"...And that's about it for the basics. Any questions?"
He had a fuck ton of them, but most of them were a variation of the expletives and insults he knew put into different configurations. Instead of attempting to flaunt how stupid all of that was however, he went ahead and shook his head, signing for them to start practicing his drawings.
Considering the sheer amount of notifications saying he'd gained XP towards one talent or the other and even a few skills, he was tempted to say they were indeed practicing magic correctly, but he could also see their problem.
Not only was their magical language extremely convoluted to the point where he and his practically nonexistent knowledge on programming and coding would be able to create improvements for it, but their culture seemed to also be taking a big chunk of fundamental logic and telling it to take a walk.
Sure, even if he didn't like it, the formulaic way of scribing spell matrixes was fundamental in it's ability to guide any basic spell effect meant to last more than moments. Even now he could imagine other means of going about it, but those required much higher stats and/or talent to even begin to attempt without instantly killing himself, and it wasn't like they completely invalidated the basic and boring way of doing things either.
But to add such inefficient bajulation without even applying the means of attracting the specific elemental mana mentioned in the spell was more than just dumb, it was indoctrination and overespecialization in a method that equaled lifting boulders with… he didn't actually have a good analogy, but around half of their spellcasting process was to use mental power and mana to influence the surrounding into manipulating their own mana and into the effect they wanted manifested.
Again, he could see the use of it, but only for sacrificial or ritual spells where you desperately needed something to happen and would do whatever was necessary to see it done despite not knowing how to do it yourself.
The worst part was that said method required the mana itself to like you, even if minimally, and for a large natural mana pool from which to waste in the whole thing.
This meant that the genetically lucky novices were stuck ritualistically doing stupid shit for the mana's attention, those lucky enough to become full fledged didn't know any other way to gather significance and so were stuck wasting their weirdly developed pools on stupid shit, and the masters were unable to fathom any method that is not complimentary to the current one due to age and habit, nevermind the amount of power someone that specialised would lose if they used any other base method at such point, and so were stuck doing stupid shit.
Was this what that guy from the 'Sage of magic' novel meant when he said that the regress of magical knowledge physically hurt him? Did he mean that their stupidity and bullshit were giving him an aneurysm? Because he sure felt apoplectic at this reveal.
HOW FUCKING CLOSE TO BEING CUT TO PIECES IN A DIMENSIONAL STORM DID HE GET WITH THESE FUCKTARDS SUMMONING HIM?!?!? Was there even anything left behind of the area where it happened or had the building collapsed in itself as the vacuum settled in?!
Thankfully, he was an insane mage. Instead of having a panic attack or a berserker's rage, he just became colder. Sure, his dexterity suffered for that, but he could care less about the weak minded puppet playing at being a fop and his snide.
No, he just needed to restrain himself a bit more. Whatever else they had planned for him, he didn't give a shit, he needed some violence, and there were just so, so many ways to let it out the moment he reached the training grounds.
………………
[You have learned the skill Spell: fire bolt Lv 1.
You have learned the skill Spell: sticky fire Lv 1
You have learned the skill Spell: ashen fire Lv 1
You have learned the skill Spell: ignite mana Lv 1
…. Spell: ignite oxygen Lv 1
…. Spell: ignite iron Lv 1
…. Spell: ignite magnesium Lv 1]
'Well, thankfully I did not try to ignite either nitrogen not hidrogen before they knocked me out. I would have either died to the explosion, the fire or the mana drain.' Aki noted as he stared into the ceiling of his room. ‘More importantly though.’
[Breakthrough detected. Experience awarded to relevant areas. +12500 XP.
Breakthrough detected. Experience awarded to relevant areas. +2500 XP.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Breakthrough detected. Experience awarded to relevant areas. +2500 XP.
Breakthrough detected. Experience awarded to relevant areas. +2500 XP.
Congratulations, through practice you have unlocked the Meta talent Oversaturation casting Lv 1 (Intermediary). Due to accumulated comprehension, you have also unlocked the Meta talent Saturation casting Lv 1 (Basic).
Note: Due to the lack of mastery in Basic knowledge, you will be unable to allocate Talent points towards Intermediary knowledge before reaching level 10 in all related talents.
Congratulations, through practice you have unlocked the Essence talent Forced cascading elemental conductivity Lv 1 (Intermediary). Due to accumulated comprehension, you have also unlocked the Essence talent Elemental conductivity Lv 1 (basic).
