Chapter 56 Roland's Earth-Shaking Wisdom

Moonlight spilled through the window as Roland sat at his desk, flipping through books while pondering how to use the spell modification card.

Although it allowed for the modification of an existing spell to acquire a new skill, the exact nature of the resulting skill depended entirely on the user. It was a reward with an extremely low floor, yet an astronomically high ceiling. After all, ensuring that an altered spell formula still complied with the fundamental logic of spellcasting was no easy task.

During his free time, he had actually discussed this issue with Fram, which ultimately taught him one valuable lesson: a powerful individual is not necessarily a good teacher.

Many arcane trivia that Fram considered to be mere common sense sounded like celestial scripts to Roland's ears. Especially when the conversation touched upon the optimization and modification of spell formulas, it left Roland completely lost in the fog, barely managing to keep up with her train of thought.

In the end, she offered no constructive advice, teaching him only how to adjust existing spell circuits. As for how to modify them or what to change them into, Fram's stance could be summarized in a single phrase: use your imagination; whatever suits you best is the best.

Then, Roland made a rather dismal discovery.

Aside from Blink, none of the skills currently in his repertoire seemed to leave much room for imagination. After all, the modification card required the result to adhere to basic spellcasting logic; he could not simply transform a spell into whatever he fancied.

Consequently, his favorite spell, Flash, was the first to be eliminated. Its foundational structure was far too simple, leaving virtually no room for improvement or refinement.

Next was Blink. The reason for its elimination was the exact opposite of Flash: its structure was far too complex for Roland to even know where to begin.

As for Body Enhancement, Mage Hand, Fireball, and Mana Discharge, these were all entry-level spell formulas. Among them, the only two with any development potential were Mage Hand and Mana Discharge. Both possessed high ceilings and broad versatility, but Roland felt that wasting a modification card on them would be unwise. Even if he upgraded these two skills, they would hardly make a difference given the current high-stakes situation in the royal capital.

Besides, he still had a random spell card on hand.

"Let's see what random spell we get. If it fails to impress, I'll just choose between Mage Hand and Mana Discharge."

"System, use the random spell card."

[Ding! Congratulations to the host for acquiring the spell: Spell Interference.]

[Spell Interference: Upon locating the weak point of a spell, the caster can trigger interference, disruption, or take control of the target's casting process.]

Seeing the reward, Roland fell silent.

The skill effect sounded decent on paper, but in actual practice, it was utterly useless. First of all, the activation condition alone practically sentenced it to death.

If I'm already capable of finding the weak point of the opponent's spell, why on earth would I need to cast this spell?! Wouldn't it be much easier to just use a mana shock to shatter the spell directly? That achieves virtually the same effect, doesn't it?

Furthermore, meeting this prerequisite for casting was not something just anyone could achieve. First, you had to recognize the opponent's spell; then, you had to know how to cast it; and finally, you had to study its structural composition in depth...

If I already possessed that much knowledge and information, what would I need this spell for? It fell squarely into a frustrating category: those who had enough knowledge didn't need it, and those who didn't couldn't use it at all. It was a complete waste of a skill slot!

Just as Roland was about to discard this useless, randomly acquired spell and refocus his attention on whether to choose Mage Hand or Mana Discharge, a sudden flash of inspiration struck him.

This skill... didn't actually seem entirely unusable.

Roland promptly cast Shelter of the World Tree, then did his utmost to record a portion of the visible spell structure. Repeating this four times until every drop of his mana was depleted, Roland finally managed to record roughly one-third of the spell structure belonging to this skill derived from the Primordial Runestone.

Through careful selection, he did indeed find a segment within Shelter of the World Tree that bore a striking resemblance to the structure of Spell Interference.

It seemed his hypothesis was correct.

This seemingly useless skill of Spell Interference was very likely an ultimate, heavily weakened version of Shelter of the World Tree. That highly similar segment of the spell structure was likely the proof.

Roland grew somewhat excited. He felt as though he was on the verge of accomplishing something major.

"System, use the spell modification card on Spell Interference."

[Modification in progress...]

A virtual screen quickly materialized before Roland's eyes, displaying the spell structure of Spell Interference.

From this point on, what the final product would look like and how it would turn out depended entirely on Roland's manual adjustments. However, for Roland, who already had a reference answer in front of him, all he needed to do was copy the answer over.

Although he could only extract the relatively simple portion concerning spell destruction from the intricate structure of Shelter of the World Tree—leaving behind complex mechanisms like automatic target-tracking defense, reverse-silencing the caster, and most crucially, the invincible state, none of which he could comprehend or remember—having just this fragment was more than enough for his purposes.

Half an hour later, after copying the answer and making a few minor tweaks, the spell modification was declared a success.

[Ding! Congratulations to the host for completing a successful spell modification.]

[Certain unreasonable elements have been automatically optimized and improved to ensure proper casting logic...]

[Modification complete. Congratulations to the host for acquiring: Spell Interference - Altered.]

[Spell Interference - Altered: Cast upon a spell that is currently being cast or has already been released, causing the target spell to automatically dissipate.]

[Can be cast with charging, consuming a massive amount of mana to disrupt the operational patterns of mana within a certain radius, interfering with and affecting the casting process of all targets within the affected area except the host.]

Looking at his newly acquired skill, Roland nodded with satisfaction.

It was absolute perfection.

Though the defensive effects of Shelter of the World Tree were formidable, it remained a passive, trigger-based survival skill. Even during his two attempts at casting it against Kalia, he had relied on using himself as bait, deliberately triggering the counter-measure mechanisms of the spells that might have lingered within Kalia's body in order for it to successfully activate.

If Fram's binding spell had lacked an automatic counter-attack function, or if the Blood Demon Prince's spell hadn't been rigged with a mechanism that triggered upon sensing mana fluctuations, Roland's two attempts might never have worked at all.

Now, things were different. The spell, which was previously restricted to defensive counter-attacks, had gained a weakly functioning active counterpart.

Although it could not silence the caster and required him to use his mental energy to lock onto the target spell for activation, its mana cost was remarkably low! It only consumed slightly more than a Fireball.

Unlike Shelter of the World Tree, which drained a full quarter of his mana pool with a single use—or the invincible state, which demanded more than three-quarters of his total mana reserves—this was far more sustainable.

Just as Roland, exhausted and drained of all mana after expending immense focus and energy on modifying the skill, prepared to crawl into bed and sleep, he abruptly noticed a face full of lingering resentment floating right outside his window.

Don't get the wrong idea; it wasn't an assassin from the Chaos Brotherhood.

It was Kalia.

"Mmph!!!"

Propelled upward to the second-story window by her own shadow, Kalia pressed her pouty face against the glass, glaring fixedly at Roland.

After being startled by Kalia, Roland sighed, got silently out of bed, and drew the curtains shut.

Out of sight, out of mind.