Chapter 683
4th Tier Rune Master
Chapter 683 Fourth-Order Rune Master
With the continuous supply of divine radiant energy within Liuying's body, his magical power can be replenished in an endless stream.
This change completely liberated Gaode, who no longer needed to be stingy with his magic.
[Divine Guidance+], [Comfortable Sleep+].
He used every available auxiliary spell that could help him improve his rune learning efficiency, and began to go all out.
His already astonishing progress in runic arts skyrocketed to an even more terrifying speed with the support of multiple auxiliary spells.
Gao De slowly opened his eyes, and the first thing he felt was softness and warmth.
Because at this moment, he was not lying on the cold stone surface, but resting his head on Liu Ying's lap.
The girl's skirt spread out, carrying a faint fragrance that belonged to her.
The fabric of the skirt was so delicate that Gao De could clearly feel the warmth of her thighs beneath him, as well as the slight rise and fall of her steady breathing.
"Awake?" Liu Ying noticed Gao De's movement.
Her voice was very soft, like a feather falling into your ear.
Gao De slowly propped himself up, his gaze unconsciously falling on the small part of her arm that was exposed.
Those menacing, radiant veins still pulsated beneath the skin.
"Hmm, has the Soul-Destroying Wind arrived?" He withdrew his gaze and asked casually.
"Not yet." Liu Ying shook her head and added, "It's very quiet outside, it should be a while longer."
"Are you alright?" Gao De asked again.
"Fortunately, with your help, the photochemical process has been greatly slowed down," Liu Ying replied.
The biggest change after the evolution of the [Primary Body of Fire] is that, at least in the Desolate Soul Domain, the holy radiance energy on Liu Ying's body will no longer cause Gao De any burning pain.
Even after such a long period of close contact, he only felt warm and comfortable, without any discomfort.
On the contrary, I can clearly feel that the magic power in my body has been fully restored.
In this situation, in order to replenish mana as much as possible and speed up the rune learning process.
In order to continuously absorb the restless energy overflowing from Liuying's body, slow down her photochemical process, and alleviate her pain, Gaode was "forced" to significantly increase the time spent in "intimate contact" with Liuying.
The most important adjustment was that during his rest time, the two of them should try to maintain "close contact" as much as possible.
After all, during most of his waking hours, Gao De was busy learning runes and had no time for anything else.
Aside from that time, the majority of his remaining time was spent sleeping and resting, which naturally became the best window of opportunity to absorb the divine light and energy.
Initially, Gaode's idea was simple: just to keep holding hands during breaks.
After all, holding hands is simple and direct, and it can also achieve the purpose of absorbing energy.
After trying it a few times, he found that the posture was not convenient.
Liu Ying didn't need to rest like him; most of the time she just quietly stayed by his side, and the way she held his hand made it difficult for her to move freely.
Moreover, when he falls into a deep sleep, his fingers will unconsciously loosen, interrupting the absorption of energy.
Faced with this "dilemma," the two were ultimately forced to adjust to their current approach.
This not only ensures continuous physical contact and uninterrupted energy absorption, but also allows him to sleep more soundly.
The effects of 【Comfortable Sleep+】can also be maximized.
Liu Ying only needs to sit in place and occasionally adjust her posture to move her hands freely without being restricted.
Although it was even more offensive, Liu Ying clearly didn't have much of a concept of this.
And Gaode could also convince himself by saying that it was for the sake of Liu Ying.
So the two hit it off immediately and quickly settled on this way of getting along.
In fact, Gaode Maps is not satisfied with merely slowing down the photochemical reaction speed.
He wanted to do more and wanted to turn things around.
However, the efficiency of the [Primary Luminous Body] in absorbing divine radiance energy is ultimately limited.
This amount of absorption is merely a drop in the ocean compared to the enormous, volcanic energy within Liu Ying's body, and cannot solve the problem at its root.
Before evolving into the [Intermediate Luminous Body], this absorption efficiency is obviously unchangeable.
What frustrated him even more was that after he evolved into the [Primary Luminous Body], his progress in light adaptation completely stalled.
No matter how long he maintained close contact with Liu Ying, the progress bar remained completely unchanged.
This is due to insufficient intensity; even if the purity of her divine radiance energy is high, it won't be effective.
It seems that only after leaving the Desolate Soul Domain, without the suppression of the magic-free environment, and after the Holy Light Energy within Liu Ying's body regains its activity and its intensity surges, can intimate contact further advance the adaptive process.
There is no sun or moon in the tower; only the coming and going of the withered wind marks the passage of time.
