Chapter 40 – Spell Edits

When Yuki returned to his dorm room, his mind was filled with diagrams and letters. The amount of spells that were in those texts that Mabel had given him was immense and Yuki only managed to finish one of the scrolls.

He sat at his dining table and ate a meal that he had grabbed from the meal hall on his way back. Yuki found out that he could grab food at anytime from the meal hall and that he only needed to show his smartwatch to them to get it.

‘Good thing I walked past there,’ Yuki thought as he munched on his sandwich. 'Though I would rather prefer to make my own meals. The food here isn’t the best.’

He finished quickly and went to the bathroom to get himself cleaned. When Yuki came out, he was dressed in a pair of blue pajamas. He went to his room and kneeled down on his bed, closing his eyes. Then he entered that familiar grassy field.

Yuki’s eyes opened and there he was standing in that field. He turned around and saw the sitting form of Akira who had her eyes closed as she focused on something within her mind.

‘She’s doing research, I think,’ Yuki guessed. ‘I shouldn’t bother her.’

Yuki marched over the hovering crystal ball and placed his hand on it. His status appeared but Yuki ignored it for today. He had checked it not too long ago and there was something that he wanted to do today before he left to do combat training. Yuki entered the door the led him to the library created by Ancestral Knowledge.

He appeared right where he had left last time. He was standing in the middle of the hall with a stack of books next to him. Though Yuki wanted to read them, they weren’t the books that Yuki needed right now.

‘Do you have any books on magic spells and spell creation?’ Yuki asked the library.

Nothing happened for a couple of seconds. Then a relatively thin manuscript flew out of a shelf and stopped in front of Yuki.

‘Is that all?’ Yuki asked. ‘Are there no more texts on spell creation?’

A notification appeared before Yuki in response.

[Ancestral Knowledge Has Not Been Completely Unlocked.]

‘Oh, that would make sense,’ Yuki thought. ‘But I don’t know how I would go about fully unlocking the skill.’

Yuki decided to put it off until later. It would probably unlock once he had met a certain set of requirements that were unknown to him. He grabbed the book in front of him and began to read it.

When he had finished within an hour, he put it down and sat. The book confirmed Yuki’s suspicions on how spells worked. The words that were written in runes defined what it was that the spell did. The lines connecting the runes said the order at which things happen.

The book also gave Yuki new information that he never knew such as the reason why spell chants were long. The reason was to prevent unintended effects from being added to the spell. The longer and more specific the chant was, the safer and more defined the spell was. The magic circles that are made from the chant reflect this and more words are added the longer the chant is.

Another thing the manuscript told Yuki was that the uniformity and aesthetic of the spell circle played a major role in whether the spell worked, the strength of the spell, and the efficiency of the spell. The more symmetrical the spell the better it worked. Spells that didn’t follow these rules didn't work. The runes of a spell are written in such an order that the lines connecting them formed patterns.

‘Taking these things into consideration, it seems that creating spells is a much more complicated process than I thought,’ Yuki remarked. ‘If I want to try, I’m going to need to plan out a lot of things.’

Yuki snapped his fingers and summoned a blank journal from the library. He had discovered this by accident the night before when he was wishing he had a notebook to write information in. With a tap, a pencil popped out of the journal.

He picked up the pencil and began to sketch out the drawing of the self-strengthening spell that Mabel had first taught him. Before creating spells, Yuki decided that it would be more beneficial to alter existing spells.

As Yuki read the runes that were etched along the circle, he crossed out words that seemed redundant to him. The book on spell creation had told Yuki that will of the user is very important. By simplifying this spell, Yuki was essentially making it so that only Yuki could use it. The other reason why spells were so long was so that anyone could use them.

Once Yuki had finished scratching all of the extraneous words that he could from the circle, he then started the task of linking the words and creating the mana circuit.

‘The lines in the spell circle also function like the pathways for mana to flow,’ Yuki repeated in his mind. ‘As the lines determine the order of the words, it also determines the order of the mana.’

With this in mind, Yuki drew lines that connected the runes that symbolized the body and strength. Then with those together, he made a single line that linked those two words to the rune the represented self. Next came the specification of the length and the power of the spell. This was done with two runes; one that made it so that Yuki could determine the length through his intentions and another that set the amplification to low. When Yuki was finished, there was a total of five runes that were connected with five lines all drawn in a circle.

‘There,’ Yuki thought. ‘Now let’s try it out.’

He closed his eyes and pictured the spell that he had just drawn. Within his mind the circle flared into life and the rune that specified the length pulsated lightly. Understanding what it meant, Yuki ordered it to last five minutes and released his mana. Opening his eyes, he saw the circle being formed in the air. Then his mana was suddenly drained and the circle pulsated, filling Yuki with a sensation of strength that was much stronger than the one he had felt in his class.

‘The mana consumption was more even though I used less lines,’ Yuki commented. ‘I need to fix that. And I don't think I specified the strength well enough either.’

For the next couple of hours, Yuki continuously tinkered with the spell circle. He edited little parts here and there, adding or removing runes as he went. When he was finished, the spell was slightly larger with seven runes. The design of the circle had also changed. In the center was now a rune that specified the range of the strength amplification. This rune was in turn connected to two more runes on the outer edge of the circle that made so that the amplification was only for physical strength and that the amount of strengthening within the range was determined by the caster. The other four were the same as before.

Satisfied, Yuki tried this one and found that he had succeeded. The spell utilized less mana than the previous one before and was easier to cast while giving the same effects. At least, easier to cast for Yuki. If someone was to try to use this adapted form of the spell, they would have trouble getting it to work.

‘And what’s even better is that the chant is only three words,’ Yuki thought. ‘I only need to say “Physical Strength Enhance” and the spell will appear as long as I picture it correctly.’

Nodding, Yuki started to sketch out another spell that Mabel had made him memorize. But before he could finish, he could feel the smartwatch on his wrist vibrating. Yuki pulled himself out of his mana dimension and back into the real world. He lightly tapped his watch to stop it and got off of his somewhat sore knees.

‘Alright,’ Yuki thought. ‘It’s time to do some training.’

The time was 23:00 and Yuki headed toward the Combat Hall.

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