The basics of Spell Forging was simple —he just had to learn in what order to activate the Magic Circles in, which he’d been doing unknowingly. Clearly, he couldn’t apply a Push Component and then create the Mana Ball, as that would be pushing nothing and then creating what was supposed to be pushed.

He’d breezed through that.

Mind Inhibitor Modification was a somewhat complicated concept that referred to how to turn the thought process of casting Magic into a reaction —his Computation took care of it, making it immensely easy for him to just cast it by thinking about it.

Timers and Overflow focused on the fourth dimension, that being time, and how to create and manage elaborate timed bombs if he ever had the need to, which at the moment, he did not. He took a glance at that last time during his first fight with the giants to create the Flawed Explosive Mana Ball, which he later referred to so he could learn how to insert the concept of time into his Explosive Mana Balls so he wouldn’t kill himself.

Basically, he’d more or less read it back when he was in Veidrheim. Then there was the real meat of the first chapter of the Spellbook —Shaping Magic. That was also the most practical of all the concepts he’d learn.

Shaping Magic was a simple concept that Sean hadn’t managed to grasp mainly because he was being inattentive and jumping into situations that were far beyond his capabilities far too many times. They’d turned alright for the most part, but still, after he started reading up on shaping Magic, he realized how dumb he was to ignore it.

It was a simple concept, one that would have taken him no longer than a few hours to grasp. Within his Mindscape, he saved a lot of time. He could even practice his Magic in the black void that was his Mindscape. It was comfortable, almost, like he was in space and floating with no worries.

Then again, he’d never been to space. The only knowledge he had of it was from movies and Youtube. Mostly from short videos.

Creating various shapes was simply… replacing the Mana Release Circle that made up his Mana Balls. Concepts such as revolving shapes and the like were next-level concepts that he’d learn later down the path, but making spells with a single shape that never changed was easy.

He’d just have to replace one circle.

It would be easy.

Sean closed his eyes, as useless as that was, and he thought of the Mana Release Circle that was in the shape of a disc. The very concept of “shaping” was dependent on the dimensions of the objects.

The Ball Shape, which the Mana Ball used, was a three-dimensional object. On the other hand, a Disc Shape was a two-dimensional object. That meant he had to draw a line instead of the triangle. That was the designation for the number of dimensions. If he, for some reason, needed to do anything that included revolving movement, he’d have to draw a square as that would imply it was a four-dimensional object that used time as a factor.

For now, though, only triangles and lines were necessary.

Then there were the two circles. The outer one was the “canvas” of the function. Without the canvas, nothing would work, so the outer circle was necessary. On the other hand, the inner circle was for the shape.

Both the disc and the sphere were essentially the same “shape” so all he had to do to create a Mana Disc was replace the triangle with a line.

That was all it took.

It was easy to imagine. Computation didn’t make it easier for him as he wasn’t yet acquainted with the circle intimately but he could cast even without the help of Computation. Otherwise, he would have never learned to use Magic in the first place.

For now, he didn’t need a Push Component. Instead, he just used it in its lonesome.

The singular Magic Circle appeared before him and Sean tapped it. He couldn’t see his own body but he felt where it was. It was as if he was aware of anything and everything that happened within his Mindscape even without the need to see.

Once he tapped it, the Magic Circle was swallowed up and a disc the size of a small table appeared before him. It didn’t move and simply hovered there.

He was sure it could cut through things. That was essentially what he needed. Everything he had now was basically blunt trauma. Well, other than the rending effect of Mana Balls. They were able to do some damage but not much. The one doing the heavy lifting was the Push Component, turning the mostly corporeal balls of blue light into wrecking balls.

It could make a hole through some metals with some dedication but for the most part, it wasn’t very useful in combat.

Even the Explosive Component only really did blunt damage. Since he assumed that there weren’t any shrapnels shooting out from the Explosive Mana Balls.

Now, he wanted to see how well his Magic would fare against a tree. It could make a dent in it before dissipating. Sean knew that it was due to the fact that the Mana Balls not being very dense. They could be cracked if they hit something with enough force, and often, whenever they hit something with enough force, they shattered and turned into nothing.

Somehow, the Explosive Component made it linger a while until it exploded.

But if it was in a Disc Shape, then it wouldn’t break as easily. He hoped it wouldn’t. His Mana Balls couldn’t use the full potential of the Push Component just yet. He could shoot it fast but it didn’t count if it broke apart before it did damage.

