjusted itself with a twisting sound. Then the main blades installed on it aligned itself with the wind's direction and began to rotate .
This was a mechanical energy transfer.
Swipe, swipe.
Through its gear and crankshaft, the rotating blade drove the lower magnet rotor to rotate as well. A metal coil around the rotor was continuously generating and importing current, via a metal wire connected to the bottom of the windmill.
Thus mechanical energy was transformed into electrical energy.
At the bottom, a simple and practical lead storage battery had been fixed. It was absorbing the current and storing it, waiting to release it when needed.
And thus electricity was converted into chemical energy.
Night time, in the bedroom of Richard's palace.
Richard sat on the bed with a fully-charged lead storage battery in front of him.
With his eyes closed, Richard was in deep meditation, his body vibrating rapidly. Then, like a butterfly breaking out of a cocoon, his consciousness rushed out of his body.
Looking at his body with his consciousness eyes, Richard tried to use his spiritual power to control it. He had done this many times, it practically was like a walk in the park for him by now. Soon, the body sitting on the bed moved, slowly raising its hands and touching the two external wires of the lead battery.
Crack.
The moment the body's hands touched the wire, it became a conductor and formed a closed circuit with the lead storage battery. The current quickly flowed out of the lead storage battery and into the body. The electric current's sensation spread all over his body and passed to Richard's consciousness through the transparent tape at the back of his neck. It felt hot and numbing.
The biological current in the body began to increase tremendously, and his cells entered the highly activated state.
As Richard recalled the instructions on The Writings of Monroe, he started collecting his spiritual power.
After gathering as much spiritual power as possible, it had become semi-solid, like a very small speck of dust. He controlled this speck of spiritual dust to float to his heart, fixed it, and condensed another speck of spiritual dust before sticking them together.
This process, similar to a swallow building a nest, was time consuming.
According to The Writings of Monroe, unlocking the magic source was very important to wizards, and it often took dozens of days, or even months.
The longer the period, the larger the size of the magic source constructed and the more mana (energy) could be stored. As a result, more magic could be released.
Of course, since the magic source could be constructed, it could also be modified. There were many wizards who merely built a small magic source at the beginning. When they later felt that it could not meet their needs, they modified and expanded the size of the magic source.
However, modifying a magic source was not easier than building a new one. Therefore, wizards who did not want to do it would just continuously unlock new magic sources as they advanced. They said that the most powerful wizard in the world had more than 10 magic sources, and his magic would almost never be exhausted.
Of course, with more than 10 magic sources, perfectly using the mana in each magic source without any clashes was also a problem. But for beginners—Apprentice Wizards—it was obviously slightly early to consider this.
While thinking, Richard kept condensing the spiritual dust, slowly constructing his magic source. He worked all night yet only managed to build a structure the size of a fingernail, which was far from building a complete magic source.
But Richard was not in a hurry. For a long time, he continued to build it patiently.
As time went by, the magic source gradually formed. At last, a standard diamond-shaped source had been built in the middle of Richard's chest.
Afterward, Richard had to face the third life reconstruction—energy smelting—to become a wizard.
According to the explanation in The Writings of Monroe, energy smelting was meant to transform the energy absorbed from astral projection into the purest form of standard energy: mana.
In other words, because of the differences between celestial bodies, the energy from astral projection was mixed. Even if this energy was stored in the magic source, it would be difficult to use it. As such, he had to smelt and transform it into a universal mana before releasing magic.
To carry out the third reconstruction, energy smelting, the body had to be in a high-energy state.
Regarding this high-energy state, Richard had developed some theories while unlocking the magic source. Among them, the most likely one was that it was connected to the magnetic field.
According to The Writings of Monroe, during the second life reconstruction and the third life reconstruction, energy enveloped the entire body. They had certain similarities, but they were not exactly the same.
Taking into account the relationship between electricity and magnetism, it wasn't hard to determine what the third reconstruction was.
Once one figured this out, the problem was easier and a lot simpler than the first and second life reconstructions. Because of electromagnetic induction, electricity could create magnetism, and magnetism could produce electricity.
In the room, a metal coil was surrounding the bed. When the current in the lead storage battery flowed along the coil, a magnetic field was formed naturally.