In between accelerating his rune learning, Gaode made another special trip.
With a clear objective, harvest a wave of withered soul minions to replenish soul essence fragments.
After evolving into a body of demonic origin, his magical power was completely freed from the constraints of a magic-free environment, thus his activity radius and monster-killing speed increased exponentially.
Finding or killing Dead Soul Servants has become effortless.
He showed no mercy, clearing away everything along the contours of the wasteland, annihilating all the withered souls and servants wherever he went.
It was a thorough sweep, reaping almost all the withered soul servants in the Desolate Soul Domain. The scale of the harvest was far more ruthless than that of Mordecai back then.
This allowed Gao De to collect enough fragments of soul essence, and then he began to make a concerted effort to break through to the fourth-tier rune master.
The withered wind came and went, went and came again, repeating itself 111 times.
Time slowly slips away amidst extreme focus and self-discipline.
Gao De moved closer and closer to becoming a fourth-tier rune master.
He conquered everything from mastering the basic level four runes to complex combinations of compound runes.
The purple soul energy formed a dazzling pillar of light that shot straight to the top of the stone tower.
A complex composite rune is as solid as a physical object, its lines gleaming with a lustrous sheen.
The surrounding space began to distort, forming a small energy vortex.
Seeing this, Gao De slowly breathed a sigh of relief, and his tense nerves relaxed.
Success! The successful operation of this Tier 4 Soul Rune signifies the successful completion of the second step in becoming a Tier 4 Runemaster, granting the initial ability to replicate Guiding Array 21.0.
Yes, he was prepared to replicate the Guiding Array 21.0, which was extremely difficult even among fourth-order rune arrays, without ever having completed a third-order rune array before.
This was simply unbelievable to all rune masters outside the world.
Leaving aside the terrifying difficulty of tearing through the dimensional barrier in Guided Rune 21.0, just consider the barrier to drawing a Tier 4 Rune Array: under normal circumstances, only a Tier 4 Rune Array can be drawn.
This is a common problem faced by many rune masters:
They have an amazing talent for runic arts, but their talent for mages is relatively average—those who possess both are truly rare.
Therefore, it often happens that someone's mastery of runes has reached the next level, but they are limited by their mage level and cannot construct the next level of rune array.
The reason why the levels of runes are so strictly defined lies in the rune regulation, a necessary step in the construction of a magic array.
The construction of rune arrays is never something that can be accomplished by simply copying blueprints.
Rune diagrams only provide a basic solution, like architectural blueprints; their actual implementation must be "tailored to local conditions."
Only through rune tuning can rune masters adjust the composition, arrangement, position, and connection of runes that make up a magic circle according to the different properties and sizes of the magic materials and the different needs of the magic circle. This allows them to confirm whether these runes can form a magic circle and make corresponding adjustments as needed.
All tests and precedents indicate that a mage with at least the corresponding level of spiritual power to operate a magic array is required to adjust the rune frequency of the corresponding rune array.
However, these are all limitations within the framework of the old symbolic literature theory.
He Xi's six laws successfully replaced the traditional "rune tuning" with precise calculations, fundamentally avoiding the shortcomings of rune masters' insufficient mental strength and breaking the shackles.
This is also where Gaode's greatest confidence lies.
Otherwise, even if his mental strength far surpasses that of other mages of the same level, he still hasn't reached the level of a fourth-level mage.
In a demon-free plane like the Desolate Soul Realm, how could he possibly raise his mental power to the level of a fourth-circle mage?
Before replicating the Guiding Array 21.0, what Gaode needs to do is to first calculate and deduce whether the Guiding Array 21.0 it plans to construct is valid.
As soon as Gao De thought of this, he took a deep breath and turned his gaze to the guide array 21.0 rune diagram left by Mordekay on the stone tower wall, which he had deduced step by step through iteration.
The image is covered with dense runes, crisscrossing lines, and countless tiny notes.
That was the optimal solution that Modica had summarized after countless failures, but for Gaode, it was just an "initial template" for calculation.
He had cleared out a large, flat, and open area on the ground of the stone tower to serve as a blackboard.
Gaode began its calculations and deductions.
First, determine the basic parameters.
The total area is approximately based on the rune map left by Mordekaiser, with a total of 17280 runes, including 360 level 4 basic runes and 1440 level 3 basic runes.
He broke down the first composite rune of the Guiding Array 21.0: Level 4 Condensation Basic Rune, Level 4 Energy Absorption Basic Rune, Level 4 Energy Conversion Basic Rune, Level 4 Limitation Basic Rune, and Level 3 Connection Guidance Basic Rune.
