Wizard: Starting With Synthesized Gems-Chapter 271: Special Permanent Defensive Field Magic

Locke didn't know how long he had been fighting in the Twilight Garden. Even the Dermal Charging Suppositories, Cycad Purple Ming Tincture, and Spirit Spring Soul Surge Potions he had saved from preparing for the great battle were all completely used up, but he had killed his way to the front of the manor, which was now filled with piles of rubble.
Fragments of memories belonging to a First Circle wizard all surged into his mind, becoming Locke's own.
From these obtained memory fragments, Locke even pieced together what this First Circle wizard's permanent defensive field had been in life, it was a First Circle magic from the Transmutation School called Stone Statue Legion.
Therefore, as long as he was in a place, the sculptures and stone statues in that place would automatically be granted continuous transforming forms, thus gaining the ability to move and destroy any enemy.
Even if a place had no stone statues, this formal wizard could easily use transmutation school spells to create the sculptures he wanted out of thin air using surrounding materials when he was alive.
This was the power of permanent defensive field magic. Even though they were all First Circle magic, permanent defensive fields occupied an important soul structure of wizards, the magic pressure layer, so their consumption was extremely small and their casting speed was extremely fast.
The type of permanent defensive field magic often determined most of a wizard's combat power.
Many wizards' spells after First Circle were all learned and researched to assist their own permanent defensive magic and this point was also what Locke comprehended during this secret realm battle.
When the clock tower bell rang for the third time, time was reset again.
The Black Chain Sword Bamboo once again, driven by the Green Grasp spell model, collided with the two-handed greatsword held by the expressionless angel statue soldier.
Locke noticed that the opponent's comprehensive level had indeed risen somewhat.
This caused him to expend some effort even dealing with such a small stone statue soldier but from the current perspective, these stone statue soldiers after the third reset were still within the range he could handle.
Locke rapidly retreated, but in an instant, he froze. 'This feeling is...'
'These sculptures have undergone three transformations! Does the strengthening of this permanent defensive field Stone Statue Legion of a First Circle transmuter have no upper limit?'
'Why can the time within the secret realm be reset again and again? This secret realm follows that First Circle wizard's magical rules from when he was alive, and this isn't even his peak period. Calm down, the Transmutation School shouldn't have the ability to truly change time. The fact that time can be changed now should be because this is a secret realm.'
'I must think calmly to find a way to break through. This is the true meaning hidden behind this secret realm.'
In battle, amid the rapidly changing situation, Locke's Black Lock Iron Sword had a layer of invisible mana stuck to it. That layer of mana was like a rubber band, connecting the rare magical plant in Locke's hand with the two-handed greatsword in the angel statue soldier's hand, and began to stretch as Locke retreated.
When stretched to its limit, this invisible rubber band manifested by transmutation mana suddenly yanked, directly pulling Locke himself over.
At the same time, two stone statue soldiers that had transformed into eagles attacked Locke's chest with their talons, trying to kill him.
At the critical moment, Locke took out three Corrupt Soil Taro Kings from his astral ring and used Mayfly Flower Cannon, making the three rare magical plants bombard those statue soldiers repeatedly, and he himself used Scorched Earth Bomb to blast apart the stone statue soldiers attacking him.
Locke seized the opportunity, and the natural magic eye on his forehead swept across the statue soldier that had locked onto him with transmutation mana, blasting it into fragments.
This way, the super rubber band formed by transmutation energy between it and himself would collapse without needing to be attacked.
Otherwise, dealing with it would be too troublesome. He would either have to abandon the magical plant in his hand or be led around by the opponent.
A larger memory fragment fell into Locke's mind.
Locke's gaze focused. "I see, I understand now."
"The strength of stone statue soldiers driven by transmutation has limits. The stone statue soldiers can't keep getting stronger. Although three transformations seem incredible, they can't possibly be that powerful. So what's actually weakening is me."
Locke looked down at the manor and saw a huge Transmutation School magic array rising from the manor's ground, "The essence of transmutation magic is changing form, so even I am being continuously changed in form."
"Time is very unique in transmutation magic and holds a very high position. Time is a ruler that measures whether an object has transformed." Locke recalled the basic content of transmutation magic through his Universal Studies class. "All things change under the scale of time. Without time, there would be no change."
