Chapter 778 – Three Thousand Mirror Ruins 45

These six beast cores, without exception, were all trophies she had obtained over the past two days from solo, head-on kills of mirror beasts.

According to the laws governing beast core skill extraction, extracting skills from these cores would yield the highest success rate and the most complete skill transfer.

Mo Lan had originally planned to wait until she hunted down her target mirror beast—the phantom leopard cat—before naturally using the Mirror Explorer methods of this world to extract beast core skills.

But after personally witnessing the entire process of Bai Wei and Ren Miao extracting their skills just now, she changed her mind.

When the skill imprints of Glimmer Heal and Lesser Water Arrow had flashed briefly at the center of their brows, a powerful sense of déjà vu surged through Mo Lan’s mind!

The resemblance was uncanny! They looked far too similar to the spell structures of Valen mage magic!

Though she couldn’t recall any spell structure in her memory that was completely identical, they were remarkably similar.

This discovery made her impatient to extract a skill herself and verify her hypothesis.

After all, her psychic power wasn’t truly at the one-star level.

The other students in her class had limited psychic power and could currently only barely manage to extract a single one-star beast core skill, after which they would need extended periods of nurturing and refinement before they could unleash its true power.

Because of this, when choosing their first—and possibly only—skill for the foreseeable future, every one of them was exceedingly cautious, weighing their options again and again, striving for a perfect match with their personal development path.

But Mo Lan had no such concerns whatsoever!

Her psychic power was vast enough that even extracting a seemingly useless beast core skill would be of no real consequence to her.

In fact, even her original target—the phantom leopard cat’s beast core skill, Lesser Mirror Image—was merely something she found relatively interesting. As for whether it would bring any fundamental improvement to her actual strength? Not really.

No sooner said than done!

Mo Lan’s gaze swept across the six beast cores on the table. After a moment’s thought, she reached out and picked up the crimson red-eyed grasshopper beast core.

The reason for choosing it was simple: recalling how the red-eyed grasshopper had spat that scorching viscous liquid, the Searing Liquid Spray skill contained within this beast core was roughly equivalent to a Fireball without the explosive effect, but with sustained burning and adhesive properties instead.

And similar effects were things she could easily replicate at will using Witch Magic, mage magic, or dragon-tongue magic.

If the true nature of beast core skills really was as she suspected—spell structures—then with her understanding of fire-element magic, reverse-analyzing the structural model of a “weakened Fireball” would be utterly effortless.

She would absolutely be able to identify its core framework and principles at a glance!

Using it to verify her hypothesis was undoubtedly the most suitable choice.

Mo Lan placed the searing beast core in her palm and slowly closed her eyes.

Her psychic power, vast as an abyss, acted like a precision surgical scalpel and simultaneously like a domineering sovereign—forceful yet meticulous as it invaded the beast core’s interior directly, instantly enveloping the skill imprint representing “Searing Liquid Spray”!

The fire elemental force within the beast core became as docile as a lamb the moment it encountered her psychic power. Mo Lan swiftly completed her perception of the skill imprint.

She had merely perceived and memorized the appearance of the Searing Liquid Spray skill imprint—she hadn’t even proceeded to the step of stripping the skill imprint from the core—yet Mo Lan had already confirmed her theory.

The skill imprint within the beast core was indeed something akin to a spell structure. No question about it!

Mo Lan withdrew her psychic power from the beast core. The red-eyed grasshopper core in her palm rapidly dimmed, its fire elemental force quickly dissipating and vanishing.

At the same time, a scorching little ball of magma appeared in her palm, identical to the high-temperature viscous liquid the red-eyed grasshopper spat.

But she had not extracted the beast core skill into her mental sea, nor had she used a fire-attribute beast core as a casting material. She had done it entirely using Valen mage casting methods—rapidly sketching the skill imprint from the red-eyed grasshopper’s beast core within her mental sea using psychic power, leveraging the fire elemental force in the surrounding environment, and the spell was successfully cast.

No matter how you looked at it, this skill imprint was essentially the spell structure of the Searing Liquid Spray skill.

The only difference was that Mirror Explorers directly used psychic power to permanently imprint the skill imprint from the beast core into their minds. When casting, most of their psychic power went toward linking the skill imprint with the elemental energy within the beast core.

Whereas after she finished casting, the spell structure she had temporarily constructed with psychic power in her mental sea simply disappeared.

She had already fully understood the knowledge and meaning this spell structure represented, memorized it, and could reconstruct it at any time when casting, drawing upon the energy in the air to fuel the spell.

Mirror Explorer spellcasting was like buying a painting book—when needed, you just grabbed some paint and ink and traced along.

Valen mage spellcasting was like being a skilled painter who could even mix colors from the surrounding environment, painting on the spot whenever needed.

In terms of psychic power consumption during casting, the former was lower than the latter.

But in terms of additional material consumption during casting, the former was higher than the latter.

Moreover, the portion of psychic power used to imprint and engrave beast core skills, once occupied, could never be called upon again. So the number of beast core skills a Mirror Explorer could possess was far fewer than the number of spells a mage could learn.

However, hunting mirror beasts and imprinting beast core skills was far simpler than the process mages went through—studying magical knowledge and memorizing spell structures.

“They’re actually quite complementary!” Mo Lan couldn’t help but marvel.

If the magical beasts of Valen had beast cores like these from which spell structures could be extracted, the development of Valen mage magic would have advanced much faster.

And if the mages of the Three Thousand Mirror Ruins had the meditation techniques and magical knowledge of Valen mages, they wouldn’t always have to risk damaging their psychic power to extract beast core skills, nor would their spellcasting always depend on beast cores.

Using psychic power to perceive the spell structures within beast cores, reverse-engineering and learning from them, then casting using Valen mage methods—this approach saved research costs, increased the safety of learning spells, and reduced casting costs all at once.

Once Mo Lan figured this out, she immediately revised her subsequent plans.

She had no intention of engraving skill imprints and tying up her psychic power. Instead, she would properly study the skill imprints within beast cores, decipher the corresponding spell structures, and cast using Valen mage methods.

This way, she wouldn’t be limited by extraction success rates or extraction completeness either—beast cores from any source could be used.

The beast cores her original body’s parents had left behind as casting materials could all be put to use now.

She could also use the skill imprints within these beast cores to update her repertoire of spell structures. The skills contained in six-star beast cores could theoretically rival Third Rank mage magic—her mage magic could finally be elevated.

From that day on, her primary energy was devoted to beast core research in the evenings.

The skill imprints she observed and memorized from within the beast cores were recorded one by one in her magic notebook. She then reverse-engineered and studied the magical principles contained within them, before comprehending and mastering the corresponding magic.