Chapter 39

Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios

This world truly existed, and so did wizard’s magic system. Hence, it also went through different stages such as birth, development, maturity, and change.

According to The Writings of Monroe, the magic system had first appeared during the ancient wizard civilization.

A long time ago, the first batch of wizards created the first spells with their wisdom and abilities, forming the prototype of this system.

Later on, after several centuries, the prototype was improved and developed by many outstanding wizards, and it gradually evolved into a mature and comprehensive system, complex and sophisticated.

At the same time, this ancient wizard civilization developed and reached its peak, which also led to the building of inexhaustible energy sources. Furthermore, they even built the skyscraping Tower of Babel and a floating city that could accommodate more than a 100 000 people. At one point in time, they even moved away from their motherland to explore the wider world and universe.

But one day, a catastrophe suddenly came—there were no records of this disaster and how it had happened. People only knew that it had destroyed the entire ancient wizard civilization at an unimaginable speed.

Then came a long dark age, a time without any historical records.

Hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of years might have passed before the remains of this ancient civilization gradually developed again and became a new civilization. With the help of bits and pieces of information passed down, the new generation of wizards began the struggle to restore the previous magic system.

Many spells had inevitably been lost, and only perhaps after another long period of development, they might be restored. In any case, what had finally been restored was a lacking magic system—the current one.

According to The Writings of Monroe, this system had five classifications—the general magic system, magic categories, magic sections, magic branches, and magic school.

The magic categories were the first of the magic system classifications. Currently, nine major magic categories had been restored: the Energy-modeling Spells, the Spirit Spells, the Transformation Spells, the Prophetic Spells, the Summoning Spells, the Space Spell, the Time Spells, the Magic Pattern Spells, and other spells.

As the name suggested, Energy-modeling Spells were related to magic that shaped, controlled and utilized energy. Fireballs, ice shards, wind blades, lightning, and so on belonged to this category. They were also the most common and practical spells and currently formed the largest magic category.

This magic category was further divided into nine sections: water, wind, fire, earth, wood, thunder, dark energy, light energy, and pure energy.

Some of these sections only had one branch, whereas others had multiple branches. For example, water element spells had many branches, including the water branch, the ice branch, and the acid branch.

If a wizard were to contribute greatly to a certain branch and invent a series of related spells, it would develop into a school.

For example, within the ice branch was the Knokke School created by a wizard named Sknor, and it contained a series of spells: Sknor Snowball (Zero-ring), Sknor Ice Shard (Zero-ring), Sknor Hail (Zero-ring), Sknor Ice Storm (One-ring), Sknor Polar Cold (Two-ring).

After the Energy-modeling Spells, there were Spirit Spells.

Spirit Spells, as the name suggested, involved spells that worked on the human brain, spirit, or consciousness. They could be divided in five categories: attack, defense, illusion, control, and soul. Each of them had one to three branches, and this was the second largest magic category currently.

Attack, defense and illusion spells were normal. However, control spells could directly change a person’s mind and turn him into a fully obedient slave. Some lascivious wizards used these spells to control many young and beautiful women, including twins and mother-daughter pairs, to become their sex slaves, submitting to them day and night. This had thus been condemned by many righteous wizards.

Then there were the Transformation Spells.

Transformation Spells could make an entire living body or part of it undergo temporary or permanent changes. It was the third major magic category.

Many of these spells were strange and evil. While powerful, they challenged ethics and moral relations. For example, there was a spell called the Reaping Corpse that required the wizard to have sex with a corpse in order to extract terrifying attack, defense, and recovery powers from it. The wizard would then instantly transform into a humanoid fighting machine, capable of staying in combat for three days without rest.

There was another spell called the Black Death Frenzy, which could cause a plague to sweep across an entire kingdom and its neighboring countries in just a few days, destroying a large region. The effects were overwhelming, but it would likely end the entire world if it got out of control. Hence regardless of how crazy wizards were, they dared not study this type of magic in depth.