Richard, who was in it, could clearly sense the energy stored in the magic source, being refined bit by bit, and eventually turning into mana.
So far, all three obstacles to becoming a wizard, the so-called three life reconstruction, had been solved by scientific methods.
Suddenly, the door to magic opened.
One month and a half later, late at night.
The entirety of Blue Lion City had gone to sleep, and the palace was extremely quiet.
In the bedroom of Richard's palace.
Richard was not meditating tonight, he just stood at the window. His thoughts remained unknown.
After a while, Richard turned around, and his gaze fell on the bed where The Writings of Monroe laid. The book had been opened on a certain page, the one that explained the Zero-ring Spell.
The Zero-ring Spell.
According to The Writings of Monroe, spells were divided into Zero-ring Spells, One-ring Spells, Two-ring Spells, Three-ring Spells and so on, which also correspond to different wizard levels.
Among them, an Apprentice Wizard could release Zero-ring Spells and occasionally a less powerful One-ring Spell.
A Level 1 Wizard could release One-ring Spell. In his best state, he could release some Two-ring Spells.
Level 2 Wizards usually released Two-ring Spells. When they tried their best, they could release Three-ring Spells.
And it kept following this pattern.
Ring Spells were subdivided into three small levels—low, medium, and high.
Obviously, the higher the number of the spell, the stronger the power and the greater the difficulty. In fact, the power of One-ring Spells alone could already be considered terrifying, and the most powerful One-ring spells—namely the high-level ones—were as powerful as missiles on Modern Earth.
Zero-ring Spells were the lowest-level spells, and most had no destructive power. They had limited effects such as creating light, opening doors, repelling the enemy, forewarning about beasts, among others.
The weakest Zero-ring Spells—low-level Zero-ring Spells—were often termed as tricks by wizards.
At this moment, the spell Richard was reading was a trick called the Phosphorus Candle.
"Kriter er pullas turk ainize."
An obscure spell came from his mouth, and Richard slowly stretched out a hand.
The magic source in his body shook, and mana gushed out, circulating along his blood vessels rapidly. As this happened, certain specific changes were occurring within him.
When the circulation reached a certain speed, the mana was activated, like boiling water. He felt an obvious burning sensation as it passed through his blood vessels.
Richard's palm shook. The activated mana flowed along the radial artery, entered the veins of his palm to his fingertips, and then rushed out.
All five fingers in Richard's right hand shook violently. Poof! Five deep blue flames appeared and burned quietly.
As he closed five fingers towards the center, the five flames merged into a bigger flame, burning more furiously, and illuminating the entire bedroom. Under the blue light, the atmosphere of the entire house turned sinister. The sultry summer night became a bit colder, as if the air temperature had suddenly dropped by several degrees.
"A Phosphorus Candle? Does phosphorus burn? So the color of the flame is blue?" Richard muttered to himself as he held the flame and walked to the window. He looked outside and there was no one.
With a throw, the flame flew into the air. Its size quickly expanded from the size of a fist to that of a basin, and then to the size of a bathtub.
A 50 cm diameter flame cast a faint blue reflection on the ground in front of the palace, making the building look very strange and mysterious. Just as it was about to expand again, it went out with a puff, disappearing without a trace like it had never existed.
Edward, the Chief Bodyguard, who was also guarding the palace gate then, suddenly looked up, and there was a flash across his eyes. He thought to have seen something extraordinary from the corner of his eye but found nothing when he looked around.
"Did I see it wrong?" Edward shook his head and lowered it. His gaze returned to the palm-sized book in his hands, and he revised its "content" again.
"Countess Elizabeth gave a lovely smile and, suddenly…"
Richard, who was in the bedroom, sensed a special wave of energy dissipating outside the window. He looked at his hands, and there were no burnt marks. His eyes sparkled. "Spells. Is this a real spell? Is this pseudoscience that cannot be explained by science? Or potential science that Modern Earth has not explored yet?"
"No matter what, the legend of the wizard seems to be true here. In that case, the more I want to figure out the truth of this world and how I came here. How interesting."
He closed his eyes, as if he was savoring the moment, and opened his eyes after a long time. Richard nodded and said seriously, "Well, this is really interesting."