Chapter 103: Chapter 102 Easy-to-Understand Arcane Magic (Part 2)
“…Are you really learning magic for the first time?”
Rex glared fiercely at Fang Zheng, like a ravenous wolf ready to devour him, and Fang Zheng simply nodded in response.
“Of course, Mr. Rex.”
Looking at Fang Zheng before him, Rex really wanted to smack him across the face. Although he didn’t think this young man had much potential, as a teacher, he was naturally committed to teaching wholeheartedly. Although the White Tower and the Sanctuary didn’t get along well, he still had to do the job well. The “textbook” he had given to Fang Zheng was a beginner’s textbook studied by all Mages in the Magitech Nation.
But… normally speaking, those Mages would need at least a year to grasp the contents!
You’ve mastered it in two days and then you come here asking me what to do next?
Rex had seen his fair share of remarkably talented Mages. The Sanctuary had Holy Spirit Knights and Divine Favorers, and there were similar beings among the Mages since both groups worshipped the Goddess of Order. But… someone who could master the basics of spells in just two days was unheard of to Rex!
Oh, right, the kid hadn’t even chanted the Spell Text; he used Silent Spell!
Compared to Rex, Fang Zheng seemed quite composed, not because he was pretending to be, but after going through modern educational trials, Fang Zheng didn’t find these materials challenging. The so-called Magic Runes just needed to be memorized like an Elemental Periodic Table—didn’t everyone emerge victorious from their college entrance exams by doing just that?
As for Spell Text? He refused to believe it could be more difficult than C++, which ranged from beginner to grave!
In fact, it was quite simple.
Perhaps Spell Text was indeed challenging for the average person, but for Fang Zheng, who had survived coding, how could Spell Text, which was infinitely simpler than code, pose a challenge? There were no circular references or destructor functions to worry about, just a game of text elimination—how hard could that be?
As for Silent Spell… of course, Fang Zheng wasn’t aware of the principles behind Silent Spell, but after reading the whole textbook, he grasped its essence. After all, it’s easier to invoke and remember words when you vocalized them, so Mages chanted spells not because they needed to, but because it helped reinforce memory while utilizing the Power of the Soul to trace Runes.
However, for Fang Zheng, who possessed a Perfect Body, his memory, though not quite as perfect as those with absolute recall, wasn’t far off, so he didn’t need to chant and could quickly use the Power of the Soul to trace Magic Runes in his mind and Release spells.
Unfortunately, Fang Zheng had also wanted Nymph to learn magic incidentally, but Nymph just couldn’t cast spells. Oddly enough, Nymph could invade others’ spells to control them; however, she was incapable of casting even a Level Zero Trick. Of course, this definitely wasn’t a matter of her intelligence; as an Artificial Angel, Nymph truly had a photographic memory, grasping things upon a single exposure, but she just couldn’t Release magic, which was quite awkward.
Rex looked at Fang Zheng with a complex expression, at a loss for words. Similar to the Sanctuary, anyone wishing to enter the White Tower had to undergo a thorough investigation. They had also received information about Fang Zheng from the Sanctuary. According to the information, this young man was of Fallen Nobility, and his abilities were decent. But there had never been any evidence that he knew magic before, only that the immortal old man had once mentioned some special traits about this young man…
Could there really be someone so favored by the Goddess in this world?
Of course, if translated into Fang Zheng’s world terms, what was going on in Rex’s mind would be, “To cheat so egregiously, how are other players supposed to survive? Don’t think you can do whatever you want just because you’re clinging to a GM’s coattails! Everyone’s here to win!”
After the initial shock, what Rex felt was anger and excitement.
The cause of his anger was—such a promising magic talent had been squandered by those immortals at the Sanctuary!
And what excited him was—he might witness the emergence of a legend!
Hehehe, who knows how far this kid can go?
Thinking this, Rex narrowed his eyes, fell silent for a moment, and then stood up to look at Fang Zheng.
“Very well, since you have passed the basic test, next, you must choose your own specialization faction,” he said.
For Fang Zheng, the spells of this world were completely foreign to him, but after some fervent cramming, he had finally grasped the formation of spells in this world.
In the Main World, spells were divided into eight major systems.
Protection Class, Spellcraft System, Prophecy System, Enchantment School, Shaping Type, School of Illusions, Necromancer Class, and Transmutation.
The Protection Class, as the name suggests, specialized in defensive and isolative spells. If one were to elaborate, the Protection Class would be the sturdiest shield among the magic, used to shield mages from harm and isolate enemies.
To Fang Zheng’s understanding from his world, the Spellcraft System resembled that of a summoner. The essence of the Spellcraft System was to use magic power to summon various things and creatures from alternate dimensional spaces for battle—in simple terms, ganging up on the few with many.
Compared to other factions, the Prophecy System appeared to be a very “harmless” spell school, although it did not allow one to completely and thoroughly master one’s destiny, it could alert the spellcaster about what was happening or was about to happen somewhere. Sometimes, just a premonition, a revelation, was enough to change the entire course of a battle.
As an outlier among the spell schools, the Enchantment School to Fang Zheng seemed a particularly malevolent school, as its essence involved using Arcane Magic to influence and distort others’ spirit and will, targeting the mind and soul specifically. Well… it was hard not to think of harmonious titles such as “Hypnotism Ryo Academy” and “O Mother Brainwashing” when Fang Zheng encountered this school’s spells.
The Shaping Type needs no further elaboration—famously known as the Five Fireballs Sect, wielding the Elemental Power to destroy everything. If the Protection Class is the mage’s sturdiest shield, then the Shaping Type is the mage’s sharpest spear. Creating tsunamis and tornadoes with powerful spells is effortlessly easy for them, impossible for ordinary people to withstand.
But the most indomitable enemy one faces is always oneself. Precisely for this reason, the School of Illusions became one of the eight major spell schools. It crafts the scariest scenarios in one’s heart through illusions, thus transforming one’s will. Superficially, the School of Illusions doesn’t seem much different from the Enchantment School, but in reality, they are quite distinct. If Enchantment is likened to “hypnosis,” then in Fang Zheng’s view, the School of Illusions seemed more akin to “conditioning”—while hypnosis might one day be broken, once a person autonomously transforms their will within an illusion, it’s very difficult to revert to the past.
The Necromancer Class also needs no further elaboration—a profession dealing with skeletal frameworks and souls. However, what surprised Fang Zheng was that the White Tower actually did not prohibit the existence of the Necromancer Faction. Although Shi Dong had once told him that the Sanctuary absolutely could not allow the manipulation and play with the dead’s souls to occur. But for Rex, he evidently had a different explanation.
“Those grave-diggers are just summoning other people’s souls for trading, nothing as evil as the idiots at the Sanctuary say!” he explained.
Thus, Fang Zheng immediately understood where the values of the White Tower and the Sanctuary diverged.
And as the last of the eight factions, the Transmutation focused on the word transformation, capable of changing the properties of any object through the power of Arcane Magic, whether turning wood into steel or a person into a chicken, all at their whim. Even advanced Transformation Spells could change the weather and terrain of an entire area—viewed from a certain angle… Transmutation Mages were much more reliable than artificial rain.
Honestly, Fang Zheng wanted to master all eight factions, but regretfully, Rex was not planning to give him that chance.
“Stop dreaming, kid! According to the rules of the White Tower, a mage can only specialize in one spell school while studying up to three more! All others must be restricted! You must make your own choice!” he declared.
To choose four out of the eight factions and then restrict four?
This was torment for someone with decision paralysis!