Chapter 195: Mimicry
Late at night, inside the largest mud hut in the High Tower Territory settlement, Ace’s residence.
Under the cool light of the Controllable Light Orb, Ace stood with the cowlick on his head swaying violently. Not far from him, Arno was exhausting his Heart Force with all his might.
Ace, using the Soul Spell Insight Perception combined with the Spirit of the Book’s abilities to comprehend the unknown and deduce, had roughly recorded the complex rune flashing near Arno’s heart in his perception field.
“Huff! Huff!”
Arno, nearly exhausted, lay weakly on the ground, panting heavily.
Ace attempted to trace this peculiar complex rune in the air with his mental power. Each time it was about to be completed, the rune mysteriously shattered, as if missing some key component.
“What is it?”
Ace muttered to himself while pacing around the room.
Squelch. He seemed to have stepped on something soft. Subconsciously, he stepped on it again.
Arno let out a muffled groan. Ace had stepped on his hand.
Ace lifted his foot, squatted down to look at Arno lying on the ground, and asked in an emotionless voice: “What do you think is the most important element constituting the rune in your heart?”
Arno took advantage of Ace lifting his foot to pull his hand back. Panting heavily, he said intermittently: “I… Courage… is the most important…”
Hearing this, Ace stood up and muttered: “Courage? That is, the so-called creed. Can it be understood as an attribute of will?”
He then looked down at Arno, pulled him up, and said: “You have worked hard. I will have my assistant take you back to rest.”
As he spoke, he almost dragged the weak Arno up and handed him over to the mirror image clone.
After sending Arno away, Ace continued to think, muttering: “Heart Force is composed of the will of the creed and Inherent Mana. Perhaps I can try self-hypnosis to form a mental will similar to the Courage Creed, and then mix it with my own Inherent Mana.”
Thinking of this, Ace immediately began to relax his body and mind, closed his eyes, and activated the Soul Spell Suggestion to hypnotize himself.
After a long while, his eyes opened, burning with a fervent emotion similar to the courage he felt in Arno’s Heart Force.
Ace sensed his mental power and found that it had a slight golden sheen. He opened the fifth page of his Grimoire and recorded in the Magic Diary:
“Every virtuous emotion, if it can penetrate the spirit and achieve resonance, will produce peculiar changes. The most characteristic phenomenon is the coloring of mental power.”
He controlled this mental power, slowly separating a small piece. This ball of mental power emitted a soft golden glow, pulsating like breathing, giving off a powerful warmth.
Ace separated a piece of Inherent Mana and slowly brought it close to this ball of mental power. Under his control, the two began to merge. Buzz!
It seemed like some mechanism was unlocked. A strange supernatural power somewhat similar to Heart Force was about to be born. Bang!
The power turned into foam and vanished without a trace. Failure!
Days passed. Ace continued experimenting. Through constant trial and error, simulating Knight cultivation, he finally created a unique mental power similar to a Knight’s creed. Ace called it Mimicry Courage Will.
The Mimicry Courage Will, emitting a golden hue, rolled in the air like waves. As Ace injected his Inherent Mana, a violent reaction occurred immediately!
Golden light shone brightly. A supernatural power similar to Heart Force appeared. Although this power was similar to Heart Force in all aspects, its root was still Mana. It could only be called Mimicry Heart Force, not true Heart Force.
The cowlick on Ace’s head began to sway. The image of the strange rune replicated from Arno appeared before his eyes.
He controlled the Mimicry Courage Heart Force, tracing this strange rune bit by bit. Upon the rune’s completion, he seemed to hear a shout, and he felt a surge of emotion, as if possessing endless courage!
Ace looked at this rune and tried to replicate it into his Soul Sanctuary. He found that it could not enter the sanctuary. It seemed to strongly repel the Soul Sanctuary. No matter what Ace did, this strange rune refused to enter.
Ace tried to combine it with basic Soul Runes, but failed again. This rune seemed self-contained; it did not need the assistance of other runes and had its own set of operating rules.
Ace watched this rune floating in the air, sometimes disappearing, sometimes appearing, seemingly on the boundary between visible and invisible. It reminded Ace of the Sea of Illusion and Reality. Is it a shared characteristic of illusion and reality? Ace thought silently.
Ace dared not place this rune directly near his heart. If it modified his heart to be similar to a Knight’s heart, who knew what would happen?
Knights cannot use Siphoned Mana directly, and the available spells are very few.
Recently, the apprentices had captured quite a few Monsters, which were kept near the Magic School construction site. Ace decided to use Monsters for experiments first. He went straight to the construction site and used a rope shaped from Mana Crystals to drag away a monkey-like Monster.
In his residence, Ace pushed the somewhat dim rune toward the Monster’s heart. The dim rune, like a shark smelling blood, drilled in fiercely and merged with the heart.
Under Ace’s observation, this Monster’s heart changed rapidly. In just a few seconds, it turned into a golden heart.
This golden heart repelled the Mana on the Monster’s body, driving it away. The Monster struggled in pain, and finally, with a bang, turned into a pool of blood water. Nothing remained except a beating golden heart.
Ace looked at the pool of blood water with lingering fear. If he hadn’t experimented carefully and had shoved this rune directly into his own heart, he probably would have ended up like this too.
In the following days, Ace experimented with several more Monsters, all with similar effects. The formed golden hearts, after beating for a few days, gradually withered, the golden color disappeared, and they turned into dried yellow hearts.
After experimenting with Monsters many times, Ace took the experiment a step further. He muttered: “It is necessary to verify with humans. That batch of slaves in the territory are suitable test subjects.”
He randomly selected six strong males from the slaves. He used the Lesser Permanent Mental Blessing on three of them. Two achieved Mental Overdrive, while one did not.
Ace used the Lesser Permanent Mental Blessing on the other three, but still, no one achieved Mental Overdrive. He selected a few more slaves and finally gathered three Mental Overdrive Specialists.
Through mental resonance, he forcibly raised their mental power to 1 Unit. After letting them meditate for a week, he selected three ordinary mortal slaves and began a comparative experiment.
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