Chapter 396 – Mage Magic

Chapter 396 – Mage Magic

Compared to Witch Magic, the learning process for mage magic was considerably more troublesome.

Witches only needed to use their will and emotions to drive the magical power within their bloodline to cast magic.

Simply put, it was “I want it, therefore I can.”

As long as you had magical power and a firm casting will, that was enough.

Mage magic, on the other hand, required using psychic power to painstakingly construct the corresponding spell structure within one’s mind before one could even possess the ability to cast that magic.

Elemental Magic used this spell structure to leverage the free-floating elemental force in the air to cast magic.

Psychic Magic used this spell structure to draw upon more of one’s own psychic power to cast magic.

Alchemy Magic used psychic power to painstakingly imprint the spell structure from one’s mind onto magical materials, thereby imbuing them with the corresponding magical effects.

Generally speaking, the psychic power a mage could devote to constructing spell structures was limited, so even mages with multi-elemental magical talent wouldn’t learn every spell from their proficient schools. Instead, they would combine spells from multiple schools to build a more well-rounded spell repertoire.

As the book Mo Lan held in her hands, 《Essential Cantrips for Mage Apprentices》, stated:

“Constructing spell structures, much like constructing a meditation image, is an arduous and slow process. Destroying a spell structure will result in the complete destruction of the psychic power used to build it.

Therefore, the selection and combination of spells is of paramount importance to a mage.”

This book listed cantrips with high practical value for mages at the apprentice stage, along with ideas for combining them and their future potential.

A mage apprentice was equivalent to an Apprentice witch.

Cantrips were the magic tier corresponding to the mage apprentice rank. Because their power was so insignificant—like magical parlor tricks—they were called cantrips.

The subsequent mage ranks and magic tiers were the same as for witches: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, and Peak level, with roughly corresponding power and effects.

However, most mage spells lacked the potential for upgrading.

In other words, whatever tier a spell’s structure was when it was first constructed, it would remain at that tier forever.

Only a small number of spells could be further constructed and upgraded building upon their original spell structures.

The process of mages learning magic was the process of constructing spell structures.

Once a spell structure was successfully constructed, that spell was considered learned.

If it couldn’t be further constructed and upgraded, the spell’s effects were essentially fixed.

It couldn’t be upgraded through practice. At most, when a mage’s own rank increased and their psychic power grew stronger, or their elemental affinity rose, the increased influence over elemental force meant the same spell structure could mobilize more elemental force, thereby enhancing the casting effect.

But this enhancement was always limited.

Each tier had different spells, and on top of that there were composite magic spells that could mobilize multiple types of elemental force. Overall, the quantity of mage spells was greater than that of witches.

However, a large part of this numerical difference was because spell structures constrained each spell to fixed effects. What a witch could accomplish with a single spell, a mage might need several spells to achieve.

For example, a witch’s Metal Arrow spell could produce a single arrow, multiple arrows, arrows as large as pillars, or arrows as fine as needles—all achievable through improving spell proficiency and spell tier.

But for a mage, a single metal-element arrow was one spell, a barrage of multiple metal-element arrows was another spell, a giant arrow was yet another spell, and metal needles were yet another spell entirely.

Special school magic like witch Culinary Magic, with its flexible and diverse effects, was essentially impossible for mages to replicate through spell structure construction.

So when Lilith and the others said mage magic was inferior to Witch Magic, from this perspective, that was indeed the case.

There was ultimately still a layer of separation between psychic power and elemental force—it couldn’t match the directness of magical power converting directly into elemental force for spellcasting.

Though it had its shortcomings, it also had certain advantages.

For example, composite elemental magic and Psychic Magic.

Psychic power merely served as the leverage and fulcrum for moving elemental force. As long as one had sufficient affinity, one could influence multiple types of elemental force.

Magical power, on the other hand, could only convert into a single type of elemental force at a time.

So witches had no composite magic, but mages did.

Mage composite magic was essentially irreplaceable by any Witch Magic.

For Mo Lan, mage composite magic not only served to expand her spell reserves, but could also provide inspiration for creating composite-type magic cards.

Just reading about the representative composite spells in 《Fundamental Principles of Composite Magic》 was enough to pique Mo Lan’s interest.

For instance, domain magic that could alter the terrain of a battlefield.

Unfortunately, among the magic books Grandma Dayla had sent over, there were none that recorded composite magic spell structures—only some theoretical texts.

Mo Lan only found a few composite-type cantrips in 《Essential Cantrips for Mage Apprentices》. Their effects were barely worth mentioning, a far cry from large-scale composite magic.

Psychic Magic was even more unique.

The spell structure served merely as guidance; the spell effects that manifested were more based on the inherent properties of psychic power.

Each different type of energy had characteristics that distinguished it from other energies, and psychic power was no exception.

The reason Psychic Magic was said to somewhat resemble witch Psychic Magic was that psychic power was related to memory, while psychic power was related to thought and cognition.

Thought and cognition, in a sense, were built upon the foundation of memory.

One exerted influence on memory, the other on thought and cognition—their effects overlapped to some extent.

For example, the mage spell Memory Fabrication could alter memories, thereby changing the target’s attitude toward the caster.

A witch’s confusion spell could achieve the same thing, and more easily at that.

But Memory Fabrication’s changes were more nuanced and its applications more versatile.

Moreover, among mage Psychic Magic, there were spells like the Oblivion spell that could erase memories.

When Mo Lan read about the effects of these two spells in a book called 《Introduction to Psychic Magic》, she immediately decided she absolutely had to learn them.

These two spells were simply the perfect choice for infiltrating foreign races.

Being able to both erase memories and fabricate memories meant she could not only create a “real” identity in other people’s cognition, but also completely eliminate any worries about her identity being exposed.

Unfortunately, after searching through every magic book Grandma Dayla had sent, Mo Lan couldn’t find the Oblivion spell or Memory Fabrication—she couldn’t even find a single apprentice-tier cantrip for Psychic Magic.

Among the books Grandma Dayla had sent, the ones that actually recorded spell structures and could be studied were fairly comprehensive only for the five major single-element schools: metal, wood, earth, fire, and water—ranging from apprentice tier all the way up to Advanced.

Though at the Advanced level, each school had only one or two spell structures at most.

Wind, lightning, and ice school spells only went up to apprentice and Beginner tiers.

Light and dark schools had even less—just a handful of apprentice-tier spell structures.