Hearing Charles’s words, Dark, who had been furious only moments ago, suddenly froze in place.
It was as though he had been struck by a revelation.
“That’s right!”
“If someone drinks the Ascension Potion and dies, does that necessarily mean there’s something wrong with the Ascension Potion?”
“Couldn’t it simply be that those fools were too stupid and weren’t qualified to ascend?!”
Charles’s suggestion to maximize the effects of the Ascension Potion, to hell with stability and safety, caused Dark’s eyes to become brighter than ever before.
“Yes!”
“Yes!”
“That’s exactly it!”
“How could I have been so foolish?”
“How did I never think of this?”
“The original Ascension Potion was created because I saw those magnificent, incomprehensible forms in my dreams and heard their voices containing the mysteries of the magic within all things in the universe. That inspiration erupted within me and gave birth to the potion.”
“In other words, it was a revelation given to me by the Ascended Ones.”
“But my later modifications were based on the shallow understanding wizards have of magic.”
“To use such pathetic knowledge to modify the revelations of the Ascended Ones…”
“How utterly ridiculous!”
Dark frantically muttered to himself.
He even slapped himself hard across the face, tears of excitement streaming down his cheeks.
At this moment, when Dark looked at Charles, his eyes were filled with gratitude and emotion.
“Charles, my friend.”
“No wonder you possess a brain as precious as Dumbledore’s.”
“No!”
“Dumbledore never defended my Ascension Potion.”
“What right does he have to be compared with you?”
“Your foresight and wisdom surpass Dumbledore’s by more than a hundredfold!”
“Only a genius like you can understand how magnificent my goal truly is.”
“Once the Ascension Potion succeeds, both you and I will shed these weak human bodies and embrace the great source of magic!”
Charles wore a solemn expression, with a hint of honor in his eyes, and spoke in a deep voice.
“The flesh is weak. Ascension awaits!”
Dark also shouted excitedly.
“The flesh is weak! Ascension awaits!”
Then he immediately began rummaging through the various ingredient cabinets in the underground chamber, preparing to remove every stabilizing element from the Ascension Potion just as Charles had suggested.
Chaotic and frenzied magic would be allowed to erupt freely within the Ascension Potion!
“Let me see…”
“Bone-Breaking Grass. Yes, this is necessary. It’s the key to shedding the physical form.”
“Crimson Deathbell. A magical herb naturally carrying a powerful curse. It will help us shed this cursed human flesh.”
“And this…”
“Blood Crown…”
“This one…”
“The primary ingredient of the Demon Potion…”
Dark looked as though he had gotten completely intoxicated on some kind of drug as he threw one bizarre herb after another into the cauldron.
Finally, he carefully took out a bottle.
Inside was an extraordinarily disgusting green slime.
The instant Charles saw it, he felt an overwhelming wave of nausea.
It was as though the stench of rotting flesh had somehow passed straight through the glass bottle and poured directly into his nostrils.
Dark, however, looked intoxicated.
He gazed at the substance as though it were some priceless treasure.
“And this…”
“The most crucial ingredient of the Ascension Potion.”
“The traces left behind by those great beings.”
“What magnificent magic…”
“How close it is to the very source!”
He then carefully dropped five drops of the green slime into the cauldron.
Instantly, the potion that had originally been a deep black began boiling violently.
Its entire color also transformed into the same bizarre green as the slime.
After the entire batch had been boiled until it became thick and viscous, Dark carefully poured it into a bottle.
Then he handed it to Charles.
His expression was filled with nervous anticipation, like a student waiting for his teacher to grade an exam.
“Come on, my friend.”
“Try my newly modified Ascension Potion.”
Looking at the bubbling potion in front of him, Charles struggled internally.
If he hadn’t seen what ingredients Dark had put into it, he probably would have gritted his teeth and drunk it anyway.
But after seeing exactly what had gone into the cauldron, Charles couldn’t help feeling deeply resistant toward the stuff.
However, after a moment, Charles gritted his teeth and tilted his head back.
He downed the entire bottle of the maximally charged Ascension Potion in one gulp.
