Looking at the rewards, Elios thought 'It seems I should get 100 magic gold coins and 48 extra gold coins…' the average written inside the book was 130 – this was because the standard in the wizard tower was slightly higher than in other wizard alliance.
He was slightly excited, then closed this book too.
Although there were a few things that he hadn't fully read through, it wouldn't matter whether he read that part earlier or later.
He looked at the last book and saw it was titled "Runes, Spells and Rings [Special Edition]".
When he saw the last part, he guessed this was why the old lady at the reception told him that he had a special book and not the generally used one.
Opening up, he instantly saw on the first page the explanation on spells.
The more he read, the more his face fell. Not from disappointment, but from surprise that the rumour in his past life was partially right.
People always say "Wizards are mobile dictionaries", like a scientist of sorts. He hadn't reached that point and thought rumours such as this were basically groundless, unless you studied the research path.
But now he understood that it was he who was wrong.
First of all, his previous guess was right – you would use different rune circles, sometimes a single one, sometimes many stacked together, to form the 'platform for spells'.
These rune circles were most of the time copied from your rune ring – that's right, copied!
Apparently, through a special movement, you could copy the circles inside a ring, and only these who have been made your very own foundation.
It wasn't a super-fast technology, but this copying was easier than engraving a new rune, basically, it takes one third the time it takes to engrave a normal rune.
But, the circle you copied and such will only be a platform, for you to engrave a skill, you don't actually rely on runes any longer at this point.
The engraving is now a combination of Intent and Knowledge.
Every spell had a deep knowledge foundation. In the book, the example was an easier to understand one: Vince Control. It was a spell of then elemental faction which is used to control vines.
The knowledge required to cast this spells is the Basic Plant Elemental Power, Basic Vine Movement, Basic Mana Control, and a few smaller ones. These were books, one would have to read, memorize and understand them, before one could engrave them.
And this knowledge always had to be called out when you casted the spell.
Although some books were a general field, such as Basic Plant Elemental Power and Basic Mana Control, for every spell, there were still additional books to learn from.
Then, once you have the knowledge, you have to use intent to engrave the spell into your spell platform. This intent is very vaguely described, it was like compressing all your knowledge into a pen and then writing down the name of the spell, full of… intent.
'In the end, no matter how scientific wizardry seems, it's still magic and not science. Else, arcanists would've long taken over the whole Wizard Alliance. Instead, they can barely stand as a strong faction comparable to the oldest ones.'
He smiled and flipped through the book. The later chapters actually described various basic rune and spell knowledge, until he finally arrived at the last point, Rune Ring.
This chapter was also marked as special, which confused Elios – this was clearly a topic for everyone, why would it be special?
The first sentence made his eyes gleam slightly:
"Three is the Foundation, Six is the ability, Nine is the supreme! The Arcane Warlock already has Three, which is the trinity foundation of Body, Magic and Soul. Six is said to be the ability of having mastered various things – the six abilities refer to having mastered a faction withing the three paths of Creation, Research and Warlock.
These six abilities are also based on the strongest faction: one should take the strongest faction of each path, and then an additional faction to define your own way. The strongest factions are Potion Makers and Alchemists of the Creation Path, Arcanists and Body Transmutationists of the Research Path and Bloodline Transformation and Elementalism of the Warlock Path.
Choose one of each faction, then choose another that will fit you best.
Nine is the number of rings –
In the ancient times, Wizards didn't know how to advance. The first stage is practically creating something out of nothing. Many times this seems more difficult, but once you have done it, your thoughts will remain in this path of research.
But, the second stage is not about creating something out of nothing, not at all. The second and third stages are accumulation. Now we know that rings are also split into normal stages and higher stages, after the third stage will be the second real sublimation, the first is the first stage after one has transcended mortal life.
So, not knowing this, the ancient wizards had no way to advance for a long time, until there was one genius wizard – Great Wizard Laos of the Nine Rings, we only know his first name, the title Nine Rings has been given to him for his great accomplishment.
He continued to form more rings, not rune circles and spells such as others, but truly more rings. To do this, having a normal ring formed isn't possible – instead, one has to have a meditation rune ring, at that time, this wasn't known, not even slightly.
It is said he shattered all his rings and then built them anew based on his theory.
Now we know this courageous move was the right one. He created the first Meditation Rune. The specialness of Meditation Runes is that they are not perfect, across all paths, none are perfect.
Why do we form a rune ring from 27 rune strings instead of 30? The reason is simple – to leave these 3 as connection spaces…"
The book continued talking slightly about this while Elios' jaw had long dropped.
"So this is how it is!" he exclaimed, finally having understood a deeper matter of the wizard world!