Shades of the New World

Chapter 58: Mage Specializations

Evin didn't really find the prospect that exciting, but something about the way that Ssatsko said it made it seem much more interesting.

"Is there something we need to mind in the border?"

"Nothing to mind. The guards are used to people passing through with some kids in tow," Ssatsko said smilingly. The old man was acting kind of bashful, like he was excited to surprise us with something. Honestly, it was a bit difficult for Evin to watch. Evin could act like a kid, since outwardly he looked like a brat, even though he was much older than Ssatsko, but there was just something wrong about an actual old man acting in such a manner.

The three soon went to sleep after each doing their own thing for some time. Before sleeping, Evin would spend some time talking to Karan in his head. It wasn't much, but it seemed to help the sword deal with his situation a bit better. Though Evin never heard the man complain about his circumstances even once. Evin even wondered if his attention was necessary in the first place. He could only admire the man's strong will.

The next morning came, and the three resumed their journey. This time, Evin was sitting in the back of the carriage, floating in the air and reading the book. Sitting on the carriage itself turned out to be quite discomforting, to say the least. The constant shakiness, the sudden bumps, the clacking of the wooden wheel, the general feeling of motion sickness

Floating on the air though, turned out to be much better. Without the endless shaking of the carriage, Evin could properly focus on the book and understand the content much more clearly.

Rith also asked him to make her float alongside him. Soon, the Feline went to sleep.

After about four hours of non-stop reading, Evin was able to finish the book by skipping some irrelevant info here and there. Arza was still reading, but the boy read much slower compared to Evin.

Just like its name suggested, the book only covered the most basic information a beginner mage needed. They introduced to the reader some of the most common methods to use the Worlds. Just like the Inscription and Engraving methods that Evin learned about the previous day, today he learned about Scroll-making, Artificing, Alchemy, World Formations, Sprite Casting and Core-bending. The author insinuated that there were a lot more uses to Magic than just the ones that were written in his work, but these were ones that were known by every mage.

Scroll-making, Artificing and Alchemy were pretty straightforward. Scrolls could contain some complicated spells that could be used once without spending any mana. Their advantage was that the Mage could spend some time before a fight and own a bunch of scrolls that he usually couldn't cast in a fight.

Artificing was actually the art of inscribing runes and whatnot on objects. This was related to Engravings and Inscriptions as well.

Alchemy was the art of creating potions for various uses.

World Formations were mostly used for defensive purposes. Evin asked Aran to put some defensive measures in his house and most of them were World Formations aside from the lineup of Engraved Devices. The ones that Aran put inside Evin's house were one that attacked the people that were not registered on the Formation. The ones registered would obviously be Evin's family and Aran's family. There was also one that notified the town guards when something happened inside Evin's house. One final formation was one connected to a scroll. The scroll had almost 1000 kilograms of lodestones' worth of mana imbued into it, and even Evin didn't know what it did. Aran just told him that it will definitely save his family from a perilous situation.

World Formations were hard to use in fights since no enemy would allow you to set them up mid fight, but one could lure them into spots where Formations were hidden beforehand.

Next were Sprite-casting and Core-bending.

They were both kind of natural ways to increase your powers. Sprite-casting, as its name suggested, was a way for mages to employ World Sprites for their spells. They worked as a support for your will. Most mages struggled with their willpower being low. Even though they knew how a spell should work with their imagination, they couldn't get their spells to work, since they were still bending nature's forces to their will.

Most mages have a talent for one magic World. Be it the Dark World, or the Luminous World, everyone had their bread and butter. So most mages want to find World Sprites that are suitable for them. Even the World Sprites themselves want to find a suitable host for themselves. It was a similar situation with the Giant Snake and its resident World Sprites of Life in the forest near Smallwall town.

The art of Sprite-casting not only involved information on how to better cast spells with the power of Sprites, it also told one how to assimilate the Sprites or even a Beast Lord within themselves better. There was also some information on how to feed and take care of the Sprites. For example, mages with World Sprites of Fire must visit places with high temperature at least once a month, or else their Sprites might die out. If they are also assimilating a Beast Lord by some kind of luck, the time they spend in such place naturally increase.

For the first few months, you practically have to spend every day in such places for your body to assimilate to the Beast Lords' powers. Over time, when you get used to their powers, you can spend less time in such places, but your body will start naturally craving for such places themselves. It would feel very natural, like hunger or thirst.

It was very interesting to read, but such things were too far for Evin to worry about.

Next was the art of Core-bending. This one was a must learn for many accomplished mages. It was the only way for them to increase the size of the mana-core, after all. There were thousands of methods to increase the size of your core, and 90 percent of it involved a World Core in some way.

The concept for this subject was very simple. It taught mages how to absorb the powers from a World Core, or a Core Shard. The book started with an easier subject. The Core Shards.

These little gems were much easier to absorb, since they only contained a fraction of the power that a World Core possessed. As Aran explained to Evin before, World Cores were the amalgamation of all the unused mana lodestones of a century. At the end of every century, all mana lodestones in the World would be gathered and turned into World Cores. The mana lodestones will then reappear in the nature as mana lodestone mines and whatnot.

So one could imagine how much power a World Core might possess. Core Shards, on the other hand, were all over Alvox. Not only were they tiny compared to complete World Cores, but they would become naturally weaker after they were broken down. For the smallest shards, most healthy mages could simply melt and turn them into pills and swallow them. It would naturally find it's way to your mana-core and start assimilating itself into it.

For bigger Shards, you could break them down and take them as pills, but its powers would be lessened significantly. So your best bet would be to slowly absorb its powers and direct it to your mana-core. Compared to just swallowing it, where the process was automatic, for the bigger shards, you had to do it manually.

There were many ways to absorb such powers. Meditating while channeling the World energies inside yourself was one way to do it. Some even try to submerge themselves in a bath that had absorbed the powers from the World core and do the absorbing that way.

There were many different paths to take, but Evin didn't need to know about such things for the time being, so he focused on the other contents in the book.

It was also littered with advertisement for the kingdom's resources and opportunities it gave to mages. There were so much of these things that Evin wondered if Unabach was held at gunpoint when he was writing this book.

Evin's guess of the academy working as a brainwashing tool to turn young mages more patriotic was starting to take hold more sturdily.

'Well, as long as they don't actually start brainwashing me, I should be fine,' Evin thought.