CHAPTER 104: CATCHING UP TO SPEED (2)
The first difference Ramie noticed was that the rank was displayed.
Usually, the artifacts only display the rank after the mage rank up to higher Ranks. As for the first rank magicians, they are considered by defaults first rankers, without displaying the field. The second difference was the missing grade of the artifact. It wasn't mentioned whether the artifact's grade was common, rare, special, or epic. There was no mention at all.
Anyway, this wasn't important, but the rest.
For instant, his magic energy points were at a staggering value of 160! This wasn't small value at all! What did it meant to have this much of magic energy?
It basically meant that he could go wild with his castings, showering the enemy with spells!
Now, it had to be said, even after advancing his artifact four times, and becoming a peak Rank-1 magician, Neil only had a pathetic 20 magic energy unit at his disposal. He could use his fire ball spell only twice before going bankrupt. In the battle with the attacking group in the compound, Neil had to act with utmost cautiousness with every casting. He had to priorities and weights the gains and losses before even daring to think of casting fire ball.
But this man, and even though he was a mere rank-1 magician… he actually had an astounding 160 magic energy units, a frightening 8 folds of what Neil had! If this man wanted, he could cast fire ball 16 times! If Neil had this much, then he could have fried the bugs that attacked the compound, inflicting a staggering damage at them. And if all of the magicians in the compound had this kind of number, then, the bugs wouldn't have been able to suppress them to that degree.
The difference between the two was unbridgeable. It was like Neil had a pathetic small hand gun, with only few bullets, while this Cyril had a fully automatic machine gun with extra magazine.
This number deeply stunned Ramie.
However, this still wasn't the biggest news here.
The biggest news was that this Cyril didn't even have an artifact! Yet, he was still able to amass this enormous amount of magic energy.
Cyril was very confused by Ramie's question, however, he still answered: "Master, only the strongest organizations in the world possesses artifacts! Aside from that, only those who had obtained their artifacts long ago and are hiding in the forest still have them. If they are discovered, then the top forces would come after them. It's forbidden for people to have an artifact…. Whoever acquires an artifact or finds someone who has it, is encouraged to report the matter. And whom ever does so, will get an enormous prize. Failing to comply and being found out means death, or worse punishments."
"If you don't have an artifact, then how did you manage to become a magician in the first place?" ramie couldn't wait but to ask.
"Like the rest of mages in the world, by consuming resources, also by studying, and researching magic spells."
Hearing the answer, Ramie realized that many things have happened during these 40 years. The common sense he has was now severely outdated.
"Tell me the key points of everything you know that had happened from the disaster till now. EVERYTHING YOU KNOW, leave out no detail!" Ramie said with a severe tone.
"Yes, yes, master!"
…
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The beasts, and with no surprise there, weren't an inhabitants of this world. But, creatures that had came over from another world, a world where magic is in everything, a magical world so to say.
The voice, had another name – the arch-mage!
Prior to the disaster, the earth had been enclosed by an invisible, global magic formation that was filtering off magic energy, rendering earth magic free planet. Also, this formation inhibited the ignition of life energy. So far, no one knew why this formation covered the entire earth, what was its purpose, or who set it up?
However, after the invasion occurred, the arch-mage, aborted this formation, and distributed the artifacts. In doing so, he meant to give the people a fighting chance to resist what was to come.
After that, Cyril elaborations went to the artifacts matter. Next, he revealed news that gave Ramie no small astonishment.
Now, when someone wants to become mage, he first has to spend his entire life in pursue of this goal. Obtaining rare resources, putting in a massive effort in studying theoretical knowledge, memorizing, comprehending, gaining some rare insights, guidance from real magician, slowly accumulating magic energy inside the body, and other set of factors…
Becoming a magician was an accumulative process! It wasn't something that happens overnight.
At least, this is how this Cyril did it; through decades of endless sweat, blood, and effort. It didn't come about in one day.
