Rules of the Worlds

- I'm pretty sure he's not lying, just a bit dumb and ignorant. So whatever, I either found a goldmine or found someone that can lie better than that one guy I had to interrogate back at the space marines and was led completely astray. That one was a hell of an a*shole... - Zora's suddenly shook his head to snap out of the pointless reminiscence.

"Okay, let's do this. What do you need me to do?"

"Ah, finally! I mean, I'll teach you a magic spell, you just have to perform it. I'm glad it was burnt into my core, I have no idea what I would do if it eroded like the rest in the storage... Anyway, it goes something like this."

What followed was a few hours of frustrated exchange between a pretentious teacher and a frustrated student. 

Zora lacked the proper theoretical knowledge to handle the magic the Necronomicon required of him. He was only ever taught elemental magic that is based on the orbs of power to operate, while the fusion magic he was supposed to do was elementless, using pure mana without focus points.

It's not that it was much harder to accomplish, its just he never had to do it before. The Necronomicon on the other hand was a bad teacher. To be honest he was never supposed to teach, just store knowledge and help with research. An annoying part of the new job he has taken up. He had to teach both of his previous masters too and it never got any easier.

By the time Zora finally managed to learn every part of the magic to at least a servicable level, the book was barely able to contain his excitement. 

It was the last chance for Zora to back out of the deal, but he didn't even consider backing down.

The idea, that even if everything goes south he will still revive and he'll just try again next time, was so deeply rooted into his personality, that his self-preservation instinct highly degraded over the uncountable years of his long journey. Thus he pushed forward without a second thought.

When everything was ready, Zora started chanting in the language of power. He needed this, because that language can seemingly facilitate the handling of magical energies, something he is in dire need of because of his lack of experience and finesse at handling elementless magic.

With enough practice he could use wordless elementless magic too, but that takes time, its far off into the future.

After a few minutes of chanting and concentrating pure mana started congregating around and between Zora and the book, invisibly building a thin rope of magical binding.

It was a long process, possibly because the nature of the magic, but more likely because of the many complex systems that make up the spell.

Zora was familiar with the concept of chanting to make it easier for people with lacking talent to produce way better results then what they normally would be capable of. It seems like this world favors chanting magic much more, as if there is a slight barrier when using chantless magic, making it harder to properly utilize it, while magic with chants work just as fine as in any of his previous worlds.

There is a really interesting hypothesis Zora formed during his travel in the multiverse. Its impossible to prove, but is something he spent countless days and nights thinking about.

He theorized, that all worlds are running parallel to each other in time, meaning they started at the same time and are always the same age wherever he goes. This should mean that there is a huge river of time, in which these tiny (not so tiny) worlds flow next to each other.

What he found is the trend that civilizations progress is only as advanced as their worlds quality lets them. For example for those worlds with magic the easier it is for its inhabitants to use magic the faster they will advance. For those worlds without magic its possible that there is something else that influences the quality of the world.

In one of his previously mentioned lives he was a high ranking officer in a space marine corps. Studying that world he found out the chances of intelligent life being born is way higher than in others. There is a range in which most worlds stay when it comes to chances of intelligent life to develop, but that one was far off into the positive end of the spectrum. Which meant there were many civilizations before and probably will be after them, as such the technological marvels one species create would carry on to the next, if they were to find it. 

For average worlds even if there are multiple civilizations after each other, the time between their existences are so huge, that its impossible to have much technological boost even if the latter manages to find the remnants of those before them.

Also the difference between magical and technological worlds is huge. Magic strengthens the magician, granting power and insight, which all promotes individualism and the pursuit of science for the sake of personal gains. These worlds are ruled with an iron fist by the most talented individuals standing at the top of the world.

In technological worlds the simple existence of new technology doesn't benefit its researcher most of the time. Technological advancement is encouraged by the community, the prospect of consumers buying new and fancy devices. Or any military technology is developed by a community's government, once again to strengthen the standing of the whole community, instead of a single individual (again, most of the time [its safe to assume that dictatorships don't go a long way]).

Considering this logical deduction says even though this world is magical, its probably not very advanced. Instead of boosting a single path of magic, which would help the inhabitants of the world flourish, there is a restriction, which means the quality of magic is slightly lower than in other worlds.

Even though natural mana is wild and abundant here, it is a tiny bit less likely for humans to properly use it. Considering this tiny disadvantage carried over millions or billions of years of life in this world, its safe to assume, that the end result puts any civilization here way back.

Also the intelligent life producing factor seems to be quite high in this world too, considering there was a previous civilization the "Old Gods" not long ago, which left behind many artifacts and some knowledge possibly. The volatility of magical worlds is put on full display with this.