Then again, if he condensed it, then he could do some decent damage. It was basically the difference between slinging a basketball and rock at someone with the same strength. The basketball would slightly hurt whoever it hit, yes, but a rock? That’d devastate them.

Now, replace that rock with a knife thrown by a professional.

The difference in lethality was obvious.

Mana Disc

As a student of the Theoretical Branch of Magic, you have started to delve into the concept of Shaping the very Mana for various uses. The easiest shape to master is undoubtedly that of the Disc, granting your Mana enhanced cutting capabilities and durability due to the nature of two-dimensional objects.

Skill Rank: D-Rank

Skill Mastery: 0%

Mana Cost: 5

Damage Formula: 2 x Stat used for Force Applied (Cutting)

Skill Type: Magical

That was good. It was more durable than a regular Mana Ball, which was apparently a trait shared with other two-dimensional objects and it was cheap. If he applied a Push Component to it, it’d be a bit more expensive, but even the very formation was twice as cheap as a Mana Ball, which cost 10 Mana Points to even create.

The fact that it also did twice the amount used to apply force to it was ridiculous. If he used his Push Component, then the damage he’d do now was ridiculous.

‘Mana Ball: Push’ did damage equal to 10% of his Intelligence. That meant the disc would do 20% of his Intelligence as damage. It was basically twice as effective as the Mana Ball while being more durable, meaning it’d do more damage before dissipating.

This was basically pure profit.

With a grin, Sean turned to the other shapes. There were some other three-dimensional objects for practice purposes but the Spellbook stated that the only real practical two-dimensional options were the disc and a line.

He could understand that.

A disc that had edges on all sides was better than a square or a hexagon.

Arrows were three-dimensional objects and were also simple.

His arsenal would grow immensely if he learned all of them. It was actually interesting now like he was learning Geometry, but better. Well, if he hadn’t paid attention to Geometry and Physics back in school, maybe he would have been out of his depth. But since he’d mostly aced them? It was beyond easy to comprehend.

Then again, he was at what amounted to the Introduction Chapter of a textbook.

The line was basically like a laser beam. There were numerous variations, some of them three-dimensional and some of them four-dimensional, but the easiest and most cost-effective version was the two-dimensional version.

Its cost would be negligible, or so the book said. Then again, the Mana Disc was cheap and most likely the line version would be even cheaper.

But they’d be devastating in practice.

There were some concepts about Freeform Shaping —a level that was far beyond him. It required far too many calculations and mastery over Mana Expenditure Management, which honestly sounded a lot like managing memory in programming.

That was, quite frankly, something he never liked to think about. He had to do it if he ever wanted to be truly competent but he knew that he wouldn’t even need to use it in the foreseeable future.

“This is… fun,” mumbled Sean, talking to himself. He loved the black void his Mindscape was, letting him be truly alone, but that didn’t help his bad habit of talking to himself.

It was way better than running into walls, but then again, back when he was starting to learn Programming, it was also easy. He wasn’t even past the first chapter of the Fundamentals of Theoretical Magic.

Fundamentals.

That implied this was mostly the theory part.

As for the Magic Circle for creating a line, it was basically replacing the inner circle with an X-shape with a triangle in the middle very much like the circle in which he could put the sigil for a number to dictate after how many seconds the effect would take effect in.

However, the triangle referred to the size.

Some circles would have more than a single triangle that would refer to each dimension up until the fourth one, at which point you’d insert a circle for time. It was intuitive and almost simple when you were looking at circles that had already been given, but if you tried to create your own, it was basically impossible to not screw up bad enough to die.

As such, imagining Magic Circles that you didn’t see before was suicide.

Sean’s eyes lit up with blue light as his geeky side flared. What sort of nerd would he be if he didn’t think about doing eye beams? After all, it was too iconic and only boring guys wouldn’t think of it.

He closed his left eye and widened his right. Then, from it appeared two Magic Circles overlapped together —it was a Magic Release Circle for a Line stacked with a Push Component. Basically, that was the most basic version that was useful for combat.

Sean had inserted the sigil for five inside the triangle at the center, which would dictate its length. It used a term for length he did not recognize —slashes. He’d just have to see to measure it.

A blue beam of light that was almost as long as a meter extended from his eyes and shot forward and into the void. The beam couldn’t light up the void, for it was darkness itself but you could see it fading off to the distance.

Mana Line: Push

As a student of the Theoretical Branch of Magic, you have started to delve into the concept of Shaping the very Mana for various uses. One of the easiest shapes to master is that of a Line, granting your Mana enhanced piercing capabilities and durability due to the nature of two-dimensional objects.

