Chapter 12 One year and three months
The arrival of the Augustine family was just a small episode, and Locke soon returned to the days of studying and studying every day.
Time passed quickly, winter turned to spring, and Locke spent one year and three months at Aurelian College.
In Locke's dormitory, Locke has read all nine books of Vine Hand.
In the dormitory, a pot of mandrake placed on the windowsill has even grown, turning from a seed into a green leafy vine about three meters long.
This vine, under Locke's daily spiritual irrigation, has some magical properties and can even express some simple emotions.
For example, if you feel the air is cold, the leaves of the vine will curl up slightly, just like a person hugging himself into a ball after catching a cold.
If there is a lack of water, the vine will gently tap the window with its leaves to remind Locke to water.
Today, Locke looked at the last page of the ninth book of Vine Hand.
That is the last step to complete the hand of the vine, allowing the Mandrake vine to fully mature, leave the soil, and be grafted onto one's own spiritual power.
In this way, the mandrake vine can always be carried with you, and can be driven and used by spells at any time during battle.
Similar to, a vine pet.
Locke placed ten stones engraved with ancient language runes in the form of two circles around the mandrake flower pot, and then softly chanted the incantation.
At the same time, the mandrake vine that was originally climbing on the window seemed to be moving. The leaves of the vine began to shake, and the vine itself crawled slowly on the window.
Locke held a flower in his hand, and at the same time, he quickly recalled in his mind the last step, the common dangers and common possible side effects of mental power grafting.
Locke said: "Spiritual power grafting is the last step of the Vine Hand spell. The cultivated mandrake is removed from the soil, and through a ritual, it is connected to my mana. My mana supplies the mandrake, so that the mandrake can be commanded by me and better transformed by me to attack my enemies."
"According to the knowledge I read in the book, [Wizard Cole] of Verdantia University who invented the Vine Hand put forward a hypothesis - [Wood element particle plant birth hypothesis]. In this hypothesis, there were no wood element particles in this world, but after the birth of a certain plant, this plant took root in the water and soil. Among them, water element particles and earth element particles are combined to form composite wood element particles."
Locke thought: "Therefore, there are no wood element particles in this world, which is the basis of plant magic. Plants were born, so plants produced wood element particles."
"Unfortunately, Wizard Cole seemed to have not found the plant that gave birth to the first wood element particle until two hundred years ago, so this hypothesis is just a hypothesis, and there is not enough evidence to prove his point of view."
"But this hypothesis is one of the foundations of all the spells developed by the magic vine wizard Cole. Therefore, using the vine hand, I need to transfer the rich wood element particles elsewhere to my mandrake vine."
"The place where the wood element particles are most concentrated is the plant itself."
"Therefore, the casting medium of this spell is some kind of plant. Otherwise, if I cast the spell with my bare hands, I would be the one paying the price of life force. It is my own arms and my own muscles that wither."
Locke quickly ran through all the key points written in the nine books in his mind.
This is the first time he has actually cast a spell, the first time he has truly used magic independently.
Strangely, Locke was not as nervous as he thought. Instead, he was calm and composed, because today's spellcasting was something he had reviewed and meditated on day and night for nearly two years.
Every step is already very familiar to him.
Dean Tunguska also warned the three of them that Corfu is no better than the wizarding world and has very few magic resources, which means that it is difficult to find a doctor to treat injuries caused by magic.
In the past, there were many examples of young wizards in the academy who died due to their own carelessness and the backlash of their own spells.
Locke transferred the vitality and wood element particles in the flowers in his hand to the mandrake vine. The flowers in his hand quickly withered, while the mandrake quickly grew new green leaves, quickly becoming more mature and approaching its adult state.
Locke held a ceremonial knife made of obsidian and carefully carved the Ogham tree text under the trunk of the mandrake.
Through this rune, his mana will be officially grafted with the mandrake that has been transformed by his own mana, becoming an existence like his own arm.
Ogham Ancient Language is an ancient magical rune for universal plant magic.
This is exactly why, before learning the Vine Hand, you need to learn a prerequisite course, a course on the general basic knowledge of plant magic.
Since this mandrake has been nourished and transformed by its own magic power for too long, and its own magic power has strengthened its branches and leaves, strengthened its spirituality, and optimized its roots, the mandrake does not have much resistance.
But Locke still needs to concentrate all his attention on inscribing the Ogham tree inscriptions. There are a total of sixteen Ogham tree inscriptions that need to be inscribed.
If there is any mistake in the inscription, the best result will be that the mandrake will be destroyed by oneself. The worst result will be that oneself will be counterattacked by spells and be impacted by a large amount of wood elemental magic, turning every cell of oneself into wood and turning oneself into a wooden man.
