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Adelheid 9: The Magic System
🕑 Added 2022-03-10 14:03:59 +0000 UTCCourt Mage Eric Redland brought out the ebony wood and ichor slime's magic stone that Adelheid had chosen previously. When Adelheid had left that day, he had carefully stored the materials, waiting for her to resume lessons.
"The first step is known as mana synchronization. It is the process of acclimating the magic stone to the caster's mana. It is not a process that can be accomplished at once. The end goal is to have the magic stone's mana be perfectly compatible with the caster's. Saying it is easy, but accomplishing it is difficult. The magic stone itself will influence the mana within it." After explaining, Eric held a yellow magic stone between his fingers.
In front of Adelheid's eyes, the magic stone began to glow an earthly white. Then the glow died down, but soon, the magic stone began to glow again. Only this time, the glow was a brilliant yellow, with a tint of orange in it.
"Can Your Highness discern which glow was the result of my mana entering the magic stone?" the court mage asked.
"The second time. The first time the magic stone glowed, the light was an exact match for the stone's color. The second time, there was an orange tint in the light that looked unnatural to the magic stone," Adelheid replied.
"Very good, now you try," Eric Redland said.
Adelheid held the marble-like magic stone in her palm. Adelheid stared at the stone in her hand as she concentrated her mana to flow from her body into the magic stone. She could feel the mana gently caressing the magic stone, but there was no reaction. Scrunching her brows together, Adelheid focused more of her mana until it reached the point of being visualized.
The red marble began to exude a blood-red light at that moment. The blood-red light wasn't bright. Instead, it was like a soft blanket that covered wherever it reached in a thin film. Moments after the blood-red light was exuded, the mana visualized by Adelheid died down and disappeared and left only the blood-red light.
Adelheid's pupils reflected the red light, giving her an eerie appearance. It was as if her pupil glowed red, which only stood out more against her steel-gray eyes.
Eric Redland widened his eyes as he saw this. The example he showed to the imperial princess resulted from years of experience and expertise of a court mage. Forget causing the magic to exude light, most people who attempt it will fail even after a hundred attempts.
As time passed, the blood-red light slightly changed. The color didn't change, but the glow took on a viscous quality. At this point, Adelheid felt that the magic stone had acclimated enough to her mana and looked at her teacher for the next step.
"Your Highness always surprises me," Eric praised. "But, this result is only momentary. It is a long and gradual process that you must complete over a long period of time."
Adelheid frowned. "Does that mean that I can not start crafting my wand until I finish?"
Eric Redland shook his head. "The synchronization process is both the first and last step. Since your highness has already grasped the process, let's move on to the next step."
"Wait," Adelheid said.
"Is there a problem, Your Highness?" Eric asked.
"I remember you saying that mana cannot be easily extracted, but how come I was able to place my mana into the magic stone?" Adelheid asked.
"That is due to the properties of the magic stone. In addition, not all magic stones are compatible with your mana. The ichor slime magic stone is scarce to the point that I don't know when we will find another one." Seeing that the seventh princess had no more questions, Eric proceeded to the next step.
The court mage picked up a scrapwood the color of sand and held it up for Adelheid to see. Under Adelheid's disbelieving gaze, the wood began to morph and shape itself as if it was a living appendage. There were even some wood chips and shavings that fell off while it writhed. When everything was done, a delicate wand with intricate engravings appeared in Eric Redland's hand.
With a smile, Eric placed the wand in front of the seventh princess and gestured towards the black branch. "Now, it's your turn, Your Highness."
Adelheid picked up the black wood in her hand. Thinking about it, she recalled that she was never informed of the species of tree the wood came from, but that was an unnecessary concern. Focusing on the task, she tried to decipher the process that Eric Redland used to craft the wand currently lying on the desk.
She glanced at the court mage to see him giving the same fawning smile that was always on his face. Without disturbing her facial muscles, Adelheid gritted her teeth. She wanted to ask for the exact process, but she felt that she would lose if she asked.
Calming her turbulent emotions down, Adelheid once again focused on the task at hand. 'The process must involve mana control in some way. That day I chose the wood, some of the wood exploded. Even if they couldn't stand my mana, it's weird that they would explode. So that means they have been specially prepared for wand crafting.'
As a test, Adelheid inserted her mana into the wood. Once she did so, she tried to alter it, and to her surprise, the black branch began to morph and twist according to her mana. Adelheid quickly stopped upon realizing that the branch wasn't changing the way she liked.
Afterward, Adelheid tried several times to shape the wood according to her will, but she did not possess the same exquisite control as Eric, so the result would be something in the shape of a wand but far too crude or misshapen for her liking.
After each failure, she continued to accumulate experience until she devised a suitable way to shape the ebon wood in her hand. Holding the wood in her left hand, she inserted her mana to keep the shape of the wood while she used her dominant hand's finger like a knife to shave and shape the wood. The mana in her finger allowed Adelheid to cut the wood like a hot knife through butter. Were it not for the mana fed to the wood through her left hand, her finger would have been too sharp, and she would have shaved off too much with each stroke.
Before Adelheid had realized, the sun had already dipped into the horizon. In her hand, there was a dainty thin stick the length of her arm with some crude vines and leaves for decoration that she had engraved using her nails. She wasn't a hundred percent pleased with her work, but it was the best she could do at the time.
However, Eric didn't continue to the next step as the day was late and ended the lesson. The next day, the lesson continued, and the court mage informed Adelheid of the next step. Unlike the previous times where he only showed how he did, Eric explained the process step-by-step.
