Time Twister - 100 Instantaneous Casting session

He did discover a lot of new things, actually.

Some theories he had questioned were finally explained, such as the formation of lifeforms. The Helennic empire was quite focused on this type of research since this was their bread and butter.

Lifeforms, in general, goes beyond the genetics level. It’s possible for a non-carbon lifeform to procreate with a carbon-based lifeform, the same way an immaterial lifeform can procreate with a material lifeform.

It all lands on three basic aspects: Life essence doll compatibility, Cultivation level, and Cellular plasticity.

Life essence doll compatibility focuses on the following aspects: Concentration of life essence, the connection of karmic threads, and Elemental affinity.

Cultivation focuses on the average magic energy flowing in one’s body at any certain point, as well as the lowest and highest concentration.

Cellular plasticity simply indicates the evolutionary capacity and the adaptive measures one’s body can undergo, from minimum to maximum.

The first checkpoint is cultivation. If there’s too much of a difference between two parties in terms of cultivation, no fertilization/impregnation will occur due to the sex cells of either party either being too strong for the other or vice versa.

For example, Mundane up to Master class can initiate copulation, but Master and Legendary class beings cannot because their life essence will drastically change upon reaching Legendary class. Those within Legendary to Demigod class can do this successfully, and those in the Divine to God class can do so as well.

After this checkpoint, it’s followed by Life essence doll compatibility. First, it checks if the concentration of the life essence of both parties is high enough to produce life. Second, it checks if both parties have enough karmic threads to be used to create the life essence doll of the child. Lastly, do the life essence dolls compliment in terms of elemental affinity, or does one dominate over the other; this would result in the elemental affinity of the child being determined beforehand.

The last checkpoint is about Cellular plasticity. This is where most impregnation fails, causing them to result in a non-live birth, miscarriage, or dissolution.

Can the sex cells adapt to one another? Specifically, can their genetic structures merge in such a way that they would be stable enough to produce a living being?

Xander wanted to test this out for real though, in a controlled environment. He even wanted to hurry the development of the planets and evolution of biological and non-biological lifeforms in the laboratory and “guide” them to procreate through external influences.

However, after a few minutes of accelerated thought process and talking with the system, he decided against this, as it seemed to pass an invisible, moral boundary that he himself had set-up unknowingly. Forcing relationships between sentient creatures… it just seemed wrong for him.

Xander was in heavy thought before coming up with a solution: He’ll create planets where multiple sentient species, material and immaterial, and biological and non-biological lifeforms can interact, fall in love, marry, have children, etc., while Xander would observe the situation closely.

He looked around the vast, vast space of the Laboratory, and saw there were quite a few planets being formed, still being condensed.

After the 2 hours were up, he collected the produce in the gardens and the minerals and elemental crystals produced and left.

He would start placing similar libraries in Eden in the Laboratory once the planets have fully-formed in their stable forms, with each planet having a library of sorts. Originally, he wanted a way to connect all libraries to one another, even those in Eden, allowing cross-communication. However, there were spatial and universal differences between the two, so for now, it wasn’t possible to do so until Xander finds a solution to solve the problem.

He then headed to Eden, looking around the place. He was silently comparing it with the laboratory. The latter was around 1.12e+15 light-years in size, while Eden was exactly 1 light-year in all directions, shaped like a 1-sided ribbon, having no end in sight.

Xander felt quite unsatisfied with the garden, as it lacks the variety and excitement that the laboratory could bring, as everything in the garden is controlled. 1 light-year worth of land and sea seemed big enough though, to host at least a trillion or more beings.

Xander thought about it for a moment, before deciding that later on, after he had broken through to Legendary class, he would remodel the garden the same way as the laboratory. However, he would have to sort out the kinks first.

He talked with 100 million beings in Eden once more, taking him 500 years to complete this. He then began to practice fighting. This time, he wanted to see the limits of his vitality, so he told them to launch all their attacks at him.

The results were… unprecedented. All their attacks were at the level of Demigod-5 and lower, but the attacking power was quite lacking for Xander.

His body had been bombarded so many times, with the [Absolute Defense] turned off and any other defenses. His arms and legs were quickly blasted off in the barrage of attacks, yet the next moment they quickly grew back as nothing had happened. The feeling was quite weird, seeing one’s arms and legs and torso slowly blasted to bits, then recover completely after a split second.

