The sage was put in a pretty bad mood. They were in the cla.s.sroom, having long since left the Big Heaven Little Earth array.Which, to Lord Yasunori"s great pain, had gotten cucked from him by Damien.
"I don"t like smelly old men and b.a.s.t.a.r.d ghosts. I"m following Prince Damien from now on!" The fire-haired beauty hated that Yasunori kid for sealing her soul in this small world for so long and taking advantage of her as he pleased.
Meanwhile, the Prince was a truly dauntless youth who stayed the same no matter what. Handsome, talented, young and capable of giving ma.s.sages that were just divine..just thinking about the last thing had her sighing dreamily.
Ahem. Yes. Anyway they"d spent innumerable years fighting each other, killing each other and bickering with each other….He"d made her many delicious snacks near the end, too.
Anything could be recreated in their little world. Though what they ate wasn"t filling as they had no need for food, the taste was enough. It was to the point where she never got bored of eating them.
SImply put, she liked him! Not to mention he was her race"s Prince, so she would have followed him regardless.
And to think she killed him so many times, ah...She didn"t know at the start, though, so it"s not her fault!
Just another reason to hate that s.h.i.tty old man and his dead ghost of a master, they even set her against her race"s young Great One! She wanted to beat them up. In fact, she did. How dare they walk into their home like they own the place?! So she killed them about twenty million times.
Then, once everyone left she shrank down into a little white sphere of light and place herself within a strange empty s.p.a.ce inside his body where his second core should have been. One must know, their second cores are semi-physical, illusory objects that are both there and not there, normally existing on a higher dimension than their actual bodies.
The place where these second cores existed was also metaphysical in nature. Yet while his body did have some weird connection between itself and two strange Artifacts, the s.p.a.ce that should hold his second core was actually empty!
This was mind-bogglingly odd. Still, it didn"t seem like it bothered him? In any case, their second cores were just to keep their energy levels balanced, so it didn"t really hurt to not have one if something else did it for them.
In any case, it suited her just fine. She was originally a core herself before she was reborn, she thought. Therefore why couldn"t she take that place herself instead? And so she did.
She merged herself with that empty s.p.a.ce and felt as snug as a bug in a rug, incredibly comfortable.
Now she"d always be with the Prince wherever he went. Hm, she felt stable too. More in tune with reality. Before, the concept of time didn"t register with her as she had no point to focus on, only an endless white. Now, however, everything was so much more tangible. She experiences the world just like the Prince does and her sense of time is fixed too.
No longer did eons pa.s.s in the blink of an eye. Things were slower now, yet so much more enjoyable.
She was even able to exist outside of her realm! See the bright, shining world! So much has changed, ah! She felt like crying. This was all something unexpected. She had no idea merging with the Prince like this would bring this kind of result, allowing her the vivid colors and motions of life.
Perhaps this was only possible because he was a Dragon without a second core. If she never met and decided to follow him, perhaps it would be impossible for her to see past that unending white.
How long had she truly been "dead"? To her, an infinite amount of years had pa.s.sed. But in reality, how long?
A hundred years? Five hundred? It was impossible to tell. However it didn"t really matter right now, she was having too much fun zipping around the entire campus in spirit form. She flew here and there like a fairy. Happiness oozed from the depths of her being.
On Yasunori"s end, he was miserable. The array he"d spent years to perfect, buying and robbing many precious and priceless materials to build, actually ended up in someone else"s hands just like that!
His disciple couldn"t control the array anymore at all. It"s thoroughly imprinted itself onto the boy"s body, hiding somewhere they couldn"t detect, much less interfere with. It truly frustrated one to death! He retreated into his book with a look of defeat.
"So. Spells please." ANd the boy had the gall to want even more from them!
"Motherf.u.c.ker…." The old sage cursed. "You want a spell? Here, I"ll teach you a G.o.dd.a.m.n spell alright."