Adelheid soon understood why, because if she had to figure it for herself, it would have taken months or years.
"Although the wand's body itself appears to be finished, that is only on the surface. Within the wand's body, there are numerous pathways." Eric pointed at the end of the wand, where there was a slight indent with claws at the end. He took the yellow magic stone from the previous day and placed it at the end, and under his control, the 'claws' wrapped around the magic stone and secured it in place.
The court mage flourished the wand with a swish and allowed his mana to flow into the magic stone. Unlike when he used his personal wand, there was not a string of mana coming out from the end. Instead, light burst out from almost everywhere on the wand.
"See?" Eric asked as he allowed his mana to continue flowing into the wand. "This is the result of the pathways not being aligned. In order to craft a wand, you have to adjust the pathways so that it leads from the magic stone to the tip. Otherwise, it's just a useless piece of wood attached to a magic stone."
"Before, Your Highness was shaping the wand to the desired shape. Now, Your Highness has to use your mana control to alter the pathways without deforming the wand. I'm sure Your Highness already noticed the pathways during the process," Eric Redland said.
He stopped his flow of mana into the yellow magic stone. After a moment, he inserted his mana into the magic stone again. This time, a string of mana came out of the tip. "Now, it's Your Highness's turn."
Adelheid picked up her black wand. Before she started, she moved to carve out an indent for which to insert the ichor slime magic stone. Only after did she focus on altering the pathways.
After closing her eyes, she discovered that visualizing it in her head would be easier to map out all the pathways inside the incomplete wand. She had expected the pathways to be straight if slightly distorted from one end to another, but she was wrong. It was an exaggeration to call it a knot of strings, but that's what Adelheid felt like what she was working with.
Contrary to shaping the wand's shape, altering the pathways was a far more tedious procedure. Not only did Adelheid have to delicately control her mana supply, but she had to be careful with how she moved the pathways. Otherwise, the shape would distort to the point of no return.
Continuously focusing on altering the pathways was something that could easily fatigue the mind, so Eric portioned off some time to teach her the categorization of spells among other foundation knowledge.
Mages generally had two methods to cast spells: incantations and magic circle construction.
Incantation casting was a method that all magic pupils learned, because magic circle construction required extremely high mana control that took at least a decade. In short, incantations were spell words that mages used to hypnotize themselves to aid them in constructing magic circles. If a mage was skilled in mana control, they could even shorten the incantation.
The second method of casting magic was to forgo the incantation and directly construct the magic circle, but to do so required the mage to have powerful mental capacity and deep knowledge in magic. Of all the existing spells, less than ten percent had incantations. In general, only magisters, scholars of magic, cast spells via magic circle construction.
The foundation of spells was magic circles. They needed to be constructed with precision without the slightest deformity. Otherwise, the spell might fail, or worse, explode. There was even a precautionary tale about a magic pupil recklessly constructing a magic circle that summoned an eldritch being that slaughtered hundreds of thousands.
Magic was divided into ten levels, from one to ten. These ranks were known as 'Circles.' The circle rank was not just an arbitrary word chosen by the first mages but alluded to the number of circles in a spell.
A first circle spell was formed from a single magic circle, and a second circle spell had two magic circles, but that is not to say a third circle spell only had three magic circles. In reality, third circle spells were formed from four magic circles, and fourth circle spells were formed from eight. The number of magic circles doubled with each rank, so a sixth circle mage like Eric could cast spells with thirty-two magic circles.
Each circle represented a single effect. For example, the spell Light allowed the caster to emit a burst of light as the name implied, but it lasted only for a single moment. For the light to be continuous, there must be a second magic circle known as Source that allowed the caster to supply a steady amount of mana to the Light spell, which would result in a perpetual light source for as long as the caster supplied mana. Appropriately, the spell was known as Lightsource because it merged two single circle spells. Lightsource was a spell constructed of two magic circles, so it was a second circle spell. As long as an aspiring mage has enough time, they could cast second circle spells. Single and second circle spell casters were known as beginner mages.
The first divided between those with talent and those without is the third level, third circle spells. Those without talent can spend their whole lives without being able to cast a single third circle spell.
Under Eric Redland's tutelage, Adelheid absorbed magical knowledge, and in the final week of the Month of Darkness, the seventh princess's first wand was finished.
It was a sleek wand with a ridge separating the handle from the shaft and tip. On the shaft and tip, there were numerous engravings of vines and leaves while the handle was patterned for grip. Some wands had their core inside if the core was small enough, but Adelheid mounted hers at the end cap.
The wand wasn't completed until it was soaked into an alchemical solution that finalized the changes and prevented the mana from altering it anyway, so the pathways and shape were permanent. If not, then the mage's mana would slowly deform the wand every time they used it.
Whenever Adelheid inserted mana into the wand, the engravings of the vines and leaves would light up. Of course, this had no actual effect on spellcasting at all and was just for style, but Adelheid felt it aided her.
As for the pathways inside the wand itself, they were lines with angled curves like that of a circuit board. Initially, she had wanted to make them more organic with soft curves like her mentor's wand, but she gave up halfway. It had felt like Adelheid was creating a new limb for herself, because she modeled the pathways after her veins, but she later realized that a wand was a tool in the end. Adelheid could not bring herself to treat her wand as an extension of her body, resulting in her scrapping her first prototype and forming a second wand with the remaining wood.
Adelheid wanted to start learning spells immediately, but with the Day of Creation so near, all the lessons were canceled. The whole palace and capital were preparing for the festivity. In addition, Adelheid's brother, Sixth Prince William, second-in-line to the throne, had returned.