Was this the effect of [Ordered Life Regeneration (no Limit)] and [Chaotic Life Evolution (no Limit)], Xander thought to himself. The spells that targeted my life essence doll was rendered useless, and the damage my body would experience is reverted quickly to normal. This was weird because technically, the spells these magic beasts and sprites were throwing at me were under an ordered system, Xander thought to himself.

He could only attribute this to his vitality, maybe? Because technically, [Chaotic Life Evolution (no Limit)] only activates if it’s used in the Great void, and the former didn’t have the capacity to passively heal all his injuries…

Xander began to decrease the interval between the attacks he received, trying to find out what was the lowest interval time he could regenerate from the attacks he received.

This continued on for the next 10 years, every being attempting to deal fatal damage to Xander.

From 5 seconds, to 4, to 3, 2, 1, 0.5, 0.1, 0.001, 0.0005, 0.0001, etc…

When it finally reached 0.0000000001-second interval between attacks, Xander instantly knew it was his current limit. This was because when he attempted to order them to decrease the interval lower, they couldn’t go any lower, which was a limitation to their casting ability.

He didn’t have the same interval problem, as his space-time spells can be cast with 0-second interval, meaning, true instantaneous casting. This was probably attributed to having complete control of these elements. But for the other spells, he wasn’t able to cast them instantaneously and still needed a period of time for preparation, ranging from 0.0000001 to 2 seconds per spell. What he was worried is that his body might not survive against attacks from Sage cultivators and above. After all, their cast interval was very low, nearly at 0.0000000000001 seconds to 0 seconds. He was also scared if he faces a space-time cultivator with a higher comprehension of the space-time element; wouldn’t that mean all his defenses would be for naught, then?

After the practice, he then played a bit with the sprites and magic beasts, he headed out of Eden and headed to bed. Tomorrow, he was going to his parents’ house and take a look at the situation of his mom’s pregnancy and if his father had begun to arrange solutions.

_________________________

Monday morning. Xander woke up groggily. He had quite a fun time at his parents’ house yesterday, playing with Jacks and eating his mom’s cooked food, to the dismay of his father. Even Xander was quite sad that his mother continued to work, however, she said it was what kept her currently sane in doing nothing.

Xander took a bath and headed downstairs, eating the breakfast prepared. What was good with Esta and Rosa was that the meals they cooked weren’t repeated, and there was a different cuisine each time he ate breakfast or dinner at home.

Of course, this could be attributed to the thousands of recipes that he had given them, coming from the different empires he had visited. For the materials of the recipes, there was a spatial pantry that contained the materialized items, so all they needed to do was input the required materials, prepare the materials after the pantry produces it, and then properly cook them.

It was one of his recent magic artifacts. Inside the pantry were rows upon rows of boxes, stacked properly containing thousands if not hundreds of thousands of magic beast remains, plant materials, and animals, containing no life essence, but their bodies were full of elemental essences of their primary elements.

Specifically, the magic beasts’ remains ranged from Master to Demigod class, the plant materials were from Class 3 to Class 8. He could produce materials up to Sage class, but he had no purpose for them besides selling and eating them raw, or crafting elixirs or magic artifacts. And if he planned to sell it to large auction houses and even empires, Xander needs to have the necessary documents to prove that the magic beast and cultivator remains were hunted down, rather than cultivated and then killed.

The empire of Magic Beasts, Nemean empire, would not love it if their fellow compatriots were being raised like cattle to be slaughtered. It wasn’t ethical for them. Although they advocated renting out magic beasts to gather byproducts and paying them afterward, the form of slaughter-raising was not a favorable concept, and no auction house or empire would want to be embroiled in such a manner.

After all, it was the Nemean empire that leads the charge against the Zergs, and without their strong momentum… there might not be a strong foothold for universal empires now.

Anyways, he decided against it because the chefs in his villa were not able to process such materials perfectly, and that would affect the quality of the food.

After eating, Xander went upstairs to brush his teeth and got his bag. Of course, this bag of his had been improved, allowing it to act as a defensive magic artifact, if you will, with the materials used to modify the items. Yesterday, after spending quite some time in the Laboratory, he finally got a hang of creating a magic artifact, using the summoned remains of magic beasts, other cultivators, and even sprites’ origins.

The materials he used were top-notch, allowing him to use it to defend a 2-meter radius from any attacks weaker than a Sage-7. Another good ability of the bag was it can change its appearance and effectively block all forms of tracking and spying, besides Xander’s spatial perception.