And he patiently taught him the weakest, most common spell in the world that almost every mage knew: Barrier magic.
"Barrier magic?!" Damien"s eyes lit up. "That"s awesome!" He listened intently.
"Hmph. if you don"t have even this you can"t be considered a real mage. We use it all the time, you hear me? All the time. " He lied through his teeth, because almost no one used this particular spell. They preferred the stronger variation, Magic Armor. "This is a very special magic, Barrier. Young mages always learn this first, you see. Although it"s defense isn"t great, it can be cast almost instantly! It"s very useful, very useful indeed." He fiddled with his stubble, which used to be a long beard he sorely missed.
He then erected an oval shield of transparent blue light around his body. "Easy. Now you."
Barrier magic was a simple spell to weave, anyone can do it. Because it was so simple, only needing you to stimulate a few magic circuits in your body with a little mana and then tying it off, erecting the barrier was something that one didn"t even need to learn a chant or rune for.
"What, that"s it?"
"You want more?"
"That would be pretty d.a.m.n nice, yeah."
The old man rolled his eyes. Grumbling to himself, he handed over a thick leather-bound book. "This is a list of simple incantations. Have fun," He snorted.
Damien flipped through the book there and then. "Why are they so long?"
"What do you mean?"
"The incantations."
An annoyed grunt. "Well, the written form is obviously going to be longer. Most mages abbreviate or think of the incantations in their minds for faster results."
"So they just think it."
A shrug. "Basically. The speed of thought was pretty fast, but concentration is needed. For lower-level spells it"s negligible but mid-to-higher level spells and a single mistake could lead to disaster. By then incantations are much longer. This is because even a single mid-level spell would require, in actuality, a dozen commands to perform."
"Commands...wait. Are you telling me you can customize spells?"
"You can." The old man nodded. "But a great many spells are already optimized. All of the best, most powerful spells are based around how many commands they require to achieve the desired result of the caster. This is why mid-to-high level spells take longer to cast, yet are also much stronger."
"Is layered casting a thing?"
The sage raised a brow. "You can cast the same spell as someone else at the same time and combine them to increase the power of the end result if that"s what you mean.
"Uh, kind of. But I meant more like...I guess delayed commands. Something that only activates after a certain amount of time pa.s.ses, or after certain conditions."
"I believe that is possible...however those would be high-level spells because of the extra incantations. They would be VERY long incantations too. Maybe useful in a battle between lower-tier mages, though. You could fit it in low-tier spells and not lose too much time since their incantations aren"t long in themselves. But at higher levels you wouldn"t want to waste time on something like that. You"d die before you get it off anyway, most likely."
Yasunori watched them closely. In fact, that was an important part of spellcasting once upon a time, but that was before even his era.
No one knew how to achieve delayed casting past the era of the Second Cataclysm when all the great mages of the mortal realms were taken and their souls were interrogated by malevolent beings from the G.o.d Realm.
And with their death, their knowledge.
"Multi-casting?"
This f.u.c.king kid, all these questions….the old man hadn"t talked this long in forever.
"You can"t cast the same spell twice at the exact same time, no." He shook his head. " In theory it"s possible, but the mind isn"t great at multi-tasking. At all. Your attention is always focused on one thing. No matter how hard you train, true mult.i.tasking is impossible. The most you do is learn how to process and respond to information faster. Giving the illusion of mult.i.tasking. It"s just about how fast you complete the spell, really. I"ve known some mages who can cast a mid-level spell so fast it almost seemed like multi-casting, though."
Damien idly read through the book. "Alright, well what about delegating pieces of a high-level spell?"
"Others have tried that, actually. It wouldn"t work. It has to come from the same source or else the spell doesn"t work."
Damien finally put down the book and cast his first true spell, Barrier!
A light surrounded him. Thin, transparent. But solid. He punched at it and the thing cracked. "Pretty weak." He commented.
"Uh, no, it"s not that weak…." This kid cracked it with his bare hands?! Even Barrier wasn"t that flimsy!
