Chương 208: The Flaw In Magic

"Demonic Beasts, despite their name, have no discernable negative or evil traits," Professor Martin said as he lectured in Damion's Beastology 2 class.

"While the exact origin of Demonic Beasts is debated, just as the origin and cause of Realm Breaches is still debated, Demonic Beasts have been studied and found to be only slightly different than Ferocious Beasts, just as Ferocious Beasts are only slightly different from normal animals."

"So, why do we call them Demonic Beasts and not Magic Beasts or tier 3 beasts or something less evil sounding?" Eugene Hill asked.

"The origin of the designation, Demonic Beast, is much easier to pin down than where they are from. Our oldest histories show that early knights named them Demonic Beasts because of their magical powers and their being observed as coming out from Realm Breaches. Early knights had yet to study Realm Breaches and few who entered ever returned. In the beginning, Realm Breaches were believed to be portals to the underworld."

Professor Martin's comment caused several students to snicker at what they considered to be the ludicrous idea that knights had once thought Realm Breaches were doorways to the underworld. Over the course of tens of thousands of years, the people of Nerotath had learned magic, grown stronger and delved into the depths of the unknown, but here these young students were looking down on those that paved the way for their current knowledge and Damion could not help but let out a snort of disgust.

"Something to add Mage Wells?" Professor Martin asked.

"I was just finding it amusing that some students appeared to be looking down on the people that laid the foundation for everything we now know."

"Of course you would side with knights," a female student spat. Damion did not know her name or recognize her face, but he found her remark reminiscent of the things Thomas Sorin had been spreading about him early in the first term, so he marked the student down as either a noble or one of Mage Sorin's lackies.

"That is enough Mage Fontane," Professor Martin said.

"Mage Wells was hardly taking a side. He was merely pointing out that it is easy to look back and pride ourselves on what we now know, but we should not forget those who helped us get where we are."

"Exactly," Damion said. Professor Martin's explanation of what he meant was a small part of what Damion found amusing, but mostly he was laughing at how these young mages were so deluded. Though, he did not bring that up since the professor had already defused the situation. Damion took another look at the female mage, Fontane was a noble family he was familiar with. Now he could understand her animosity towards him, but he felt it was misplaced.

He did not know if the Fontane brothers he killed were her older brothers or cousins, but it did not really matter. Even if they had tried to kill him, Damion had still killed members of her family, and he could not help but think she was feeling something similar to how he felt due to the loss of his family. Mage Fontane met Damion's look with a glare from across the classroom, so he faced front and strove to put her out of his mind.

'It would be good to be in the wild, away from people and politics,' Damion thought.

'Perhaps Elicia is right on me joining the Crimson Order.' The rest of Professor Martin's lecture on Demonic Beasts focused on different varieties of beasts and ended with him giving the class a long reading assignment as homework. Damion's next course was Artificing, which he was quite excited for. Ever since his first few days in this world he had been fascinated by artifacts and how they could do basically everything technology could do on Earth.

Over the years he had learned a bit about some artifacts, he had even crawled under his family ground car as a kid to try and see how things might work. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. What Damion discovered, from that small adventure as a toddler and from later experiments and disassembling various artifacts over the years, was that the majority of artifacts worked by using both mechanical and magical forces. Take his family ground car.

It was powered by magic, but magic alone did not make everything in the car function. Magic gave it power, which translated to motion through the use of wheels, turned by axles, set in motion by an engine that used magic to run. Damion did not understand the mechanics of an internal combustion engine from Earth any more than he did a magic engine on Nerotath, but he was eager to learn, especially since how a ground car worked had to be child's play compared to how a tablet functioned.

"An artifact is any item powered by magic. Most of you think of artifacts as weapons or armor. Something used to fight with, but that simply is not true. Most artifacts are mundane items, used in everyday life, without a second thought." Professor Heinrick took his communication tablet out of his pocket and held it so the whole class to see.

"This artifact, most of you would be lost without. Unable to function for a single day because you could not instantly speak with your friends or look up information. But this artifact has only been around for a few ages and only in this form for a few centuries. Just three hundred years ago, communication tablets were not tablets, but large buildings that sent messages between Zones at a very high cost. But now, nearly everyone has one and they cost almost nothing."

Damion listened to Professor Heinrick's lecture with rapt attention. He had not previously given much thought to the progression of artifacts. Just like on Earth, computers and other technology initially required large infrastructure, but they slowly shrunk as technology advanced. On Nerotath it seemed artifacts ran a similar course and once something was invented, it would continue to be refined and improved upon or maybe even replaced by something else at some point.

"It is possible to spend an age, just reviewing how artifacts have advanced with the passage of time, beginning with artifacts that have hardly changed, like basic weapons, swords and spears, and ending with something far more advanced, like magic cannons. But what we will focus on in this class is the core of artifact creation. And first and foremost, in artifact creation is this enchantment." Professor Heinrick waved his hand and in the air above his desk appeared what Damion knew to be a magic seal.

The professor called it an enchantment, but he knew this magic seal was a passive spell, and the first magic seal he had ever learned, Mana Absorption.

"This enchantment makes up the core of nearly every artifact, it is what powers most and supplements nearly all the rest. This is the Mana Absorbing enchantment, study it, learn it, if you ever hope to create an artifact that can power itself, like your communication tablet, or the lights in your homes, this enchantment forms the basis. If you want full points for this class, you will need to create an artifact that makes use of this enchantment."

Looking at the projection in the classroom, Damion could not help but pull up the magic seal for Mana Absorption in his mind. The two, while not entirely identical, were nearly so. With his knowledge of Nashto, he could see that the differences were in the growth of his spell and his ability to manually activate and deactivate the spell. Did this mean it was possible for other mages to learn Mana Absorption? Damion had always wondered why there were no passive spells for any affinities.

When he considered that mages supposedly engraved magic seals on their cores during the memorization process, he thought that was probably why they could not learn passive spells, since their cores did not align to spells without an affinity. But it was clear now that passive spells did exist, through artifacts, through enchantments.

'Can I learn enchantments as passive spells?' Damion thought as he flipped through his textbook looking for other enchantments.

'Or what if… what if I can figure out how to teach other people passive spells?' Ding {Hidden Quest Revealed} [Quest: Discover the Flaw in Magic] [Description: You have realized something does not add up with the way mages on Nerotath learn and practice magic. Discover the flaw they have trapped themselves in.] [Reward: 1, 000 Experience, 10, 000 Store Credit]