"Magecraft or Thaumaturgy, is the artificial reenactment of Mystery, which is ordinarily possible only by inhuman beings.
It is the ability to bring about what is possible through science with supernatural means; although the process is considered a miracle, the result is not. The limits of Magecraft have changed with time, as science evolved and Magic from the past became possible through science.
There exists no impossibility for modern Magecraft within the rules of the world and limits of human intellect; there are limitations, however, where it only appears that something is possible. Because Magecraft acts as the reenactment of preexisting phenomena, it is impossible to use it to create new Mysteries; even with an infinite amount of research, there exists a "wall" preventing human wisdom from doing so in the current era. The realm past this "wall" is known as Magic."
Mystery involves human belief and metaphysical "weight" and "concepts".
Which means that it could most definitely be sexist apparently. Brooms enchanted to fly do exist, but they don't they to work too well with males apparently, which is complete bullshit. Alex could only sigh in regret every time he saw his real-life "Nimbus 2000" collecting dust in his room. Now if only he could somehow Disney it up and have it clean his room for him on its own.
It was a bit disappointing that Magecraft only amounted to basically using a shortcut to what science could do. Oh, sure, he could learn how to shoot a fireball or an equivalent of a mana bullet after studying for weeks, months, maybe even years to make it worth a damn at the expense of lots of time, effort, and lots and lots of agonizing pain... Or he could buy a fucking gun or a grenade.
"What that you say Professor Briggins? Mundane weapons don't work well against magical beings and monsters? Well if I run into one I'd be fucking dead anyway!"
Which is why besides healing magic he was immensely grateful that most of his other studies were spent mostly reading books, going to lectures, and observation. Dissecting Chimeras and fresh corpses were pretty gross but surprisingly interesting.
He even managed to make some Mystic Codes!
Well, ok, any half-decent Magus would probably be too ashamed of them to ever call them proper Mystic Codes, but he was proud of his work!
So what if one of them was quite literally just a wooden stick? A wand was a wand!
A Magus had a body that was naturally suffused with magical energy, it was why poor and desperate ones like himself could sell their blood which was rich in the stuff. Basically his entire body was like a gathering of crafting materials from an RPG and he didn't hesitate to take advantage of the fact. He might or might not have broken off a branch at the oldest tree he could find at the local park, only a few decades old sadly, and soaked it in a tube of his blood and special herbs he got from his class as if he was trying to ferment it. Three whole months he continued to supply it with fresh blood and pumped every single scrape of his Od into it every waking moments. Sometimes he would strain himself so much that he'd pass out in his room, only to wake up and repeat the process all over again. It was an ugly little thing...
But hell, a wand was a wand.
So what if it was slightly crooked? It wasn't too shabby for a novice at woodworking, was it? He thought it gave the thing character. No, he was not delusional. Not at all.
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Appearances didn't matter much, the only thing that did was that it helped amplify his magical powers by a whopping 3 times! Not much considering his circuits were of such low quantity even if they were slightly above average in quality. Fucking Rin and her bullshit 100x amp sword. Not everyone had money to burn using goddamn Jewels and diamonds as crafting ingredients, damnit! This wasn't Minecraft and he was absolutely salty about all the pay2win Magus families.
His issues with the unfairness of life besides, his shitty brownish red wand was only a means to an end, as he used the boost he got from the wand to help him in his true project. There, sitting in front of him, was the culmination of months upon months of work.
The Gk-01, full name God killer Mark 1, was ready for action. It came in two "modes", one was travel size in the form of a black and white and obscenely powerful semi-automatic dessert eagle, and the other was full-blown artillery "Blow it and everything that fucking moves the hell up". By attaching extra parts to it, it could quickly become a sniper rifle or a mounted cannon within moments. The rapid-fire of a machine gun and the sheer penetrating power, accuracy, and range of a sniper rifle. It was, without a doubt... Ok excluding the maniacs at Atlas's Black Barrel, the strongest fucking gun on the goddamn planet.
Designs a century ahead of anything currently in the world, magically crafted and reinforced, bathed in his magic powers 24/7 none stop for the past half a year. He was confident he should shoot a hole through two or three tanks and hit somebody five miles away with this baby. Its bullets were the size of a half-dollar in diameter, made of a mix of mundane metals into steel alloy that was super-condensed as much as he could manage with his noob Alchemy skills.
Wind Resistance Nullification, Light Suppression, and Noise Suppression. A bastardization of Runes, Alchemy, and Enchantment that I somehow managed to cobble together across the barrel. It looked like chicken scratch and a kid's drawing, but it proved effective nonetheless. Three was the max he could plaster on it without the entire thing falling apart, or worse blowing up, and while large for what they were, the bullets didn't offer nearly enough surface area for him to work with.
The entire thing weighed 200 lb in Sniper Mode and a third of that in as a handgun. He had to learn Reinforcement to increase his physical strength just to carry the thing around when it wasn't sealed in its case which was enchanted to reduce weight. He really needed to work on learning recoil suppression or something because the kickback sent him to the hospital for a month with broken bones and fractures all across his arm and shoulders when he was caught off guard.
Well that, or he learns enough biology to safely modify himself without turning into a grotesque monster like Zouken.
Of course, in hindsight, maybe it was a good thing that he was vastly limited by his resources, or else he would've definitely tried to make something even stronger. He just hadn't figured out the kinks of amplifying pure kinetic energy yet. So far he had plans to see about imbuing the projectiles with air to increase their speed and possibly make it invisible like Artoria's Invisible Air... But he had no fucking idea how that thing worked besides "Air's is invisible, so just transfer that concept to a tangible thing". Pretty impossible even by a mage's definition as far as he knew.
He also wanted to make a railgun.
He quickly figured out why Mages all had special "workshops" when the last prototype blew up suddenly and he had to remove shrapnel of steel out of his beds for a week. He still occasionally found one or two in his ass every now and then, thank god for safety procedures and helmets.
If only he could learn Tracing, sadly he was a novice at Projection at best. Useful, but he needed to learn to make the items last more than half an hour if he wanted to make anything of worth.
He wasn't looking for Unlimited Blades Work, he just wanted to stop spending all his money on materials damnit! Why is everything so expensive?!
Oh right... He had just the luck to be reborn right as the stock markets crashed.... Only 7 more years until the Third Holy Grail War and World War 2.
Alex made a mental note to work on getting some protection for himself. Maybe he should start interacting with his peers? It's not like they were all sociopathic homicidal monsters... Right? He held back a groan knowing he very much needed the connections to survive the coming years.