Chapter 2291: Chapter 2292: Optimizing Flaws

After listening to the story told by Feng, even if Angel was slow-witted, he understood that there must be some connection between the "Mad Hat" in the story and the mysterious magic pattern.

"Could the Mad Hat in the story be the origin of the mysterious magic pattern?"

If this is really the case, then it might not be a fairy tale, but something that truly existed.

This reminded Angel of the desolate space where he first met Tullas and the mysterious object he missed. The creation of that mysterious object stemmed from a legendary swindler in history—Lucas.

Feng nodded: "According to my research, there indeed existed a genius hat maker named Louis in the history of that world. However, as time passed, it became hard to trace back what truly happened, and it’s unclear if it was a fairy tale or a real story. But since this person truly existed, there must be some connection to the mysterious magic pattern, and there’s a high probability that he is the origin of the mysterious pattern."

At this point, Feng hesitated slightly: "However, what puzzles me is, the end result was a magic pattern, instead of the hat in the story that was made from Cha Cha’s fur."

The birth of the mysterious object in numerous pan-dimensional planes makes it difficult to find established patterns. Just like people in the same era as Lucas, whether ordinary people or wizards, none had anticipated that Lucas’s mouth full of lies would eventually become a mysterious object.

Although it’s challenging to find the birth patterns of mysterious objects, once the general origins are confirmed, certain ranges can be defined.

The most magical aspect of this fairy tale is Louis’s hat. The white hat can maintain sobriety and return humans to their weak essence; the black hat brings madness and grants the magical powers of the citizens of the Teapot Country.

If sourcing the mysterious object, the hat seems most likely to become a mysterious object. Why does a magic pattern ultimately appear instead? The story does not mention the presence of a magic pattern at all.

Precisely for this reason, Feng feels confused about it.

Nevertheless, these are merely background stories of the mysterious magic patterns; they don’t affect the capabilities of the pattern itself, and knowing them isn’t particularly necessary.

Angel shared this thought; although he was quite puzzled in his heart, his current main concern was the traits of this mysterious magic pattern.

Angel distinctly remembered that before telling the story, Feng once said: "The current effect of the immaculate magic pattern is only this because the figure in the picture only threw out a white hat."

Recalling the plot in "Louis’s Hat," where the hat changes between black and white, "The Coronation of the Mad Hat" might not just mean the coronation of the pattern with a white hat but could also include the coronation with a black hat.

Angel voiced his question.

Feng nodded: "Indeed, a black hat will be thrown out. The effects of the white and black hats are completely different, and it’s fair to say the black hat effect is the true subversion."

"True subversion..." Angel murmured those words with a hint of perception in his heart.

If the effect of the mysterious magic pattern follows the logic of the fairy tale, the white hat merely returns Louis from madness to sobriety, allowing Louis to retrieve the cognitive level before wearing the hat. It certainly has significant use in the story, but its practical value in reality is limited; this corresponds to the white hat of the mysterious magic pattern, an impressive effect, though only relatively impressive. It remains low-grade amongst mysterious objects.

Yet the story’s black hat is completely different; it renders Louis mad and grants immensely powerful abilities, making the black hat the source of Louis’s survival strength.

According to the story, if the mysterious magic pattern is crowned with a black hat, it might truly result in unprecedented subversion!

"What exactly is the effect of the black hat? How can the shadow in the picture throw out a black hat?" Angel asked Feng impatiently.

"We’ll discuss the black hat later. First, let’s talk about the white hat. Do you really think you’ve fully understood the white hat?" Feng didn’t directly start talking about the black hat but instead brought up the white hat first.

"Is there an effect of the white hat I don’t know about?" Angel muttered for a moment, suddenly thinking of something and gazing at the "Floating Water" magic tattoo horn within the immaculate magic pattern.

Feng also noticed Angel’s gaze and smiled: "Just realizing now? The optimization effect of the white hat’s magic pattern is not just enhancing the power of the pattern itself; it can also optimize the flaws within the pattern."

When Angel heard "optimize flaws," he finally understood why Feng disrupted his drawing of the pattern earlier; it was all for this purpose.