It is weak compared to better spells like Magic Armor, but this should still be able to tank at least 2-3 lower-tier spells before cracking...this guy did it with a light punch...what the h.e.l.l is he? RIght, what did that woman call him? D-D-Dragon Prince? The sage started sweating bullets, choosing to ignore that line of thought.
"Don"t do that. It"s still connected to you, break it and you"ll feel the backlash."
"Pretty small too." It kept your inside as well. It was like a see-through wall surrounding you, you could barely walk. It followed you, yeah, but you couldn"t move much. It"s like having shackles around your legs, limited in how long you could take a step.
"You can make it bigger, but the defense goes down."
Oh? Damien"s ears picked up. "What about making it smaller? Does it raise the defense then?"
"Huh?"
"Do I have to be inside it, even?"
"No, you don"t, but…" Wouldn"t it defeat the purpose of having it?
"I"ve gotta experiment with stuff. You can go."
And Damien ignored him.
In his hand was a small, palm-sized disk with numerous lines of characters taking form within.
The old man huffed at being treated so poorly and was glad to leave.
"Heh, stupid brat...go ahead and experiment with those s.h.i.t spells, see how far you get."
He laughed scornfully.
Just a bunch of uselessly long incantations for simple spells, unbalanced as h.e.l.l, and a c.r.a.ppy Barrier spell no one uses. What can he do with that?
***
Damien had been shut inside the cla.s.sroom for five days straight, locking everyone out except Minerva who went to take him meals, coming out only to shower and go to the bathroom before resuming his studies.
Many explosions occurred within the room. Strange lights blinked from time to time. Screams that seemed to originate from the bowels of h.e.l.l would commonly be heard.
In the middle of the day, the sun would darken. At night the sky would alight with a river of flames across the sky, then quiet down like it were a mere dream.
Immense waves of mana would erupt with a choking pressure and thousands of disks would pop into existence everywhere randomly. At those times the world would shake. Or the flames would reappear.
Everyone was frightened to death.
However only those from block C knew about this. The strange happenings seemed confined to their area and no one besides them knew about it.
That is, until a magic instructor from block A felt one of his familiars take damage near the building of block C and hurried to investigate.
The grey-haired man discovered an invisible shield formation around the entirety of block C that could only be seen with the Second Sight, a high-level technique used to peer into the mysterious and profound.
What frightened him? The entire formation was comprised of thousands of small disks...and these disks were undoubtedly created from the Barrier spell! These disks were about three inches thick and impossibly durable, not scratched at all even when he used a dozen mid-level spells in succession, blowing his mind.
Was this really Barrier? And how could there be so many cast at the same time?! There"d have to be thousands of people casting it! However, the energy signature for each is clearly identical.
In a panic he called Gladstone, who sent the other magic instructors to the scene without hesitation.
"It really is Barrier!" One of them marveled. This was a youthful-looking woman who"s true age was unknown. "How are there so many? And these symbols….Ah! That line, it"s the abbreviation for...hm...no, it"s similar to penetration prevention. But, it"s different?"
"It"s weird. Is it negating all physical force?"
"Not quite, buts close enough. It"s dispersing it. But the exact word being used, I don"t understand what it is."
"Forget that, this line there, it"s Anti-Magic!" Someone shouted in astonishment.
"What?! Impossible!" Everyone knew that was a useless spell. Or well, it"s not actually a spell. It was a rune, an incantation that could only be activated by it"s written form. So it was, strictly speaking, an enchantment.
However, due to the nature of the enchantment, it made all magical Artifacts into normal objects. Any enchantments added after wouldn"t take effect either. Only G.o.dly Artifacts were immune.
"How can you apply that kind of thing here? Why isn"t Barrier collapsing?"
"No, take a closer look! The words themselves, at least that line, is also a Barrier….in actuality, Barrier is a solid light construct, so you can make it any shape you want. Someone just changed the shape to mimic the Anti-Magic enchantment. The enchantment isn"t even touching the disk, it"s floating in front of it!"