He went to the car and it was James that drove him to the campus. The ride was quiet and solemn, neither of the two talking to one another.

Xander was fine with that, since most of his trips, it was either Rafa, Michel, Danes, Farhouid who initiated the small talk, which he kind of disliked? After all, his time was being wasted by non-stimulating conversations. Although he gave them tips in their training as well as ideas to improve their abilities, it was from a master-servant perspective, and not as equals.

Probably, the one who he can take as an equal would be one of his friends in the future. He had high expectations for Maryann, Valerie, and Carly. The three others, Faykes, James, and Alexa, were wild cards, to be honest. They have their respective strengths, but also, they weren’t fake.

Once he reached the campus, when he opened the door and stepped out, Xander heard a subtle thank you coming from James, who continued to look stoic.

Xander closed the door casually as if he didn’t hear his words. Why was he thanking him for saving his companions, when that itself was a trap? Anyways, he entered the campus and headed straight to the building where the Basic Magic Training class was held.

As usual, he was quite early, and no else was there, so he headed to the lounge.

To his surprise, the girls, Carly, Alexa, and Valerie were present, talking to one another and giggling about something.

In the past few weeks, Carly had also been working part-time at one of the prestigious Magic Physics departments in Eta, the Eternal Physics Foundation, where she was able to explore the knowledge she had gained from the materials I had given her before.

Alexa, on the other hand, was going to focus on Magic Psychology and Aquaculture fields of study. She was going to break away from the traditional research fields her family was involved in, branching to a new field. She had begun doing part-time work in several Aquaculture farms, while also practicing as an assistant for one of the psychologists working in the city.

Valerie actually participated in her grandfather’s training of other special forces soldiers. The training was quite brutal for a teenager, but she managed to survive 2 days of continuous training every week for the past 3 weeks after she changed her pseudo-spells. She really was determined to practice the art of killing, huh.

When they saw Xander, the trio waved at Xander, with Alexa and Carly standing and dragging Xander to their location. The two were less stiff in terms of talking and interacting with Xander, their questions becoming softer and more…friendly, if Xander would put a term for it.

They began to talk about different topics, with Xander learning a few stuff about their chosen fields of focus that didn’t intersect with his. He also managed to talk about their fields by relying on the data bank the system had, pulling necessary information needed at the moment.

After an hour and a half of talking, they headed downstairs where they began to talk to their classmates and other friends. He also saw Faykes and James talking to one another, their faces seemed serious.

Xander was a bit curious but wasn’t that desperate to snoop in their private, serious discussion.

However, it was then he heard James say, “Let’s ask Xander. He would know what to do.”

Damn it. Act asleep, act asleep! Xander told to himself, laying his head down the table.

However, Faykes and James still approached Xander, with the former nudging Xander.

“Hey. Heeey. Heeey Xander. Heeeey. I know you’re awake, dude.” Faykes said with his annoying voice, poking Xander.

Xander, seeing his plan failed, rolled his eyes and raised his head, looking a bit grumpy at the two.

“Ugh! What is it this time?”

“Well, you see, I’m planning to invest in James’ business, and he suggested for the company to start branching out in other fields that magicians would need besides portable magic energy storage.”

“…So what do you need me for?”

“Erm, can you, well, see if its a worthwhile investment?” Faykes asked shamelessly, but the latter half of the sentence was transmitted in the form of an inaudible whisper.

Xander rolled his eyes, before saying,

“Can’t see it anymore, I invested as well, you see. I suggest investing 100 million Etas first for the Ru0026D development of the new products. Once several products have been proven feasible, increase the investment.”

“One feasible topic of product research is the transformation of immaterial elements into the material matter, basing it from my co-authored paper. There are multiple applications in terms of weaponry and day-to-day type of items.”

“Also, don’t you plan to open your own company as well? You could use the name of the company to increase your exposure and purchasing power once it takes off.”

Hearing this, Faykes’ eyes brightened; he agreed that this seemed the most optimal situation for investment. This was what James had also proposed to him, but he was quite skeptical at first. Concerning using his new company’s name, he thought about it for a moment, realizing that this was also a good way for publicity in the field of business.

Faykes thanked Xander and the two left him alone, continuing their renewed talks about the potential investment. Xander played games with his smartwatch for the next couple of minutes until Ms. Lim arrived.

