《Orc Lord》64. Magic Engineering
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What the hell did I just read?
These Indigos I've only heard about a couple of times did some ridiculous things. Creating magic tools, communing with the spirits, space travel, and deicide? No, more importantly, they created the W system: that thing I'm always using to reference my skills?
No, even more than that, they had the technology to travel to different worlds, right? Isn't there a chance I could use it to see my family again and return to my old world? I know I can't go there looking like this, but I can't help at least wanting to investigate it.
Someday, I should definitely go and take a look at that Space Chamber thing, if it's even still there.
Now then, there are still a few more pages. Let's look at those before going to bed.
[Chapter 1: The Basics of Enchanting]
Oh? Looks like something I can maybe use this time.
At a glance, the remaining pages seem to be dedicated to this work.
[Knowledge of Spell Patterns is an indispensable aid to any Mage. It allows us to easily understand new spells, and even understand what kind of spell a person will use before they use it.
Will, wish, intention, heart; whatever you want to call it, there is an internal force we Mages use to create a spell that works a certain way. The desire to bring about the suitable effect shapes the Magic Power inside of oneself. This is considered successful execution by the S system, and the spell is learned before you even have to cast it.
Many Mages have noted that the same spell pattern is formed every time a certain spell is cast, regardless of which Mage casts it. And so, the technique for documenting spell patterns was born.
A simple drawing is all it takes. You use it as reference for how to shape your own magic power. Often times, Mages who know few spells to begin with have trouble with this, because it is not always obvious how the two-dimensional spell pattern can be translated to three-dimensional spell formation. New Mages must study the spell patterns for every spell they already understand before entirely new spell patterns can be of use to them.
As a solution to this problem, the thing that would eventually come to be called enchanting was born.
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Section 1: Magic Power Conductive Agents]
Yeah, this thing reads like a textbook from my old world. It's a good thing I'm actually interested in what it's talking about.
[Any Mage who’s closely observed combat specialists, or have any weapon skills of their own, may have noticed a key feature about the way Magic Power functions. That is, many skilled fighters, who have plenty of Magic Power, but lack any ability with spells, still use up Magic Power when they use their skills. They will imbue a certain combat skill into their weapon of choice. This naturally led to the realization that different materials are better or worse at tolerating Magic Power flowing through them. Fighters started seeking materials which could better conduct their skills, such as Mithril, Herite, Orihalcom, Angelite, Adamantium, and Neofite.
It was quickly discovered that Skills assumed to naturally destroy the weapon used with them could be used regularly with materials that easily conducted Magic Power. I.E. the destruction of the weapon was not a result of the skill itself, but of the Magic Power which the material could not contain.
When Mages realized this, they quickly tried to make weapons for Mages, called wands, hoping that their spells would become stronger when filtered through powerful materials. The results were not as impressive. At best, the narrow filter improved the accuracy of spells in novices. At worst, it restricted the maximum size of a spell pattern, rendering some fifth level spells and above uncastable. Wands were not the answer.
However, Ertin Sebdalanyu, a Spell Pattern researcher at Muyan University wondered if that trait of filtering Magic Power could still be useful. So, with great effort, he carved the most basic Spell Pattern for into a slab of Neofite, creating a Magic Insulator, and filled the grooves with Herite, a high efficiency conductor. When Sebdalanyu tested this Spell Pattern by putting a small amount of Magic Power into it, he found that it naturally took on the shape of the spell.
Sebdalanyu called in a few trusted students to help him verify the effectiveness. What he found was that the students who hadn't yet learned , instantly learned it upon putting Magic Power into the Spell Pattern.
Testing along this track continued for around a decade. After this new type of Spell Pattern, Sebdalanyu’s next best achievement was when he used hundreds of references to alter the Spell Pattern for , discovering a spell version of the skill. This was the first time a precedent was given for a Spell Pattern being discovered before the spell itself. And it became the basis for most of the future research geared at discovering new spells.
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Section 2: The Transition to Enchantment
In order for Sebdalanyu’s research to be useful to the common people, the materials involved had to be simplified. Neofite and Herite are simply too precious to make even a single copy of every known Spell Pattern. A subordinate group of researchers at the university found that ordinary parchment could serve as the insulating ingredient if a sealing spell was placed on it. Then, they used magic conducting ink to write the Spell Pattern. This ink could be made from the blood of Magic Beasts, or any other magical Race, or it could be distilled from the sap of magical plants. Even stones and crystals with good magic conducting properties could be grinded into powder and mixed into regular inc.
The most popular method today is to use the blood of Magic Beasts for these Spell Patterns, as it is a renewable resource, and the magic conductance of the blood is directly tied to the Magic Power held by the beast. Some students who can't afford to purchase such ingredients simply use their own blood, as it works just as well.
This is the trend most researchers followed for a while. However, Nickett Salma, a magic researcher at Muyan University well known for her eccentric nature, followed Sebdalanyu’s research down a different path. She made Spell Patterns using stronger and stronger materials. She had a few successes where her test students were able to learn spells beyond their level and jump to the status of fourth level Mage, straight from second. But what she really wanted to see, was if she could make Spell Patterns so dominating that non-Mages could learn spells, and that Mages could learn spells outside of their elemental attribute.
She failed in this endeavor, but created the field of Enchanting by trying.
People who used these most advanced Conductive Spell Patterns were not able to learn the spells they cast, but the spells could be cast nonetheless. Non Mages could cast spells as long as they had the Conductive Spell Pattern handy, and the same was true for Mages casting spells outside their elemental attribute. A new subordinate group of researchers began looking for ways that these Conductive Spell Patterns could be produced cheaply.
The field of study gradually moved to embedding these Conductive Spell Patterns into objects where they would show the most use. For example, a pot with a Conductive Spell Pattern for the spell at the base. Conductive circuits were created so one didn't have to hold where the spell would activate to activate it. One could hold the handles of such a pot, put in magic power, and the contents would boil. These tools, augmented with the latest advancements in magic were named Magic Tools. Officially, a creator of Magic Tools should be called a Magic Engineer. However, the people of other Races were so bewitched by the wonderful commodities that began to trickle into their territories, that they called them Enchanters instead. While the official name remains, most people these days still refer to the field of Magic Engineering as Enchanting.
Section 3: Magic Circuits
The most important thing to keep in mind when designing a Magic Circuit is that it doesn't interfere with the Conductive Spell Pattern, referred to from here on as the CSP. This is usually accomplished by placing Nodes at certain intervals along the circuit to allow a small amount of Magic Power to leak out. If built correctly, the magic power will not actually leak, but jump to the next segment of the circuit. This leads to Magic Power buildup happening only in the CSP.]
Huh? What? Where’s the rest of it?
Just when I was getting into it, I ran out of pages. I can't help but feel greatly disappointed. I wanted to see examples of the Magic Tools that could be created. Or examples of different Spell Patterns. Heck, I don't even know what exactly a node is supposed to look like!
But it’s true that there aren't any more pages, and it’s gotten considerably late while I was reading. I suppose, in the morning, I'll share these last some pages with Fiara, and we can try making a magic tool tomorrow.
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