Chương 4: Codex Arcanum
14th Sept 1986
Carter Residence
Sitting on my bed, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. I tried to direct whatever was inside my chest to my arms. A moment later, there was a brief flash of light and a large book poofed into existence. I barely had time to catch it, turning it over in my hands. It was bound in thick blue leather with a silver leaf border. A symbol inlaid in gold marked the cover. Two wizards holding staves and reading books sat side-by-side a shield bearing a watchful eye on it. Underneath in bold text was written 'CODEX ARCANUM'.
Finally! My personal grimoire! Okay, I made it past the first hurdle, willing it into my hands. It was a strange sensation, like I was getting lighter, but not in a way that affected my actual weight. I opened the book, but before I could take a look inside, a piece of parchment fell out. I turned it over. It read -
Hello, Ben. By now you must've realised that the reason you couldn't perform any magic yet was because I made some adjustments. I'm glad to see that you didn't obsess over things and spent some quality time with your new family. Knowledge is necessary no doubt, but there are things far more important in life.
On that note, Happy Birthday. Here's my promised gift to you: a grimoire that will allow you to travel to other worlds, and a bit more. Use it wisely. And remember, if your mind can conceive it, if your heart can believe it, then you can achieve it. Good luck, kiddo.
The moment I had finished reading the note, it disintegrated into tiny motes of light. 'Thanks, old man', I mentally intoned. I took a deep breath to focus and opened the book, revealing thick sturdy paper that looked crude and rough, like parchment. Covering that thick paper was simple straightforward English in a bold font. I spent some time looking over the book, making mental notes on interesting things to read in more detail later.
As far as I understood, the book was divided into 9 sections: Creation, Gravity, Spatial, Restoration, Spirit, Evolution, Metamorphosis, Elemental and Conceptual.
Creation Magic: It grants the ability to imbue magical properties to minerals, creating new ores with special traits. While it also allows the creation of artifacts, the true power of this magic is the ability to manipulate inorganic matter.
Gravity Magic: It grants the user control over gravity. The true power of this magic is the ability to manipulate the planet's energy. It can interfere with a planet's magnetic fields and ley lines, or utilise geothermal energy like magma. It can be used to create earthquakes or volcanic eruptions as well.
Spatial Magic: it allows the user to manipulate the space around themselves, allowing them to either bend or expand said space, or move themselves to another space or location. The true power of this magic is the ability to manipulate boundaries. It can be used to create entire dimensions, as well as manipulate the boundary between fantasy and reality.
Restoration Magic: It allows the user to restore the state of anything to either its previous or original condition. The true power of this magic is the ability to interfere with time, meaning it has the ability to manipulate the time of anything, anyplace or anyone to a point the user desires to. It can also be used to look into the past or potential futures, based on set decision variables.
Spirit Magic: It allows the user to manipulate the soul of a living being directly. It's possible to revive a living being back from the dead (time restriction applicable), or transfer the soul from one body to another, or even into a non-biological body as well, making any living being functionally immortal. The true power of this magic is the ability to manipulate the incorporeal elements of sentient beings. This includes memories, thoughts and consciousness. With enough skill, a spirit magic user can take these incorporeal elements, duplicate them, and create a new soul out of them.
Evolution Magic: It allows the user to enhance or evolve all other forms of power, be it strong or weak, boosting their power and scope. The true power of this magic is the ability to manipulate information. When it is used to strengthen someone's power, it effectively overwrites the "information" of their abilities with something of a higher tier. It can also be used to view the information of any person or object, as well as manipulate their total magic capacity, provided the user is skilled enough.
Metamorphosis Magic: It allows the user to remake the form of a normal being and turn them into a higher form. The true power of this magic is the ability to manipulate any organic matter, meaning not only animals, but it's also possible to remake plants or intelligent beings and reform their structure as needed.
Elemental Magic: It allows the user to manipulate the different elements found in existence. Through different spells, the user can formulate their elemental quantities and energies for various purposes. It's categories are -
a) light magic
b) darkness magic
c) fire magic
d) earth magic
e) wind magic
f) water magic
g) lightning magic
Conceptual Magic: It is a combination of all forms of magic. The main ability of conceptual magic is that it allows one to interfere with the laws of the world and impress concepts upon it. By raising up a powerful wish or desire, it can be actualized to the level of a concept, before being forcefully materialised with raw magical power. If the user's desire is fulfilled, the spell may not remain stable for subsequent use. However, if the desire is still present, it can be used more than once.
HOLY CRAP!! Looks like the old man really came through for me. Full of excitement, I flipped back to the beginning of the book. It started with a few pages on how to access your internal magic, something that needed to be done before you could even begin to learn any spells.
