Chương 209: Possible Solutions

The hidden quest notification surprised Damion, but when he read the reward for it, he was quite eager to get started, unfortunately he was still in class. Still, he devoted his attention to his new quest instead of the lecture. What the quest meant by the 'discover the flaw' was somewhat ambiguous. Was he supposed to find a way to teach other mages how to use passive spells? What about knights? If their cores were formed properly and they did not have an affinity, would that not mean they might be able to?

Or was it something more fundamental, related to magic cores themselves? Thinking back on Mage Teft's lessons from last term regarding multiple affinities and how mages were unable to balance the forces of magic in their core told Damion something did not add up. He had multiple affinities, and the Magic System informed him he could acquire all affinities. Fundamentally he was still human, the System just gave him shortcuts.

Logically, that meant other people should be able to use magic that was not their affinity or acquire additional affinities like he had. The Magic System had told him that his affinity was engraved on his magic core and that when mana was pulled through the affinity to a spell it became aligned for use with a specific affinity. Did that mean other people's affinities were not engraved on the core? But in the core perhaps?

What else could explain why his mana core was just a pool of unaligned mana but others had cores specific to their affinity and had to split their mana pool for multiple affinities. Damion already knew finding an answer to these questions would not be easy. Mage Teft had told him that magic cores lose any magic seals engraved on them when a person died, making it very difficult to study cores.

'But what about the affinity?' Damion suddenly questioned.

'Demonic Beasts have magic cores that are aligned with a specific affinity and that affinity persists after the death of the Demonic Beast. Wouldn't that mean the affinity of a core for a human would persist after death as well?' Now Damion realized he had a two-fold problem. He could not exactly study a human's magic core and compare it to a Demonic Beast's magic core, not without finding some way to look inside a person.

Mage Teft had once told him it was illegal to try and study a human's magic core, since the only way to do so was to open a person up and examine it while they were alive. This brought to Damion's mind an idea he had briefly considered in the past, but since he had no idea how the technology worked on Earth or how artifacts worked on Nerotath, he had no way to know if it was feasible or not. Still, it should be possible.

Now that he understood that artifact enchantments were passive spells, with his understanding of Nashto, he should be able to design at least a rudimentary spell to let him look inside a person. If that spell was turned into an artifact, then he would be the creator of Nerotath's first magic x-ray. With that he should be able to look at magic cores in humans and Demonic Beasts and his own to figure out what was flawed.

Professor Heinrick's lecture on artifacts ended and the class was dismissed to go to lunch, which did not hold much interest to Damion, since he was still trying to work out how to scan a person and project that image. Projecting the image should be the easy part, most tablets could already do that, so he doubted he would even need to create a new artifact for that.

He might have to figure out how to transmit the data from his scanning artifact to a tablet, but first he would need to work out how the scan would work. True Sight held some clues. The passive spell allowed him to identify Ranks of people and items and according to the Magic System, once it advanced to B Rank, he would be able to see more information. Obviously, this meant the spell was capable of accessing people.

What he needed was a way to make it assess the insides of a person, once he had that, he could refine it to spy on a person's magic core. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. The idea of examining a testing crystal came to mind, as the device obviously somehow sent a pulse of magic into a person and that pulse was translated to read the affinity of a person's core, their mana capacity and even their magic power.

But he did not have access to one, so all he could do was ponder how they worked. What he needed, was a way to safely send magic into a person to find out what their core looked like. After lunch, Damion sat in Alchemy class, which if he were not so preoccupied, he would have found fascinating. Professor Heinrick showed them the process most potions and salves went through to be made. To Damion alchemy looked like a mix of cooking and chemistry.

Some ingredients where ground down into small pieces and placed in beakers and test tubes, heated or chilled to harvest just certain parts of the original. Other ingredients were dropped into pots whole. Knowing how to prepare each type of herb or extract from a Ferocious Beast was essential. But what was equally important was the process of mixing everything together to make healing salves, mana potions and even healing potions.

'Healing spells,' Damion realized as he watched Professor Heinrick's demonstration.

'Holy and Light spells could enter a person and not hurt a person. All I need to do is tailor a spell to pass through a certain area or the whole body and then return to the artifact and transmit everything as an image to project.' As Damion worked through his idea, he realized that a spell or enchantment that could do what he was asking was not an easy thing to create.

If the artifact created could send a pulse through a person and then the user controlled the magic by willing it to map and return, it might be possible, but it was certainly not an easy task. When willing magic to do something a person's will can affect the magic, it would be too easy for a person's will to affect the result of the scan by what they wanted to see, or thought would be there. Even subconsciously, a person's will could change the results. He needed to develop an artifact to do it all.

His last classes of the day were Wilderness Survival, taught by Professor Elden Moretti and Theurgy, which was taught by both Professor Toole and Professor Holden. In Professor Moretti's class Damion was instantly bored. Most of the class was reviewing what types of items were needed in an adventurer's kit. Having long since created his kit and even upgraded it several times over the years, Damion did not pay attention and continued to focus on his artifact project.

Theurgy, however, offered Damion a few insights to his quest. Professor Toole lectured on the nature of magic.

"Magic has been shown to flow from Realm Breaches. The higher the Rank of a Breach, the more ambient mana flows from it. From this we can assert that mana, and thus magic, is a form of energy, much like heat and follows the law of entropy, slowly moving to become uniform across existence.

"The expelling of mana from Breaches also shows that wherever Breaches originate from, has an extremely high level of ambient mana as even F Rank Breaches contain more ambient mana than our world.

"Since the creation of the first magic seals and our ability to determine someone's affinity through testing, our knowledge of magic and our ability to use magic has greatly expanded. Perhaps one day, we will even be able to determine the source of Breaches or possibly prevent their appearance."

"Professor, how do the testing crystals work?" Damion asked.

"That question might be best answered by Professor Heinrick, but in general the testing crystals send out a pulse of Light magic to see what affinity a person is aligned with and then the crystal displays the result."

"How did we come up with a way to read a magic core, I thought it was illegal to study cores?"

"It is illegal to cut a person open and study their core, obviously, so the study of Demonic Beast Cores was essential in the creation of the device. Plenty of people donated their bodies to be studied after death and through a great deal of trial-and-error testing crystals were developed. Once testing crystals were made and people had a way to tell their affinities, then magic began advancing much faster, since it was easier for people to focus on magic that they could use."

Professor Toole's explanation filled in some blanks for Damion, but there were still gaps in the explanation. He considered asking Professor Heinrick, but in the end, he decided having a testing crystal to take apart and examine the magic seals was likely a quicker path to finding the flaw his quest asked him to discover.