Chapter 814: The Super Jaeger Dream Blossom

Carter Dunn's dormitory was a gallery hung all over with magical paintings. The paintings contained no patterns of flowers. Instead, each was like a wash of rainbow-colored pigment.

Below these magical paintings hung labels with the artist, the title, and a brief description.

From reading the descriptions, Locke found that the various rainbows on these paintings seemed to express some kind of artistic concept. It appeared that the Rose Council's higher-ups had found those magical painters and asked them to take the colors of various rose flowers and use those pigments on the paintings, to recreate the beauty of those flowers having dissolved into disordered colors.

In other words, these paintings were essentially decorative in nature.

Locke's only comment on these paintings was, 'Living in a dormitory full of an artistic atmosphere is certainly a unique experience.'

At this moment, he and Carter entered Carter's small laboratory. Although Carter felt the laboratory was too crude, Locke considered it adequate.

He had already rented ten acres of magical field in advance at the Rose Council's market. It was not expensive, since it was rented by the day. The estimate was that by the end it would only cost thirty to forty thousand magic stones.

Carter lifted the prototype of the Dream Blossom, the Jaeger Rose, out of a flowerpot in some corner of the dormitory's small laboratory.

The Jaeger Rose was half dead.

Feeling this was indeed rather embarrassing, Wizard Carter coughed awkwardly and explained to Locke, "Since maintaining it costs money, I just found a random flowerpot and planted it in there."

"I am sorry, Lord Augustine. My room and laboratory are a bit cluttered."

Locke shook his head slightly.

"Give me your materials."

Carter immediately crouched down to rummage through the messy documents inside his cardboard box. He searched for five minutes with sweat on his forehead, growing more anxious the longer he looked, his eyes shifting with guilt.

Because how was he supposed to have known that a Second Circle wizard would take an interest in his research?

Those materials were all over the place.

With things at this point, there was no way he could find them quickly.

Locke let out an almost imperceptible sigh. In a certain sense, he could somewhat understand Witch Olivia's attitude toward this person.

"Just give me whatever is in your hands right now."

Wizard Carter immediately nodded, stood up, and handed those documents to Locke.

Locke flipped through them and raised an eyebrow, giving a slight nod. Wizard Carter might not be very organized when it came to sorting documents, but his thinking had no real problems. No wonder he had managed to reach the crystalline phase by around forty years of age.

Though the requirements of the top wizard universities of the Cloud Marsh Wetlands for their lecturer wizards were not as extreme as those of the advanced Origin Academy, the basic expectation was still to reach the crystalline phase before fifty, even before forty-five.

After all, the number of wizards hoping to join these top wizard universities of the Cloud Marsh Wetlands was simply enormous.

Locke reviewed his main approach, which was divided into two parts.

The first part involved using the hybridization cultivation method to improve the Jaeger Rose's base profile, while also crossbreeding it with a magical plant called the Black Death God Rose and the White Angel Rose.

Three varieties of rose crossbred to produce one capable of constructing a powerful dream state.

The second part involved using the Queen's Chessboard along with the enchantment spell model Pleasured and Forgetful to construct a vision of extraordinary beauty, pulling a wizard's consciousness into it and causing them to dream and experience scenes that could not appear in the present reality.

Looking at the second part, his foundational skills were quite problematic. The breeding portion of the first part was completed in a near total mess.

Of course, this was largely related to his lack of funding and his inability to conduct proper research.

But Wizard Carter had completed the second part very well.

Without using the Queen's Chessboard, and without the money to purchase even the most basic enchantment equipment, he had pieced together an enchantment blade and an enchantment workbench from discarded materials from other laboratories, and had produced something that looked quite respectable.

Locke looked at him in surprise.

"You are also an enchanter?"

Wizard Carter said somewhat sheepishly, "I did study some of it, and I did get certified. The enchantment studies at the Rose Council are fairly decent."

Locke nodded. This was actually the main thing he had seen in Carter.

His ideas regarding enchantment studies were good.

The Dream Blossom was not merely a straightforward campaign-level magical plant, but a combined product of enchantment studies, breeding studies, and botanical studies working together.

The breeding studies portion was for cultivating the magical plant itself. The botanical studies portion required designing a matching botanical spell model. And the enchantment studies portion required enchanting Pleasured and Forgetful onto the magical plant.

Carter had his own strengths in enchantment studies and spell models.

It was only that his talent in breeding studies was ordinary.

His weak breeding talent had held him back, making it entirely insufficient to support him in completing this project.

And the reason he was not valued in Olivia's research group was probably related to this as well, since what he excelled at happened to be exactly what Olivia's side did not place much emphasis on.

Locke said directly to Wizard Carter, "Then refining the Pleasured and Forgetful enchantment spell, along with the matching botanical spell model, will be left to you."

