Megamio

Sorry, this chapter might be not to your liking, but I made it as easy to understand as possible. Give me feedback on your thoughts.

I was standing on a table, my tiny 4 fingered hands holding the pages of a book almost as tall as me, flipping it to the next page. Thankfully my crystal eyes were fine along with my low-quality brain core, without those two I wouldn't have a body to pilot. 

'This world is a little different than I expected.' The book I was reading was an encyclopedia of general knowledge of the world, including its magic system. It was the book students in the academy had to read for an entire course with how big it was and how much information it had. It was almost 2500 pages.

It had almost everything related or known to this world, which was unbelievable since Audra said that it only had a quarter of the information. Everything else not in there was sensitive information that kingdoms and empires kept secret from themselves.

To sum it up, there were the regular monsters in this world, dominating the expansive wilderness, keeping the civilized races intending to expand in check. One example said that a once domineering empire intended to burn one such wilderness to the ground once and for all, but the next day, they were erased from the continent along with everything they created. That alone gave chills deep in my soul.

Thankfully, those stronger monsters were hard to find, and they didn't have any interest in mortals, or so said the author of the encyclopedia.

Then there were the typical races, humans, elves, fey or spirits, and orcs, not the pig type, but the green shamanic type. They were a reasonable bunch in this world, mostly living on the fringes or deep in the wilderness, battling monsters and beasts to their heart's content. They were left alone most of the time, and occasionally some shaman king would try to conquer the lands once every few decades.

The truly interesting race was the spirits or fey, It's said that they were an ancient race, emerging long before recorded history, and they were elusive, barely anything is known about them. These days it's rare to see one in a person's lifetime, mages included.

And sure enough, the humans in this world were bloodthirsty and power-hungry, fighting endless wars among themselves. The majority of the info regarding races was that of humans. Eternal Fighting and struggling is the definition the author of this book described them as.

It also mentioned the thing I'm most interested in, The magic system of this world. Indeed there was mana in this world, but it isn't omnipresent one. There was barely any mana in the atmosphere, and the book said that mana could only be found deep underground in the form as one would expect mana crystals.

'The only reason my 360 crystal vision could work was because of the absence of mana in the atmosphere.' If it was, I wouldn't have a vision since I would only see the ever-present mana, rendering my final sense mute.

This absence is also the reason why those scary monsters aren't interested in the lands of the civilized races. In the eyes of those monsters, our lands were barren, and hostile to life, while the wilderness was heaven since it was always filled with mana. Something the author was unable to know the reason for.

And due to this shortage of mana, the magic of this world wasn't as diverse as I knew them to be. 

Mages as I understood them were not exactly mages, and the old man gave me the misconception since he was able to cast so many spells. 

Every 'mage' was born with some mana in their bodies, not in their souls or spirits, the book had a lot of names to it. Those found to have a good amount of mana in their souls had the potential to become mages, those who don't are commoners and peasants.

There were too few people who had a huge amount of mana present in their bodies at a young age, those were the people who could be called geniuses. But the majority had average and precious few mana that could only regenerate naturally. If you were to absorb mana from mana crystals, you will eventually become a corrupted being or otherwise known as a Dark Mage. 

A dark mage might have increased the amount of mana in their body, but in return the mana causes hidden and irreparable damage to the soul and psyche of the mage, gradually twisting them into monsters in human skin. The only way you can avoid such a fate is first don't do it, and second, become a master at manipulating mana so that you avoid the mana from damaging and corrupting you.

This corruptness isn't instant, it takes years of continuous absorptions of mana crystals, but because of the addictiveness-the increase of power- it causes once you taste it, you're over. Unless you're a strong-willed person.

Because of the little mana average mages have in their souls, and not being able to increase the amount that easily, the development of this magic system focused on extreme specialization over a short period to reach a level where you can begin to safely absorb mana crystals without it corrupting you.

There were no such things as a mana potion since a mage could only handle the mana they were born with. Any other mana instantly disturbed and damaged the body, mind, and soul. The reason the telepathy spell and such other spells that gave easy access to one's inner systems are wary and afraid of.

This method of the magic system begins with learning to cast spells with the inner mana every mage has. Once your foundation in spellcraft was solid, to advance, you must learn a specific spell called Base. This spell is the base you build your power on.

This Base spell once mastered, becomes a permanent part of your being, more specifically your body. This is where the true path begins. 

The next step involves choosing one specific spell, it didn't matter what affinity or nature it has, once you choose that spell, you must cast it repeatedly day after day for 6 months until it becomes instinctual to cast it. Once that is complete, the final step to becoming a true 'mage' happens. 

You must combine the Base spell and the spell of your choice into something called Spellcore. This Spellcore allows you to utilize your limited mana to the best of its use, giving you an edge over those who didn't have one. Since the spell that made up the Spellcore had become a permanent instinctual part of your body thanks to the Base spell- It focuses the mana present in your soul to efficiently and easily flow, compared to a person who didn't have such a focused core.

A person with a Spellcore could easily and quickly defeat 10 people who didn't have it, no matter how many spells they had, of course, there were outliers and exceptions to this rule, such as the old man. I suspect he never formed one and liked the freedom of using any spell he wanted.

This method didn't mean you couldn't use any other spell, your mana is still a normal one, and you could force it to bypass the Spellcore and use it on other spells, such as the telepathy spell Audra made. But it would take too long and was useless outside of special circumstances.

More than that, the existence of magic items countered the weakness of only being able to use one spell. Some even went so far as to make their Spellcore specialized and functioned only with the use of specific magic items. 

Enchanters were the makers of magic items, making their Spellcore to have spells like mana manipulation, or fire or earth spells. 

To be honest, it was an advanced and unique magic system compared to what I expected. It could produce a powerful team of mages easily. It felt like- no it was made for war. And there was not that much information about the pioneers of this magic system in the book.