Nihility [ Isekai • Dragon Evolution ]

After the loop restarted, I modified the spell so that it needed a constant connection with the monitoring spell or it would begin to release the accumulated magicules in a controlled motion so that it wouldn't go out of control like it had happened before.

Testing it was simple enough. I just had to activate the monitoring spell first and then the absorption spell. I monitored as it dragged more and more ambient magicules into itself, and ignored Gereth and Mavi trying to talk with me. I learned that I needed to transform back into my true form when the loops started or I would be captured and dragged into their camp.

As the absorption spell reached its peak I cut the monitoring spell, observing it with my own eyes and trying to understand using [Magicule Detection] but the only thing I could see, with both, was the spell turning into a small sphere of light that's blinding if you looked directly at it. I guess it was releasing the magicules as a light source.

With that problem resolved, I moved to the main subject. How I would deal with the multiple elements conflicting with each other both in the spell and when released. The answer that Henry, surprisingly, helped me think of. I still needed to actually plan how to do it, of course, but having an end goal was better than just going in blindly.

The main problem is that I didn't know how many elements I would he dealing with, so I had to come up with a solution to deal with all of them dynamically, and to do that I would need to come up with a spell that changes after it has already been cast, and not to the degree I had already done it. What I did was simply "if you didn't detect thing, break other thing".

"But how will I be able to do it?" I thought out loud as I walked in circles.

If I made the spell collect all of the elemental energies, I would need for it to change every time a new element was absorbed into it, and it would only become more complex as more and more elements were added into it, increasing the risk of another explosion.

"...what if I don't store them in the spell itself?" I said as the idea came to me. If I couldn't use the spell that is absorbing to store the various elements, why not store them in another spell? Sure, I would need to make it so that they wouldn't get dragged along with the absorption and, more importantly, just would need for them to be auto casted, and not by me.

I needed to create a spell that would cast other spells, and I didn't know if it was actually possible. Sure, I could cast how many spells I wanted, but there was a difference between having a conscious being creating a spell and an artificial construct creating… one…Wait, was there a difference?

A spell that creates spells. If I change the words it can be "a program that creates programs". Isn't this basically what an artificial intelligence is? There were mentions of golems in the books I read from Henry, so the concept of an automaton is possible, meaning that it should be theoretically possible to create something like an AI.

"But to create something as complex as an AI… No, I don't need to make something that complex" I said as I thought about what I needed. What I had to do was actually much simpler than what an AI. I just needed a conditional spell, a spell that would trigger something when certain conditions were met.

I shook my head. I was thinking way too far. I didn't even know if a spell could make other spells, I needed to try it first.

I pulled [Magical Programming Language] and started to create a spell that would continuously create a jet of water forwards. It was just a proof of concept more than anything else, I just needed to make sure it could work.

When I tried to cast it, it took a lot of magicules from me just to form the spell, and more to feed it magicules.

The spell itself took the shape of a cube filled with lines and runes, and inside that cube there was the magical circle I recognized as the water jet spell.

As the spell took more and more of my magicules, with the pain of using too much while my soul was still wounded increasing, I saw it flowing through it and then into the spell at the center, which took the magicules and formed a drop of water in the center, and then started spraying in a continuously stream that shot forwards…for a few seconds, as then the spell started drifting inside the other spell and sprayed water everywhere until I stopped feeding it magicules and it exhausted its reserves, fading as the water stream stopped.

"...at least it works" I said, drenched by the water.

With a simple wind spell I created, I dried myself easily.

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I spent the entire loop doing more trial and error until I had a complete spell that would invoke another spell and keep it from destabilizing. Then I spent another ten loops trying to decrease the minimal amount of magicules necessary for the spell to work, I even tried reading the book about magic circuits which I managed to get a few ideas out of and managed to create a way for a spell to cast another spell I had already programmed with my skill and make it so that it would only cast it after a certain amount of magicules was injected on it.

The way I had created the spell initially made it so it cast both of the spells at the same time, and then basically transformed into two separate spells with only the flow of magicules connecting both. But now I had found a way to put the spell I wanted for it in the structure of the spell itself, and only actually cast it when I wanted it to.