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I would like to say that during the few hours I spent reading, I had mastered all the beginner level spells in the book. Unfortunately, it seemed like this would not be that kind of adventure. Learning magic was not the simple process of reading the book and suddenly knowing exactly how to perform the spell. Nor was it as easy as just saying the right incantation and moving my (non-existent) wand in the right patterns.
Instead, learning to cast a spell or rather spells in general, required precise control over your magic. Luckily I was not completely hopeless. As the book described, the process of learning how to manipulate and control your magic for the first time usually required intense concentration for one or two days worth of meditative sessions, all to get in touch with your inner magic. I was able to work through the process in about four hours. It was still impressive, even though I don't think I would be becoming an Archmage overnight.
The description of how to access my magic was frustratingly vague in most parts, forcing me to bridge the gaps as best as I could. According to the book, the process of drawing magic from your aetherial core is unique to each individual, using visualisation, focusing techniques and even chants to draw the power from within.
I tried doing it in several different ways, until I remembered a video I had seen in The Before. A glowing, molten blob of glass was pulled, pressed and cut until a beautiful art-piece was produced. So, I imagined my core as a sphere of molten glass, which I pulled and drew in long glowing strands.
I can't say exactly how long I spent visualising it, with my eyes closed and the grimoire in my lap, but eventually I could feel heat in my arms, slowly being drawn to my palms. I opened my eyes to see a pure white haze of energy giving off a simmering light, pouring from my palms. I stared at the glowing cloud for a few seconds before shutting it off when I started feeling my magic reserves slowly depleting. It was a hollow feeling, not painful but definitely not pleasant either.
As I stopped using magic, I could feel the pool slowly starting to refill. As a seven year old who was using magic for the first time, my mana pool was pitifully small. I can only hope that would change, either over time or with the help of potions, rituals and enhanced items. Even a few small increments to the amount and speed of magic regeneration would be incredible.
Once I figured out how to pull out my magic, I moved on to actually learning my first spell. For that I put aside all the complex stuff and decided on elemental magic. More specifically, I chose the beginner level spell "Fireball".
In learning how to pull my magic from my core, there was a certain level of personalization, mostly how I controlled and manipulated my magic. But unlike the entirely personal process of drawing out my magic, casting spells had specific actions that the magic must go through before and after leaving my hands.
Rotations, twists, splits, mergings, geometric shapes and a whole variety of different pathways all needed to happen before the magic was forced out of the body. This determined the attribute, power, range, scope, diffusion rate, effusion rate and control rate of the spell.
Other things such as inductivity and sustained duration decided the amount of power generated by the spell. Even how the energy left your body changed depending on what kind of spell you were casting, be it targeted, a spray, on yourself, fired from your hands or your feet, as well as several other spell-casting types.
The problem was that all of that needed to be done, but exactly how it needed to be done depended heavily on your own biological and personality metrics. Everything from your natural attribute to the alignment of your soul influenced this process. This meant that while you knew the the "Fireball" spell started with a spiral matrix, so that your final expulsion could travel through its eye, forcing the charged energy to rotate and follow a tighter pathway, how tight or loose your spiral needed to be was dependent on several personal factors.
The bottom line was that there were two stages to the learning process, starting from memorizing the spell matrix and ending with a long tuning process that required an incredible amount of practice and experimentation. The grimoire repeated at several points that the natural aspect of the magic and spell matrix would ingrain itself in my mind over many uses, meaning that eventually, after reaching a certain proficiency with the spell and acclimatizing its use, the matrix would get easier and easier to create. This would result in me needing less energy to use it as well as making casting it as simple as willing the matrix formation in my mind.
Considering that after three hours of tuning, adjusting and experimenting with the spell matrix I had only cast the spell a handful of times, it would be a long while before I get to that point. In the end, even with the euphoric feeling of performing real magic, my young body could no longer fight the tide of exhaustion washing over me. I felt like I had just spent hours doing hard physical labour instead of sitting on my bed, reading.
As the first rays of dawn peaked around the curtains, I willed the grimoire away, feeling it traveling back inside, probably nestling in my soul. I practiced my first spell a couple more times just to make sure it was all real, and not a lucid dream.
As I stared at the tiny ball of fire hovering over my palm, I looked back on my life till now. Although I had some pretty great moments in The Before, nothing in both my lives could trump what I was feeling right now. It was just, magical. Finally I cut off the supply of magic, watched the Fireball dissipate and leaned back on my pillow, knowing that today was the first day of my journey and wondering just where it would finally take me.
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