Chereads / among the simpletons / Chapter 23 - Chapter 23

Chapter 23 - Chapter 23

Now that I have ingeniously found a way to do my homework, I want to return to the library. The soul theory instructor said that there is a way to identify people, and it is through imprinted mana. Considering that that is one of the only ways I could get caught, I need to learn as much as possible about it so I can avoid it and knowing my great self, even find a way to bypass it.

Heading back to the library I return the book about the layout of the mana core and start searching for something about finding identities through imprinted mana, and searching, and searching. Finally after a whopping hour and a half of searching I found something, a book called "Finding and Identifying People Through Their Imprinted Manas Collar Spectrum by Fen Toling", it was hidden in some cramped corner of the library. 

Funny it's like the people of the academy don't want students to know how this works, no… how silly of a thought for me to have, of course, they don't want this information to spread, it would make all the noble drama going on twice as annoying.

Anyhow, looking through the book, I find the two only ways to fake your imprinted mana collar.

The first way is with soul shenanigans, and it's definitely the harder one to pull off, it sees a lot of stuff I don't know about yet, the basics my great brain was able to see through is that you have to make a burrow in the hand you are going to put on the examination cristal, you then have to fill it with somebody else's imprinted mana somehow and from there on it's all incomprehensible gibberish that I can't understand. 

The second and easier way is to create a magic item, although this way is easier to see through, it doesn't involve tearing out a part of your soul so this is probably the way I will do it. It seems that you have to create a very illegal magic item that copies other people's imprinted mana, this requires artificing, which I will start learning in the second year.

So until then, there is no way to prevent myself from being caught, which is bad but I'm sure with my great acting skills I can get past any mana colure test.

Looking outside I find that it's already nighttime, so I may as while head back and get some sleep. Returning everything to there proper place, I head toward the dorms.

Heading inside I find Ustos sleeping, well at least I don't have to deal with that idiot. I take off my clothes and go straight to bed.

The next morning I wake up and go through the routine, put on clothes, go to the cafeteria, eat and leave some food for Ustos, come back to the dorms, and feed Ustos.

I then pick up the notebook, the quill, and the write assignment and go to magic theory.

The scorn and disgust are getting to an annoying level, one guy even dared to through a crumpled piece of paper at me which said "Goblin spawn", with admittently good penmanship, which is the most annoying part. I, of course, kept it, because paper is expensive in this world, and I can use it to practice my quill skills.

This time on magic theory, the instructor talked about magic circles, which is the basis of creating spells. You inject mana into a magic circle and it casts a spell.

Apparently, a magic circle gathers the needed element to convert the natural mana into the type of spell you need to cast. For example, if you need to cast a fireball it will gather all the fire element and turn the natural mana into fire mana. This does mean that if you are in a region with a low fire element ratio, it will take longer than normal and more mana to cast a fire spell.

A blank magic circle comprises two concentric circles, with one slightly smaller and situated inside the other, both sharing the same center point. The process of creating a magic circle involves three distinct steps.

The first step is to specify which kind of element you need, every element has its own symbol. You must draw the symbol on the top half of the magic circle. note that it is recommended to minimize the amount of elements you use while casting a spell.

The second step is to specify what the spell does, this is the longest step of creating a magic circle. During this step, you need to specify what the spell is, how long the spell should last, what it should do after casting, and so on. This is done with rune script, each rune in the rune script represents different things for example: one rune can mean fast, another could mean explode, and another can also mean after 5 seconds. There are potentially infinite amounts of runes that have not been discovered, yet most of them are likely useless.

The third and final step is to specify how much mana that you're going to give the spell. This is done by drawing a shape in the smaller circle, that specifies how much mana you're going to give the spell. For example, a fireball does not require much mana and so the shape inside the smaller circle is a star, but casting more mana-heavy spells will need a different shape that represents more mana like a triquetra. 

all spell scripts specify to divert natural mana to acquire more elements, so if you are casting a fireball and there is a low density of fire element around you, it is advised to make the mana drain higher by adding a different shape.

Apparently, the rest of the first year in mana theory is going to be dedicated to teaching us rune script, so we will be ready to cast spells in the second year.