After he was done designing the emporium, the system informed him it would take an entire day to construct it and he would be able to see it only upon completion. Lucian nodded hearing this.
'I kind of expected that so I finished designing the shop first. Now, let's do magic!!!'
While he was able to restrain himself since he awoke here to not perform any magic, his patience was wearing thin. Although he was an old man in his previous life and had adequate self control, when faced with magic, even robots would want to try it! Lucian immediately brought up memories related to magic and went through them meticulously.
Why go through all this caution?
Well, while going through Lucian's memories the first time, he remembered numerous instances of spellforms destabilising and exploding in his face due to inadequate control or various other reasons. Hence, spells were always performed with a master or guardian present when one was a beginner. He definitely couldn't ask anybody to act as a guardian while he performed the most basic spell as that would be basically telling everyone that he wasn't Lucian.
After another hour or so, he finally had an adequate idea of how magic worked and made a note to himself in the system notepad. Yes, it provided a notepad which would record what he wanted. He was surprised too.
Basically, mages draw mana or aether from the surroundings to fill their magic cores and then use that mana/aether to construct spellforms and do amazing stuff. The spellforms themselves are the results of the research of countless high ranking mages over history. Constructing a spell form is an arduous task even though it is just copying it from your memory and pasting it in front of you using mana. Constructing the spellform takes mana manipulation skills which can only be raised through practice. The ones with higher aptitude or mana sensitivity have much better mana manipulation skills generally as they can sense the mana itself much better. Spellforms also get exponentially complex with increase in the rank of the spellform. They too are divided into 6 ranks similar to that of mages and warriors. Spellforms can be kept ready by just not providing enough mana for activation. This is also how mages could be combat ready at a moments notice. Some have foci on which they engrave the spellforms they deem necessary, so that those spells can be unleashed at a moments notice.
An ordinary human, even if they have mana, can only perform the simplest of simplest spells as they simply can't compute the amount of information required to even copy the spellform.
Another thing that prevents ordinary humans from becoming mages is aptitude and their magic core size. Aptitude is basically mana sensitivity, it is divided into 5 levels, ranging from A-D, with S as the highest. Core sizes follow the same. Lucian was lucky to have a B grade aptitude and an A grade magical core. He was definitely in the top 3% of the entire country in terms of talent.
A few other things that distinguished mages were their foundation circles, affinity towards elements, and knowledge and resources available to them.
When a mage breaks through to a higher rank, they normally create a permanent spellform in their magic cores itself, these spells would help raise their computation ability and higher level ones would even have additional functions like defending the magic core from targeted attacks, hiding the level of the core and so on.
Lucian started to cast his first spell, one called shadow limb. It basically formed a tangible limb made of shadows. It was not a particularly powerful spell, but it was a useful spell to disrupt the enemy's focus.
Lucian had already gone through the memory of casting this spell a dozen times, so he was pretty confident in casting it. He first drew his mana from his core and started to form the spellform. He went as slow as he could and perfectly formed it. As soon as it was complete, the shadow of a cupboard which he aimed at rose from the ground and formed a hand.
'That's awesome!! I can feel that limb as if it's attached to my body. Wow!! Now, this is magic!! Though that already consumed 3MP'' Lucian exclaimed internally. He was exhilarated from casting his first spell successfully. Lucian then spent the rest of the day practicing around 40% of the spells Lucian knew only leaving his room to have his lunch and dinner and also reviewing Lucians memories when waiting for his mana to regenerate.
One thing Lucian noticed was that he hadn't formed his foundation circle yet so he expected his performance to increase dramatically when he did form one. Lucian hadn't learned a lot of spells either, as he had just advanced to rank 1 and was supposed to go to the royal academy of magic to continue his education.