The moment the potion entered his mouth, a sensation several times more disgusting than the previous bottle surged through him.
Charles immediately began dry-heaving again, instinctively clawing at his throat.
The stuff was so disgusting that Charles’s eyes rolled backward.
His consciousness even briefly slipped into unconsciousness.
But very soon, the dense series of notifications from the Deep Blue System jolted Charles awake.
“Deduction Points +100…”
“Deduction Points +100…”
This time, the notifications came even more rapidly than during the first bottle!
By the time the notifications gradually became less frequent and the effects of the Ascension Potion had been completely absorbed, Charles’s remaining 4,396 Deduction Points had skyrocketed to more than 20,000.
His total had broken through 25,000 Deduction Points!
Charles struggled to open his eyes.
Seeing this, the nervous Dark suddenly burst into tears of joy.
He began crying uncontrollably.
“You didn’t die!”
“My friend, you didn’t die!”
“You’re the first person to survive the original Ascension Potion!”
“You were right!”
“I shouldn’t have doubted the revelations of the Ascended Ones!”
“This is right!”
“This is truly the correct path!”
Charles gave Dark a thumbs-up.
“Dark, you’re almost there.”
“You’re already walking in the direction of success.”
“But it’s not enough yet.”
“During my brief unconsciousness just now, I heard a new revelation from the Ascended Ones.”
“They congratulated me inside my mind.”
“They told me that it still wasn’t enough.”
“It wasn’t violent enough to allow someone to complete their ascension.”
“Dark, continue.”
“Continue increasing the potency.”
“The Ascended Ones are watching you.”
“The greatest undertaking in history is right before us!”
Dark seemed to have received some kind of divine revelation.
His entire face became filled with fanatical devotion.
He muttered like a man possessed.
“More powerful…”
“The dosage for shedding the physical form must still be insufficient.”
“Otherwise, Charles should already have shed his human form.”
“The dosage of these demonic toxins needs to be doubled.”
“And the amount of slime left behind by the Ascended Ones needs to be increased as well.”
Over the following period of time, Dark produced three more bottles of Ascension Potion, each one more violently potent than the last.
Charles drank every single bottle of the increasingly disgusting potion.
And with each batch of Ascension Potion, his Deduction Points continued skyrocketing.
Eventually, they broke through 100,000 points!
At this moment, Charles roared inside his mind.
“With one hundred thousand Deduction Points, I refuse to believe I can’t deduce Lumos to an earth-shattering level!”
“I refuse to believe I can’t kill one old wizard!”
“Deep Blue!”
“Deduce it for me!”
“Use all one hundred thousand points!”
Following Charles’s roar inside his mind, Deep Blue began operating at an unprecedented level of intensity since the moment Charles had transmigrated into this world.
One hundred thousand Deduction Points were burned away in an instant.
In their place came a vast ocean of knowledge.
It poured into Charles’s mind in overwhelming quantities, to the point that his head began to ache as though it were about to explode.
It was as if countless versions of Charles from countless parallel worlds had spent day and night studying Lumos.
Every piece of knowledge and every insight they had gained was being poured into Charles’s mind!
Several different paths for increasing the destructive power of Lumos began progressing simultaneously within Deep Blue’s deductions.
The path of continuing to develop the Laser Charm could produce lasers with even higher frequencies and higher energy levels.
The Flash Charm could also continue being developed.
Light and heat were intrinsically connected.
If the light of the Flash Charm could be converted into heat, it could create an area capable of roasting an enemy into ash.
Countless inspirations and flashes of insight erupted.
Eventually, the results from several different paths accidentally merged together…
A blazing light, hot as the sun itself, flashed through Charles’s mind.
Deep Blue’s notifications began ringing one after another.
“The host’s Laser Charm has been deduced to a new level…”
“The host’s Flash Charm has been deduced to a new level…”
“…”
“Congratulations, host!”
“Using Lumos as the foundation, you have successfully deduced a large-scale destructive spell—Eternal Blazing Sun!”
(End of Chapter)