<h4>Chapter 154: Spells</h4>
<strong>Trantor: </strong>Henyee Trantions <strong>Editor: </strong>Henyee Trantions
Butler Goode was responsible for keeping order for the outer area of the ind, so he came to the outside together with Angor.
“Mister Padt, as Lady Flora said, the master didn’t teach you spells for your own good,” Goode spoke in a small voice.
Angor looked at him and waited for his exnation.
“Do you know about ‘the path of truth’?”
Angor nodded. The path of truth meant that a wizard should walk his or her own path when doing wizardry. Sunders told him before, that “Walking on your own path without being restricted by the ancestors and keep it up for years on end. Even if you can’t see where you’re going, you are creating your unique sight. Such a wizard is a real wizard”.
Angor did not understand though.
<i>Didn’t every wizard already create their own path? If they could seed by copying the ways of ancestors, formal wizards should not be so scarce.</i>
“The master didn’t teach you spells now because he wished that you can enter the path of truth sooner,” said Goode. He considered for a while and added, “You have to figure out what you want to learn and why do you learn it. By that time, the master will give you some appropriate advice instead of leading you to a path that already existed. Master has always been nning to do so.”
Goode’s words made Angor felt a little better. Wizardry, spells, or else... Good choices for someone would usually not work for other people. He needed to know what to pursue. Sunders refused to teach him now so that the boy could find his own path.
But... Angor wished Sunders could teach him spells so that he could save up merit points! Learning spells from Cloud Library cost money, and he was broke!
“If you want me to find some kind of path, just let me in your library! At least that will save me a lot of money,” Angorined in his mind even though he clearly knew that Sunders’ personal library was tinypared to the giant Cloud Library.
Before sending Angor away from the ind, Goode nced at the covetous apprentices around and whispered to Angor, “Mister Padt, the Sorcerer’s Garden will be finished after about a week. Return here as soon as possible. By then, maybe you’ll find destiny for yourself.”
With that, Goode hurried away and joined the other Phantom Servants.
On his way back, Angor saw the trio again on the sky bridge, but they did not do anything this time.
He reached the Falling Cloud Stop peacefully.
After boarding the sky bus toward apprentice town, Angor was still pondering over “path of truth”.
He never knew what that was before because Sunders only used vague words when exining it. But after hearing Goode’s advice, Angor realized something about it. The path of truth might be a path full of a wizard’s own marks. While walking down such a path, the wizard used his or her own ideas, experiences and, knowledge. They would not change for any external factors. A wizard should keep walking by him or herself, alone.
Angor recalled a certain incident in Padt Manor when he was younger.
There was someone called Auntie Rary in the manor, who loved stealing small benefits for herself. Everyone hated her. She always stole bits of food from the kitchen. She even used to take away portions of Angor’s milk. That was why Angor disliked the woman as well. Later, when Angor mentioned her to Jon, his mentormented with a smile, “In your view, she is wicked and filthy. But to her adopted kids, she is a gentle and reliable mother.”
There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people’s eyes. Whether someone was favorable was only one’s personal ideas. If there was a “beautiful woman” among people, people around her might like her for different reasons, such as her face, her body, or her inner virtue.
These views were equal. No matter which part of the woman people liked, they all reached the same conclusion – that she was “beautiful”.
The path of truth was something simr. Other people’s experience could be used to achieve certain goals. Yet following it blindly would cause someone to lose his own judgment.
Believing in oneself and figuring out his or her own future was the true significance of the path of truth.
Angor was wondering about something though. If the path of truth was such an easy concept, why were there few wizards who actually stepped onto the path? Were there some other important factors?
Angor left the sky bus and headed toward the central area of Tree Spirit Garden instead of returning to apprentice town. A new apprentice had to get registered before he could start epting quests from the questing hall.
When this was done, Angor went to the resource distribution hall and epted a small bag. The bag contained two objects for him. One was a robe with a simple rune on it. It looked exactly the same as Sailum and Teuton’s “bed sheet” except that this one was ck.
The other object was a crystal ballmunicator.
...
On his way back, Angor wanted to go to Cloud Library and look for some spell books. But he gave up the idea.
