248 Human Tool

After gagging for almost half an hour, Roland finally felt much better.

He immediately set off for the docks.

Two carriages had been prepared. The plan was that each would accommodate five people, but Schuck said that Margret couldn’t be too close to regular animals even in her human form, or those creatures would be terrified by her dragon’s aura.

So Schuck and Margret would fly in the sky without taking the carriages. They could also scout for the team that way.

Naturally, there were no objections.

In the evening, their caravan took off.

Generally speaking, evening was not the best time to start a journey, because the night would fall soon and spending the night in the wilderness could be dangerous if the travelers couldn’t reach a town.

But for the professionals, especially a quest team with a perfect combination of classes, it was not a problem.

If night fell, they could simply use their illumination skills.

When Roland cast a dozen balls of light to the sky and made them follow the caravan, the hundred square meters nearby were as bright as a football field with a match going on.

Most nocturnal magical beasts were scared of light. Such intense light could prevent 99.99% of the animals from drawing close. Even the robbers would step back when they saw a dozen lights floating in the sky. So, a lot of unnecessary trouble could be avoided.

In the carriages, everybody was in the mood for talking at first, but two hours later, they all lost interest and began to surf on the forum or watch online movies.

Thankfully, in-game access to the Internet had been enabled by the developers, or it would’ve been hard to weather through the boring journey.

Roland, on the other hand, was looking into a magic model.

It was not one of the models from Tobian, but was bought on the forum earlier and had never really been studied by him.

The name of the spell was Body Fortification.

It was only a level-one spell with few nodes. With Roland’s experience in magic, he soon picked it up.

He tried it on himself first. After a green flash… He frowned, as he did not sense anything different.

Then, he clenched his fists, only to discover that he was indeed a lot stronger.

The member of Silver Wings on his opposite side just quitted the forum. Seeing the flash on Roland, he asked curiously, “Roland, are you doing a magic experiment? Don’t blow up our carriage!”

“It’s just a buff spell. It won’t blow up anything.”

This particular member was named Suel, an agile Warrior. He was also one of the special talents of Silver Wings. Whether or not the quest was completed, he would go to Andonara to be trained into a Great Swordsman.

He shrugged and said, “I’m really scared of Mages. Last time, a Mage girl in my guild blew up a warehouse at the docks during her experiment. The losses were huge.”

“Seriously?” Roland was rather surprised.

“That’s just a major failure. I’m too lazy to count the minor failures.”

Roland nodded, as it was quite normal. He had failed a lot in his own experiments too. However, thanks to the magic arrays in his tower, no severe consequences had ever come of failed experiments.

Suel asked curiously, “What’s the effect of your new spell?”

“Body Fortification.” While talking, Roland snapped his fingers and buffed Suel. Then he smiled. “You’ve been buffed! Now go feed yourself!”

“Hahaha.” Suel burst into laughter. Then, he warmed up his hands, only to be slightly surprised. “It’s quite effective.”

At this point, the other two people in the carriage came back to themselves from the forum.

One of them was Betta. He shouted excitedly, “Brother Roland, give me one!”

Roland snapped his fingers again.

Betta moved his hands and exclaimed, “It’s very effective!”

As a balanced professional, his strength was lower than that of an agile Warrior, so he sensed it more clearly.

The lower one’s stats were, the more clearly they would feel the buff.

“If I’m capable of this spell, I’ll be confident in fighting a Warrior who focuses on strength, provided that he doesn’t have such a buff.”

Sensing a strength that seemed to be surging out of his body, Betta couldn’t be more confident.

At this point, the member of Silver Wings next to him said to him with a smile, “Dispel!”

The magic light on Betta was apparently weakened.

After a brief surprise, the member of Silver Wings shouted again, “Dispel.”

It was not until then that the magic light on Betta was completely gone.

Roland was briefly stunned, as he didn’t know that buff spells could be dispelled.

But actually, the member of Silver Wings was ten times more surprised than he was.

That guy was a Priest who focused on ancillary spells. His Dispel had been specifically enhanced, allowing him to remove three buffs on his target, including Magic Shield, which was the Mages’ strongest defensive spell, at one time as long as the target was not three levels higher than himself.

However, it took him two tries to remove a regular buff from Roland.

It was unbelievable. In a life-and-death battle, successful dispelling after one try and after two tries would be completely different.

In a battle between people on the same level, those few seconds could’ve decided who the final winner was.