"Therefore, all the time changes I felt before were all hints from the magic in this secret realm, and within this formation, it quietly changed my perception of time."
"Similarly, my strength and speed have all become slow under this formation's continuous changes to my form." Locke pondered, "This is an advanced application of transmutation magic, a First Circle magic called Weakening Formation that this First Circle wizard used in life to strengthen his permanent defensive field magic Stone Statue Legion."
"Unfortunately, even in this echo, this First Circle magic has already become incredibly weak. It can't even handle me."
Now Locke was very excited. In this secret realm, it was as if a First Circle wizard was fighting an instructional battle with him, inspiring his thinking through battle, forcing him to think, and opening up his wisdom.
To some extent, this was the true meaning of this secret realm for wizards and Locke had only gradually felt this.
A First Circle wizard's time was very precious. Not everyone could enjoy having a First Circle wizard dissect their own magic and waste so many resources on them, just to explain the way of First Circle magic.
Locke used his ancient creature bloodline to strengthen his flying magical plant, enhancing its flight speed. At the same time, he circled the manor three times in the air and stopped all attacking behavior.
This abnormal behavior made the guardian wizard watching in secret feel somewhat baffled.
"What's going on? What's that kid trying to do now? Has he given up?"
"That would save me the trouble."
"It's already undergone three transformations. This wizard secret realm has consumed quite a lot of magical resources. Troublesome. If it weren't for Halen Vera's sake, I would have forcibly kicked him out long ago."
"That little girl didn't even make it past the first round. That's what normal white wizard combat level looks like. This kid's combat level makes me think he's a spy from the black wizard side."
The guardian wizard watched Locke circle in the air several times. The group of stone statues chasing Locke from behind flew faster and faster, and just when they were about to catch up to Locke, making him unable to avoid them, suddenly Locke made a sharp turn and directly crashed toward the center of the manor, that clock tower!
The guardian wizard was greatly alarmed. "Oh no, what is he trying to do!"
"Stop right now!"
At this moment, high above the secret realm, Locke's eyes were determined. His pupils had completely transformed into vertical slits, his battle intelligence activated to its limit.
While comparing himself across space and time with this First Circle wizard, Locke thought of the vital point of transmutation magic, the ruler.
All transmuters had a ruler to measure whether they were transforming. Without this ruler, they couldn't distinguish whether they had actually undergone transformation.
Only if this ruler still existed would transmutation magic not lose control. Many transmuters permanently transforming into some kind of magical creature was because their ruler had disappeared and was gone.
The invention of the ruler in transmutation magic greatly improved the combat power and safety of transmutation magic, but as long as the ruler was destroyed, transmutation magic would also be seriously disrupted and even destroyed because of this.
And during battle, Locke was constantly thinking about how to destroy the opponent's ruler.
And the opponent's ruler most likely was this clock tower before his eyes.
With his own attack power, he very likely couldn't destroy the clock tower, so he would borrow the Stone Statue Legion that was no longer controlled by anyone and running automatically.
Locke's Rapid-Fire Pea bullets shot toward the clock tower but were all blocked by a layer of magical defensive shield on the clock tower's surface. When Locke saw that his magical attacks indeed couldn't break through the clock tower, he actively dispelled his flight magic, causing him to directly fall from the air, dropping straight toward the ground like a meteorite.
But this also allowed him to avoid the Stone Statue Legion attacking from behind in the air. Because Locke's position was very close to the clock tower, these birds of prey transformed from the Stone Statue Legion actually couldn't brake in time, and with their momentum and stone talons, they directly attacked the clock tower.
'Bang~'
The stone talons of the Stone Statue Legion collided with the clock tower.
The guardian wizard in the magical mist was so angry his eyes nearly split. "This is a disaster. He's a student. Even if he breaks the secret realm, can we really make him compensate? Impossible. But I'm the one who has to pay!"
"This kid, is he trying to smash the secret realm I'm guarding?"
"Is he still an honest, dutiful, rule-following white wizard!"
The guardian wizard hurriedly used magic to try to maintain this secret realm, constantly activating formations and drawing more mana from the Magic Sunflower Aerial Garden side to infuse into the secret realm, attempting to maintain this secret realm with massive amounts of mana.
The consumption at this moment nearly drove this guardian wizard mad.
