Markets and Multiverses (A Serial Transmigration LitRPG)
Chapter 362: Eldurian Spellcasting

“The first thing we should do is go over your options,” said Veridian, as she turned towards Anise. “Wait… actually, I have an idea. Normally, I would just teach Anise the Hylian magic system, and teach you the Alyndian magic system. But, while I haven’t discussed this one with the others yet, I think they’d love it. And it might let you really make a difference. Are you interested?”

I blinked in surprise. Elder Veridian had sounded pretty disappointed earlier, but I could see a spark of excitement in her face again. I turned towards Anise, who hesitantly nodded.

“We’ll at least hear you out,” I said.

“All right. What I’m thinking is related to your nature as heroes, as well as your ability to test things out. As I’m sure you’ve already learned, our access to older magic systems is quite restricted. A big part of this is because we lost a lot when we fled to the sanctuaries… but a lot of it is also due to our incredibly restricted Essence production. When we still had access to the planets, we had a lot of ‘essence vents’ scattered across the continent. All of these produced lots of essence-rich soil, which we could use to at least maintain a reasonably large quantity of essence-crops. Back in those days, limitations on magic were nowhere near as bad as they were today. The limitations on a country’s magical potential were based on how many people were born with the right potential, rather than today, where we can’t even afford to train every potential magic user. As a result, back in the old days, people also have the essence to actually try researching new magic systems, unlike now, where we barely have enough to keep the city defended.”

I was starting to see where she was going with this.

“So, are you asking us to provide essence for magic research somehow?” I asked.

Elder Veridian nodded.

“Specifically, what I’m thinking is that I’ll let you two practice all of the magic systems for the essences you have available. Anise has access to manifestation essence, and you have access to absorption and alteration, right? If you two don’t use your essence, it goes to waste when your pool is full. In other words, you don’t have to hoard your essence like other people - instead, you need to spend it as much as possible, as long as it’s done in a way that’s actually useful. A big reason why we’ve never restored some of the old magic systems is because we don’t have enough essence to even try to mess with them and figure out how they worked. On the other hand, if you two are willing, I could try teaching you how what we know about the old magic systems, and maybe you can restore them through trial and error?” Elder Veridian looked more than a little hopeful. “There are some risks involved, and you might hurt yourself - but Miria can heal injuries very effectively, and no screw-up will result in you exploding on the spot or something. So any damage should be possible to fix without much trouble.”

I looked at Anise, and her eyes were shining like tiny stars.

“That sounds amazing! I’d love to have multiple magic systems to pull from!” she said.

Veridian grinned. “How about you, Miria?”

“I’m at least willing to hear about the other magic systems that haven’t been restored. From there, I’ll think about it,” I said.

“Fair enough. Since Anise seems more eager, how about we start there?”

Anise nodded, and pulled closer to Elder Veridian. She was nearly vibrating in excitement, which nearly made me chuckle. It was nice, seeing Anise still be just as excited about magic as always.

“Well then, let’s start with Anise. I’m a bit more familiar with Manifestation essence than the other three essences. Manifestation essence originally had three major magic systems. The one we still mostly use today is the Hylian magic system, which is particularly good at summoning fire.

“Fire might seem odd to you, because it doesn’t exist in the natural world. It seems to be completely made up, whereas most magic systems at least roughly pull other elements out of reality…” Elder Veridian spaced out for a few moments, before she shrugged. “Either way, fire is quite useful against the Formless hive. Fire can warp and harm flesh, and because it doesn’t exist in the natural world, it’s extremely difficult to defend against. In general, it is similar to acid in how it can damage things, but it is far less prone to causing property damage if it lands on something like a wooden house.”

I blinked. Fire caused less damage to wooden houses than acid did? This world’s physics really were weird, at least compared to my expectations.

“The Hylian magic system does have several flaws, though. It is mostly based around small, energy-efficient attacks. It seriously struggles to keep any level of energy efficiency when it comes to bigger attacks, and it also takes a few seconds to prepare a Hylian magic attack. This is why I want to introduce you to the other two magic systems. The Eldurian system, in particular, is fascinating. The Eldurian magic system allows the user to manifest physical or magical representations of certain culturally accepted images. For example, if lots of people had seen a play about a swordsman who had some sort of mount-splitting cut, a user of the Eldurian magic system could manifest a real version of that attack, as long as they had enough essence and enough people were aware of its existence. It was built around manifesting an illusion of a special attack or object, and then spending more essence to make it real. We still know how to manifest the illusions, but experiments on making those real tapered off, because they were too expensive.