Locke said to Wizard Carter, "You need to be quick about it, because I will produce the Dream Blossom and complete the relevant breeding work within one week."

Wizard Carter was taken aback.

"One week? Al... all right."

Wizard Carter thought for a moment, then said to Locke, "Lord Augustine, if you are willing, you could try learning the Second Circle botanical spell Ephemeral Dream. My inspiration for the Dream Blossom came from the First Circle simplified version of it, Ephemeral Bloom."

Locke looked thoughtful. "All right, we each get what we need. Here are seven hundred thousand magic stones. Take them. This should be more than enough for you to complete the modification of the Pleasured and Forgetful enchantment spell model."

Wizard Carter's eyes went wide at the sight of the seven hundred thousand magic stones.

Locke was giving him the money directly without going through a financial reimbursement process.

Wizard Carter said, "Lord Augustine, I will complete the task as quickly as possible."

...

Three days later, inside a rented magical field shop on Rose Street, Locke was cultivating magical plants. The ten acres of land were filled with First Circle-level roses.

Locke looked at the pink-white Jaeger Rose in his hand. This Jaeger Rose was built upon Carter's research foundation, but it had gone so far beyond it that it had almost nothing to do with Wizard Carter's original vision.

Locke had set aside Carter's designs for the breeding studies portion and started fresh with the Jaeger Rose as the base, incorporating the Black Death God Rose and the Red Devil Rose to produce a First Circle-level Dream Blossom.

The advantage of the hybridization cultivation method was that it allowed the pollen of multiple magical plant varieties to be used in crossbreeding simultaneously.

That is, combining the genetic material of different parent plants, the pollen-donor male parent with the pollen-receiving female parent.

In this way, multiple magical plant traits could be carried through to the next generation of offspring, while also creating genetic diversity.

In a sense, whether it was creating genetic diversity or allowing multiple magical plant traits to be stably inherited by the next generation, the hybridization cultivation method had far more advantages than the grafting cultivation method.

The reason Locke had previously not been fond of using the hybridization cultivation method was that most of the magical plants he cultivated had little to do with flowers.

Although hybridization could be used even without flowers, the difficulty and the results were not comparable.

The greatest practical use of the grafting cultivation method was actually to support certain plants in growing quickly and healthily.

Of course, through spiritual fusion, the grafted magical plant would also acquire some of the rootstock's spiritual characteristics, thereby inheriting certain magical plant traits in an unstable way.

But the grafting cultivation method could not simultaneously crossbreed multiple types of pollen as the hybridization method could, to create complex genetic conditions.

Standing in the ten-acre magical field, Locke looked at the Dream Blossom in his hand and sighed. His foundations were still too shallow.

This time entering the Rose Council, over three days, using the Moon of Evolution to accelerate magical plant growth, combined with Flowers Bloom and Fall and the Synthesis Cube, along with the complex and varied hybridization cultivation method, he had finally designed the Dream Blossom that Carter had envisioned.

But this experience had confirmed to Locke that he needed more experience to accumulate more foundations.

His experience in evolutionary and breeding studies was still too sparse.

For example, this time, using the pollen of three varieties of rose for cross-hybridization had been a new experience.

It was even quite interesting.

It had to be said that hybridizing rose-type magical plants was fascinating.

Locke read the entry for the Dream Blossom in his hand. [Jaeger Dream Blossom, Grade 8 synthesized item. Produced by hybridizing Red Devil Rose pollen as the male parent and Black Death God Rose pollen as a second male parent, with the Jaeger Rose pistil as the female parent. Possesses the independent ability to construct a dream state. Inhaling its fragrance causes one to fall into a dream.]

Locke frowned, used a dose of moonlight essence, and injected it into the Jaeger Dream Blossom, preparing to forcibly upgrade it to a Second Circle magical plant.

The last time he had killed those pirates, he had obtained a total of three and a half doses of the Zero Potion, and the star ring wizard pirate's body, being somewhat special, had not yet been refined into a potion.

In other words, combined with the one and a half doses of the Zero Potion he had obtained from the Twin Demon Realm, he had a total of five doses of the Zero Potion.

One dose of the Zero Potion was used to sustain the six branches and twelve flowers of the Large Glazed Winter Green Plum. One dose was used to maintain his Second Circle climbing fern, a previously broken one having been replanted. One dose was used to sustain the Great Blood Wave Bromeliad wizard shoes. That left two doses.

So Locke used one dose to evolve this Jaeger Dream Blossom.

One hour later, Locke removed a virtual root from a golden peach tree and grafted it onto the Dream Blossom, turning the Jaeger Dream Blossom into a Second Circle wild magical plant.

But at this stage, Locke was still not finished.

For what he had in mind as a virtual root server, this degree was far from sufficient.