The total energy of this composite rune is: .477.891
Gao De noted down the number and continued to dissect the second composite rune.
Time passed by, second by second.
The stone tower was so quiet that the only sound could be the scratching of a bone pen on the ash floor, occasionally punctuated by Gao De's sudden, rapid breathing.
All composite runes must be carefully disassembled, calculated, and verified, and then these composite runes must be combined and calculated again.
During this time, Gaode also encountered some problems, such as the situation where "the same secondary basic runes are connected" in three composite runes. He handled them according to the rules of Hosey's Second Law.
We also encountered two composite runes that contained a suspected violation structure of "three identical base runes linked together".
According to Hosey's Third Law, this structure is invalid and must be adjusted.
"Sure enough, the original image also has flaws."
Gao De circled those two places, "It's possible that Mordecai made some modifications later, but he didn't correct them on the rune diagram. After all, he only kept it for his own reference, not to actually publish a teaching material. These two composite runes need to have their connection method redesigned. Three identical runes won't work, at most two, and the directions must be opposite."
Gao De immediately stopped writing and pondered, making corrections on the ash ground, and finally drew the adjusted rune connection diagram. Only after ensuring that it conformed to the third law did he continue to calculate downwards.
Two hours later, the ground was covered with a dense array of numbers and various rune structures.
Liu Ying, who was watching from the sidelines, curiously peeked out.
I felt that I clearly couldn't understand these things at all, and I shouldn't have any feelings about them, but a kind of "chill" rose from my heart.
As for Gaode Maps, the progress is actually less than one-tenth complete.
The computational workload of a fourth-order rune array is unimaginably enormous.
He is now performing the most tedious calculation step, which is to calculate the theoretical robustness value and the actual robustness value.
According to Hosey's Sixth Law: The theoretical robustness of a magic circle equals the number of runes on the magic-conducting material multiplied by the number of rune pairs multiplied by (1 - magic resistance) multiplied by the interference constant 1.1299.
The drawing of soul runes is inherently without a source, so the magic resistance can be considered 0. The next step is to count the total number of runes and all adjacent rune pairs based on the drawn connection diagram.
The rune diagram is covered with countless lines.
Gaode started counting.
This is not simply a matter of "one, two, three, four," but rather requires counting each path and each loop according to the topological structure of the connection graph.
Each line represents a pair of adjacent runes, and some runes connect to more than a dozen other runes at the same time, each of which must be included.
An hour later, he compiled the statistics for the first area.
Three hours later, in the second area.
Six hours...
In Mordekay's Guide Array 21.0, the occurrence of adjacent identical runes is mainly concentrated in the energy conduction channels, with a total of 2880 adjacent identical runes marked.
Substituting into the formula: Number of runes * Rune pairs * (1-0) * 1.1299 = 17280
The final result is approximately 6450 million.
This is the theoretical robustness value. If the actual robustness value exceeds this number, the magic circle will either fail to function or collapse completely.
According to Hosey's Law II, calculate the total energy of each composite rune individually, then add them together to obtain the total energy of the magic array, and multiply by the number of interference pairs.
The calculated actual robustness value is greater than the theoretical robustness value. The rune array cannot function and must be adjusted.
This time, the actual robustness value was greatly reduced, but it is still greater than the theoretical value.
If it exceeds even a slight limit, according to Hosey's Law, the magic circle theoretically becomes invalid.
Then iterate
The entire calculation process took a long time; the numerical formulas and structural diagrams on the ground were erased and rewritten, repeated five or six times.
Gaode went into a frenzy, working tirelessly day and night.
Even the withered soul wind came twice during this period.
Even Liu Ying couldn't stop yawning while watching.
You should know that for such a long time before this, she had found the tedious process of learning runes fascinating.
This time, however, these strange symbols, distorted diagrams, and stacked numbers were like hypnotic spells, as if they possessed some kind of magic or hypnotic magic. Just looking at them for a few moments made her feel extremely sleepy.
She clearly shouldn't have this physical symptom of being sleepy.
This surprising discovery also amazed Liu Ying.
Just as she was yawning, Gao De suddenly stopped what he was doing, a bright light flashing in his eyes.
“The actual robustness value is lower than the theoretical robustness value, so the rune array is fully valid!” he said softly.
Although Liu Ying couldn't understand the cryptic language Gao De was speaking, she could still glean meaning from his tone and eyes.
"It's done?!" she confirmed.
"Yes, it's done. Now all we need to do is draw it precisely."
(End of this chapter)