At the same time, because Locke had instantly dispelled his flight magic at high altitude, he had essentially fallen directly from a hundred meters high. He climbed up from the mud pit and rubbed his face.
Because he had undergone ancient creature bloodline transformation on himself, even falling from a hundred meters high wouldn't kill him. He didn't even suffer any fractures, just soft tissue contusions throughout his body.
He raised his head and saw that the clock tower at the highest point of the manor indeed began to collapse.
Locke watched this scene with great interest. "What will happen?"
"Does this transmuter formal wizard still have any backup plans?"
"Sparring with a First Circle wizard is really too interesting. It greatly broadens my knowledge."
As the clock tower half-collapsed, it caused massive magical loss of control in the Stone Statue Legion. The foundation of modern transmutation magic was different from ancient transmutation magic's foundation. Ancient transmutation magic had no ruler system, but the current transmutation magic system had rulers.
Once the ruler fell, transmutation magic began to collapse on a large scale.
These individual Stone Statue Legion members began to shatter one by one.
Countless crystals exploded from within these stone statue soldiers. Some of these crystals were triangular, some were cubic, and some were polyhedral.
At the same time, memory fragments surged into Locke's mind as if free of charge, greatly enhancing his understanding of First Circle wizards in a short time.
Because too much information flooded in at once, much information was lost.
Locke had a flash of inspiration and took out that bottle of Beholder Lord Potion from his astral ring and drank it directly.
He had already completely memorized the formula and heat control technique for the Beholder Lord Potion, so keeping it was useless. It was better to drink it and enhance his mental power.
Moreover, the Beholder Lord Potion had a side effect that could enhance his mental sensitivity and mental perception to a greater degree than the Beholder Potion, and this point could just play a role when he was receiving these massive amounts of memories.
In an instant, Locke endured the huge side effects of the Beholder Lord Potion. His self-perception completely transformed into thinking he was a Beholder Lord floating in mid-air, and he rapidly acquired all these memories.
Under the enhancement of the Beholder Lord Potion, many tiny memory fragments that flashed by and originally couldn't be captured by a wizard apprentice all caught Locke's attention.
"Hm?"
"This is a variable First Circle permanent defensive field research project? A special-grade research project at Lilith's Cottage from five hundred years ago?" Locke grasped the fleeting moment and quickly caught important information from this complicated and fragmented information.
"This is truly an unexpected windfall. I didn't expect there would be this kind of harvest."
Among the infusion of these massive memory fragments, Locke, relying on the extremely enhanced perception from the Beholder Lord Potion, caught an unusual memory fragment.
From this memory fragment, Locke learned that five hundred years ago, Foucault had researched a dangerous but interesting project with a First Circle crystallization wizard from Lilith's Cottage, wanting to research a variable permanent defensive field for First Circle wizards.
Using the intersection of transmutation magic and plant magic, they tried to find a way to change their First Circle plant-based permanent defensive field magic to a certain extent.
This kind of project was very significant. If successful, it would be an experiment that could change the existing structure of the southeastern quadrant.
A relatively changeable First Circle permanent defensive field magic had unimaginable significance. It could completely make Lilith's Cottage become a holy land of plant magic but this project's experiments were ultimately a failure.
Moreover, that special-grade project caused a huge ethical crisis.
Because in that special-grade project, Foucault and another First Circle wizard, Cliff Lewis, actually used the souls of large numbers of first-class wizard apprentices for experiments, and even experimented on the souls of some First Circle wizard colleagues without their knowledge.
This led to serious incidents of multiple wizard deaths, and ultimately that laboratory was sealed.
But from Foucault's memories, Locke learned that their experiment had been very close to success at the time. It was just that they could never solve the final problem of achieving a closer connection between magical plants and wizards, so the experiment kept failing.
Combined with the serious ethical crisis at the time, the two were disgraced, and could only die in depression from the failure of their research. This point made Foucault feel regret until his death.
And originally, according to the association's requirements, his memories related to this period of experimentation were to be erased by a First Circle wizard from the Mind School using special magic.
This was the association's punishment and requirement for him.
But Wizard Foucault used special First Circle transmutation magic to actually transform and hide this part of his thinking, and also hid the specific location of the research site he shared with his colleague Cliff Lewis in this part of his memories.