Chapter 546: Conduction
Ace unleashed the illusory power of the dream to its maximum output. The giant bug began to struggle violently, the Magic Net tightening its grip as the Source Power of the entire Wizard World vibrated.
Boom!
The giant bug broke free from the Magic Net. Its vertical single eye bulged wide, and its massive mouthparts opened to spew out endless ash-like matter.
Ace did not hesitate. Raising his right hand forward, layered runes appeared dazzlingly. A nebula phantom emerged and immediately solidified. The thirteen Star Noble Phantasms generated a massive gravity well at this moment.
The complex gravity well formed terrifying hyper-limit traces. Crashing forward, it mangled the giant bug’s face into a bloody mess.
The entire Astral Void shook. Fortunately, this was outside the world; otherwise, the Great Source would have found it hard to bear.
The seven Legendary Wizards, including Warren, along with the two Legendary Knights, Arno and Ancestar, controlled the tentacles of the Magic Net and recaptured the giant bug.
With a fierce ram, the giant bug knocked a dent into the main world of the Wizard World Cluster. The interior of the world shook violently, invisible shockwaves causing eerie fluctuations in the star, and triggering landslides and tsunamis on the habitable planets.
Ace continued to use the hyper-limit traces to cut the giant bug. The bug’s skin was extremely thick, making it hard to break through. Ace simply aligned the thirteen stars into a straight line and drove them directly into the single eye.
Roar!
The giant bug let out a fierce roar, rolling frantically in pain. The nine Legends barely managed to bind it with the Magic Net. Ace took the opportunity to continue influencing it with dream illusions. Having absorbed the overflowing Source Power from the world cluster, Ace’s dream illusions received a massive boost, and extremely dense dream mist completely enveloped the bug.
The giant bug’s struggles gradually weakened. After about half a month, it finally fell into a deep slumber.
Ace looked at the giant bug and let out a long sigh of relief. This massive creature had originally been asleep. While these past two weeks seemed like just half a month to others, Ace had used the time to read through the giant bug’s entire life experience.
The giant bug seemed to have been born from a certain world. Its nature was anomalous; it could be called a World-Devouring Bug. From birth, a rudimentary world gestated in its belly. However, this rudimentary world was just an embryonic form, and a freakish one at that.
As it continuously grew, it became larger and larger, eventually blotting out the sky and swallowing that world’s sun in one gulp.
In its blurry subsequent memories, many tiny figures attacked it, only to be swallowed whole. Eventually, it grew so large that it ate a massive hole through the entire world, and countless tiny figures worked together to push it out.
That world was incredibly unlucky to have birthed it, but incredibly lucky that the bug bored through and left.
The larva of the World-Devouring Bug did not consume its birth world, leaving it somewhat malnourished from a young age. Food in the Astral Void was scarce. It almost constantly devoured various drifting astral wreckage, astral predators, and other bizarre things.
Ace even saw the larva swallow a dragon egg. It was simply an astral scavenger; as long as something was nearby, it would eat anything edible.
Inside the belly of the World-Devouring Bug was a complete plane, albeit a somewhat twisted one. This plane had no origin of its own; everything relied entirely on the bug’s devouring.
This meant there were no native inhabitants—all were foreign creatures. Moreover, the internal structure of the World-Devouring Bug’s world was different from ordinary worlds: things could only enter, not exit.
If the creatures inside truly wanted to escape, they could only wait for the split second the giant bug opened its massive mouth to feed, braving the spatial turbulence in reverse to perhaps escape into the Astral Void.
But ordinary creatures had no ability to survive in the Astral Void. Except for dragons, all of them would perish.
Ace looked at this giant bug and thought for a moment. He personally manipulated the threads of the Magic Net, binding the bug tightly. Then, a thick Magic Net tentacle reached into the bug’s mouthparts, probing directly inside.
The sleeping giant bug’s single eye squeezed shut forcefully, seeming extremely uncomfortable.
Ignoring everything else, Ace shoved the tentacle straight in, plunging it directly onto the internal world within the bug’s belly and probing deep.
Inside the giant bug’s pseudo-world, everything was dim and gray. Above the hazy continent, a giant eye abruptly appeared—it was Ace’s magic, the Eye of Truth.
The Eye of Truth brazenly emitted golden light, piercing through a swath of gray mist and startling the creatures here. Some intelligent species merely tried to perceive it and immediately descended into madness.
