Right now, Darius was undertaking a huge project. He was currently stuck in the Design phase of his newest spell which he had been working on for one and a half years.
It was a spell from the Order element!
One should know, this element - along with its counterpart, the Chaos element - were the two highest elements discovered to date. They had only been recently unearthed too, so they didn't have much patronage in the world as of yet, though after learning their effects, every single mage craved them.
At the same time, they were also terrified of them as the cost of utility was high and the effects were too strong. Not to mention, pioneering Journeyman and above spells for these two wasn't just difficult, but using Caesar's rating it would at least be a Nightmare Quest!
What's more, Darius had yet to use the two Basic spells even once, so how could he move onto the Design stage? He would need to use them repetitively for a long period of time before he could grasp their inner machinations.
So what was Darius doing? Why undertake such a foolish method that had almost no success rate? Why bother trying if you don't even dare to cast the Basic spell?
Wouldn't this time have been better used on other elements?
Well, once one looked at the cost of the spells, as well as their effects, one could understand why everyone lusted after it, but only very few dared to touch it!
[Stabilize - Level 1 Spell
Grade: Basic
Cost: 5% of maximum HP, MP, and STA permanently
Description: Bend reality to your will to introduce order to the world. You are able to fully control reality for 1 second in a range of 1 meter around your body.]
[Destabilize - Level 1 Spell
Grade: Basic
Cost: 5% of all stats permanently
Description: Introduce a little chaos into the world and let anarchy reign. You are able to twist reality for 1 second in a range of 1 meter around your body.]
Very simple descriptions and the effects were clear to anyone. In essence, once you cast this skill, within a small range around yourself and for a short period of time, you were the God of Faust.
If it wasn't for the fact that he wouldn't get much exp from it anyway. Darius would have loved to blink next to Thor or God Krona and vanquish them by controlling reality.
'Controlling reality' was a broad term. It meant that Darius could make himself superman without the weakness to Kryptonite within that period, or turn himself into a peerless sage.
Heck, could he even insta-make himself the Supreme?
However, the cost of the spell daunted all comers, even Darius. Even though Transmutation had increased the effectiveness by 500%, making the spell cost 5x less and become 5x stronger, it was still too much.
5% of all his stats permanently for Chaos? 5% of his HP, MP, and STA permanently for Order? This meant after 20 uses, he would vanish from this world. Of course, since he had the Resurrections Stone, he could be said to have 80 uses of each of these spells before he became either dead or a waste.
But why would he waste his precious 3 extra lives on… experiments?
That would be the limit of foolishness, and only ignorant and brash youngsters who had little logical capacity would advocate for such a thing.
After all, he was doing just fine as he was, he didn't need to waste his bloody stats or extra lives for anything. In fact, he needed them, even more, to strengthen himself to become the Supreme.
Of course, Darius was not without imagination. Upon hearing all this, a question would form in the mind of a quick-witted fellow, which was 'why not reverse the cost imposed by the spell when you control reality around you?'.
A great assumption, and this was what Darius was hoping to try, but didn't dare to still. After all, assuming that this cheap idea would work, it would be insulting the entirely of Faust's Magical System and Laws, and going a step beyond that it would also be insulting Goddess Vena.
To think that such a cheap loophole could work was the height of arrogance. One would basically have to assume that they were smarter than the one who had created them and the one who ran the world for hundreds of millennia smoothly, that their lifespan of between 15-70 years yielded them more wisdom than whatever these other two entities could muster.
Not to mention even if it did work, Vena was sure to strike him down immediately. He had not forgotten that he was like a puppet and Vena was the one pulling the strings. If he was starting to rebel so openly, she could just as easily cut those strings and Caesar would surely love it.
This was why Darius had humbled himself. It stood against all forms of sane logic that it would work, and he wasn't willing to risk a 5% loss in any way.
Why would he make himself the test subject when soon enough many 'Apprentices' would be coming to his doorstep?
As such, he continued trying to Design the Journeyman Order spell he had in mind, but he could barely discover where the mana needed to pass to convert to the Order element as he had no idea of what it even felt like.
Right now, Darius was using an alternative method, which was abusing his high Luck. It wasn't wrong to describe his action as Darius trying to 'thread the needle' for the Order spell, but he had to feel out the needle's hole.
He focused more on his spiritual senses that came with 50 points of Luck and discovered that if he moved it in unique ways, he would either get a chill in his heart, telling him that he'd better stop there and step back or he'd get a neutral feeling, telling him that while he was far off the mark, he also was not in utterly deadly territory.
After all this, he had only felt a burst of joy on three separate occasions, telling him he had passed the right corner in the maze of nodes in the body that alluded to the Order element.
This was an undertaking that would span years, as the maze of meridians and nodes in the body were far too many, and the possible combination would have to be measured in trillions.
Otherwise, some fellow would discover a new element every other week.