The breeding system he had designed for rapidly producing articles and results was far more than just this level.

A pulse of the Moon of Evolution descended, and Locke recited a spell. The Second Circle Jaeger Dream Blossom began to wither.

The Second Circle botanical spell model, Flowers Bloom and Fall.

Three seeds dropped. One Second Circle Jaeger Dream Blossom withered.

Locke frowned and looked around at the magical field. He had miscalculated somewhat, having not accounted for the resources needed to cultivate three Second Circle magical plants. This kind of magical field simply could not support a Second Circle magical plant.

A higher-grade magical field was needed.

But that would cost at least three hundred thousand magic stones per acre.

"It was really so much better using the teacher's second group laboratory, where the formations and magical resources were all right there."

Locke thought of how in the second group's laboratory he had simply called on the magical formations and resources directly.

He negotiated with the owner of this store alliance and, after paying one million magic stones, with one hundred thousand of that as a deposit, rented three acres of Second Circle-grade magical field.

These three acres were located underground beneath the shop, that is, beneath Rose Street.

Looking up at the ceiling of the underground space, Locke saw the bottom of an elemental pool churning above. So the shop had placed an elemental fission well above this basement, using it to artificially create the gradient environment of a magical tide concentration suitable for Second Circle magical plant growth. However, if the elemental fission well above were attacked, the entire commercial street would likely be blown up.

No wonder three acres of magical field, even for a temporary rental for a period of time, cost so much.

This kind of artificially constructed growing environment for Second Circle magical plants was indeed expensive. If one was renting from someone else rather than having built it oneself, the cost was high.

Locke placed the three seeds into the magical field, then regulated the magical formation, concentrating the magical tide. Because the magical tide was so dense, even a magical tide storm appeared in this basement.

Three storms kept crashing against the walls of the basement that had been reinforced by defensive magical formations.

At this point, Locke recited a spell and used the Second Circle spell model Enhanced Accelerated Growth to speed the growth of these magical plants.

Four days later, three Second Circle Jaeger Dream Blossoms grew out. Locke plucked them and observed them in his hand. "Some degradation has appeared. I am not sure if it is because of limited conditions and crude equipment, or because offspring in hybridization cultivation can exhibit degradation under certain circumstances."

"After all, I did not do any backcrossing to stabilize their traits."

There was nothing to be done about that. Backcrossing would have required considerably more cost, time, and manpower.

And there was no need for it.

Although some degradation had appeared, they were sufficient for synthesis.

Locke thought, "Actually, the Jaeger Dream Blossom that has been strengthened by the Moon of Evolution and forcibly elevated by a level can already be used."

"So I do not need to keep synthesizing and looking for recipes. But it would be best to strengthen it once more with the Synthesis Cube."

"That way, perhaps a better result can be achieved."

After all, the core of his virtual root virtual server was still the Stygian ancient tree, that mysterious magical plant of unknown rank that he had found beneath the Stygian River. At its core, this plan would only succeed because he had fished for a bit of that mysterious magical plant's power.

Otherwise, shared virtual roots alone would not be reliable.

The amount of virtual roots was directly proportional to the energy a magical plant could provide. If the energy was insufficient, several Second Circle magical plants might simultaneously collapse.

So the critical thing was that the energy had to be sufficient.

And what could possibly have more and stronger energy than that mysterious Stygian iron tree?

One day later, inside the underground laboratory.

Locke took out the Jaeger Dream Blossom that had been strengthened twice through the magic cube.

[Super Jaeger Dream Blossom, Grade 9 synthesized item, created from three Second Circle Jaeger Dream Blossoms. Possesses powerful energy and can construct a stable dream state for an extended period, with an independent dream space. It is said that during growth, it accidentally cross-hybridized with Red Devil God Rose pollen, which produced an independent dream space.]

"The independent dream space is located on a style of the Super Jaeger Dream Blossom, approximately the size of a thumbnail."

"Although its material basis in the present reality is extremely small, the dream space's interior possesses a sufficiently vast world capacity. Making good use of this dream space may allow for extraordinary things to be accomplished."

Locke saw this dream space and a gleam lit in his eyes.

"My luck was good this time, producing a special synthesis recipe directly."

"Right, the Red Devil God Rose does indeed possess an independent spiritual space on the style within its flower. This is the Red Devil God Rose's unique ability, and one of its charms. The Red Devil God will capture souls that die from its fragrance and bring them into that spiritual space."

"Teacher cultivated one such Red Devil God pot in the corridor of the castle in the Origin Academy, using it to warn other wizards not to enter the garden corridor near her office."

A gleam appeared in Locke's eyes.

This was the charm of the hybridization cultivation method, and the charm of magical plant blossoms. Through multiple male parents through pollen, magical plants of different forms could be cultivated.

