Jasper kicked a loose pebble on the ground. He had tried to turn his Tome of Elementalism into an Artefact and found that it required more Worship than he had access to. As such, he was pondering what to do next.
Jasper could feel the knowledge from the tome slowly pour into his mind, passively teaching him Elementalism. The AI was clearly doing its best to compensate for the lack of initial magic and had allowed him to spin up a whole new spell school without having to dedicate any worship to it. Jasper got the feeling that he wouldn't be as lucky during the next iteration, meaning that he should at least establish the base spell schools while he was here.
Walking through the village, he saw his students practising magic. Each of them was making progress in their own way, trying to combine various elements and manipulate them. Most of them were failing, and Jasper walked past his volunteer students and tried to instruct them on how to perform the spells more efficiently.
As the god of magic, Jasper hadn't been using any magical words or gestures when he had been casting yesterday. Still, he also knew that spells would be much easier when using those, and with the students trying to copy him, they were effectively trying to run before they could walk or even crawl.
Jasper asked his pupils to gather around him, and they seemed more than eager to learn more about magic now that it was evident that they could perform the spells themselves. After all, some up-and-coming students were among them, but Jasper really hadn't bothered learning their names. Learning their names would be pointless as, at most, he would be here a week before having to leave for 100 years. They would be long dead and gone by the time he got back.
Jasper could feel his mind wandering again, and he cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses, looking at the boys and girls around him.
"Right, so I see a lot of you trying to command the elements using your mind alone. The fact that you are able to even do that much is very impressive, though you most likely need a bit of help to get to the level I displayed yesterday." He explained.
It wasn't long before he showed them some magical gestures. Each gesture had an associated word that would help underline the intent of the gesture. One of the more popular gestures was the gesture for movement, simply a fist pushed forward as if to punch someone, while speaking the word "Kin". Combined with the gesture for fire, a hand cupped in a bowl and then moved in a pattern shaped like lightning in front of one's chest with the word "Pyros", would force a flame to move.
An archmage could achieve the same effect by simply thinking of the intent instead of speaking it out loud. However, focusing on one's will through gestures was much more manageable.
Jasper was pleased when his students seemed to be much more skilled at spellcasting when they used the gestures, though he couldn't help but notice that he had gotten himself a bit of a crowd.
Some of the pre-teens from around the village who hadn't been part of his lectures yesterday were trying to follow along, though they seemed unable to perform the spells that their friends were performing. Jasper wondered why that might be, and he scoured his mind for a reason, pushing against the limits of the Knowledge Domain, meaning that there was no reasonable explanation since the system hadn't made one yet.
As if struck by lightning from a clear sky, a thought came to Jasper that he had written something about it in his tome. He did remember that to be able to start on a spell school, one would need to get instructions from a Mage, the rank before Archmage, or above. It was something with linking the fundamental force to one's soul through observing a master in action. That was, without a doubt, complete rubbish and something that the system had just invented since magic was still very new to this world.
It didn't matter. Jasper got the feeling that the system was still malleable and trying to make magic fit into the world, and the rules weren't as set in stone as the system liked to pretend.
The god of knowledge would need to teach these new kids how to perform magic, though Jasper wanted to show them a new kind of spell school to create more diverse disciplines.
"Yesterday, we talked about the foundational forces in nature and how they can be channelled through us and become magic," Jasper said, bringing the group to a more quiet level of internal discussion.
Of course, there wasn't complete quiet as the kids couldn't help but poke and prod at each other whenever they felt bored, and since they weren't doing magic, some of them were absolutely bored.
"We concluded that the elements are one of the fundamental forces, does anyone else have a suggestion for what a fundamental force might be?" Jasper asked, only seeing a couple of his students pay attention.
Some of them were only here because their friends were there, and Jasper had a lot more respect for his wife. Being a teacher was more challenging than he had imagined.
As the thought crossed Jasper's mind, the god of endurance couldn't help but wonder if he could make an Elementalist Elementary school teacher. It could be a fun character for their next pen and paper session.
Before he could dive deeper into his musings, he turned his attention back to the pre-teens before him, adjusting his glasses to refocus himself. Most of them had a raised hand, and he picked one at random.
"Plants could be a fundamental force." The kid said, clearly proud, though Jasper considered the answer and shook his head.
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"You are right, though plants are the domains of the druid, and I am afraid that I can't teach you much about that. If you want to learn druidic magic, you should contact the elves. They should know more about this." Jasper explained.
It probably wasn't true with his powers since he could mimic any magic, but he also knew that a deeper explanation of what a druid could do would lead him down a rabbit hole that would be more akin to a bottomless pit.
He quickly pointed at another one of the kids. "My dad says that nothing is stronger than loving your family." The young man said, and Jasper thought that over as well.
"Well, the human spirit is a gateway to many fundamental powers, some of which are considered unnatural," he said, a little bummed that Celeste wasn't here to catch his reference. "However, emotions and our brains have a fundamental force as well. We call that Mentalism." Jasper assigned Energy to be skilled in Mentalism, and suddenly, he understood what terrible power he was about to teach these kids.
