Believing in oneself and figuring out his or her own future was the true significance of the path of truth.
Angor was wondering about something though. If the path of truth was such an easy concept, why were there few wizards who actually stepped onto the path? Were there some other important factors?
Angor left the sky bus and headed toward the central area of Tree Spirit Garden instead of returning to apprentice town. A new apprentice had to get registered before he could start accepting quests from the questing hall.
When this was done, Angor went to the resource distribution hall and accepted a small bag. The bag contained two objects for him. One was a robe with a simple rune on it. It looked exactly the same as Sailum and Teuton’s “bed sheet” except that this one was black.
The other object was a crystal ball communicator.
…
On his way back, Angor wanted to go to Cloud Library and look for some spell books. But he gave up the idea.
Back on the cloud whale, he already recorded a good number of books in Sunders’ book room. He would check these first and see if there was something worth studying.
Upon arriving at his villa, Angor asked Toby to enjoy the day by itself. He then went to the balcony.
It seemed the tree spirit was really considerate to Apprentice Town Eight these days. The sunlight remained strong all day. Before leaving, Angor placed his tablet on the balcony to recharge. Now the battery was all full.
He took his tablet back to the soundproof room and began going over the books he recorded before.
There were all kinds of books. Angor spent half a day classifying them before he started to read them.
To learn spells, he first needed to know what they really meant.
A spell was a way to express magic while using the mana pool as the core, mana as energy, and knowledge as structure. It worked by levering and interfering with reality.
Simply put, a spell consisted of three elements: mana pool, mana, and knowledge.
For example, a level-0 cantrip called “Cleanse” was a spell that removed filth by combining the use of water and wind.
The fundamental of the spell was to disrupt the natural combination of water and wind elements. It would then simulate the elements by using a formula before expressing the formula with mana, thus making the low-level cantrip possible.
In general, a wizard created a model of the cantrip by using mana to build a “formula” as its base, then used the formula to affect the physical world. As a level-0 cantrip, Cleanse did not need many steps to cast. For certain high-leveled spells, wizards needed external help to cast them, such as changing his or her body or certain glands or by spending materials as mediums for the spell.
People already summarized how to build the model for Cleanse, so anyone who wished to learn it did not need to understand the “combination of water and wind elements” at all. They simply had to apply the existing cantrip model to cast the spell.
Angor looked at the display of the hologram tablet, where a “magatama” stood upon a surface, and triggered something in his mind.
He controlled his mana pool to release mana to the outside. He then built the model of Cleanse spell in his mind. Under his careful manipulation, his mana slowly formed up the shape of the cantrip.
Next, Angor felt a strange urge in his mind. Following the urge, he released a strange feeling from his fingers.
A small current of damp air blew over the soundproof room, removing dust and dirt scraps from the room’s walls and floor.
“That’s how Cleanse work? It’s so weak,” Angor complained at how insignificant the spell looked. Little did he know that being able to cast a spell on the first attempt was an amazing achievement for anyone. That was how the mana purified by a singular point helped him. The mana was extremely pure and flexible, which allowed him to build an accurate model without previous practice.
Angor kept reading the book.
Similar cantrips all had completely determined models. Apprentices only had to memorize the models. Thanks to the experience of ancestors, they did not need to reach into anything deep down in order to cast the cantrips.
Thinking about this, Angor got a new idea.
He did not wish to follow ancestors and copy the models. He wanted to start from zero and worked out how Cleanse spell came into being on his own.
Angor found the page that explained the fundamentals of the cantrip and read on carefully.
A day later, Angor began to calculate the combination patterns of wind and water elements on his own. He spent half a day on filling twenty pages with his formulas. There were too many calculations involved and he failed to figure out any viable combination.
“No wonder people only copied the books. It would take forever making out a combination on my own, and it probably won’t be correct,” Angor muttered. He did not give up though. The boy really wanted to see how spells worked from their root.
After another day, he finally discovered a combination.
Using the appropriate formula, Angor built the combination into a new cantrip model.
The model now looked like “a magatama sliced up by several surfaces”, which was completely different from the one on the book where the magatama stood on top of one single surface.
Following his own cantrip model, Angor slowly channeled his mana.
A moment later, he felt a small breeze. His collar moved a little.
Angor took out his notes and wrote down: [The Cleanse spell following this combination did not achieve a balance between wind and water elements. Water element almost did not exist, and the wind element was too weak. It doesn’t work as a Cleanse spell. Not even a Breeze spell.]
He put down the note and prepared to find another combination.
But this time, he was planning to use the tablet to help him calculate the results faster.
For the first combination, Angor used paper and pen in order to see the essentials of the spell and know its “nature”. Once this was done, he no longer had to work out further combinations on his own. Using the tablet would save him a lot of time.
He set two different elements as “A” and “B”, and put his formula, variables, and data into the hologram tablet.
The system began working on its own.
It only took ten minutes for the system to return more than 30 different combinations for Angor.