Skill Rank: D-Rank

Skill Mastery: 0%

Mana Cost: 2

Damage Formula: 3 x Stat used for Force Applied (Piercing)

Skill Type: Magical

It seemed that both of them were D-Rank, which was, quite frankly, quite low. Then again, some of his D-Rank Skills were indispensable. Mindscape was a D-Rank Skill and Research was an F-Rank, so clearly, the ranks didn’t dictate how useful they’d be.

Mana Shaping: Modified

You have learned the concept of Mana Shaping and have applied it to Mana to various degrees of success. Further study of shapes will be simpler and all Mana Shaping Variations will be included within the Skill Tree.

Skill Rank: D-Rank

Skill Mastery: 34%

That swallowed up his Mana Ball: Modified Skill Tree and upgraded to make his Skillbook look neat. That was something he could appreciate. As a procrastinator, he’d never bothered to clean up the screen of his computer until he snapped. The System did that automatically.

Skillbook

Skill Name

Skill Rank

Skill Mastery

Computation

F

89%

Mindscape

D

64%

Technical Linguist

D

96%

Mana Shaping: Modified

D

34%

Mana Sight (Class Skill)

C

15%

Essence Absorption (Class Skill)

C

Heart Factor

C

Presence

A

Appraisal didn’t appear on the Skillbook for some reason, but he assumed that was more of a basic function of the System than a Skill that he could learn and master. With that said, Essence Absorption and Presence seemed to not have a Skill Mastery level just like Heart Factor, which he’d noticed with them when he got them. Still, what did that imply? That there was no room for growth? That it was at full potential the moment he learned it?

That made sense, quite frankly. How could the Heart Factor even evolve? He couldn’t get better at eating hearts or something of the sort. He’d assumed Presence would at least have room for growth, but even as it was, it was immensely useful —namely in stopping various abilities.

But what was more important was the fact that his Technical Linguist Skill was somehow climbing up in mastery, almost at the 100% mark. Would it upgrade or would he just be able to understand Magic easier? The only technical language that he was using at the moment was Magic Circles, was it not?

Sean wanted to apply the Explosion Component to the new shapes but was rudely dragged back to reality by the outside world. He felt himself slowly take over his body as if he’d been outside it and his eyes snapped open. Rather, they wereopen but simply didn’t see anything until he was fully conscious.

He’d taken a seat on a comfortable couch on the second floor and quite possibly looked like he was asleep, which was exactly the effect he was going for. If he was asleep, people wouldn’t bother him, he hoped.

They were in a room that was basically the library, filled with books about literature and fairy tales —some had been written by the hunters, meant to teach the newer generation how to hunt monsters. He needed to learn his Magic better first, though.

“Wake up, sleepyhead,” said Marie. She was positively beaming, with a toothy grin on her face. She had glasses on now, her straight hair now tied into a ponytail with a hairpin pulling back the hair that ended up falling before her face usually. She was wearing something other than her uniform for the first time —a black tracksuit, “You’ve napped enough. Teach me that trick you did before.”

Right, she said something about studying together.

It wasn’t a bad thing —far from it. In fact, he wanted to know more about Elementalism. He’d seen three people with the same class. One was Mr. Ishida, the other was that one loud girl that claimed she’d killed one of the ghosts and the third one was Marie.

The number of Mages he’d seen was small. He’d only seen one of them and that was in passing, back when he was leaving the apartment complex while he scanned the people for their levels.

“Only if you teach me your magic,” said Sean with a small smirk. It was weird, talking about it like that. But then again, it made him feel like he was back in university or high school, studying and all. It was the equivalent of swapping completed assignments of two different classes or helping the other one prepare for an upcoming exam.

“I asked first,” she said with a pout, her eyebrows slightly furrowed.

“Ladies first,” said Sean. He’d used that a few times before but ended up being bullied into starting first either way, “Anyways, it’s better to talk about it sitting down.”

There was a single long table in the middle of the room and the walls were lined with bookshelves that reached the ceiling, which in the case of this room, was almost five meters. The table had three chairs on each side and they both took a seat to the edge closer to the door, on opposite sides.

“Fine,” she practically hissed and pushed her glasses back with one finger, like a nerd, “I suck at teaching, by the way. That’s a warning.”

“You can’t suck more than my geography teacher back in high school. She could practically make anything boring and unintelligible,” said Sean with a shrug as he finally pulled himself up from the chair. Then he started to stretch his back and arms as if he was about to do something.

