Now what will happen if you have every stat that is an essence stat? Will it make you ‘OP’? No, of course not. That would just be stupid and make it a meta build, but the build was absolutely no meta. The effect would just make you unable to specify in one area and force you to use ingenious ways to give up these stats when you want to focus on something.
What the beta-tester knew though, was that the more essence-stats you had, the better you would perform free-form magic. What is free-form magic? It was magic that was used when your character didn’t use the abilities they ingrained into their circles, those you formed as a mage.
For other paths, it would be formations they learned and ingrained in their dantian, hand seals your muscle-memory memorised, and so on. Free-form magic was when you directly used mana and performed whatever you wanted it to perform purely based on the players knowledge.
It was basically the stat that veteran-players would be able to use, something that comes purely from them and not from the character. It was a variable that the author told the game-creator to include, as the knowledge was based on the books he wrote and forced all veteran players to buy and study his books, all of them.
How did you use such knowledge in the game? Simple, some were by specific key combinations, from easy ones to several combinations that have to be performed one after another. You would only get to know them when you properly study the books and ‘translate’ the descriptions in there to the key combinations needed.
Others were writing words blindly without any way to read them in the free-form magic mode, which made sure that the keys you pressed didn’t look like you were jumping and ducking randomly in the world, that would be too weird. Some would think ‘well, I will just copy-paste’, no, that’s not possible. The game only registered the keys you pressed, and the ‘copy-paste’ combination in free-form magic mode actually was the ‘Alt-F4’ alternative in basic settings, because, why not let cheaters suffer a bit?
Some other ways of free-form magic, which really should just be called knowledge-based magic, were actually talking. You had to say words in languages that the author seemed to have just randomly made up, writing in them was much easier than spelling them, as you had to buy the audio-version of the book to properly do so. If you didn’t have a microphone, well, forget this kind of free-form magic.
Truly, free-form magic was for the real fans of the book, like a reward from the author for all their time spent in there. It was very versatile, PvP was even split into one with and one without free-form magic. The game was so extensive that it became the biggest and most sold one of the decades, even after a decade people would probably still play it, as it was the perfect game for a long-time player base. It was rumoured that if a VR came out, this would be the first game to appear, as it had the foundation to do that from the get-go.
All things aside, free-form magic still had the flaw that the strongest things would need a long time of preparation and it was more based on specific tastes. Everyone with sufficient mana would be able to perform it, as long as one had the essence-stat in the direction of the free-form magic they wanted to use, of course.
Someone without stats that were used for soul magic wouldn’t be able to perform the soul-specific free-form magic, no matter how hard they tried. This is why I, a great fan of the author before he even started thinking about creating a game, am so good at free-form magic!
It’s basically my forte, and of course I will have to take each and every stat that is specific for it.
Just because free-form magic is so strong and versatile, doesn’t mean every ability is usable. Especially body-abilities are hard to reproduce without very extensive knowledge and materials to do so. Also, if you need to say a hundred words just to summon a fireball, then it is obvious that you are slower than normal mages that have the ability ingrained in them.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
Nonetheless, I like free-form magic more anyways. For this reason, I will do the smart thing and use all remaining stat points to enhance my mana regeneration. A large mana pool? Bah! Since I’m no mage, when would I spend so much mana in a single second? Of course, the later free form magics will need a higher mana pool, but for now, I’ll just stick to the ones that take preparation and continuous application.
The ‘play’ button has blinked for quite a while in the bottom right corner of the screen, but I need to do something before that. Taking out my notebook with the title ‘Rituals III’, the latest of my Ritual notes, one of the many categories of my notes.
In truth, the whole setting is truly more expansive than even some veterans think. Memorise things? That is beta stuff. With the official release, there was an update. All ritual, formation, rune and other languages actually became free for the player to reuse. Meaning, as long as one had mastered all languages, which would take a nerd to seriously study over a dozen books from the beginning of their release, then one could, theoretically, make anything one wants.
The beta-test phase was for me the time I reread all the books and genuinely tried to understand all spells written in them, especially the later books were extensive in their descriptions, and some had extra-books that contained all the written languages. After memorising everything, as a hobby, I began fantasising and creating my own free-form magic based on them.
The release three years prior made me realise all projects, and even though I never went high with any circle or the like, restricting my mana pool, my understanding and knowledge is more than extensive enough. The only things that will restrict my new play will be my mana pool and resources, resources of all kinds that will take a long time to gain.
Fighting and gathering all of them would take too long, even with the lifespan one gets with advancing the ranks, or some taboo-rituals that I know of, it would still be too long to gather all of them. And in all honesty, I don’t find fighting dragons even a tenth as interesting as learning their language and conversing with them about it.
This brings me back to the last ritual written in ‘Rituals III’, not written in the dragon’s language, that would be too exhausting for the body of a new game. It is written in the demon language, one where you can sacrifice the bodies of others to lighten the burden. Ahhh, my dear Alaric. It seems I will make you a true Villain… at least in the eyes of the majority of humans, I guess. Thankfully they only one of the many races in the world of Ziexuyl.
Ahh… my head. Why is it hurting so hard the past few weeks? I mean I guess I am spending a lot of time playing, but I am sure I just slept… right? No, that was yesterday. Right, I took a small hour nap because I wanted to be rested before I do the last things in that playthrough. Or was that the day before yesterday? I’m not too sure… I am sure that I slept someday or the other… how long did I make the preparations again?
Never mind, it doesn’t matter. Leaning in on my computer, I take a sip of my glass as I press play. Right at this moment, my shaky hands slip my glass down, spilling all the water on the ground. Annoyed, I go down and look how bad the damage is – my computer is a very old one and I had numerous cables around.
Seeing that one cable is loose and might touch the water, I try to push it back into the plug so it wouldn’t get wet. In all the darkness, and because surely there is a ghost hindering me from putting it into the plug, I have to swing it around till I put it back into the plug.
Wait – isn’t that the old cable I wanted to throw away? Yeah, right! This isn’t even for the pc but for the camping ventilator I bought the other day, testing it out here. But no… I didn’t test it here, all the different plugs for the several things around my room and for the pc were already together in a massive plug extender-thing with too many.
Zchhhh
Bad sounds bad sound bad sounds – what the hell was this? I jump down and touch the wet ground as I see sparks coming out from the plug. Then suddenly, the sparks somehow came not only from that plug but the other plugs too. What the hell is happening? Now, you will not destroy all my pc! I can’t afford a new one yet-
Pulling out the plug like a stupid someone that didn’t listen to physics class even twenty years prior in high school, but much rather spend time reading my favourite books and learning magic theory, intentionally avoiding the scientific part, something I regret to this day because I had to eventually learn parts of physics to understand magic theory better…
The plug and my wet hands connect, giving me the shock of my life, and dead as I fall down, my whole body shaking, losing my consciousness. After all, the self-thought physics I learned never talked about how to protect myself properly in experiments… or did they? I am so tired, I can’t remember that properly… oh but magic theory, yeah that’s easy to understand…!