While studying plant magic, the wizard's apprentice was poisoned and turned into a wooden man. This is a relatively common experimental accident.
But in fact, there may be more weird situations. It is written in the book that a wizard apprentice wrote a wrong symbol when inscribing the Ogham tree script, which caused the grafting to occur instead of the wizard and the vine.
However, fusing magical plants with oneself is a very high-level plant magic, an area that can only be studied by at least a first-level wizard.
Hence, the final result was that the third-class wizard apprentice himself turned into a humanoid plant and lost his self-awareness.
In the end, he was recovered by Wizard Cole and conducted some research that was omitted from the book.
About half an hour later, as Locke carefully carved the last Ogham rune, his body suddenly shook. At the same time, the mandrake in the flowerpot matured rapidly under the infusion of vitality. Then, with a "click", its body was disconnected from the root, and the three-meter-long vine was broken into two parts from the root.
The roots, which are about half a meter long, are still standing at the bottom of the soil in the flower pot, but they are rapidly turning yellow and losing all their vitality.
The sixteen Ogham tree inscriptions on the two-and-a-half-meter-long mandrake vines lit up with charming green light one by one, which was a signal that the plant magic was completed.
Locke whispered a spell.
Then, like a snake, the vine twisted on the ground, nimbly climbed up Locke's legs and feet, and then climbed up Locke's body, trying to get into his sleeves, but because the cuffs of the white wool school uniform Locke was wearing were too small, it tried several times and gave up after failure.
It was wrapped around Locke's right arm, and the extra part was wrapped around the base of Locke's shoulder and hung on Locke's body.
Locke sensed that the mandrake plant had fallen into a deep sleep. After all, it was difficult for a wizard with less than a level to use plant magic to make the magical plant move normally.
That requires a lot of mana.
In severe cases, it may even backfire on the wizard, causing him to sacrifice his own life force and wither part of his body.
Therefore, when facing the enemy, he can only recite a spell and sacrifice a plant to rejuvenate the mandrake and attack the enemy the moment it recovers.
Locke let out a breath, then walked to the table and wiped the sweat on his forehead with the handkerchief placed on the table, but there was a happy smile on his face. "Finally it's done."
He closed his eyes. The moment he completed the vine hand spell, he became a third-class wizard apprentice.
He closed his eyes and vaguely seemed to see an illusory bright star in front of him. The bright star was rotating around the main body of his mental power. At the same time, within the bright star was a magic model constructed from sixteen Ogham tree runes.
The book says that a ring of plant magic requires at least hundreds of glyphs to be used at one time, and the complexity skyrockets. However, this is just a trick at the moment, so only sixteen ogham glyphs are needed to complete a decent-looking magic.
Locke picked up a daffodil on the desk, and then recited a spell. The daffodil in his left hand withered and withered at an alarming speed. At the same time, the mandrake wrapped in his right hand reacted quickly. It stretched out five vine branches at the same time, attacking the enemy like a plant hand, inserting into the dormitory wall, leaving five holes in the wall.
Then, the mandrake exerted a sudden force, and the five branches, like human palms, were grasped and combined, and the wall was dug into a hole by the hands of the vines, making a huge sound.
After doing all this, Mandrake quickly retracted his right arm and continued to lie down.
Locke looked at this scene with some disbelief. "This power is greater than what is written in the book."
"The first is because the text description is limited and it is not as detailed as my direct use. The second is probably because the completion of my vine hand is good, so the power is increased a bit."
Locke looked at the dark blue gems and the used dark blue gems in his room that were filled with them.
These dark sapphires can filter one's own mental power and stabilize the fluctuations of one's mental power. Therefore, the accuracy of inscribing the Ogham tree inscriptions on oneself is about 30% higher than that of ordinary wizard apprentices.
That’s why the power of my own vine hand can be so great.
This is the role of the Horadric Cube.
These dark blue gems are so useful and are consumables. If you were in the wizarding world, purchasing these gems would probably not be easy. It would require a lot of resources. I am afraid they are resources that a young wizard like me with no background would have difficulty accessing.
Locke glanced at the dark sapphires he had used so much, and combined with Dean Tunguska's cherishment of scarce magic resources, he suddenly felt that he was a bit extravagant.
“There are still three months left, and the wizard ship is coming to Aurelian College.” Locke found a black windbreaker from the closet and put it on himself, so that he could hide the mandrake on his right hand that looked like a pet vine snake. "I have now become a third-class wizard apprentice, and I want to tell Teacher Tunguska, Codd and Patty the good news."
"There are still three months left, and I'd better not waste it. Ask Teacher Tunguska what I still lack now."
After all, the better he is, the more space he will have to choose the college of his choice when he gets on the wizard ship.