However, that being said… when the beasts first appeared, the distributed artifacts did just that, or close to it. Although, in essence, they didn't turn people into real magicians, as the direct condition of someone to become magician is to have the ability to cast a spell all by himself, without using any ingredients, and without using any artifact… however, these artifacts still allowed people to amass magic energy in their body in almost no time, even though this was a process that should have been done over long time.
This quick increase was done way too fast, in a very short time. It was a forceful process. So, there was no way for it to be consequences free.
The direct cost of using the artifacts to absorb the magic energy from the magical cores was burning out life span of the user!
The process of accumulating magic energy inside the body was similar to body building! It was an arduous process where one has to train for long time and put is massive amount of effort to gain results. If a body builder resorts to use some substances to force results, backlash of consequences is but inevitable. The same goes for magic.
The voice, or the arch-mage, didn't tell the warriors and magicians to absorb energy from the cores to harm them. He did it because there was no other choice…
The situation at the time was demanding a quick power ups for humans to defend their lives. They didn't have time to spend to learn magic the proper accumulative way. Hence, the arch-mage distributed the artifacts. Of course, this didn't go just for magicians, but it also went for warriors. They too were pushed to increase their life ignition percent at an alarming rate… at the cost of losing life span of course.
Normally, magicians and warriors should never resort to increase their energies through training their bodies with the energies stores in the beasts' cores. The magic energy and the life energy stored in the beasts' cores have a violent and chaotic nature that was unsuitable and very harmful to the human body.
However, at the beginning, they did just that, all for the sake of quick power up.
That is to say, every time a mage use magical cores to absorb magic energy to advance his artifact, he basically burdens his body and loses lifespan. As for those who used the artifacts to advance their rank, these people were basically burning their bodies!
It wasn't only that, but if a mage advances his rank using the artifact, then he would become a very, very weak Rank-2 magician. He would in no way be able to contend against those that had advanced the accumulative way. And naturally, the same went for warriors.
This information was not included in the artifacts. As such, no one knew about it, not the warriors, or the magicians.
This knowledge all came to light not too long after the catastrophe. It was spread by the arch-mage to the top forces in the world, and from them, to the rest of the world.
At that time, beasts were no longer attacking the cities. Hence, the need for the quick growth in strength was nullified.
After that, warriors and magicians started going about their paths the correct way, the slow accumulative one.
The real use of the artifacts was not to help mages advance; it was merely to give them additional spells that could be used during battles, supportive tools so to say! Also, it was meant to give mages spell to both learn and cast. Otherwise, merely having magic energy alone wouldn't do a thing.
That is to say, the artifacts were merely tools that were meant to assist mages in battles. They were never meant to help mages increase their magic energy and advance their rank.
However, and due to the urgency in the situation, the arch-mage urgently modified the artifacts and added these features.
In actuality, the process of ranking up to the second rank and other ranks was not merely a quantitative change, where magicians gain more magic energy, or simply activate a defensive force field, but it was more than that, much more. Ranking up isn't something one can do using an artifact, it was a process that only few capable mages can pull of, it was an accumulate process that comes after building up strong foundation and gathering knowledge; it was something that requires long time, very long time.
The artifacts, weren't everything, they are just tools that were meant to give the humans a way to defend themselves during the initial onslaught of beasts. Now that the beasts stopped assaulting cites, the artifact holder, had to go about learning magic the normal way.
'Is this why he has much more magic energy than I do? Because he trained the 'right' way?' thinking so to himself, Ramie asked: "How did manage to have magic energy pool this large?"
"By constantly absorbing magic energy from the magic stones... This way, I wasn't limited by what the artifacts can give, but only with my own physical limits." Cyril answered. "The artifacts were programmed to increase magic energy of their holders while considering the weakest physical limit. Some have bodies than only contain few magic energy units, while others can easily contain up to tenths or even hundreds. Hence, and to avoid killing no small number of those with low limits, by injecting more magic energy than what their bodies can handle, the artifacts' par was set very low."
"If this wasn't the case… then most of the artifact holders would have died after leveling up."
"Although it possible to increase the physical limit to contain more magic energy by consuming rare resources… however, at the initial stage of the disaster, people still had no knowledge of these things, how to harness them, or how to use them."
…