In enchantment magic every word has to be connected to be activated or applied to the object.
They found that the Anti-Magic enchantment was disconnected from the disks, but every letter is connected, it"s just that the letters are formed by a single Barrier spell themselves and constantly fed mana to sustain itself. This barely works in keeping the construct in existence and yet negates all magic that hits it at the same time.
Let"s say you cast a projectile at this giant shield using the element of earth. The magical force that you use to keep it at a fixed speed would be negated. Even so, the projective would still move forward and, you a.s.sume, do some kind of damage. But no, the leftover force would then be dispersed.
Obviously this was not entirely negated. However the effects were spread so thin, and the Barrier disks were so durable, that it didn"t matter.
This meant that shield...is essentially impossible to destroy using conventional means.
That wasn"t even the most terrifying part. What was truly horrible is how much mana wastage this is! This can"t possibly be done by a single person, right? There"s no way. The amount of mana you would need to sustain something like this is astronomical! Let alone the thousands of Barrier spells, sustaining the Anti-Magic enchantment on this scale would have even them dead in an hour. They had large reserves of mana, but they can"t handle such a constant drain.
These spells and enchantments were identical, so of course only one person had cast them. But what sort of monster could do something like that and not die?! You"d have to be a G.o.d or Devil!
The way the trash spell, Barrier, was used alone is already enough to rock them to their cores. They"d never even THOUGHT of shrinking the construct to increase it"s defensive power. It just wasn"t the common sense of their world. Other spells seemed so much better.
They were all talented geniuses in their own right, and now that they saw this they vaguely felt as if a new door had been opened to them.
Just as they thought this…
"You have entered private airs.p.a.ce. Leave now or deadly force will be invoked."
The instructors all looked confused. "What the…?"
"This voice, where?!"
"It seems to be coming from the disks."
"Wait, why do I feel soul force from them?" A gaunt-looking man stared. He was a pract.i.tioner of dark magics, a former necromancer who specialized in the reanimation of the dead.
But he quickly reached a dead end, discovering the limits of necromancy. Simply put, you need fresh corpses or else it"s not worth the trouble.
First of all, a skeleton might be able to move via magic. But it can"t attack with any force without muscle. So if the body was too old or ruined, they were uselessly weak. You would have to find a fresh body and pour many precious materials into it so it won"t rot, more so that it be able to become powerful.
Second, the raised corpses could only follow simple commands. They can"t adapt, needing constant orders from the caster.
Unlike what many would have you believe, necromancers didn"t raise armies of undead. Couldn"t, not practically. They instead raised and refined one or two corpses, using them as puppets in battle. This is because it"s simply impossible for them to command armies of corpses. They could, at the VERY MOST, command three or four with any real accuracy. Any more and they wouldn"t be able to fight in battle effectively since the corpses, again, require constant management.
He, too, had wanted to experience the glory of leading thousands of undead and cutting a swath through the land in his younger years. Yet he found out that was an impossibility and became depressed, turning away from the profession in pursuit of other forms of magic.
That said, necromancers have other abilities such as astral projection or possession that are rather useful. Although they can"t control souls with a wave of their hand like people thought, they were still rather sensitive to soul fluctuations.
And so why did he feel such fluctuations from these disks?
"You have failed to comply. Deadly force will be initiated."
Just like that, the Anti-Magic enchantment vanished. The text written on the disks changed.
The atmosphere changed. They suddenly felt their vision blackening. Their ears rang. Sickening nausea overcame them.
Not only that, but the pressure on their bodies increased as well and they experienced a wave of dizziness.
Sparks flew
"EXPLOSION!!!!!!!!!"
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A high-pitched shriek, which somehow sounded just like that of a little girl"s, echoed through the land.
Meanwhile,
"Rise, my children….rise!"
Bone-chilling laughter.