This also answered Angel’s previous confusion in the White Cloud Village studio—why the non-standard patterns Feng drew could still remain effective.

It was all due to the "optimized" effect.

At first glance, this optimized flaw effect seems general, given that careful drawing can negate the necessity of using it.

But in reality, the greatest challenge for magic rune mages and enchantment alchemists is that many high-level patterns and magical energy arrays are excessively complex, not only taking a long time to draw but also being highly prone to errors.

Angel experienced this challenge; he still couldn’t depict some of the more difficult magical energy arrays in the "Enchantment Compendium—Advanced Chapter," not to mention the "Perfect Chapter," precisely because his mental capacity and computing power couldn’t sustain the continuous drawing for ten days or even several months.

Once mental fatigue sets in or even a tiny deviation occurs during calculations, these advanced magical energy arrays immediately fail.

Moreover, unlike individual magic patterns, where failure doesn’t entail heavy punishment and requires only re-drawing, magical energy arrays are clusters of abundant magic power, impacting everything, possibly causing the array to collapse or even backfire on errors.

Many wizards have perished from retaliation due to surpassing their ability to depict magical energy arrays.

Thus, in late stages as enchantment alchemists and magic rune mages, failure is absolutely unacceptable.

But once possessing the white hat’s capability to optimize flaws, it becomes a major boon for them, eliminating the fear of dying due to failure in drawing magical energy arrays.

Most importantly, this optimization capability allows Angel to plan more challenging magical energy arrays!

Thinking about this, Angel hurriedly asked: "Does the optimization flaw capability have a lower limit?"

Feng: "Of course, you wouldn’t think you could sloppily draw a few lines and have the mysterious pattern optimize it into a complete pattern, would you?"

Angel: "So at what point do too many flaws cause the magic pattern optimization to fail?"

"As long as flaws don’t exceed 3% of the overall pattern, it can be optimized."

3% might not sound like much, but in the "Advanced Chapter," magical energy arrays typically comprise dozens of magic patterns, containing over a thousand magic tattoo horns. 3% of the overall structure already translates to over a hundred horns.

For more complicated magical energy arrays, such as those with tens of thousands of horns, 3% represents over a thousand horns.

This implies that when Angel depicts "Advanced Chapter" magical energy arrays, there can be over a hundred errors in the magic tattoo horns.

That’s quite a high margin for error.

Angel could intentionally make errors when his mental capacity and computing power are exhausted, recover a bit, and continue drawing afterward.

In this way, Angel believes he can depict most of the "Advanced Chapter" magical energy arrays. As for the "Perfect Chapter," he can give it a try, but his endurance might still be insufficient, and the failure rate remains high.

On the other side, Feng witnessed the entire process of Angel’s expression transition from confused to enlightened and finally brightened.

"Now you understand, throwing out the White Hat isn’t really that weak, is it?" Feng chuckled.

Angel nodded excitedly. The reason it wasn’t demonstrated earlier was because he had depicted the simplest, most basic pure Magic Pattern.

The optimization ability of the White Hat shows its value more with increasingly difficult Magic Patterns.

"Anyway, it’s a Mysterious Object. Although the Black Hat is powerful, the White Hat has its own merits." Feng paused, "After discussing the White Hat, now let’s talk about the Black Hat."

Angel’s ears perked up.

The White Hat is already so powerful, what effect will the Black Hat have?

Feng whetted Angel’s appetite, but his first words left Angel stunned: "Unfortunately, I’ve never crowned a Magic Pattern with the Black Hat."

"It’s not that I’m unwilling, it’s that I cannot..." At this point, Feng’s expression was slightly awkward.

After listening to Feng’s explanation, Angel understood that Feng’s inability actually meant he hadn’t met the prerequisite for the Black Hat’s appearance.

To have the shadow throw out a Black Hat, there is a necessary prerequisite: the depicted Magic Pattern must be flawless.

The White Hat can optimize flaws. However, for the Black Hat to appear, the Magic Pattern itself must be flawless.

It’s impossible for both colored hats to appear simultaneously. This means, once your Magic Pattern has flaws, the White Hat will inevitably appear.

If the Magic Pattern is flawless, there’s a certain chance the Black Hat will appear.

