Markets and Multiverses (A Serial Transmigration LitRPG)
Chapter 363: Alteration Magic Systems

After Veridian spent several minutes going over visualization exercises, Anise got into the swing of things. She didn’t have a proper ‘illusory eye’ formed yet, but she was at least heading in the right direction. Veridian seemed happy with Anise’s progress, so she turned her attention to me.

“Before we get started, just to confirm, you were also interested in learning an incomplete magic system too, right?”

I thought about it.

“I’m willing to try, but… honestly, I don’t think I’m as good at research as Anise is,” I said. Anise had a very strong imagination, but since she was also willing to put in a lot of hard work for things she wanted, that made it far easier for her to research new topics. She had done a wonderful job of putting together how the Zelyrian spellcasting system worked last world, despite being the only living practitioner of the magic system on the entire planet. Putting together a learning system for herself out of a few old textbooks couldn’t have been easy. “I am still willing to try it, but only if I think one of the fragmented magic systems is compatible with me, or if I think that magic system offers something the sanctuary desperately needs,” I said, after some thought. “Also, if possible, I’d like to focus on Alteration essence.”

There was no need to steal Sallia’s potential future options, after all. Researching a new magic system that had remained incomplete for thousands of years would be insanely hard. One of the only reasons I thought we had a chance was because we had special affinity for certain types of essence, which would help us greatly during the research process. Trying to do this without that benefit would probably be nightmarishly hard.

“Hmm…” I could see that Veridian looked disappointed, although she hid it well. 

“Very well. I’ll still describe the four magic systems built around alteration essence, and then let me know what you want to learn.”

“Sure,” I said.

“First, and most obvious, is the current system of alteration magic used - the ability to amplify magic. This actually isn’t a ‘complete’ magic system, because we did lose a significant chunk of information about it. However, the information we lost and have yet to recover was how to use that magic to ‘counterspell’ other magic systems. Back when times weren’t quite so dire, there were rare but occasional outbreaks of war between different kingdoms of people. This magic system was exceptional because users were sometimes capable of outright halting an enemy’s attempts to use essence. However, for obvious reasons, nobody wars with the other sanctuaries anymore.” 

Huh. Interesting. The occasional war wasn’t that surprising to me - after all, where there was people, there was conflict. However, I was surprised that people had managed to remain united for over seven millenia, even in the face of disaster. Even if I took into account how long people lived in this dimension, that was an incredible display of unity and focus on the future.

I could also see why this part of the magic system had been lost. With people in this dimension acting so united with each other, it really would be very hard to find a reason to rebuild the ‘counterspelling’ part of the magic system. I couldn’t help but wonder whether the corporation that managed this world had intentionally kept this branch of magic alive specifically to appeal to transmigrators, because it seemed unlikely for it to survive without outside interference. People in this dimension just weren’t conflict-prone enough, especially if this part of the magic system had little use against the hive.

“Anyway, the biggest part of this system is amplifying other magic systems,” said Elder Veridian, as she grinned wickedly. “That might seem boring, but it’s actually the key to some of the city’s final defenses against powerful raids. You see, a lot of monsters have pretty specific weaknesses against certain things - such as the giant leviathan earlier this week, which struggled to maintain its form against ‘flesh-warping’ effects. In the old days, the Eldurian magic system was explicitly used to find and exploit these weaknesses. However, once the Eldurian branch of magic died off, that wasn’t an option anymore. To make up for it, we use a mixture of amplification and enchanted items. The city defenders identify a weakness, use the most similar enchanted item available, and then amplify it as much as possible before hitting the monster.” Elder Veridian cackled. “It keeps essence costs as low as possible.” 

I sighed. Hearing that every monster had specific weaknesses, and that specific elements could counter them, made me suspect that these ‘weaknesses’ were built into monsters by design. It probably made it way easier to help Transmigrators farm Slaughter Achievement. After all, Achievement seemed to be based on the overall power of a monster, and while a monster would be weaker if it had some kind of major weakness, killing monsters way stronger than you were seemed like an excellent way to farm Achievement.

I just hoped my guess was correct. If that was the case, we would have much better odds than we had expected in this world. We might have some way to make up for our small essence pools.

“All right, that sounds really useful,” I said. “What do you think would happen if Anise succeeded, and then I amplified whatever she built? If she always used magic that a monster was weak to, and then I amplified it… we could do some real damage to even the stronger and more threatening raids. But tell me about the other systems. I can at least hear more before I decide what I want to focus on,” I said. Of course, I would be empowering more than just Anise - I would eventually be strengthening Felix and Sallia as well, if I did end up focusing on amplification magic. I suspected this was the one I would want the most long-term.

