Chapter 575 - 405: The Arrival of the Three-cup Witch

Chapter 575: Chapter 405: The Arrival of the Three-cup Witch

Researching the essence of the Mad Witch was clearly far more dangerous than the relatively safe Star Creation experiment. Moens and Isaac reached a rare consensus on this point. Thus, after Isaac shared his recent findings, he and Moens began preparing for the experiment together, deciding not to let the others act on their own.

There were two tasks at hand. First, they needed to attempt to locate the unknown Concept while the Legendary Mages were conducting their transaction rituals. Second, they had to have the Arcanists perform rituals with Outer Gods, True Gods, and Virtual Deities respectively. This was to both verify the Divine Code and investigate why they were unable to achieve Conceptual Resonance with the unknown Concept.

In addition, they also needed to test a variant of the transaction ritual—a cooperative contract ritual.

However, Isaac would be the one to perform this ritual. For anyone else, the difficulty and risk were a bit too high; having him personally oversee it was the most reliable option.

Soon, everyone began nervously preparing for a new round of transaction rituals. During this interval, Isaac wanted to take the opportunity to catch up with Moens. But then he remembered that the ten years he had experienced was merely the blink of an eye for Moens and the others. There wasn’t much to discuss at the moment, so he abandoned the thought.

Instead, he focused on setting up the ritual to locate the unknown Concept, while simultaneously contacting Angel to have her people from the Witch Country come and accept the first-phase delivery of the Witch’s Secret Medicine.

’Those Witches were the absolute worst. Each one was more twisted than the last, yet they were inexplicably fussy about certain things, like insisting on only drinking the "all-natural" Witch’s Secret Medicine...’

Isaac wondered, ’Doesn’t this stuff all have the same effect and taste?’ (He’d never tried it.)

’Why are they being so difficult?’

’It’s not like you need to know what’s in it, anyway.’

But the Sponsor is always right. Isaac did whatever they asked. So what if he had to supervise the brewing? ’It’s fine, as long as they pay,’ he thought. In any case, it wasn’t something you could learn just by watching. For the time being, the Witch’s Secret Medicine remained Isaac’s exclusive business.

But just as Isaac required special clearance to visit many places, so too did the Witches, whose Mental States were on par with those of Mad Witches. Therefore, it would probably take them some time to be able to enter this Little World.

This worked out perfectly, giving Isaac time to conduct the experiments he had on hand.

Soon, all preparations were complete. A total of twenty-four Ritual Arrays for the Legendary Mages and Arcanists had been set up, and next to them, the locating ritual Isaac was responsible for was also ready to go.

Standing before the locating Ritual Array, Isaac rubbed his hands in anticipation. He then clapped them together lightly, activating the ritual. Seeing this, Moens, who was standing to the side, nodded to the first Legendary Mage.

The Mage took a deep breath and activated the transaction ritual before him. Soon, a mysterious aura descended. The transaction officially began!

...

Before long, the first round of twenty-four experiments concluded. There was significant progress compared to last time: all the Legendary Mages succeeded without a single failure, and among the Arcanists, ten succeeded while only two failed.

However... Isaac looked up at the sky, where a Tier Six Demigod Mage was currently hovering. ’That’s probably a major contributing factor,’ he thought.

But that wasn’t important!

Watching the mysterious Power of Concept drift above the Ritual Array, the corners of Isaac’s mouth turned up slightly. Although they had only managed to capture it twice out of twenty-four attempts, this was clearly an excellent start.

Furthermore, this proved that Isaac’s hypothesis was correct: the transformation of a Mad Witch was truly related to that unknown Concept!

The question now was whether the Mad Witch Traits were directly linked to this Concept, or if this Concept was still just one of several factors that caused the Mad Witch Traits to form.

All of this still required further research.

But Isaac was already used to this. Such was the nature of researching unknown domains: the more you knew, the more questions you had. A day when you could unravel it all completely would likely never come.

Isaac quickly collected the Power of Concept from the Ritual Array. Now wasn’t the time to study it, as there were still two more rounds of experiments to conduct. However, there was no need to continue collecting this Power of Concept.

For one thing, they already had samples. Although there were only two successful captures, they were enough for Isaac to locate the unknown Concept. Once he did, he would be able to determine if it was the root cause of the Mad Witch transformation.

For another, they might not be able to collect any more anyway. Although they had worked out the Divine Codes for the True Gods and Virtual Deities, it was just like the initial Arcane Master’s Password—a one-shot success wasn’t guaranteed, even with the cooperation of the True Gods and Virtual Deities themselves.

Under these circumstances, it was already difficult for the Arcanists to achieve Conceptual Resonance with this unknown Concept. If they couldn’t even manage to resonate, how could they possibly collect its Power of Concept?

Therefore, Isaac simply modified the ritual from one that collected the Power of Concept to one that would allow, to a certain degree, Observation of the unknown Concept. This would still be somewhat helpful for his subsequent research.

The second round of experiments concluded even faster than the first, as the other parties were extremely cooperative. The Virtual Deity was a given, since it was already under Isaac’s control. As for the True God, an agreement had been reached with the Truth Association for them to fully cooperate with the experiment.

However, the final results were less than ideal.

Of the twelve transaction rituals involving the True God, only six were successful—a 50% success rate. But as for the transactions with the Virtual Deity...