Everyone quickly settled down and Ms. Lim began the discussion.

“Good morning everyone. The last topic we discussed was Magic selection, just the week before the midterms. This week, we are going to discuss how to proceed with instantaneous casting.”

“Instantaneous casting is defined by having no downtime or waiting time to launch a spell completely. In the past few weeks, we have delved into practicing spells and running your cultivation skills in a passive state.”

“Of course, instantaneous casting requires us to reach a 0 second cast time. However, this is a theoretical basis, a reference for us to reach if you would call it. Most of the time, cultivators start from a 2-second instant cast time, then 0.9, 0.8, and so on, until 0.000000001 seconds delay as one’s cultivation level increased. I gave you this value because this is currently the smallest delay that was calculated from a Divine Magician.”

The students were quite fascinated with the discussion. Mostly, because they were curious how fast Xander could do instantaneous casting based on the practice sessions he had participated in. Xander, on the other hand, was rolling his eyes; he had seen records of demigods capable of casting as low as 0.00000000001, roughly 100 times faster than Divine magicians in Eteria.

Feeling the looks his classmates were giving him, Xander merely ignored them and continued to browse in his smartwatch. He didn’t really need to attend this class since his speed depending on the quality of the spell being cast and his current comprehension of their origin elements.

For example, his pseudo-spells and derived spells from pseudo-spells would take him 0.00001 to 0.001 seconds to cast. His master rank spells would take 0.001 to 3 seconds to complete.

His legendary rank spells would take 0.1 to 30 seconds. His mythic rank spells would be from 10 seconds to 5 minutes. His demigod rank spells would be from 1 minute to 10 minutes.

For divine and sage rank spells, it would take a minimum of 30 minutes.

Of course, the exception was Xander’s pure space and time spells. He could cast them continuously, with no casting time or delay. If he wanted, he could cast an infinite amount of spells within 0 to 1 second. However, that would be the case if Xander had to fight against someone he had a low chance of winning. Can’t win against quality? Win against quantity!

Ms. Lim continued to discuss what are the necessary aspects of instantaneous casting, and afterward, she called Xander to the wide-area to demonstrate the aspects of instantaneous casting.

Xander wanted to opt-out, but seeing the hopeful faces his fellow students showed, he begrudgingly followed Ms. Lim to the other side of the room.

“Now, Mr. Cloverfield, please demonstrate to the class the steps to shortening spell casting.” Ms. Lim gestured Xander.

Xander nodded in response and began to show the 5 main steps.

The first step is visualization. The body of a magician is simply a vessel, a conduit, for the life essence dolls to control and produce the desired results. An important aspect is to visualize the effect desired, and visualize the spell structure itself.

The second step is formation. The process of writing the spell structure, ranging from runic writings to magic symbols, is a necessary process. The faster one can write this out, the faster the spell can be deployed. The method of writing varies for the kind of spell. Some spells require it to be gestured (externalized) by the magician while others are internalized, meaning, they are written by the mind and released into a complete product later on.

The third step is the chant shortening. Usually, if one shortens a chant, the power of the spell is weakened, because the spell itself is derived from the chant that helps visualize the effect to the caster. Of course, this is fixed by the first step, visualization, so one can proceed with chant shortening relatively easy if they had visualized the spell quite perfectly, or through after so many times of the spell being cast. In fact, it’s possible to modify the effect of the spell with the combination of chant shortening and visualization.

The fourth step is power supplication. Power supplication isn’t as simple as dumping your magic energy into the spell structure; it requires delicate control to pump the right amount of magic energy in the spell model, where some parts can have more energy than the other parts, some parts would use elemental energy rather than magic energy, etc.

The fifth step is the spell release. In simple terms: Point, configure, release. This is the step where spell layers are added to the spell model. The spell model is released, which then gathers the elements, magic, and elemental energies around the caster and from the caster to show the spell’s effect.

There are situations where steps can be skipped. For example, the formation can be skipped if the visualization was nearly perfect or perfect itself; the spell is already formed, and needed to be supplied with power and chanted, before being released.

In Xander’s case of space-time elements, his visualization of the spell is so perfect that the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th steps are skipped, directly transforming the visualized power into a released spell. In his other non-space and time-based spells, he usually skips the 2nd and 3rd steps, and it is the powering of the spell and spell release configurations that take time.

There are also cases where the 2nd and 4th steps are combined with one another, usually during internalization or externalization.