Congratulations, through practice you have unlocked the Connection talent Emotional mana conversion Lv 1 (Intermediary). Due to accumulated comprehension, you have also unlocked the Connection talent Emotional force Lv 1 (Basic).
Congratulations, through practice you have obtained the beginnings of a new trait!
*
Abilities:
Basic arcane affinity Lv 5 (6.500/13.000): Slight increase in magical affinity.
Infuse Lv 5 (11.062/13.000): Infuse your energy into a target.
Detect magic Lv 3 (2120/5000): Focus on the energy around you.]
“Fucking, if only the numbers had less zeroes at the beginning.” He muttered as he started to get up. As he reached for the door, it even opened on it's own as Bob came in with a tray of rations.
"Go back to bed, we need to talk." She shooed him back inside.
He raised a brown in askance, but did as he was told. After he offered his admittedly thin cot, which was rejected, she put the tray on the stone ground and started talking again.
"The knight commander and a few officers are discussing what kind of punishment you should get for trashing the training grounds. Mostly it's about the fact that some think you were pretending to be weaker but for some reason, but the commander herself was convinced by those present during the whole thing to give you a chance to explain yourself since we had previously thought to leave this questioning for when there was a better way to communicate." She explained in a few breaths, taking out a small notebook and charcoal from a leather pouch and handing them to him with a somber expression.
The way she said it, the implicit 'gimme something good or you're fucked' almost sounded like she really cared. They must have assigned him a long time 'good' cop. Who the other half was supposed to be, he had no idea, but it honestly didn't matter.
Sighing, he started drawing a stick figure and several circles. Add in a few emojis, a dotted background and a separate elemental circle to use as reference, and he was able to guide Bob through what he had done.
"You infused your mana with intent and rage and managed to make your smaller mana pool move the mana in the surroundings to cast the spell you wanted.” Said his handler in askance and dogged disbelief despite his confirmation and the conditions of the training hall.
So he just pointed at the representation of his spell and at himself before summoning a small flame above a raised palm.
“You, spell.” She urged.
Miming a noble in a vest, he pretended to be wearing a jacket, from which he took an imaginary pocket clock.
“I have no idea what that is supposed to be.” She shrugged.
“Fuck.” He sighed. If even their money bags didn’t have handheld clocks then that spoke a lot about how underdeveloped their natural sciences were. Because those things were hard to make and great to show off, so he found it hard to believe that if they had been invented, they would not become a fad used to show off amongst the richer folk.
“Hey, i’m good, but this is also a first for me, ok? Try drawing it?”
He did and indeed she recognized the twelve partitions to be a clock after some prodding. Getting her to understand he meant to refer to time was a bit more complicated, but they got there when he made big fireballs float above his hands several times in a row.
“You could cast that firestorm again now?” She questioned with a different type of incredulity. Which took a bit more time to dispel by explaining that such a method of casting used the total amount of mana that you could move in a given area, so you could keep doing it if you moved to another place with a good enough concentration. “But why wouldn’t you be able to repeat it in the same place? Mana doesn’t disappear, we know that much.”
He flipped her the bird, something pretty universal since he had even seen soldiers on the fort doing it, and pointed to his mouth and throat.
“Ok, this has been difficult enough to understand and i also don’t deal well with scholarly shit to begin with.” She said while raising her hands in surrender. “I will bring this to the Knight commander and then come back to ask about you in specific, so don’t think you got out of that one by dangling bait like this.”
With his handler going out the door, Aki wondered if he should even try to lie about who he was and what he did before being brought here, but ultimately, that would be too hard and piss on the trust he was building based on his usefulness. Rather, he’d just change his origin to something more akin to a history they would be able to understand. Saying that the environment had too little mana for mages to be useful was much more believable than saying there was none after all, and if he started talking about technology that was too advanced and useful then they would try to pry him for answers while making him have a terrible time.
He’d rather be a soldier or operative with military power than an idea monkey that didn’t even know what he was talking about. After all, it’d be easier to get the resources and experience to cultivate his power acting as the former instead of the later.
For example…
Holding his palms apart, Aki first ignited the mana above them, feeding the flame with the strange energy that warmly flowed through him. Then he changed his outlook, doing his best to impress on the energy the command of giving his physical reserves and then his health to the flame. And it worked.
[You have learned the skill Spell: ignite vitality Lv 1
You have learned the skill Spell: ignite biomass Lv 1
Congratulations, through practice you have discovered a new trait.]