Back on the cloud whale, he already recorded a good number of books in Sunders’ book room. He would check these first and see if there was something worth studying.
Upon arriving at his vi, Angor asked Toby to enjoy the day by itself. He then went to the balcony.
It seemed the tree spirit was really considerate to Apprentice Town Eight these days. The sunlight remained strong all day. Before leaving, Angor ced his tablet on the balcony to recharge. Now the battery was all full.
He took his tablet back to the soundproof room and began going over the books he recorded before.
There were all kinds of books. Angor spent half a day ssifying them before he started to read them.
To learn spells, he first needed to know what they really meant.
A spell was a way to express magic while using the mana pool as the core, mana as energy, and knowledge as structure. It worked by levering and interfering with reality.
Simply put, a spell consisted of three elements: mana pool, mana, and knowledge.
For example, a level-0 cantrip called “Cleanse” was a spell that removed filth bybining the use of water and wind.
The fundamental of the spell was to disrupt the naturalbination of water and wind elements. It would then simte the elements by using a form before expressing the form with mana, thus making the low-level cantrip possible.
In general, a wizard created a model of the cantrip by using mana to build a “form” as its base, then used the form to affect the physical world. As a level-0 cantrip, Cleanse did not need many steps to cast. For certain high-leveled spells, wizards needed external help to cast them, such as changing his or her body or certain nds or by spending materials as mediums for the spell.
People already summarized how to build the model for Cleanse, so anyone who wished to learn it did not need to understand the bination of water and wind elements” at all. They simply had to apply the existing cantrip model to cast the spell.
Angor looked at the disy of the hologram tablet, where a “magatama” stood upon a surface, and triggered something in his mind.
He controlled his mana pool to release mana to the outside. He then built the model of Cleanse spell in his mind. Under his careful maniption, his mana slowly formed up the shape of the cantrip.
Next, Angor felt a strange urge in his mind. Following the urge, he released a strange feeling from his fingers.
A small current of damp air blew over the soundproof room, removing dust and dirt scraps from the room’s walls and floor.
“That’s how Cleanse work? It’s so weak,” Angorined at how insignificant the spell looked. Little did he know that being able to cast a spell on the first attempt was an amazing achievement for anyone. That was how the mana purified by a singr point helped him. The mana was extremely pure and flexible, which allowed him to build an urate model without previous practice.
Angor kept reading the book.
Simr cantrips all hadpletely determined models. Apprentices only had to memorize the models. Thanks to the experience of ancestors, they did not need to reach into anything deep down in order to cast the cantrips.
Thinking about this, Angor got a new idea.
He did not wish to follow ancestors and copy the models. He wanted to start from zero and worked out how Cleanse spell came into being on his own.
Angor found the page that exined the fundamentals of the cantrip and read on carefully.
A dayter, Angor began to calcte thebination patterns of wind and water elements on his own. He spent half a day on filling twenty pages with his forms. There were too many calctions involved and he failed to figure out any viablebination.
“No wonder people only copied the books. It would take forever making out abination on my own, and it probably won’t be correct,” Angor muttered. He did not give up though. The boy really wanted to see how spells worked from their root.
After another day, he finally discovered abination.
Using the appropriate form, Angor built thebination into a new cantrip model.
The model now looked like “a magatama sliced up by several surfaces”, which waspletely different from the one on the book where the magatama stood on top of one single surface.
Following his own cantrip model, Angor slowly channeled his mana.
A momentter, he felt a small breeze. His cor moved a little.
Angor took out his notes and wrote down: [The Cleanse spell following thisbination did not achieve a bnce between wind and water elements. Water element almost did not exist, and the wind element was too weak. It doesn’t work as a Cleanse spell. Not even a Breeze spell.]
He put down the note and prepared to find anotherbination.
But this time, he was nning to use the tablet to help him calcte the results faster.
For the firstbination, Angor used paper and pen in order to see the essentials of the spell and know its “nature”. Once this was done, he no longer had to work out furtherbinations on his own. Using the tablet would save him a lot of time.
He set two different elements as “A” and “B”, and put his form, variables, and data into the hologram tablet.
The system began working on its own.
It only took ten minutes for the system to return more than 30 differentbinations for Angor.