Dragons and those other elite races had 'indestructible' circuits, which was why Darius could keep practicing without harm. The reason he felt a 'breakthrough' when he succeeded was because he had forcefully strengthened his mana circuit until it could handle Master-grade spells.
Using the car example, if one created an 'indestructible' car with internal parts that could never explode and forced jet fuel into it, either it would refuse to start or eventually forcefully adapt.
Of course, it was not that simple, but it was the best possible analogy Darius could think of.
The Itemancer breathed out and understood what he had to do. When training his army or elite forces of any kind, he would now focus on magical circuit strengthening and body strengthening.
The same theory had to work for those who Sparked. They could not use abilities above their stage because their bodies had not been strengthened by their base ability to withstand such a thing.
This was a precious finding, because Darius had a thousand and one ways to create special substances with his resources outside to make this possible. In fact, he had some basic ways to achieve this even in here where he was limited, though naturally none of them could naturally compare to his current bloodline!
Darius then focused on his actual work and chose to turn the stone into the flesh type he was interested in right now. He chose human flesh and watched the stone slab warp into pinkish flesh that stank.
The flesh was alive and working, resembling part of a person's body. What was before he seemed to be the muscle and skin area around the shoulder blade, but Darius noticed a jarring problem.
He could only sigh because he had partially expected this, yet had hoped he could bypass it. The flesh he created lacked bones, so while he could create a whole human body with ease, the entity would be boneless!
This was not conducive to Darius' plan, so he would have to create a Stone to Bone spell which he estimated to take about a month.
What was Darius's plan anyway?
Well, as stated before, the ecosystem was deficient of life and flesh-based species. Since this world would not naturally produce them, why not artificially create them?
Yes, there were a slew of problems with this. Firstly, even if he created a perfect human body with flesh, blood, and bone, it would be a lifeless husk without a soul.
Oh make no mistake, the body would be 'alive'. Blood would be pumping, the brain would be working, the entire system active as if the person was asleep at worst.
However, they would be like a fully catatonic person, completely without thought or sentience.
Secondly, how to reproduce them. Since they were mindless, he did not know if reproduction was even possible. This did not affect humans only but any species he would introduce to this ecosystem.
The problem was not getting them to mate, as Darius had a solution for that. The problem was that even if they mated, how to take care of the budding offspring with braindead parents as well as whether the child would even be in possession of a soul anyway.
Thirdly, how to balance them out. Nature usually had its own way to make an ecosystem reach equilibrium of all species at a point. Since there was no true nature or laws of that kind here, Darius would have to manually regulate everything.
This was a task that would take a great investment of time and brainpower, but Darius wasn't daunted. He made sure all his systems were fortified and would work during his downtime, then returned to his manor.
There, he entered his mediation room and sat on his meditative cushion. He began working on the theory for the Stone to Bones spell.
Like this, 15 days had passed.
Darius rose from his meditative position as he stretched his body casually. He was surprised that he had ended up faster than he had hypothesized previously, but he attributed it to the only change that had occurred, the breakthrough of his mana circuit.
He then visualized the details of his new spell.
[Bones to Stone - Level 1 Spell
Grade: Master
Cost: 500 MP
Description: Transform an area of 2,500 meters around you containing any form of bones of all kinds to any form of stone (and vice versa) directly or remotely. The speed of conversion is 0.1 seconds per 2,500 meters and the effectiveness of the conversion is 2,500%.]
Darius was satisfied. The ability to change into any kind of bone was far-reaching as bones were made of various materials and could be of various types.
Not to mention, he could now face an undead army and turn them to stone with ease. Whether it was their rotten flesh or the boney skeletal warriors, they were nothing to him now.
But that was not the main use of this spell.
One could create skeletal systems of various epoxies and sell them. Darius knew of special Ludoian tribes that used the bones of their ancestors to fight, the Shamans.
Instead of waiting for powerhouses to die and dig out their bones, they could custom make what they wanted with only this bit of mana. They would quickly become menaces on the tier of Mages, Immortals, and Exorcists.
There were also medical uses for both this and Flesh to Stone. Just place a brick on a person's ripped-off arm and recreate the entire limb with just a bit of mana.
Of course, there were Life Element spells that could achieve this, and even Light Element ones too.
But hey, one might not always have fellows with such power available, nor was there a reason to scorn a wealth of options, right?
Darius smiled as he felt excited for the first time in a long time since he came here. He was about to undertake the activity of the Gods, creating a being!
How many scientists on Earth wished to grow their own humans in a capsule but were hounded by religious zealots and falsely righteous casuals who cried about morality?
