"Gurgle, gurgle!"
At the moment the crimson liquid began to drip, a sound resembling a human gulping water echoed sharply, and the entire book visibly twitched, its cover and pages seeming to come alive.
Simultaneously, Richard felt the temperature in the room plummet several degrees, turning the atmosphere chilly and dim. Outside the side tower, the hounds barked sharply, and the horses in the stables whinnied in distress. But soon, as if their throats had been strangled, the sounds ceased abruptly because...
"Crack!"
Richard's hand rested firmly on the cover of the book.
At the moment of contact, he felt a sensation of warmth and elasticity, akin to pressing against human skin.
Immediately, from the point of contact, dark ink began to spread like ripples, radiating outward.
Before long, a line of text appeared just above the previous inscription, occupying the rightful place of the book's title: Loren's Human Skin Diary.
"Loren's Human Skin Diary?!" Richard read aloud, pausing dramatically at the last four characters.
"A Human Skin Diary? 'Diary' suggests it's a reading notebook; 'skin' implies it's written on human skin. So, this must be a systematically compiled reading journal, right? Hm, written on human skin, nonetheless," Richard mused.
Without much hesitation, he flipped open the cover and glanced at the contents.
The first page of the book was filled with densely packed handwriting.
Richard started reading from the first line: "Mortal, be quiet and listen as I unveil the secrets of wizards…"
A night passed without sleep.
As dawn broke, light flooded in, replacing the darkness with daylight. Richard slowly closed the Human Skin Diary in his loft laboratory.
Standing by the window, he observed the soldiers, servants, and grooms stirring in the morning at Baron Leo's castle, a rare smile crept across his face.
"How interesting," Richard reflected.
He couldn't help but add, "Really, very interesting."
In that moment, Richard felt a surge of excitement. After a night of reading, he realized that his years of effort in searching for magical creatures were not in vain; he had caught a glimpse into the corner of a mysterious world.
Closing his eyes, Richard quickly recalled the diary's contents. After a long while, he murmured, "If this diary isn't deceiving me, then becoming a wizard capable of casting spells, even as a lowly apprentice casting simple spells, is incredibly difficult."
Many fantasy novels depicted training methods that often involved meditative postures, absorbing the energies of the world, and storing them within one's body to be released during battles.
However, the diary described a far more complex process.
Though it didn't completely stray from the trio of absorbing, storing, and releasing energies, each process came with numerous requirements.
Richard sat down at the laboratory table, unrolling a papyrus scroll and laying it out. Dipping a quill into ink, he began to write, organizing his thoughts; this too was a form of his notes.
First, energy absorption.
In the Human Skin Diary, this process was referred to as meditation.
Richard understood meditation, rooted in modern India's yoga, a technique for entering a deep meditative state. While it was said to help one grasp the universe's essence, that was rather mystical; however, it truly did enhance focus and calm the mind.
The meditation described in the Human Skin Diary was even deeper than that found in Indian practices. If Indian meditation brought one to a state of semi-consciousness, the meditation in Loren's diary led one into complete slumber, maintaining awareness while becoming entirely unresponsive to the external world.
Richard felt this resembled a nightmare state, somewhat akin to what some modern individuals on Earth called "lucid dreaming," Monroe's "Journey Out of The Body," or "astral projection."
Generally, achieving this state often required abruptly waking from deep sleep. Before the motor centers of the body were activated, one had to willfully keep the body paralyzed while only the brain remained active. However, the success rate was extremely low; perhaps one in dozens of attempts would yield results.
Entering such a state slowly and deliberately under normal conditions was also exceptionally challenging, as it required mastery of the Indian meditation technique.
These were the first two difficulties Richard faced—neither of which he could overcome.
Following closely was the second difficulty.
According to the Human Skin Diary, meditation allowed for the acquisition of some elemental energy. However, under normal circumstances, these elemental energies could not be stored in the body. One must create a specialized mana core through consciousness to store them.
Creating a mana core demanded exceptional mental strength and required the body to be in a peculiar activated state. Knowing how to enter this state constituted the second difficulty.
Lastly, there was the third difficulty.
The diary detailed that the energy stored within the mana core could not be summoned directly. As the absorbed elemental energies varied, they had to be refined into a pure and singular elemental energy before they could be successfully released as spells. The refining process required the body to enter another activated state, similar yet not identical to that needed for creating a mana core. Knowing how to achieve this state formed the third difficulty.
Only when all three challenges were overcome could one be deemed capable of casting spells.
Those who managed to conquer all three difficulties were considered gifted candidates for wizardry, referred to as "golden seeds." Those who stumbled at one hurdle but navigated the other two were deemed "silver seeds." Generally, silver seeds, under the guidance of true wizards, had a considerable chance of becoming competent wizards; however, they were often not as formidable as their golden seed counterparts.
The majority of individuals, ordinary people, found themselves unable to conquer any of the three difficulties, living their entire lives lingering at the gates of the wizarding world. They were known as "black seeds," a term akin to "Muggles" in Earth's novels like Harry Potter, bearing discriminatory and derogatory connotations.
Richard was one such individual.
Testing a method from the Human Skin Diary, Richard soon realized he was indeed among the ordinary, incapable of overcoming any of the three barriers—an unequivocal black seed. Upon discovering this reality, Richard accepted the truth without distress.
To be honest, Richard had never viewed himself as possessing any special talent. According to the diary, golden seeds had a likelihood of less than one in a hundred thousand, while silver seeds fell below one in ten thousand. Black seeds comprised a staggering forty-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-eight point nine out of fifty thousand. Thus, possessing talent was an exceedingly rare occurrence; lacking talent was the norm.
Richard felt no disappointment in this.
For him, the most intriguing prospect wasn't becoming a wizard but rather studying wizards. The desire to be a wizard without talent was essentially a death sentence. However, the aspiration to research wizards, devoid of talent, simply guided him towards a variety of research directions.
Why must wizards conquer these three formidable challenges in order to cast spells? Was there a way for someone utterly devoid of talent to adeptly tackle all three obstacles?
What was so thrilling about becoming a wizard? The actual excitement lay in the potential to unveil the secrets of wizardry, develop methods for mass-producing wizards, and unravel the mysteries of all the enigmatic forces of this world—that was what truly captivated him.
"Rustle, rustle…"
Richard slowed his writing with the quill on the papyrus until he finally came to a complete stop. Looking over what he had written, surveying the various possibilities and hypotheses for overcoming the three hurdles, a smirk appeared on his face.
"The three great challenges? Interesting! Let me see just how difficult they can be."