He was level five, and so was Roland. It didn’t make sense.

Somehow, the Priest became jealous.

Seeing that Dispel was so powerful, Roland became greedy.

Regretfully, the Priest’s divine skills were blessings of the gods, or Roland would’ve offered to pay for the man’s magic model.

At this point, the atmosphere in the carriage became odd.

Most players’ silliness was only their disguise. They were actually all very sophisticated. The other two people in the carriage both saw the weird look on the Priest’s face.

Immediately, nobody talked anymore. They reopened their browsers and logged in the forum.

Although he did not understand why the guy was suddenly upset, Roland was not interested in asking.

He continued devoting himself to his magic experiment.

If the buff spell could be dispelled, he would increase the “thickness” and “length” of the buff and see if it could be dispelled again.

Roland tried to reconstruct the nodes of the spell and infer the more suitable nodes through modeling.

About three hours later, the effect of the new spell was out.

Body Fortification (Enhanced): This will temporarily improve the target’s constitution by 0.6*(the spellcaster’s current level) for 1*(the spellcaster’s current level).

After it was done, Roland cast it on himself, and the flash was brighter this time.

Although Suel pretended to be checking the forum, he had actually been paying attention to Roland. Seeing that Roland cast another buff on himself, he asked curiously, “You picked up another new spell?

Hearing his voice, Betta and the Priest turned their heads too.

Roland nodded and snapped his finger at Suel.

Hardly had the spell taken effect when Suel felt a warm stream flowing in his body. He clenched his hands and looked at his system menu, only to be shocked. “I’ve got three more points of constitution! That’s awesome!”

Betta was envious and even more eager to learn this buff spell.

At this point, the Priest, who had been reticent, waved his hands at Suel, performing Dispel.

Once, twice… six times!

It was not until the sixth time that he finally removed Roland’s buff.

The Priest’s face was strange, as if he couldn’t feel anything anymore. A dozen seconds later, he finally opened his hands and said, “I’ve failed. I really can’t compare to a genius.”

He knew that he had failed brutally.

He had succeeded in removing the buff after six attempts, but it would’ve taken him ten seconds to do that in a real battle.

More importantly, performing Dispel required tremendous mental power.

If he were to remove the target’s buff by performing Dispel six times in a battle, he would be no better than an idiot.

It would be a waste of his time, and he would lose too much magic power.

At first, the Priest was rather jealous of Roland, but no longer.

It was pointless to be jealous of a genius you could never catch up to.

Looking at his companion’s face, Suel felt lucky that he was not a spellcaster, or he would’ve really been bummed knowing that there was such a genius above him.

Roland showed no response.

He was still not satisfied.

The buff had been dispersed by a level-five Priest after a few attempts. What if he ran into someone of a higher level?

Roland began to reconstruct the spell nodes again to further increase the “thickness” and “length” of the spell.

Soon, the caravan stopped, and Hawk smacked Roland’s carriage from the outside and shouted, “It’s time to rest.”

As it turned out, it was already midnight.

The players needed no rest, but both the drivers of the carriages and the horses had to take a break.

Roland jumped off and established a three-floored building with Mud to Stone. He also set up a simple stable for the carriages and the horses to protect the horses from the cold wind at night and the stalking beasts.

The players, on the other hand, went to the building. Betta even made barbecue on the roof.

After feeding the horses, the two drivers went to the roof and had the roasted meat that Betta gave to them in a corner. In the end, they were too sleepy and went to the second floor to sleep.

Schuck and Margret had descended from the sky. At this point, Margret was holding a dozen skewers of roasted locusts in her left hand. She relayed each skewer to her right hand and then raised her right hand to her mouth. Then, all the roasted locusts would be gone.

Roland was still reconstructing the nodes. He was holding a skewer of meat too, which Betta had given him.

He was only biting it now and then subconsciously, and the meat was still unfinished after half an hour.

Another half-hour later, Roland cast a new Body Fortification spell on himself.

This time, the flash of the spell was as bright as a light bulb, attracting everybody’s attention.

Body Fortification (Extreme): This will temporarily improve the target’s constitution by 0.8*(the spellcaster’s current level) for 1.5*(the spellcaster’s current level).

The effect was much better, but naturally… the cost of magic power had increased too.

Roland looked at the Priest.

But the Priest shook his head quickly and said, “That’s it. I’m done with being a tool for your tests.”