They successively called the giant eye the Eye of Madness, with many believing it to be yet another strange creature swallowed by the bug. Some even went to seek advice from the dragon.
The dragon, Osvald, had hatched from the very egg swallowed into the bug’s belly. He possessed the strength of a Golden Wizard right from birth. Although he was a whelp, he remained powerful inside this pseudo-world.
After his birth, Osvald survived in this world for nearly a thousand years. He continuously devoured the origin power of other creatures and ultimately advanced to Legend in this impossible place. Yet even so, his three attempts to escape the world inside the bug all ended in failure.
“I cannot see through what that is either. That giant eye does not seem to be a living entity, but rather some kind of detection method,” the dragon said in a deep voice to his kin. “According to my inherited memories, I can confirm I’ve never seen anything similar. However, the Astral Plane is vast, and anything is possible. Perhaps a powerful being outside has subdued this big bug.”
By this time, Ace had already grasped the basic situation inside the pseudo-world. On the surface, this world was a continent, but in reality, that so-called continent was a mass of shriveled corpses, piled layer upon layer.
An unknown number of endless corpses had accumulated, eventually forming an entire continent. This was not a continent at all, but an endless mass grave swallowed by the giant bug.
The entire plane was twisted. It had no origin and no internal vitality. Even if a civilization had been born within it, it was like duckweed without roots, because this pseudo-world was just an empty shell. Not only did it offer no positive rewards or internal generation for a civilization, it frantically plundered it instead.
The entire pseudo-world continuously absorbed the origin power inside it. Every once in a while, a terrifying suction force would pull the vast majority of creatures to the side of the crystal wall, which was very clear and translucent.
After all the creatures were drained into mummies, violent winds would blow them away to pile up inside the world.
The creatures here were all remnants. Apart from the dragon, all other Legends seemed to have died. In short, this was a world of despair.
Legendary Wizards like Warren had already entered the giant bug via the Magic Net tentacle channels, preparing to investigate the situation inside in depth. Ace, meanwhile, was deep in thought.
He had the ability to kill this giant bug, but the issue was not killing it; it was figuring out how to maximize its utility. The bug was already quite miserable. Ace was very curious about this bizarre astral creature and wanted to use the Magic Net outside the world as an operating table to study this entity seriously and see what he could harvest.
While Ace and the Legendary Wizards were in full swing researching the World-Devouring Bug, back in the Celestial Realm, the Mage Thales had been waiting for more than half a month without any sign of Warren returning.
To survive, Thales took up jobs in the Academic City. As a Mage, it was almost impossible for him to join the private research institutes of other wizards, so he could only do some peripheral work, such as converting magic stones and refining magical materials.
Naturally, this kind of work did not satisfy Thales, but he didn’t get discouraged. He worked hard to earn magic stones to exchange for the latest academic journals in the Academic City. A short article in Wisdom of Spells caught his attention.
“Several Discoveries Regarding Frictional Electrification”. After a series of simple discussions, the author began to explain the research results.
“We discovered that an electrified glass bottle sealed with a wooden stopper can also attract objects. Therefore, it is certain that electricity can be conducted. According to my tests, metal has the strongest conductivity.
“Since electricity can be conducted, then electricity is highly likely an independently existing, flowing substance. We can call it ‘electric fluid’.
“In fact, this electricity is similar to our lightning magic, and the vast majority of experiments can also be conducted directly using lightning magic.
“In another experiment, we found that a glass rod rubbed with silk will repel a similar glass rod, while simultaneously attracting amber rubbed with fur, and they cancel each other out upon contact.
“Therefore, I divide electric fluid into vitreous electricity and amber electricity. Like charges repel, and opposite charges attract.”
Thales checked the author’s name: Allen, a Level 2 Wizard.
“This discovery about electric current and the discovery of vitreous and amber electricity are very interesting. Wizards have previously conducted magical experiments where lightning spells could strike targets miles away; this should be the conduction effect of current.
“But how far current can be conducted is worth researching. Also, why electricity is divided into vitreous and amber electricity is well worth digging into. This is very meaningful for casting lightning magic.”
After marveling at it, Thales continued flipping through the subsequent issues of Wisdom of Spells. This was a relatively low-end academic tabloid, and also Thales’ first target. He didn’t want to spend his whole life doing low-end work in the Academic City. Even a Mage could do academics!