Truth was, he just liked hearing his bones creak slightly as he stretched.

That felt good.

“Where should I even start?” said Marie and scratched the back of her head fervently. After almost a minute of thought, she started, “Like, I know it’s easy, but it’s also hard to explain. Basically, you infuse your intent into your Mana and just force the world to comply. That’s the best explanation I can give.”

“Force the world?” asked Sean, with a raised eyebrow.

Sean kept using Magic but he didn’t really understand what was going on in the background. He understood what the Mana did, how to make it do something, but what the Mana did to the world was something he didn’t quite understand yet.

He did read that he’d be using the laws of the world to cast Magic, but still, the inner workings still eluded him.

“More like ordering it to do something. Basically, you press a button in a game and your character does something, right? It’s like that, except you don’t press a button and send out your Mana, which then interacts with the game and the world starts doing something,” said Marie. After seeing his face, she added with a smirk, “So? Feel like giving up? I really suck at this, you know?”

“Actually, that kind of makes sense,” said Sean after thinking about it for a second, “So how do you even infuse the intent? I might be able to do something similar.”

“Well, you kind of just concentrate really hard on something and do something like ‘Let there be light!’ or something,” she said and raised her palm. The area started to grow significantly colder and atop her palms appeared a shard of ice. Now that he took a closer look at it, it seemed to grow out of nowhere, getting larger by piling up more and more ice on a center.

“That’s… interesting,” said Sean as a grin appeared on his face. He liked a good mental challenge. Those things made you feel satisfied once you got the hang of them, “By the way, what Spellbook did you learn it from?”

“Beginner’s Guide to Elementalism, duh,” said Marie. She clenched her fist and the shard shattered and turned into nothing. Sean could smell the Mana in the air, but it was faint, like the source was in the other room, “But your Magic is weird, like it’s, what’s the word? Right, pure. Which one did you even pick?”

“Theoretical Magic, or so it says on the cover,” said Sean with a smile. Talking to another mage was surprisingly… satisfying.

“Ooooh, I saw that. It was the Configuration something, right?” she asked with a grin of her own, “Yeah, I thought it was boring as hell with a name like that.”

“It is, for the most part,” he said and thought of how he would even explain the Magic to her. Clearly, he couldn’t lend her the Spellbook-

Wait, could he?

Sean opened up his Library and noticed his Mage Cloak there. He’d have to fix it sometime soon since it said that it could be fixed unless it was too badly damaged. Then at the bottom, he saw an Item Status row that said it could be fixed.

Mage Cloak (Damaged)

A cloak often granted to Novice Mages as a part of their uniform in the many Magic Academia. It is a useful trinket that is soul-bound to the user and returns to the Inventory if taken off, provided it is not traded. Weaved from Sapphire Threads, the Mage Cloak has the ability to induct Mana more effectively than other clothing and has the effect of reducing the impact from Impact Damage that is not magical in nature. The cloak may fix small wears and tears provided with Mana.

Item Rank: C-Rank

Item Attributes: 20% Resistance against Impact Damage (Physical)

Item Status: Damaged (Fixable)

That was good.

But his attention was on the Spellbook.

He tapped on it and it only brought out the description of the book he’d first read before choosing it. Then appeared the contents when he willed for it, but he just willed it to go away.

Elsworth Configuration Theorem

Learn the inner workings of Magic and the ability to go against the laws of the world by using the laws themselves to achieve it. Unarguably the most tedious and difficult to learn branch, but all the more rewarding.

There was no obvious “share” option or anything of the sort so he supposed that wasn’t a thing.

“What I’m using is just pure Mana at the moment,” said Sean, “I’m not even at the part where I learn anything cool. I can just create shapes from Mana and that’s just about it.”

Wait…He didn’t have a headache after fiddling with magic.

Sean stopped talking and summoned his Status Screen —his Mana was full. So his Mindscape let him cast spells without wasting Mana. That practically made it a cheat!

“You keep trailing off,” said Marie, “Anyways, just teach me the trick so I can act all badass by fixing up cars and stuff.”

“So ugh, what you do is basically… you just let your Mana out,” said Sean, waving his hands around. It was what he automatically did when he explained something, “At least that’s what I think I’m doing.”

She furrowed her brows and tried to do something. He supposed she was trying to do something because she was focusing.

“How do you even get it out?” she asked after almost a minute of struggling, “There isn’t even a hole or anything.”

“You don’t for your Magic?” asked Sean —that was new.