"That’s right, even if you depict a flawless Magic Pattern, the Black Hat doesn’t appear 100% of the time, but rather has a chance to appear." Feng paused, "I have an old friend named Rekton, from the same Rubik’s Cube as I am, albeit he is an Alchemist."

"Rubik’s Cube? Didn’t you say earlier that you were at the Temple of the Oracle?" Angel mumbled.

"Don’t interrupt." Feng chided but still offered an explanation, "It’s not conflicting; I’m just working at the Temple of the Oracle, it doesn’t mean I’m its member."

"Anyway, although Rekton is not an Enchantment Alchemist, he knows some Alchemy Magic Patterns, so I asked him to help me test the powers of the Mysterious Magic Pattern."

"I am not proficient in Magic Patterns, hence never had the shadow throw out a Black Hat, but Rekton managed to do it."

"Based on Rekton’s testing, I summarized two prerequisites for the appearance of a Black Hat."

"First, as you already know, the Magic Pattern must be flawless."

"Second, the more complex the Magic Pattern, the higher the chance of the Black Hat appearing. In Rekton’s tests, single Magic Patterns never resulted in a Black Hat. However, when he depicted a Magical Energy Array, the Black Hat appeared. That was the only time I saw the Black Hat since obtaining the Mysterious Magic Pattern."

Angel was stunned, "Only once?"

Feng had Rekton test it, so did Rekton also manage to test the Black Hat only once?—Although Angel wasn’t familiar with Rekton’s Alchemy skills, being mentioned by Feng meant they were definitely not lacking.

"Yes, only once, because once the Black Hat appeared, I could clearly see Rekton was tempted by my Mysterious Magic Pattern, possibly thinking about running off with it. So I left quickly with the Mysterious Magic Pattern..."

Angel: "..."

He thought the chance of the Black Hat appearing was so low that it only appeared once in so many years. Turns out it was out of fear of it being stolen.

Though speechless, this also shows that the effect of the Black Hat must be incredible.

Otherwise, the Alchemist named Rekton wouldn’t think about possession even in Feng’s presence.

Feng ran swiftly, which indirectly proves he clearly understands the value of the Black Hat.

"Are there only these two prerequisites?" Angel suppressed his desire to joke and asked.

Feng: "I only summarized these two because the sample size is too small. You can summarize it yourself in the future, as now the ’Mad Hat’s coronation’ is yours."

Angel then asked about the specific effects of the Black Hat.

Feng’s response was rather vague: "I can only say, it’s absolutely revolutionary."

Seeing Angel still puzzled, Feng thought for a moment and said, "Let me give an example, have you ever seen a pool of water suddenly turn into a pool of magma?"

Feng asked hoping for Angel to say "no," but Angel hesitated not a bit before nodding, "Yes."

Feng: "..."

Angel: "I know a Wizard who has the talent for water transmutation, she can not only turn water into magma but also into a pool of oil."

Originally, Feng thought Angel was contradicting him, but hearing this explanation, he understood: "So it’s water transmutation, that’s quite rare."

"Let me give another example: have you ever seen a pool of water suddenly turn into a Knight’s sword?"

This time, Angel finally shook his head.

"The situation with the Black Hat is similar to this example. When the Black Hat appears, the crowned Magic Pattern fundamentally changes. It’s a nearly revolutionary transmutation."

After hearing Feng’s examples, Angel seemed to have grasped something, but upon deep thinking, it felt as if it was shrouded in a layer of mist, ambiguous.

He pondered for a moment and thought to himself, "If I can’t figure it out, then I’ll just try it directly."

With that thought, Angel directly took out a piece of parchment treated with special potion from his bracelet, along with an engraving pen.

Seeing Angel’s actions, Feng naturally understood his intention.

"You can give the White Hat a try, but as for the Black Hat, it’s basically impossible to attempt it now." Feng: "I haven’t calculated the probability of the Black Hat appearing, but it’s definitely not high. Rekton also succeeded only after dozens of attempts."

Angel took Feng’s words to heart but still didn’t intend to stop experimenting.

An overwhelming curiosity made him unwilling to halt. After all, it’s just a trial; if it doesn’t appear, so be it.

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