Looking at the latest issue of Wisdom of Spells, Thales found another article on frictional electrification. This article discussed in detail how many objects were tested for frictional electrification and noted some interesting phenomena: some objects were easily electrified by friction, while others were very difficult to electrify.
The author believed objects should be divided into conductors and insulators. Conductors easily conduct electricity; insulators do not.
Thales’ eyes lit up. He felt this experiment was also worth delving into. Having processed a large amount of magical and ordinary materials, Thales had new perspectives on this.
“Such research is not rigorous enough. If other variables are introduced, such as heating, increasing the current, etc., perhaps conductors and insulators will undergo different changes.”
The next day, Thales purchased a series of materials, including the insulators listed in the paper and insulators he had discovered in his daily life, and began simple experiments.
“Wood is a very good insulator. Let’s do the first experiment.”
Thales directly burned the wood into charcoal and found that ordinary charcoal did not conduct electricity. He then tried increasing the current and discovered that a super-strong current would make the charcoal conduct. This phenomenon greatly interested Thales.
He successively tested several insulators, like glass, rubber, and so on, and finally wrote a short paper: Research on Conductors, Insulators, and Current.
In the article, he concluded:
“Conductors and insulators are only relative terms. So-called conductors are objects that easily conduct electricity, and insulators are objects that do not. If the condition of an insulator is changed through certain methods, the insulator can also conduct electricity. But whether an object actually conducts electricity or not actually depends on the strength of the current. Therefore, I propose the following definitions:
“The magnitude and strength of the current, I call voltage; the greater the voltage, the greater the current strength.
“Objects should possess a property that determines their conductivity, which I call resistance, meaning the level of insulation of the object. The greater the resistance, the harder it is to conduct electricity.”
Upon writing these down, Thales suddenly felt refreshed. Following the requirements, he mailed the paper via a Shadow Crow to Wisdom of Spells, this relatively low-tier tabloid, his heart full of expectation.
“This article is worth at least one Academic Point. As long as I have an Academic Point, I’ll be qualified to register my Scholar rank at the Central Tower and become a Mage Scholar standing shoulder-to-shoulder with wizards!”
While thinking, Thales skillfully processed the materials.
…
Outside the world, Warren and the others had already gone deep into the World-Devouring Bug to research. They encountered the dragon. After a nine-on-one battle, the dragon, Osvald, immediately surrendered and offered up abundant experience. The wizards also forcibly signed a magic contract with this bronze dragon.
“Witnessed by His Holiness Ace, Controller of the Wizard World Cluster, the Bronze Dragon Osvald voluntarily becomes an experimental research subject of the Supreme Council of the High Tower Wizards, and the High Tower Wizards shall not harm…”
With a miserable face, under the watchful eyes of the scales and Ace, Osvald despairingly pressed his claw onto the primitive contract.
As the contract burned, Osvald felt a strong binding force envelop him, making him extremely depressed.
Ace was also very surprised. He hadn’t expected the dragon egg to actually hatch into a dragon, let alone survive in such a harsh environment. It was simply an unexpected joy—buy one, get one free.
A creature naturally capable of astral travel like a dragon, along with the World-Devouring Bug, were both excellent experimental materials. For a moment, Ace felt his operating table was too bountiful, and he wasn’t quite sure which one to enjoy first.
The other wizards, however, didn’t overthink it. They scrambled to compete, and finally arranged an order for each person to experiment on the dragon.
Smiling, Bayen bound the dragon and took the despairing creature back to his Wizard Tower in the Celestial Realm.
Ace’s research continued. He had already begun dissecting the giant bug while keeping it alive. Aside from its head and tail, the giant bug was essentially just its middle belly.
The pseudo-world inside the belly was being explored by the Legendary Wizards, while Ace dissected the unique structure of the tail, studying its textures and runes, continuously recording and analyzing them.
This tail structure possessed extremely strong propulsion and endurance capabilities. Ace was thoroughly amazed by this natural, miraculous structure.
“As long as this structure can be successfully parsed, it will be a world-class thruster. Our Wizard World Cluster can completely abandon the primitive Magic Net flagella and enter an era of even higher-speed sailing!”
Ace’s eyes shone brightly, and the ahoge on his head swayed back and forth.
In the Celestial Realm, Thales looked at his newly received Academic Badge, his eyes full of yearning for the future.
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