“No, I just use it from inside. It just gets drained when I want something to happen. Oh wait, you’re basically just pushing out your Mana and doing all those neat stuff. That makes sense,” she said, her tone too fast, “So that smell is… Magic?”

“More or less,” said Sean. That’s what he assumed it was, “If you can use your Mana, then you probably know where it is. Just imagine this circle. Wait, let me get a paper.”

Sean looked around and found a pen sticking out of an upright pencil case on the table. There wasn’t any paper close by and he groaned.

Oh, wait…

“Actually, I can do this,” said Sean as he imagined the Magic Circle of a Mana Ball. He willed it out of his fingertip and a circle floated above, perfectly parallel to the chair, floating a meter or so above him, “So basically, you imagine this circle with a grey outline. Then imagine it being lit up with blue light. And you just force it out of your body. Just want it to get out of your body as much as you can and it will.”

Marie stared at the circle for a few seconds and nodded her head. Almost on cue, the Magic Circle faded off to blue smoke. The smell of Mana wafted through the room and Sean breathed it in. It was like fresh air to him.

“Okay, I give up. I’ll try that later,” she said and raised her hands to her sides after struggling for a while and groaned, “This is annoying.”

Sean didn’t know if it was any of his Skills or the Spellbook that was stuck inside his head that let him do it a bit easier. Then again, he did struggle a bit at the start. Maybe around five or so minutes at the very least. It was probably ten or so minutes.

“So I basically have to do that aimed at a fuel tank and I can turn on a car?” she asked and pushed her glasses back up again. Were they sliding down or was she simply doing that for dramatic effect? Quite frankly, Sean did not know which one it was.

“Well, not exactly, but yes, that’s close, but-” he started to speak and opened his mouth wide. Wait… he didn’t even need to release Mana regularly. The Magic Circles would turn into blue smoke, which was gaseous Mana one way or another after a few seconds of inactivity. That meant he could have just put a few Magic Circles inside the tank and waited.

“What? Got an epiphany?” she asked. Then she waved her hands, reassuring that she wasn’t being impatient, “It’s fine. I do that every now and then.”

“Yeah. You can just do that and wait for it to turn into smoke like it did now,” said Sean and raised a finger, “Just take care not to activate it accidentally, otherwise, it might blow up. Honestly, I don’t even know what would happen since I don’t even know if it’s combustible or anything. If you activate it, you cast Mana Ball, which I kept spamming all the time back at the school. To activate it, you have to give a mental cue.”

Whether he could accidentally cast a Spell or not, he did not know. He had accidentally used it to kill someone back in Veidrheim but accidentally activating it even if he didn’t want to activate it in the first place was a wholly different case from that.

“If it turns to smoke, it ends up fixing up the petrol,” Sean started to explain, “Since it’s something to do with the fuel and not the engines themselves.”

“Yeah, I gathered,” said Marie and nodded her head sagely, “Now, back to what you want to learn. So basically, to use Elemental Magic, you have to focus on a point and will for an element to appear there while focusing on your Mana. Umm, think of it like throwing sticks to a fire. The Mana acts as the sticks and you’re basically forcing the world to do something for you by paying it Mana.”

“Yeah, I think I’ll also study that later,” said Sean slowly. Wrapping his head around that was difficult.

“After that,” she started, “You have to control that point where you willed that Mana to for your spells to move. They’re called Focal Points and you just have to do what you did for the magic to even be conjured. Yeah, that’s just about all I can teach you before you learn the basics.”

Sean scratched the back of his head.

This was a bit different from the Magic he was used to.

Theoretical Magic was like copy-pasting a line of code to try out how to use it. Elemental Magic seemed like it was more organic as if he had to do something other than string together commands. It was more like talking if he could refer to it as that. At least that’s what Marie made it sound like.

“So ugh, I guess we’re done studying?” asked Sean with a raised eyebrow. It was good to learn new Magics but for now, he supposed getting a bit better at his own Magic was a bit better. Especially since he was just about to move on to Chapter 2 —about Configurations and the namesake of the Spellbook.

“More or less,” said Marie and looked up at the wall, with a finger on her chin, “Oh right, you’ll be limited to one element until you become an expert. Basically, you cast what you have an affinity for automatically, apparently.”

He nodded his head and thought about it —what element did he have an affinity for? He’d have guessed that someone more cool-headed would have gotten the element of ice but Marie was practically beaming. Mr. Ishida was by no means a hot-headed person, as far as Sean knew, and he had fire.

Maybe it was more or less random?