Jonathan

After they sat down on the lunch table, and the lunch had been served, the honourable Archmage Heinrich Tablos began to speak: “As I said, what you did is incredibly difficult. It is something that is considered normally the realm of the Archmages, and not all of us have managed this feat. But what does that means exactly, you might ask. And the answer to that is surprisingly easy and complex at the same time. You see, when you are normally casting a spell, you first expend power to provide the amount of power the spell needs, for all of its tasks. For example, if you want to throw that flashy, mostly useless, attack spell fireball, the spell would first expend energy to form itself, second to keep itself together and hot, and third to move to the target. All of that energy is provided by you initially. After that, you have a mass of energy, which does basically nothing. So you must tell it what to do. And if you guessed that cost even more energy, you guessed right. Ok, normally that amount of energy is not relevant, because the spell is already eating so much of it. If you want an example, the basic fireball spell used in Theron uses around 98% of the energy provided, and only 2% are used to form it. The ability you achieved, makes it possible to form a spell without incurring an additional mana cost. But it is not easy, and generally needs more time. Oh, you look like you want to say something, so speak, but let me just add this, you need to be able to cast magic the normal way before working with his ability, as well as truly massive amounts of theoretical knowledge. But now, let’s speak, my student!”

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“So, if I understood it correctly, normally it would not make sense to form a basic attack spell that way, the possible savings of mana are less important than the time lost due to forming it this way. But when considering an already expensive strategic spell, especially if a significant portion of its cost is forming it, or an extremely cheap spell, where time is not an issue, this method is superior. Hereby I assume that the forming cost has a minimum, without one, the cheap spells likely would not be viable.”

“Fascinating, truly fascinating. Where would you place such cheap spells that still need an Archmage to execute them?”

Jonathan thought for a moment and answered: “In the medical sector, there should be some tasks, which are extremely difficult and need a significant amount of experience, but which also are not hard on your mana reserves. Some of them might be to time-critical, but saving mana, for example in a field hospital, sounds like a brilliant idea. Other cheap spells might be highly specialised attack spells which might need to be perfectly targeted, so you are already forced to slow down. But I am not sure how magic works and how much is possible, so I could just be talking nonsense.”

Tablos clapped and looked at Elise: “The comment from Jonathan was great. He spoke about very fascinating things, in fact, I know that there are these spells he talked about, but they are trade secrets of certain Archmages, and he was not shy to admit that he only had some ideas, maybe based on the technological knowledge of his world. Truly impressive, do you not think?”

Elise answered: “Yes, whatever you say, honourable Archmage. Can we soon continue the lesson?”

“Yes, let me finish eating an then we will continue.”, answered Tablos.