A few days after returning from the book house, Lynch visited Subaru again, using his remaining Magic Stones to commission him to cultivate some Sober Magic Beans to help restore spiritual power.
Spiritual power is extremely important to Wizards since every activity they perform requires its expenditure, including meditation, experimentation, studying, and even eating and walking—so long as they're awake, spiritual power is being consumed.
When spiritual power is depleted, Wizards can't do anything and must stop to rest in order to recover it.
Conventional methods of restoring spiritual power mostly involve sleep and rest, but the efficiency of these methods is clearly too slow.
Spiritual power is ten times the Spirit Attribute. Lynch's current Spirit Attribute is 1.3, making his spiritual power 13.
This level of spiritual power is only enough for him to perform meditation twice, conduct three Basic Biological Transformation experiments, engage in six hours of uninterrupted spell reading, or complete one Elementary Magic Plants Transformation.
Often, the amount of spiritual power he has is exhausted by the morning. His rest periods take up over half the day, meaning that, by this timeline, he'll barely progress before the assessment arrives.
After considering all his options, Lynch finally decided to rely on some external aids.
As a basic magical plant, Sober Magic Beans can restore approximately 10 spiritual power within half an hour and can be used three times a day, perfectly aligning with Lynch's current spiritual power level.
Additionally, there's the Fairy Fountain in the plaza. If he ever gets too exhausted, he can wash his face there to recover a small amount of spiritual power.
This would significantly shorten the time needed to recover spiritual power each day. By strategically planning his cultivation schedule, he could remain in a cultivation state for 24 hours, only needing to supplement his spiritual power with sleep every two days.
This would effectively allow him to spend two days' worth of time in a single day, stretching his original three months of preparation to six months or even longer.
Of course, upon hearing this plan, Subaru thought Lynch had gone mad.
While everyone understood the idea of using external aids to restore spiritual power and extend cultivation time, almost no one seriously pursued it.
After all, Wizards are not machines. Cultivation and studying are tedious enough on their own; many apprentices can't even complete their daily lessons, with a good number finding just looking at Rune Language nauseatingly headache-inducing and sleep-inducing.
Now Lynch is talking about giving up rest entirely to devote himself to cultivation, even sacrificing basic sleep for his training.
Oh, heavens! Has no one told him that sleep is one of life's greatest pleasures?
"You've gone astray, silly boy!"
Although Subaru didn't despise hardworking and ambitious apprentices, he thought that recklessly charging forward like this was utterly foolish.
After all, this is the Wizard World—a land that values resources and connections.
Months of day-and-night cultivation might only equate to the effects of a single Magic Potion or fruit, and years or even decades of tireless effort could pale in comparison to the benefits gained from a prominent figure's favor and one night of cultivation under their guidance.
With this kind of perseverance and drive for reckless self-cultivation, wouldn't it be better spent researching higher-quality resources?
Think about ways to gain favor with influential figures and obtain their sponsorship—isn't this far more effective than futile daily effort behind the scenes?
But, despite Subaru's advice, Lynch merely scratched his head and honestly replied, "I'll just focus on cultivation for now."
Subaru was speechless: "You're ridiculously stubborn!"
...
Time flew by, and more than a month had passed in the blink of an eye.
Outer Ring of Shadow Land, Lynch's stone house.
Nighttime.
Mosquitos buzzed, candlelight flickered, and the dancing flames cast long shadows on the walls, their distorted figures writhing like tentacles.
At the experimental table, Lynch was busy at work.
At that moment, he held an extraordinary plant in his left hand, somewhat resembling an Earth pitcher plant, complete with a funnel-shaped insect trap.
This was the Magic Devouring Flower, an Elementary Apprentice Rank magical plant with a unique ability to emit a mesmerizing fragrance that attracts tiny forest insects, which it consumes.
Unlike Earth's pitcher plants, however, the Magic Devouring Flower possessed an additional excretion system. Beneath the insect trap was a thumb-thick stem that expelled digested remnants of insects after processing them.
In the Magic Forest, all flora and fauna were more or less imbued with elements, which the Magic Devouring Flower couldn't digest. These elements would crystallize and be excreted alongside the remnants of insect matter.
These elemental crystals have a wide range of uses for Wizards and are considered a common Magic Material. Because of this, many Wizards opt to cultivate large patches of Magic Devouring Flowers to produce elemental crystals.
However, Lynch wasn't cultivating Magic Devouring Flowers; magical plant cultivation is no simple task. As an Elementary Magic Plant, the Magic Devouring Flower requires specialized planting environments, specific pollination techniques, and fertilization processes—all of which demand Elemental Magic Plants Cultivation Level 2 skills at a minimum, beyond Lynch's current capabilities.
What he was doing now was still modification.
While the Magic Devouring Flower could produce crystals, its digestive strength was relatively weak, making its output small. Was there a plant with stronger digestive capabilities?
The answer was yes: the Elementary Magic Plant, Cannibal Flower.
The digestive power of Cannibal Flowers is widely known—mature Cannibal Flowers can fully digest an elephant in just fifteen minutes.
This spurred some clever Wizards to develop a method to combine the Cannibal Flower and Magic Devouring Flower, enhancing the latter's ability with the former's digestive strength to vastly increase elemental crystal production.
Thus, the Cannibal Flower Gastric Acid Mucosa Transplantation Method was born.
By extracting the Cannibal Flower's gastric acid mucosa and transplanting it into the Magic Devouring Flower, the latter gains the terrifying digestive power of the former. This technique has become a standard operation in Magic Devouring Flower cultivation.
Still, most Wizards specialize in only one or two fields due to limited energy, often mastering Extraordinary Cultivation while leaving Biological Transformation underdeveloped. As a result, many Wizards directly spend Magic Stones to commission apprentices proficient in Biological Transformation to handle such modifications.
Lynch had accepted a task from the Tower to modify one hundred Magic Devouring Flowers, with the materials provided by the client and a reward of 20 Magic Stones.
This payment was fairly generous and also allowed him to improve his professional skills. Without much hesitation, Lynch took on the task and had been busily working on it over the past few days.
Soon, the Magic Devouring Flower in his hand was successfully modified.
The overwhelming increase in gastric acid seemed to agitate the Magic Devouring Flower, causing its insect trap to emit constant "gurgling" sounds.
Lynch knew this meant it was hungry. After modification, the Magic Devouring Flower needed to consume continuously throughout its life cycle; stopping would result in its gastric acid corroding the insect trap completely.
So Lynch opened the window and placed the plant on the windowsill. The abundance of insects at night would provide it with plenty to eat.
[Elementary Magic Plants Transformation Exp Points +3.]
[Elementary Magic Plants Transformation Level 1: 88/1000.]
Meanwhile, a system notification sounded.