The next five loops were me developing the spell that would receive elemental magic and store it. I unfortunately didn't have a way to make actual elemental magicules, so i had to go into the cave each time I needed to test the spell, which ended in the entire cave exploding at least seven times by my fault after the spell failed to contain the energies, and mixing with other elements as I was creating a single instance of the spell, and another three times from the temporal energy that increased in quantity whenever I entered the cave.

In the end, though, I had a complete spell that would be filled with magicules and a specific elemental energy and store it the same way I had stored the temporal energy on the first version of the spell. It would condense and crystallize the energy in its center, and would do only that.

There were only two things that I still needed to do. The first was to create the spell that would absorb all the ambient magicules and create the storage spells as needed and the second was to figure out a way for the absorption not affect the storage spell, or else it would break down and create another explosion like the first time and I don't know if I could survive it, probably not as my soul was not wounded before, but now it was.

Looking at the code for the absorption spell, I noticed I wouldn't be able to use it as it would require so many changes. It was better if I just started from scratch, and that's exactly what I did.

The first thing I did was create the module that would read the element and cast a storage spell for it. I tested in the cave with a few safeguards, such as separating the part that powered the absorption effect from the flow of magicules, and placing a small charge I would place manually. The results were less than optimal, as it created various storage spells for the same element and then started mixing them too fast for me to stop it before it created a small explosion that cascaded out of control as I fell through the debris and water that rushed in to then hit my head on the boronita that was as if waiting for me to reach it for it to explode.

"Damn it!" I shouted as I punched one tree after I transformed back into my dragon form. It's the first thing I do every loop to avoid losing the entire loop because Mavi and Gereth found the "lost lunaspectra wolf" they were hunting for.

I reviewed the code, trying to find anything wrong with it, but I really couldn't. This was a little worse than the other spells I've done through trial and error because I could see the faulty logic that resulted in the error in those, but not on the main spell. I would need to rethink it from scratch.

Ignoring Gereth and Mavi, who asked the same question they always do when they find me, I moved towards the entrance of the crystal cave and sat down, closing my eyes and focusing only on [Magicule Detection].

I could feel the magicules around me and how they moved, but I needed to sense something else from them. My logic was that if there wasn't anything wrong with my spell, then there should be something wrong with the magicules around it. It was a backwards logic, but I honestly didn't care.

The flow of magicules felt like the flow of smoke in the air, slow and thin. With the exception of the magicules coming from the cave itself, they felt like solid blocks of magicules that were somehow floating in the air, spreading in a random way… was it random, though?

There were blocks that moved towards the ground and then spread out like it was water, another moved too erratically for me to make any kind of sense, but it felt like watching fire spread out and then die out, and there was another block that moved like mist, encompassing all the others types of magicules, but not interacting with them…no, it was interacting with something else, it was interacting with me. I watched as the mist-like magicule moved over me and then start to move like it was caught in the gravity of a black hole.

This movement… I had the sensation that I had already felt something like this before…

And then it clicked. Temporal Energy. Every time I find pure temporal energy, they always move towards me like I am some kind of black hole, pulling every piece of temporal energy I could. But this wasn't temporal energy, this was a block of magicules… elemental charged magicules.

I suddenly understood pieces of the book talking about magic circuits I hadn't before. Magicules were, generally, basically neutral in elemental energy, but they could absorb them after a while being in contact with it, just like they absorb pieces of the mental energy used to guide them. The level up with my skill allowed me to see more details in the magicules around me. They were charged with elemental energy of water, fire, stone, time and various others. What once was just a painting made with only the color blue, it now had undertones of other colors as well.

Now I understood what was happening. My spell was detecting the elemental energy in the magicules used to charge it, as well as the pure elemental energy in the cave, and was causing the spell to bug out and act as it acted. If I wanted to continue with this plan, I had to first remove the element from the magicule before reading and storing it.

I looked at the two moons that illuminated the sky and sighed.

"This will take me a long time to finish" I said with a defeated expression.