“Well, the second one is focused on ‘dimensional terraforming.” My eyes widened. “The idea is to temporarily bend the laws of reality, making the world itself work in different ways. Of course, this type of magic also has a huge drawback. Trying to maintain an ‘altered’ rule becomes more and more expensive, because the laws of reality are self-correcting. If you try to, for example, make the world no longer have gravity, the rest of the universe will constantly try to ‘straighten out the issue.’ So as far as we know, these transformations are all temporary, and tend to cost absurd amounts of essence. I don’t think many people ever bothered studying this magic system, apart from heroes, who had far more essence to waste on idle curiosity than regular spellcasters. Even then, as far as I know, heroes never seem to put this type of magic to very good use. Nobody is quite sure why.”

I frowned.

Why would other heroes hesitate to use this magic system?

Perhaps it was possible to make these transformations a bit more ‘permanent’ than the natives thought was possible?

Or perhaps it was possible to accidentally break everything and shatter this dimension. I just didn’t know enough to guess, since I had never used the magic system before. However, while I had originally intended to focus on the amplification magic system, this one was actually very interesting. I wasn’t quite sure how learning a new magic system would interact with my previous keyword ability, but maybe I could get my next ability evolution by combining the two magic systems? That might help me get the eldritch ability evolution I was hoping for… or it might give me a totally new keyword ability that I didn’t have the Achievement or the keyword slots for.

“I am very interested in the dimensional terraforming magic system,” I said. It was worth a shot, and if it didn’t work, I could still enact my original plan to get an Eldritch Ability evolution. However, if I did get an Ability upgrade by terraforming an entire dimension to make it more friendly for the natives, I would probably get a really, really good evolution. That was worth doing some experimentation for.

Elder Veridian smiled at my words.

“More than the amplification magic system?”

“Probably,” I said. “Tell me about the other two.”

“The third magic system is one built around flesh manipulation. It lets you use magic to alter your physique, which can make you an exceptional archer, or swordswoman, or anything else, really. It’s all about boosting your physical body. It also has some healing aspects to it, at least if you use it right. The original magic users of this system could rebuild flesh and even missing limbs without much trouble. Unfortunately, we simply don’t know how they did it anymore. We’re missing too much knowledge about this one.”

Meh. I wasn’t that interested in this magic system. It would be almost entirely useless to me. I could see why the sanctuary would want this magic system rebuilt, since magic healing wasn’t very widely available in this world, but I didn’t think that magic healing would be enough to turn things around for the natives here. I felt that some dimensional terraforming was probably a better method of changing things for the better, and for my own personal advancement. Perhaps I could find a way to make the astral tides permanent, instead of seasonal. That would give the sanctuaries all the time they needed to build new sanctuaries and plot a way to retake the planet.

“The fourth magic system is built around mental attacks via the use of illusions. The idea is something like this - if I summoned an illusory dagger with this system and then cut you with it, while it wouldn’t pierce your skin, it would cut your mind and hurt you a lot.” Elder Veridian shrugged. “Or at least that’s how it’s supposed to work. We don’t even know how to get this magic system started, so if you want to learn about this one, we’ll be piecing together a lot of old, fragmented records.”

I was actually kind of interested in this magic system as well, but I didn’t think it was my main focus. 

“I want to focus on dimensional terraforming,” I said. “I want to help somehow, and I have an idea. What if I could make the Astral tides more frequent, or something? What if I could find a way to resummon the Astral Tides every time a dangerous raid was near the sanctuary, or even found a way to make the astral tides permanent?”

Elder Veridian smiled, and then gently patted my head.

“That would be amazing, Miria. But remember - altering the environment, even temporarily, is very expensive. With your essence pool… I’m not sure if it’s possible.”

“It still interests me,” I said. “Besides, I’m not the only one using this magic system, right? If I rebuild it, maybe someone with a bigger pool will be able to use this to make more essence-growing areas… or to fight off a particularly dangerous raid.”

Elder Veridian nodded.

“That’s true. All right, let’s get started,” she said. “The first thing I need you to do is focus on the world around us. Alteration is already a volatile essence, prone to warping magic systems and reality around it, but that also makes it harder to control, if you don’t structure it properly. For this type of magic system, what you need to do is to first create a focus area, where you want to manipulate the laws of reality. The bigger of a change you make, the more essence it is going to cost, and the larger the area, the higher the essence cost. Therefore, to start out with, I want you to make a ‘focus field’ about the size of your pinky, and try to create it inside of that wooden box,” she said, as she singled out a wooden box in the corner. “Then, I want you to try to get a sense for what the laws of reality inside of that area are, because if you want to make changes to reality, you first need to understand what it is. We’re going to spend a lot of time working on essence control and sensing before we even try to change anything…”