The ability to make people forget great spans of time. The ability to assign them new memories, force emotions towards you or another target, and even make them unable to fight or force them to do so. All this was within the realm of a Mentalist.
Jasper had a hard choice to make. His base instinct told him that the pre-teens around him were real. They were humans, like him, with a moral compass and teaching them how to enslave other sentient beings would be wrong.
However, not teaching them would mean two things. It would mean that Jasper didn't progress with the character in the most obvious way he could. With him accessing the magic through his Perfection of Understanding power, the school was already out there, the AI had created it.
The second part was that this magic could be used to resolve a lot of bugs. He could rewrite the accent of the Innkeeper using this path, and the AI might be even more creative when using it to fix the world. He could either acknowledge these people as humans or see them as lines of code.
The god of magic adjusted his glasses once more, feeling like he had some kind of moral responsibility to these young kids.
He drew a symbol on the ground. It was a hand, though it was pretty messed up. He didn't have Celeste's talent, and Jasper's version was not perfect. It was blocky and uneven. It didn't matter, the god simply needed a symbol for them to gather around.
"As you might know, people call me Magnus the Wise. I am here to bring you magic. However, I want you to know that some kinds of magic are... forbidden. Consider this my ward. If anyone tries to mess with your mind, my symbol will protect you. There is magic out there that is much more harmful, such as Demonology or Hemolism, which is magic used for dealing with demons and using blood. I cannot prevent you from walking a path that is filled with dangers. I cannot stop you from tainting your souls. I can prevent you from doing so against your will. This is my symbol, and it protects against Mentalists." He said, surprised to see a notification appear in his vision.
Hand of magnus cost [https://i.postimg.cc/wvWhqM1C/image.png]
Then he almost had a heart attack as he saw what the change would cost him. That was insane. There was no way he would be able to implement his plan at this cost. Before he could dismiss the notification it flickered and updated.
Magnus hand - discount [https://i.postimg.cc/W3Knv8fR/image.png]
Jasper got the feeling that he was getting a significant handout. The AI was clearly using him as a solution to a problem and had set the cost of this symbol within his price range. He would have 1 Worship left once he dedicated this amount of divine power to the Hand of Magnus. There wasn't really a choice. The AI might as well have been holding a sign telling him to pick this option with the discount he was getting, and as such, he dedicated 2 Worship to the Hand of Magnus.
The rune on the ground started to glow softly, shining with the light of ethereal power. Jasper honestly wasn't sure if runes were something that he could command, being the god of magic, but simply reaching out, he found himself rebutted, as the essence of the rune felt very anti-magical.
Suddenly, things started to make sense for the archmage. He had seen no evidence that a mage shouldn't be able to wield armour, though it was cumbersome and casting would be slower. A full-plate mage should be able to cast the same spells as one in the nude.
However, these runes were something else. They would ward against magic, protecting the wearer from magical effects in a limited area around them, meaning mentalism couldn't be cast while wearing this rune.
Jasper could see how this would give martial classes a fighting chance against spell-slingers if runes were reasonably commonplace. He was sure there was a hidden cost, but without someone researching the subject, he could not know what runes were out there and how they could be used.
Jasper was brought out of his spiralling theory crafting when someone tugged on his sleeve. He blinked, realizing that one of the girls that he had been teaching was talking.
"So sorry. I didn't hear that. Can you repeat it?" He asked, and the girl looked a little offended but still repeated herself.
"Can you still teach us some mind magic?" She asked, and Jasper smiled.
With this rune in the world, teaching them about mentalism probably wouldn't be any harm.
He explained the four disciplines within the school. He went over each of them in turn, though not showing any examples this time, simply blaming it on the rune.
He talked about the discipline of Offense, which was used to overwhelm the target's mind with floods of sensory experience, from the basics of making someone simply more aggressive, all the way to the point where you could melt their brain through the intense and overwhelming bombardment of one's senses.
He then talked about the discipline of defence, something he encouraged them all to learn, though even this discipline wasn't without its horrible possibilities. It could deconstruct a target's mental defences, forcing them to only speak the truth or simply read people's thoughts.
The next discipline was the passive discipline, named after the way it turned people docile and compliant. Anything from forcing someone not to fight back to making them lose all calm and reason, forcing them into a frenzy, setting them in a state where they would fight even their friends.
Lastly was the discipline of Control. Control could force a friendship between people, or a simple command would be enough to force someone to obey. They would have no choice in the matter.
Jasper was brushing over the explanations rapidly, not wanting to delve too deeply into this, though before his students, who to his horror were paying close attention, could ask any questions Jasper was interrupted by Celeste.
The god of magic adjusted his glasses, something that he was starting to make a habit of, before giving her a deep hug and kiss. He excused himself from the crowd, more than happy to help his wife with anything as long as he didn't have to balance a moral dilemma.