Prince Alex took a book from his storage ring and handed it to Dominic.
"I’m not sure if you can learn this, but if you can, it might really speed up your progress. It’s the art of making mana crystals. Normally, only mages make them, but it’s possible that Sorcerers do too if they know the technique.
Our Father is much more relaxed about nonhumans than his father was, but there is still a lot that is kept secret about Dragonkin magic because the Wavemates Kings didn’t trust others not to use it against them.
You should be able to make a crystal up to your current innate level, but I don’t know how that will work for you, as you’re not a mage. For me, my innate level is five. The level that I can increase new spell gems to based on the level of my Battle Mage Core.
But that takes too much work for most people, so they just stop when they get a level one or two crystal and call it good.
To get a newly attuned gem to the peak of level one, it takes about five levels of mana cores. That increases with every level of the spell gem or trade skill core. It’s not static for everyone, the higher your affinity, the lower the increase.
But in general, the most proficient are around a fifty percent increase with every level. The least compatible users need around double the mana per level.
That will vary with every spell and magitech device that you get.
Some Magitech devices take inordinately high amounts of materials to increase, but that is usually because they have an exceptional effect, or combination of multiple different effects built into them, which don’t perfectly align with each other.
Now, at first, it’s not bad. Even if you needed ten levels to reach the peak of level one, most mages will need around sixty to get to level five. That’s a reasonable number that most common guards and workers can expect to reach.
But you’ll need nearly a thousand to get to the start of level nine, four thousand to get to level eleven and nearly a million to get to level twenty.
So, very few make it past level ten.
The cost in both time and mana to get past that point is simply too high.
The more that you use a spell, the more affinity that you get to it, and that is why you will eventually level up a spell gem with time. It’s not as much a matter of use giving it more energy, but of attunement improving, and the stored energy you have already given it becoming more effective.
Use the mana stone creation technique, then practice your spells constantly, and you should get a few of them from level eight to ten easily enough, assuming that your compatibility was mediocre.
If it was already good, it will be harder to gain with practice, but easier to grow with the mana crystals.
If you can master that skill, then I will give you a book on Materia Gem creation, and you can pass on your magical skills with new spell gems. That’s the real moneymaker, no matter what the magitech engineers say."
Princess Alexis chuckled as her brother finished getting sidetracked with excitement about someone new learning the arts of the Mage Lords.
What he hadn’t told Dominic was that the skill he was giving him instructions for was not one that all mages could use. Only those with exceptional talent or years of practice could master it.
But Dominic’s eyes lit up as he read the book, and within seconds, he was forming a tiny crystal in his hand.
When it got to the size of a chicken egg, it would be at level one. But at the rate Dominic was going, that would take hours. Still, he appeared to have needed mere seconds to master the technique that took most mages a decade to learn.
"That’s just cheating. I spent three weeks learning that skill, and he gets it just by reading the instructions once.
Actually, I don’t even think he finished the instructions. He definitely didn’t get into the explanatory Chapters." Prince Alex muttered.
Dominic’s crystal was growing rapidly as mana flowed from all around him, turning it to an egg sized level one mana crystal in only a few minutes.
"Oh, I like it. That’s a good skill. Thank you."
"Your aptitude for that is simply ridiculous. If you keep it up, there is no reason that you shouldn’t be able to increase your primary skills to the level of a master before you’re thirty." Prince Alex commended him.
"Are you not at level forty on your primary gem already? You can’t be thirty yet." Dominic asked.
The Prince chuckled and shook his head. "I had a fortunate encounter, you could say. I have exceptional affinity for my chosen gem, that is true. But I managed to obtain an ancient artifact that caused rapid growth. That’s how I got so far ahead at my age."
Dominic nodded in understanding. "Oh, that makes more sense. I thought that there was some secret skill hack that was kept from the public so that we didn’t have superhumans running around causing chaos."
The Prince blinked once, slowly, then stared at Dominic.
"Superhumans running around causing Chaos? What exactly do you think Dragonkin and the other Monster blooded Sorcerers are? Given another few decades, you’ll have the strength to throw a grown man through walls and the innate magic to raze cities.
Half of the Dagos Noblemen are going to be utterly terrified of your presence, and the other half will demand that anything involving your presence be done with an Antimagic barrier up.
I would also be sure to keep a barrier up on your room because after thousands of attempts, the only way that they found to kill the Dragon King was to transform an assassin to look like one of his consorts and kill him in his sleep.
Awake, they couldn’t manage it." Prince Alex reminded him.
"I had always wondered how they managed that. If the Dragon King was supposed to be so terrifying, it didn’t make sense that the nation fell so fast." Dominic agreed.
"Nobody really knows the truth, I suppose. The assassinated in his sleep theory is just a rumour that Dagos spread because there were no survivors of the events at the Palace. Nobody but the Dagos King, and perhaps his advisors, truly knows what happened that day."
Dominic sighed. "And they’re mostly dead or a hundred years old now."