Detect Magic

April 7th, 2034

New York, New York, Sol HQ

With another nauseating use of Streya's magic, we were able to open up a proper description of the skill Fire Magic Genius.

—Identified: Fire Magic Genius—

[Fire Magic Genius] (Skill, Tier-4)

Description: A passive skill granted by the class Aspect of Sun at level 70. The skill allows its user to have an uncanny comprehension of spells formed with fire mana, allowing them to tweak and mold such spells with ease.

I was disappointed that the system brought no new revelations. Still, the word "mold" seemed promising for the purposes of what Macy had suggested. I had certainly been tweaking spells, but I wasn't exactly sure what it meant by being able to mold spells.

I looked up at the clock and seeing that it was currently 10 p.m., I let out a meager sigh. Due to my quite large mana pool, it took quite a long time to regenerate. It would be nice to be able to Analyze all of the minute details of the system, among other things, but it would take a few weeks at this rate. Using mana potions wasn't out of the question, but they were rather expensive and I would need a lot of them to completely restore my pool of mana.

Well, all of that didn't matter right now. If I forced myself to do everything in my power to improve all of the time, I'd likely go insane one way or another.

Instead of stressing myself out to death, I spent the rest of the evening reading fantasy novels with Streya. Unfortunately, she couldn't conjure me cups of coffee outside of her subspace, but we had interns around for that.

It was a shame that Christina was so busy running the company. I missed seeing her around all of the time.

And then, a terrible thought struck me: I didn't really know what she looked like. I strained my head to remember her face, but it wouldn't come to me. Unsure if it was just me being tired, I attempted to visualize the faces of people like Maddy, Alton, Gerrath, or Macy. However, nothing was begotten by my efforts.

Maybe I really was losing it.

I abruptly closed the book I had been reading and laid down in bed, hoping that something would change in the morning.

"Are you all right?" Streya asked as I closed my eyes.

"Yeah, I'm just really tired all of the sudden." I didn't have the motivation to explain my current plight to her. I tried to rack my brain to figure out what in the world was going on to no avail.

Tossing and turning while haunted by my troubled thoughts, I eventually fell asleep.

…

The next day, I set off on a quest to enact Macy's plan. Once more heading down into the basement of the building, I found Gerrath sketching something into a notebook in his office.

"Good morning." I greeted him and tried to take a proper look at him.

He was a relatively short man—likely around 170 centimeters tall—and had a wiry build. His hair was kept rather short and had an auburn coloration to it. His face was rather unremarkable, just with barely enough wrinkles to put him somewhere in his 40s.

"Morning, Tom. How can I help?" Gerrath really didn't seem to be a morning person. His tone had an edge of grumpiness to it, albeit one he was trying to conceal.

"You mentioned that you were mass producing spellbooks yesterday. Can I have a tier-0 spell of some sort to practice with? Specifically, one that isn't fire magic. Oh, and then a few blank spellbooks to write on."

"Sure thing. Here, let me find something for you." Gerrath left the office and returned a few minutes later with 6 books in his arms.

He said, "All right, these are Arcane Bolt and Detect Magic. I know Detect Magic is a bit redundant for someone with the Mana Manipulation skill, but it should be a good practice tool because of that."

"Perfect," I said while accepting the books. "Thanks a ton."

Heading back upstairs, I started to read the Detect Magic book first. I quickly skimmed the pages to get a grasp of the spell. Due to housing a mere tier-0 spell, the formulas contained within were quite simple and the book wasn't very long.

Indeed, Detect Magic was going to be quite suitable for my experiments. Since it was a tier-0 spell, it didn't contain a single spell circle; it was composed of magical characters in a less-defined manner, and a lot less of them. I was used to getting spells through my class, but the knowledge imbued into me from those spells applied here.

I opened one of the blank spellbooks and tried to practice merely copying over the text of the original. Gerrath had given me spellbooks suited for tier-1 or 2 spells, so I had plenty of room to work with.

Over 2 hours later, I had filled my practice book in its entirety. My left hand was starting to feel stiff and sore, but I persevered. By no means had I become a master at transcribing spells immediately, but my last 2 transcriptions were legible enough. Someone that knew what they were doing—like me—would be able to use them, I reckoned.

Before immediately diving into it, I meditated on my experience.

Detect Magic was a rudimentary spell that allowed its user to expel a small amount of mana and get a reading back, like sonar. In theory, there was no reason why such a technique wouldn't be usable with fire mana. Hence, the crux of the issue was once again that the magical characters used to perform the magic were incompatible with fire mana.

For the sake of comparison, I decided to dub "pure" mana as arcane mana. Due to being intended for beginners, Detect Magic didn't require any elemental transmutation of arcane mana. All I needed to do was convert the arcane characters into fire characters and arrange them appropriately.

With my task laid out in front of me, I started the rigorous process. I was aided by the Fire Magic Genius skill to get a gist of the conversion required for some of the characters. However, I was ignorant of the purpose of every arcane character and most of the converted fire characters. There wasn't anyone who could help me; discerning the purposes of the building blocks of magic was precisely why creating spells was all but impossible.

Even Streya was in the same boat as me. She explained that she just "did" magic and had never studied its principles.

It ended up taking me 4 hours to get the first draft done. At the very least, my skill helped with the placement of fire characters so I didn't have to bash my head into concrete to figure that part out. Instead of concrete, it was more like wood.

"I need a test chamber," I mumbled to myself as I tried to find somewhere to test the spell out. I didn't really want to blow anyone up by accident, so I rented a jet ski and ended up near the Verrazzano. Despite the tiny amount of mana involved, I had to be certain.

With the spellbook in one hand, I conjured the required characters with the other. I slowly and deliberately pushed my mana through the spell and awaited a reaction. However, as the mana started to link through the characters, one of them dissolved. The mana contained within the spell just fizzled out harmlessly, leaving me sighing in relief.

Since it didn't destroy the spellbook, jet ski, or pen I had, I made some quick adjustments to the spell and tried again. Of course, this time a different character was destroyed during the process.

It took another few hours of trial and error, but I eventually got the spell to stabilize. Unfortunately, it wasn't working as intended. For whatever reason, whenever I cast the spell, the fire mana would get absorbed into the periphery once it was released from the characters. It was likely due to fire mana effectively being heat energy, but I didn't have a good way of fixing that issue at the present.

I tried a few more minor fixes before giving up and starting the ride back home. It was getting late, anyhow. Although the spell never ended up working, I was quite excited. There were definitely signs that this whole experiment would end up being fruitful; I just needed some time to work out the kinks.