The arrival of the Augustine family was just a small episode, and Locke soon returned to his daily study.
Time passed quickly, winter turned to spring and Locke spent one year and three months at Aurelian College.
In Locke's dormitory, Locke had already finished reading all nine books of the Hand of Vine.
In the dormitory, a pot of mandrake on the windowsill has already grown, from a seed into a green leaf vine about three meters long.
With Locke's daily spiritual nourishment, this vine has acquired some magical properties and can even express some simple emotions.
For example, when the vine leaves feel the air is cold, they will curl up slightly, just like a person who has caught a cold and curls himself up into a ball.
If there is a shortage of water, the vines will gently tap the window with their leaves to remind Locke to water.
And today, Locke looked at the last page of the ninth book of the Hand of the Vine.
That was the final step in completing the Hand of the Vine, allowing the Mandrake Vine to fully mature, leave the soil, and be grafted onto one's own spiritual power.
In this way, the Mandrake Vine can be carried with you at all times and can be driven and used by spells at any time during battle.
As in, a vine pet.
Locke placed ten stones engraved with ancient language runes in the form of two circles around the mandrake pot, and then gently chanted the spell.
At the same time, the Mandrake vine that was originally climbing on the window seemed to move. The leaves of the vine began to shake, and the vine itself slowly climbed on the window.
Locke held a flower in his hand, and at the same time, his mind quickly recalled the last step, the common dangers and possible side effects of mental grafting.
Locke said, "Spiritual Grafting is the final step of the Hand of the Vine spell. I will remove the cultivated Mandrake from the soil and, through a ritual, connect it with my magical power. My magical power will nourish the Mandrake, allowing it to be commanded and better transformed by me to attack my enemies."
"According to what I've read in books, Wizard Cole of Verdantia University, who invented the Vine Hand, proposed a hypothesis—the Wood Element Particle Plant Growth Hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, wood element particles originally didn't exist in this world. However, after a certain plant was born, it took root in the soil and water, combining water and earth element particles to form composite wood element particles."
Locke thought, "Therefore, there were no wood elemental particles in this world originally, which is the basis of plant magic. It was the plants that were born, and therefore the plants produced wood elemental particles."
"Unfortunately, Wizard Cole didn't seem to have found the plant he hypothesized to produce the first wood element particle until two hundred years ago. So this hypothesis is just a hypothesis, and there's not enough evidence to prove his point."
"But this assumption is one of the foundations of all the spells developed by the Magic Vine Wizard, Wizard Cole. Therefore, to use the Vine Hand, I need to transfer the rich wood elemental particles elsewhere to my Mandrake Vine."
"And the place where wood element particles are most concentrated is the plant itself."
"Therefore, the medium for this spell is some kind of plant. Otherwise, if I cast the spell with my bare hands, it would be me who would pay the price with my vitality. What would wither would be my own arms and my own muscles..."
Locke quickly went through all the key points written in the nine books in his mind.
This was his first real spell, his first real independent use of magic.
Strangely, Locke was not as nervous as he thought. Instead, he was calm and composed, because the spell he was casting today was the result of his careful thinking and reflection day and night for nearly two years.
He was already very familiar with every step.
Dean Tungus also warned the three of them that Corfu was not like the wizarding world and that magical resources were very scarce, which meant that it would be difficult to find doctors to treat injuries caused by magic.
In the past, there were examples of young wizards in the academy who died because of their carelessness and their own spells backfired.
Locke transferred the vitality and wood element particles in the flowers in his hand to the mandrake vines. The flowers in his hand quickly withered, and the mandrake quickly grew new green leaves, becoming more mature and approaching adulthood.
Locke held the obsidian ceremonial knife and carefully carved the Ogham language under the trunk of the mandrake.
Through this rune, his magic power will be officially grafted onto the mandrake that has been transformed by his own magic power, making it like his own arm.
The Ogham Ancient Language is an ancient magical rune of universal plant magic.
This is why, before learning the Hand of Vine, you need to take the prerequisite course, the general basic knowledge course of plant magic.
Since this mandrake had been nourished and transformed by his own magic power for too long, his own magic power had strengthened its branches and leaves, strengthened its spirituality, and optimized its roots, so the mandrake did not resist too much.
But Locke still needs to concentrate all his attention on engraving the Ogham characters. There are a total of sixteen Ogham characters that need to be engraved.
If there is even a slight mistake in the engraving, the best result would be that the mandrake would be destroyed by itself, and the worst result would be that the spell would backfire on itself and it would hit itself with a large amount of wood element magic, turning every cell of its body into wood and turning itself into a wooden man.