Next came the Prophetic Spells.

Prophetic Spells involved the use of certain mysterious mechanisms to access, change and make use of information to achieve certain goals. Because too much of its history had been lost, only three sections—detection, misleading, and judgment—and their respective branches had been restored.

Then there were other three magic categories: Summoning, Space and Time.

Wizards could use Summoning Spells to summon life from unknown places. Space Spells could alter spaces and create certain effects, and Time Spells could change time, among other effects.

Like the Prophetic Spells, a lot of the history of these three magic categories was gone, resulting only in a few remaining sections and branches. Moreover, there was a knowledge gap, which made it difficult for the new generation of wizards to understand what had been passed down. As such, these categories were inevitably in decline.

Lastly, there were the Magic Pattern Spells.

Magic Pattern Spells utilized special lines or patterns to create specific magical effects. When used on a sword, it could increase its sturdiness and sharpness. Therefore, it was called possession. But when used on the inside of a building, it could make the entire building unleash powerful attack or defense functions. As such, it was also called a magic array.

Simply put, Magic Pattern Spells had many uses and a wide range of effects. Although it was a single major category of magic, it could theoretically replace all other magic categories because it could use lines and patterns to replicate other spells perfectly. Of course, this would require absolute precision and accuracy when the carving of lines. Any slight error could lead to failure.

Precisely due to this, the difficulty of Magic Pattern Spells was not any less than Summoning, Space and Time Spells. Therefore, when Richard had said that he would be able to figure out Magic Pattern Spells, the large dragon Gregory had suddenly fallen silent and acted weirdly afterward.

However, in Richard’s view, Magic Pattern Spells were not really that difficult. In a sense, they resembled electricity circuits on Modern Earth, and the only difference was that they possessed some magical characteristics of this world.

A circuit was both simple and complex. It could be as simple as a piece of wire, like a power supply, or as complicated as the most high-end technology on Modern Earth—computers, rockets, and satellites. They were just manifestations of a large number of circuits.

Magic Pattern Spells were obviously both simple and complex. It was so simple that one just needed to follow the steps and carve out the lines. However, combining each carved line methodically to create an entire piece and then achieving a magical effect required extraordinary wisdom. This was like Modern Earth’s binary code that used only two numbers, zero and one, but could create an entire virtual world.

In the evening, the sky was dark, and the forest was as quiet as the vast ocean. Under the moonlight, large tree branches and leaves swayed with the wind, making swaying sounds as they moved.

Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh.

Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh.

In the middle of the forest, the terrain was slightly sloping, several hill crests sitting motionless like islands in the ocean.

On the smallest “island,” stood a black castle. A room in the castle was emitting a faint light, like a lighthouse giving directions to navigating ships.

Inside, the piece of white jade in Richard’s hand had cracked in the middle, and a faint blue flame had emerged, burning quietly. Richard knew that his attempt at a Magic Pattern Spell had succeeded this time.

This was the product of the simplest spell, Phosphorus Candle. Since this spell had been successfully cast, this method could be reproduced for the rest of the spells.

With the help of magic lines, the time to cast spells would be greatly shortened. This would enable him to release several, or even dozens, of spells together within the time span of one spell, and hold a power that broke through the limit of spell levels.

In other words, a Level 1 Apprentice Wizard would be able to compete with a Level 2 Apprentice Wizard, a Level 3 Apprentice Wizard, or even a Level 1 Wizard in the near future.

This was the first small goal that Richard had set for himself in his study of the magic system.

There was a certain level of difficulty involved in accomplishing this goal. Nevertheless, it seemed achievable.

Richard waved his hand to extinguish the flame and put away the broken piece of white jade. After stretching his stiff body briefly, he began to work on a second piece of white jade with magic patterns.

Then there was the third, the fourth.

It was late at night. That room in the castle was still lit, seemingly going to last all night like a lighthouse.

Chapter 40: The First Words