And the specific cultivation method for the Super Jaeger magical plant before him had also been revealed through its entry, meaning he could try cultivating one from start to finish using the hybridization cultivation method.

Though at this moment Locke did not have that intention.

He held the Dream Blossom in his hand, a pale pink flower softly radiating a pink glow in the air. The Super Jaeger was entirely pinkish, with the surface of the flower bearing red thread-like streaks, like the face of a beautiful woman scratched open and seeping blood.

"Right now it is only Grade 9, and it could theoretically be synthesized once more. But..." Locke frowned. Just this single one had already cost him a million magic stones. Synthesizing once more would require another expenditure.

Never mind.

If he used the teacher's laboratory for experiments, the cost could be greatly reduced.

For current purposes, this Super Jaeger was already capable of perfectly fulfilling the role he had in mind for it.

If his idea could actually be realized.

Locke sent a message to Wizard Carter through the water hyacinth system. "Carter, are you ready on your end? I need the enchantment spell model Pleasured and Forgetful."

...

Inside the Queen's Chessboard, Wizard Carter was working hard. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, afraid that his spirituality might mix with the spirituality inside the Queen's Chessboard chamber, as that would cause severe soul damage.

Wizard Carter sensed Locke calling him and opened his spiritual mushroom.

"Lord Locke's speed is this fast? He is truly a Second Circle wizard. He cultivated the Dream Blossom this quickly."

He sent Locke a message. 'Lord Locke, give me three more days and I can have it done.'

...

Inside the underground magical field, Locke shut off the Sun Lamp and raised an eyebrow.

"Hmm? He can finish in only three days? He is moving quickly. It seems his talent in enchantment studies really is quite decent."

"My store alliance needs this kind of talent."

He himself was already stretched thin studying three disciplines, and enchantment studies was something he had never explored before.

Coming to the Rose Council this time had produced two quite promising wizards. In the future they might be recruitable into his Augustus Wizard Shoe Store Alliance.

Of course, the premise was that his store alliance could survive Solas Light Foot's assault.

Inside the basement.

Seeing that Carter still needed some time, Locke decided to first place the Dream Blossom into the Stygian River and test it.

After all, the Dream Blossom itself was already complete. The enchantment spell model was only there to give the internal dream space a set of rules.

But even without that enchantment spell, he could still use the Ephemeral Dream he had learned in Golden Crown Mountain's library through his clone to weave some simple dream worlds.

Locke recited a spell and summoned the Stygian River. He had previously obtained a great deal of the Necromantic Lich's legacy left in the southeastern quadrant, and although much of it could not be used from the high vantage point of a Second Circle wizard, merely using some of its functions to summon the Stygian River was within his reach.

"A sacrifice is needed."

A strong killing intent radiated from Locke. "Opening the Stygian Gate requires sacrificing the death energy that has accumulated on one's body. To accumulate death energy, one must kill. Black wizards, in order to open the Stygian Gate, often need to slaughter quite a few apprentices."

"Though I can skip that step. I still have accumulated quite a bit of death energy from killing Second Circle and First Circle wizards on my body. I was actually worrying that this would make me seem too murderous and easily give people a poor first impression of me. Going forward, I can use the method of opening the Stygian Gate to consume the death energy on my body."

At this moment, a Stygian Gate opened. That door was barely there, like a crack between the plane and the present reality.

For Ghost Sacred Order wizards, they would need to prepare extensive rituals to protect themselves before daring to step into the Stygian realm, and even then the danger was considerable.

But at this moment, Locke was a Second Circle wizard.

He stepped out directly, moving from the wizard world into the Stygian realm, standing above the Stygian River.

"This should be roughly the right location."

Using his magical graft relationship with the Time Shadow Fern, Locke moved the opened Stygian Gate to the location on the Stygian River where he had been last time. He saw quite a few Stygian creatures wandering on the river.

"Hmm? Why are there so many Stygian creatures sweeping the river's surface?"

"Well, it certainly has nothing to do with me. First, I will toss this magical plant into the Stygian River."

Locke tossed the Dream Blossom directly. Instantly, what had been perfectly docile in Locke's hand, like an ordinary object, exploded with a surge of magic pressure the moment it was released, and fell toward the Stygian River like a mountain.

Immediately the Stygian River churned with wind and surging waves, its waters rising and falling.

The Stygian yaksha on the river staggered and stumbled on their warships.

These yakshas seemed unable to see Locke. They had the appearance of red-skinned monsters with pupils burning with soul fire, apparently only able to clearly perceive deceased beings and unable to clearly see living things.

They were terrified on their ships. "What happened?"

"Ah, what is that above us? Row the warship further away, quickly."

"It is going to press down on us."

"Quickly..."

"Who is it? Someone is throwing things into our Stygian River again!"