“The other magic system is the Arcane school of magic - it used to be very good at manipulating raw manifestation essence, although it was mostly used for research projects and to help enchanting projects. We know less about this magic system, but we do know that it was an alternate way to create enchanted objects, one based around manifestation instead of the usual binding essence. These enchanted objects tended to be far better at enhancing the already-existing powers of a spellcaster, but were useless for doing things like launching attacks on their own or physically strengthening the user. If I try to teach you this magic system, we’re going to read a lot of old texts and try to piece together what the original magic system was supposed to look like.

“Which magic system do you want to learn about? We should start with just one, although we can learn the others later if you’re interested.”

“I like the Eldurian system,” said Anise. “I can already replace a lot of the Hylian system with my unique magic system, and it doesn’t sound like there’s much to research in that magic system to begin with. Meanwhile, the Arcane magic system doesn’t meet any immediate needs of the sanctuary, while the Eldurian one sounds like a good way to handle large, powerful enemies. I also think it’s more interesting.”

“Fair enough,” said the old lady. “In that case, watch closely. I’ll start out by showing you what an illusion looks like. Everyone knows what stars look like, so it’s a pretty common cultural image. ” The elder concentrated, and I felt her start to pull essence out of her body and towards her hand. A moment later, a human eyeball appeared in her hand… which looked exactly like the human eyeballs that dotted the rest of the sky. This dimension really was weird, and I had no idea whether it started that way or if the corporation had made it this way.

Just like the stars in the sky, the human eyeball emitted light, although something about it felt wrong. I frowned, before I put my hands in front of it.

No heat.

Every other source of light in this dimension was also hot. The two seemed to be the same thing in some sort of twisted, incomprehensible way. Why was this light different?

“It’s an illusion. That’s why the light doesn’t make things hotter,” said Veridian. “I’m surprised you figured it out so quickly. It’s the weirdest thing ever. Light that isn’t hot.” She snorted dismissively.

“Interesting,” I said. “What limits are there to abilities or objects that can be manifested?’

“Well, we aren’t too sure,” said the elder. “Too many of our records regarding what happens when you make an object or ability ‘real’ are missing, and some of what we have left seems to contradict other bits of information we have. But we do know for sure that most things are possible. Stopping time, creating swords that can cut through almost anything… all of these are possible. But, a few things aren’t possible, such as time travel. Also, ‘absolute’ abilities can’t be created. You can’t make yourself invincible to all physical attacks, or anything like that - even temporarily. You can make yourself highly resistant, but just like with every other magic system, there are limits. Finally, artifacts created through this magic system are temporary. Once the artifact runs out of fuel, it disappears. Beyond that… well, hopefully Anise will be able to tell us what the limitations are. We haven’t had a working example of a ‘real’ illusion in over seven thousand years.”

“Is the magic system cheaper if more people believe in it, or something like that?” asked Anise.

The old lady cracked a grin. “Good! You’re thinking seriously about it. Yes, things do get cheaper the more people know about an ability. They don’t have to believe in it, though. They just have to understand what something is. Nobody believes that the characters from a fictional story or play are real, but they can still understand the magic and artifacts in that story or play. This magic system needs cultural recognition, not belief.”

Anise nodded. 

“Does that answer your last questions?” asked Veridian. After a few seconds of silence, the old lady grinned.

“Then let’s get started. Anise, I want you to start out with a star as well, because it’s well-known and easy to verify the success of. The very first step is to form a sort of extra eyeball, but one made entirely out of manifestation essence. Most records say that this eyeball could be placed anywhere on your body, although the forehead tended to be the most common spot for it. This eyeball will let you see people’s beliefs. This should appear to you as a giant network of beliefs, ideas, and images, cascading through the air around you. You will then need to take a belief and pull it out of this network of images. Things that more people are familiar with will appear bigger, and feel more solid when you try to reach out for them. The eyeball is a bit hard to create, but I will walk you through how I created my illusory eyeball first…”

I sat and watched as Anise and elder Veridian went over the basics of how to use this magic system. Even though the old lady was focusing on Anise first, I felt a rush of hope as she went over the magic system with Anise.

It might not be enough to cut off this world’s reliance on heroes, but we were finally making some kind of progress. If we could find a way to improve the self-defense abilities of our flying island, that would make this world’s lack of heroes better… and also net us a huge amount of Influence Achievement. I couldn’t even imagine how much achievement we would get for reviving a long-dead magic system, especially if it was useful.

I just hoped that these long-forgotten magic systems would be enough to clue us into what I really wanted - a way to truly make this dimension self-sufficient.