บท 4: Mana Study
Mana Study had made a huge breakthrough about three hundred years ago.
Before this, mana practitioners of that era were only capable of emitting mana in a crude manner. The use of mana to attack by gathering it using their own mind and throwing it at their opponent had become obsolete. Such a way of using mana wasted a lot of potential in mana.
The introduction of Mana Artifact made by the early Magic Engineers allowed all mana users to have an easier, more flexible, and more creative way of using mana. Aside from that, battles between mana practitioners had become more dangerous due to the improving quality of Mana Artifact during the years.
Unfortunately, almost a century had passed but they were still stuck at the latest 5th generation of Mana Artifact. This generation of artifacts introduced a way for mana users to integrate their mana with an element. Through the usage of a 5th gen artifact, the mana could be converted to flame, water, wood, metal, and others.
But now, further developments of artifacts were stagnating. The current direction of the research was the manipulation or control of elements through an artifact. There wasn't any news about the possible 6th generation at all.
Wallace was currently reading a book written by Aeolia Schien. It was a book about his story when he successfully created the 4th generation of the artifact, this breakthrough allowed mana users to control mana to enhance the human brain. Strong memory, fast reaction speed, fast analyzation, this was called the brain-boosting era.
During the introduction of this 4th gen, people had been skeptical about how this would be called another era of mana artifact, many were not convinced about how it would change the mana users.
It had been a bloody war instead of two countries that proved how important a brain-boosted mana user was. A small country that immediately adapted to the 4th gen at all cost, not caring about how expensive it was versus a larger country that still primarily used 3rd gen artifact. With mana users that could react almost instantly, battles lasted only a few seconds and it could decide their life or death.
The victory of the smaller country did not only magnified the importance of the latest mana artifact but also the significance of having talented magicians.
That small country had a lot of talented people who were able to manufacture 4th generation artifacts. Their investment in the advanced study of mana formation and array proved to be a very good move made by their nation.
It was then the surge of Magic Engineers. It is said that only 28% of the world population possess mana affinity. The remaining 72% are normal people.
This 28% was a large amount as there were more than 5 billion people in this world. From this 28%, 4% of it was people that only had extremely low mana affinity.
Fortunately, even though Wallace was not capable of being a combat magician he was not part of that 4 %.
It was also included in the book he was reading that Aeolia came up with the 5th generation of mana artifact 52 years after he introduced the 4th gen.
Due to the fact that almost all mana users had adapted to the 4th gen, people realized that the offensive or destructive powers of mana users were severely lacking. At first, it wasn't noticeable as with the fine manipulation of formless mana by the brain boosted mana practitioners, every move they made was deadly.
But after some time, when all mana practitioners got used to those brain-boosting artifacts, they realized how difficult it was to get an upper hand. There were even cases of a fight between two mana practitioners lasting for more than a day with still no upper hand gained in the battle. Instead, it was like a battle of attrition which would determine who had a larger pool of mana.
If both mana users fought with the same 4th generation artifact, they fought by manipulating formless mana to attack or defend. Obviously, with the breakthrough made by Aeolia, the way the mana users fought changed.
The creation of the 5th gen was also the start of mana users or practitioners being called "Magicians". It was because of how a mana user previously controlling the formless blue light of mana was now controlling the elements as people saw them.
Magic Engineers in recent years accumulated prestige and honor by creating different ways to use the elements. Although the 5th gen was over a century old already, the creative way of using elements had given the magic engineers a lot of roads for development. The creation of different mana artifacts could make the combat magicians capable of adapting to any situations and fight in any form of environment and could also give advantages depending on how mana artifacts were made.
Wallace was on his way to the Academy, reading the book again as he found something unusual on how Aeolia died. He found that Aeolia seemed to be hinting about the possible path for further development of Mana Artifact. Wallace kept it in mind and stored his book in his bag. He had decided to think more about it later.
He was now in front of the academy. A part of the huge gate was open for the students to come in.
Wallace was also in a good mood as he had already received the present from his parents, it was memory crystals containing his parent's clan knowledge about some specific elemental pathway on mana artifact forging. It contained advanced knowledge that Wallace needed.
His plan of retrieving 'his' body and spaceship would completely start once he qualified for the competition.
"I should start earning money."
It was costly to become Magic Engineer. If he relied on using the resources given by the Academy, improving to the point of topping all the students would be difficult.
It was then that he heard a voice in his head.
[ Pathfinder tool has completed its activation process. Would you like to open Pathfinder? ]
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