“Welcome, I imagine Sir Roland briefly explained what it is you are doing here?” She said once everyone had sat down.
“To elaborate a bit more, I will briefly tell you how to open what is referred to as the status window, as well as the basic types of magic. After which, you will be brought to a temporary room that you may stay the night in.”
She looks around the room, seemingly making sure no one had any confused looks. When her eyes land on me, she lingers for a moment longer than I would consider comfortable.
After that long moment, she continues with her lecture as if nothing happened. “To start us off, we shall begin with how to open the status window. As you are hero’s, it is most likely intuitive and some of you may have figured it out already. If you haven’t, no worries, simply imagine a page-like box. Once you have done that, try imagining reaching out and grabbing onto something important in your mind, it should happen naturally.
On this page will be your status information, and skills. Are there any questions before I continue with the rest of the lesson?”
A few hands appear among the summoned. Priest Arwin, seemingly at random, calls out to one of the people with their hands up.
“What is an innate ability and is it bad if you don’t have one?” The person who was called out asks. Also wondering what the answer is, as it would help me understand my capabilities, I pay close attention to Priest Arwin’s next words.
“Good question. Simply put, it’s a bloodline or inherent ability. If you are the descendent of someone powerful, you may have one of their more advanced skills as an innate ability. Alternatively, is if you have a spirit, summoned familiar, or a pact with some type of divine creature. Some ability, usually the ability to summon said spirit or creature, will then appear in the innate ability slot. There's more to it than that, but that's for later.” After she said that, all of the hands that were up before came down.
Seeing that, she continues. “Moving on, the next and main topic is basic magic types. Magic has many sub variants and categories, but they all fall under some overall designation. For example, summoning magic would be able to summon a sword, but it could also summon a small bird.”
She then takes a moment to demonstrate what she just said, summoning a steel sword, and then a bird which disappear shortly after.
“The basic magics are, Spirit, Curse, Summon, Support, Creation, Self, and Transmutation. Summoning magic I just showed you, although there is more to it than that. Spirit magic is what you would consider the ability to speak with the dead or beings residing in other plains, and is a key part of most summoning magic, as the most common things to summon are spirits. I will explain in more detail about magic at a later time, along with other teachers that you will be assigned to for any specialisation. For the meantime, I will continue with the basic description.”
Wondering if all magic can intertwine with each other like summon and spirit, I can't help but be excited for the possibilities that could arise.
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“Curse magic is fickle, because it is usually tied with nefarious spells to the eyes of the public, and can be overwhelmingly powerful yet corrupting if abused. Yet it's fairly simply considering what it can do, which is one of the reasons it is considered the most dangerous basic magic form. Curse magic is quite true to its name, you could curse someone to only take certain actions, or not do others. As well as its most common spells, yet most hated, mind control and mind manipulation. There are sub variants to these main spells that aren't as strong, and can be quite useful, but again, we will talk about those at a later time.
Support magic is what you would consider healing and buff magic. It is commonly used with summon magic, much like spirit magic, due to its compatibility with summoning and then empowering said summon. It has a basic principle, yet is one of the hardest magics to master as you have to extensively know the body of what it is you’re healing or buffing for it to reach its full potential.
Creation magic is easily the most common, yet diverse magic out of the basics. Creation magic is also sometimes called conjuring magic, though in Devorial, the kingdom you are in now, it is not as conjuring is too similar to summoning. Creation magic is what, for example, skills such as ice spear or fireball are labelled, as you create a fireball and then throw it. The closely followed second half of creation magic is manipulation, as again with the fireball example, you create it and then manipulate it to go forward. This is the same with the aforementioned ice spears, and things such as gravity magic.”
Hearing about gravity magic, I feel interested in it and wonder if I have proficiency with it. To my dismay, I was immediately shot down.
“Gravity magic is a complex and rare magic that is made up of several different affinities, attributes, and basic magic. I would be very surprised if any of you mastered it.
Self magic is similar to support magic, and is commonly used with it. Self magic is essentially just support magic that can only be used on the caster, so most things you learn about support magic can be applied to self magic with slight variation, and vice versa.
And finally, Transmutation magic. The rarest basic magic out of everything by far. It’s true to its name, like curse magic, and mainly does exactly what it's called, transmuting things into other things. This can be built upon to do things such as changing small elements. For example, if you only know water spells and transmutation magic, you will have an easier time changing, or transmuting, your water magic into ice magic. At higher levels you can even change water to fire, though with great difficulty. One of the most famous transmutation types are blood spells, though yet again, very rare.”
Hearing about blood spells and the possibilities of transmutation magic, I realise that I might have struck the versatility equivalent of gold, which quickly shore up my dismays of gravity magic.
Priestess Arwin then continues with some of the history and theories about basic magic, but I was barely paying attention while thinking about what I could pull off later down the line.
Slipping in and out of listening to anything that seemed important and my fantasies, the rest of the day passed just like that.
“I shall stop with the lesson for today, as it is quite late and you all have had a hectic day. Tomorrow we will go over what we discussed today, as well as to what your schedule will look like for the next while.” Priestess Arwin finishes.
She then gestures to a handmaid off to the side of the stage, who walks out to the front of the stage along with several other maids.
“These ladies will bring you to your temporary rooms, and later bring food to you. We would have a banquet for you, but we decided against it as it would be a lot to put on you after a long day, as well as you don’t know the etiquette of this place yet.”
The maids then walk up the stairs of the lecture hall, with the rest of the summoned following behind them while chattering about whatever they could think of.