Grimoire, the book of magic.
One of the things I was always curious about mages was why do all of them hold only a single Grimoire. I find it funny that the answer was find in the very first pages.
Summarizing what I read, according to tradition, each mage receives a book when he enters the magic academy or is considered an official pupil of a formal mage. The book is divided in 3 sections: introduction, spells and notes.
After being received, this book is then bounded to the mage's soul, creating a link that will supply the necessary Mana to realize the spells. But before the apprentice learns any spell, his first task is to copy the introduction word by word and only after being revised by his teacher he will have the right to learn magic. Magic is a path that values tradition above all others and no mage is exempt from fulfilling all rites.
After copying the introduction, the mage may copy the 1st grade spells and learn the first grade runes. 1st grade magic are the most basic magics that no mage is unable to cast. They are so basic that a legendary sage once said a thousand years ago that if magic was spread to all sapient being in the world, 100% of them would be able to cast at least one 1st grade magic.
While they are indeed the most basics of the basics, they are by no means useless. Just like no stone walls can be made without stones, no magic spells can be formed without 1st grade runes. 1st grade runes were the representation of the elements that gave form to everything in the world: the fire that cook our food, the earth that forms our soil, the water that creates the rain and the wind that blow the clouds to far away, the light that illuminates our path, the darkness that allow us rest at night, the lightning that falls from the sky and the spirit who give us life.
As I finished reading the introduction, I was really eager to start practicing magic, but there were two problems stopping me:
- I didn't know how to bound the Grimoire to my soul.
- Even if I did, Grimoires can only be bound to a single soul, so I need to have an empty unbounded one for myself.
But, not everything was over yet!
After reading the introduction again and again I arrived to the conclusion that a Grimoire was in the end just a tool and not entirely indispensable. Theoretically if I draw the same circle I would have in the Grimoire in the air, filling it with my mana, I should be able to cast exactly the same magic.
Of course the draw back is that for each spell I want to cast, I need to redraw the magical circle and formula all over again, and that would take multiple times more time than having it drawn in the book and if I make any mistake while drawing, it could result in the magic failing or even exploding.
Fortunately or maybe unfortunately, my desire to learn magic made me ignore the danger.
So, for the whole next week I stayed in the North-West empty field practicing drawing Magic Circles and filling them with Rune Formulas. Blue would water the crops randomly 2-3 times a day. Muddy was still committed to it's last task. And Ruyk was sleeping around due to boredom and hunger. Luckily I heard Goblins are able to survive almost a month without food, or I would have to summon something for him to eat, wasting some Mana....well, hearing his stomach sound for the thousandth time, maybe it was not so lucky to him... ;p
As the eighth day arrived, Blue suddenly came to me after it's random watering session.
"Master! Look! Look! The turpins are glowing!!!"