When a wizard apprentice was studying plant magic, he was attacked and turned into a wooden man. This is a relatively common experimental accident.
But in fact, there may be more bizarre situations. The book wrote that there was a wizard apprentice who wrote a wrong symbol when engraving the Ogham language, which resulted in the fusion of the wizard and the vine instead of the grafting.
However, fusing magical plants with oneself is a very high-level plant magic, and it is a field that can only be studied by a first-ring wizard at least.
Therefore, the final result was that the third-class wizard apprentice turned himself into a humanoid plant and lost his self-awareness.
Finally, he was recovered by Wizard Cole, who conducted some research on content that was omitted in the book.
About half an hour later, as Locke carefully carved the last Ogham rune, his body suddenly shook. At the same time, the mandrake in the flowerpot quickly matured under the infusion of vitality. Then, with a "click", its body broke off from the root, and the three-meter-long vine broke into two parts from the root.
The roots, about half a meter long, were still standing at the bottom of the soil in the flowerpot, but they were rapidly withering and losing all vitality.
The sixteen Ogham characters on the two-and-a-half-meter-long Mandrake vine lit up with charming green light one by one, which was the signal that the plant magic was completed.
Locke whispered a spell.
Then, the vine twisted on the ground like a snake, flexibly climbed up Locke's legs and feet, and then climbed up Locke's body, trying to get into his sleeves. However, because the cuffs of the white wool shirt school uniform Locke was wearing were too small, it tried several times and failed before giving up.
It wrapped around Locke's right arm, and the excess part wrapped around Locke's shoulder and hung on Locke's body.
Locke sensed that the mandrake had fallen into a deep sleep. After all, it was difficult for a wizard who was not yet a first-level wizard to use plant magic to make the magical plant move normally.
That would require a lot of mana.
In serious cases, it may even backfire on the wizard, causing him to lose his vitality and wither part of his body.
Therefore, when facing the enemy, one can only recite a spell and sacrifice a plant to restore the vitality of the mandrake, and attack the enemy the moment it recovers.
Locke exhaled, then walked to the table and wiped the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief placed on the table, but a happy smile was on his face. "It's finally done."
He closed his eyes, and the moment he completed the Hand of Vine spell, he became a third-class wizard apprentice.
He closed his eyes, and vaguely seemed to see an illusory bright star in front of him. The bright star was rotating around his spiritual power. At the same time, within the bright star were sixteen Ogham runes, forming a magic model.
The book said that a first-level plant magic tree code would require at least a hundred pieces at a time, and the complexity would increase sharply, but at present this was just a trick, so only sixteen Ogham tree codes were needed to complete a similar magic.
Locke picked up a daffodil on the desk and chanted a spell. The daffodil in his left hand withered and died at an alarming speed. At the same time, the mandrake wrapped around his right hand responded quickly. It stretched out five vine branches at the same time, attacking the enemy like a plant hand, and inserted into the dormitory wall, leaving five holes in the wall.
Then, the mandrake suddenly exerted force, and its five branches, like human hands, grasped and combined their strength. The wall was actually dug out a hole by the vine's hands, and a loud noise was made.
After doing all this, Mandrake quickly retracted his right arm listlessly and continued to lie there.
Locke watched the scene in disbelief. "This power is even greater than what's written in the book."
"First, because text descriptions are limited, it's better for me to use it directly, which is more detailed. Second, it's probably because my vine hand is well-made, so its power has increased a bit."
Locke looked at his room, which was filled with dark blue gems and some dark blue gems that had been used up.
These deep blue gems can filter his mental power and make the fluctuations of his mental power become smoother. As a result, the accuracy of his engraving of the Ogham tree text is about 30% higher than that of an ordinary wizard apprentice.
Therefore, the power of his vine hand can be so great.
This is what the Horadric Cube does.
These deep blue gems are so useful and they are consumables. If I were in the wizarding world, it would not be easy to buy these gems. It would require a lot of resources, which are probably difficult for a small wizard like me with no background to access.
Locke glanced at the large number of dark blue gems he had wasted, and combined with Dean Tungus's cherishment of scarce magical resources, he suddenly felt that he was being a bit extravagant.
"In three months, the Aurelian Academy will arrive on the wizard ship." Locke found a black windbreaker from his closet and put it on, covering the mandrake in his right hand that resembled a pet vine snake. "I'm now a third-class wizard apprentice. I need to tell Teacher Tungus, Code, and Patty this good news."
"I still have three months left, so I'd better not waste it. Ask Mr. Tungus what I still lack."
After all, the more outstanding he is, the more space he will have to choose the academy of his choice when he boards the wizard ship.