Chapter 320: Spell Matrix

“As for Conflagrant Breath, it has similar issues. Against large-scale, low-mobility enemies, its advantages are obvious.

Once you set the fire, it burns a wide swath. The flames shaped by Wizardry are extremely difficult to extinguish by ordinary means.

As long as you keep supplying mana, the enemy has to endure constant burn damage.

For clearing out minions, purging an area, or creating a wide containment zone, it’s highly efficient.”

“But again, against high-intensity individual targets, it’s relatively weak. In battles of that caliber, the situation changes in an instant.

The opponent’s movement speed and reaction time are both extremely fast. They won’t give me the time to slowly burn them.

Not to mention…”

She paused briefly, her fingertip absently tapping the edge of the page.

“Conflagrant Breath also takes a very noticeable toll on mental energy. Building and sustaining such a large-scale Wizardry flame—even with my mental reserves, I can’t keep it up for very long.

If a battle relies heavily on it, I’d likely be drained completely by the end, losing all capacity for sustained combat.”

A spell like this—high consumption, large area, but requiring time to initiate and maintain—was decent for clearing the field or finishing a fight. But as a regular tactical tool, it felt cumbersome and wasteful.

“By contrast, Umbral Weaving is more flexible, more covert, and its consumption is relatively manageable!”

Beneath Pandora’s fingertips, the shadowy script writhed faintly, almost alive. The strange, arcane Wizardry knowledge the words carried was making light contact with her psyche.

Shadows, after all, were everywhere. Where there was light, there were shadows.

As a multi-faceted technique of significantly higher complexity, its applications were far broader:

it could be used for stealth and blending into the environment, woven into chains to bind an enemy, or in a critical moment, condensed into lethal, razor-sharp shadow-spikes.

More importantly, it was a spell that leaned toward technique rather than a brute-force pursuit of raw power.

It demanded the caster possess acute perception and control over shadows. The Spell Matrix itself had to be constructed with extreme stability.

Its lethality often came from surprise and precision.

This characteristic perfectly complemented Pandora’s existing combat style. She was no fragile glass cannon.

From the corners the enemy couldn’t see, in the instant light and shadow intersected, she could weave shadows into a silent noose and launch a deadly ambush from the most improbable angle.

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Once mastered, it would produce an effect where the whole was far greater than the sum of its parts.

However, as a Rank-3 Wizardry, Umbral Weaving was noticeably more difficult than Susurrus Mist or Conflagrant Breath.

Its requirements for mental strength, stability, and micro-control were far more stringent.

An ordinary wizard at Pandora’s stage might not even have the capacity to attempt constructing such a complex Spell Matrix.

Trying to force its comprehension and formation would only lead to rapid mental exhaustion, and the unstable matrix might even backlash, injuring the caster.

Yet...

All that time, energy, and resources Pandora had so diligently poured into the Quicksilver Blood Meditation—

originally a Rank-5 method, later elevated to Rank-6 with her mentor Amanda’s help—

had forged a mental strength that was vastly superior to ordinary wizards of her rank.

Whether in total capacity, intensity, resilience, or the astonishing stability it provided when casting spells, it far exceeded the norm.

Naturally, its support for a high-complexity Spell Matrix like this one was also greater.

The fact that she had preliminarily grasped those two Rank-3 spells in just one month was proof enough.

Had Pandora not genuinely sensed that her foundation of mental strength could indeed match a stronger, more difficult spell...

she wouldn’t have moved up her original plan to begin studying Umbral Weaving—

originally scheduled for at least half a year from now—to the present.

When the foundation is solid enough, the speed at which you can build a skyscraper atop it naturally increases!

The logic was sound. All she needed was to find the right path.

And that path was right here, within the pages of The Lightless Spectrum: Reconciling Mindscape and Shadow!

She turned the pages back to the very beginning.

This time, Pandora wasn’t skimming for confirmation. She slowed down, reading deliberately, word by word, line by line.

As her concentration deepened, a strange sensation quietly emerged.

The bizarre script, previously still upon the yellowed pages, seemed to produce some subtle resonance between the words.

They were no longer isolated bits of information but began to interlink—under the scrutiny of her consciousness, gradually piecing together into a fuzzy yet internally unified whole.

As her reading progressed, line after line, page after page, Pandora sank deeper into the text. In the depths of her mind, some intangible thing was being built by the knowledge flooding in—shaped by her comprehension.

Eventually, a clear, three-dimensional silhouette began to take form within the void of her consciousness. It was the outline of Umbral Weaving—its core skeleton: the Spell Matrix.

No Wizardry could be cast without a Spell Matrix.

It was the fundamental core through which all wizardly power was made manifest and forced to operate according to specific rules.

Ordinarily, a wizard needed to thoroughly master the relevant Wizardry knowledge, understanding its inner principles and the pathways of energy flow, before they could carefully construct that precise matrix within their mind using their mental strength.

Then, through the matrix, they could channel their mana and unleash the corresponding spell effect.

The process had to be gradual; no impatience was tolerated.

Otherwise, the chaotic mental energy from a failed construction would rampage through the fragile brain—

at best, causing splitting headaches and temporary loss of spellcasting ability; at worst, leaving behind irreparable mental scars or utterly destroying the wizard’s future.

However, here, things seemed to work a little differently.

Pandora had vaguely sensed this from the very first time she’d attempted to master Susurrus Mist.

The Frozen Moment: Library of the Fallen Laplace’s Demon—the unique rules of this special environment—

differed from the real world outside the door in subtle but fundamental ways.

Here... she could even attempt things that would require far greater mental strength to barely accomplish in the real world.

For instance...

Pandora slowly lifted the hand that had been resting on the page. Her fingers began to trace a specific trajectory through the air. Where her fingertips passed, the solid twilight-hued air seemed to warp slightly.

Some extremely faint, nearly transparent linear structures began to materialize in the air, guided by her fingers.

They intersected with one another, forming the outlines of basic but bizarre glyphs.

These glyphs then layered further, attempting to coalesce into a more complex, three-dimensional structure...