A New World, an immersive game experience

Chapter 68: Types of magic

Resting a bit longer Eldrian considered what Dave had told him. Realizing that it wasn't all that complicated, rather he was missing the knowledge and experience needed to make sense of everything.

"Dave, how many types of magic are there?" Eldrian asked after a while.

"I don't actually know."

"What? How is that possible?"

"Well, what is magic?"

"Eh, I don't really know."

"Exactly. It isn't something you can just classify."

'I guess that is true.' Eldrian thought, thinking about how magic was normally used to explain unexplainable events. Yet in this world it was explainable, so then what was magic?

Seeing Eldrian deep in thought Dave spoke again. "I see that you are considering this question. That is good, I can tell you that we classify magic as anything which requires the use of mana."

"Then how is magic separated? If you consider it as anything which needs the usage of mana?" Eldrian asked, wanting to learn more about the lore around magic. He knew that it was split seeing as there was elemental magic.

"That is easier to answer. Magic is basically separated into elemental, spirit and medium-magic."

"Elemental would be one of the six elements, which would be present in the world even without living beings. Spirit is things that only come to be due to living creatures being in a world, while medium-magic is between the two or even completely separate. This magic normally requires something to work through and can't be used without that item."

"What are the elements?" Eldrian pressed while he had Dave with him. He continued to press him about each part until he got a basic grasp of what each type of magic really was.

Elemental magic involved things that would always be present, at least they are always possible to be present. Elemental magic is made out of Water, Air, Earth, Fire, Light and Darkness. Yet this is more the classifications people gave them, rather than the actual elements.

Dave explained that it was to make it easier to picture the elements, but really it was more complicated. For example, fire magic is actually presented heat, and when added with light you would get extremely hot spells. When mixed with darkness it goes extremely cold. Earth is connected to solids, air to gases and water to fluids. While light and darkness are their own and enhancers on other spells.

Spirit magic is anything that relates to the need for a living creature, plants included. Thus nature magic is part of it, along with summoning, contract, illusions and other types of abstract magics. There are naturally overlays with these magics and elemental, but the end goal would be to influence a living creature in a manner.

Here the lines get blurry when looking at skills, as they are used to enhance the user. Yet the magic used often is elemental, hence they are generally a hybrid of the two.

The last one, medium-magic requires something to work through. Dave explained it easily by mentioning alchemy and blacksmithing. Where in alchemy the entire process is ruled by medium-magic, using it to change one substance at the cost of others -along with mana. Blacksmithing the end goal is to make a medium for magic, the weapon or armor becoming this medium.

Dave had ended the explanations at this point, saying that more information wouldn't really help Eldrian understand more. Specifically due to how things often overlap with each other.

"Then is anything impossible?" Eldrian asked after the explanation, now feeling like magic should be able to do anything.

"Theoretically, nothing is impossible. Yet many things are conditional and would be impossible unless you meet certain criteria."

"Like teleportation?"

"I guess you can say so, yet it isn't all that limited since it can be accomplished without outside items." Dave replied.

"Then how does the array help?" Eldrian pressed on.

"Due to how complex it is, there are so many things which have to be considered when teleporting. the array simplifies many of these considerations. Drastically reducing the difficulty in casting it."

"How does it do that?"

"Well, when teleporting you have to keep take note of both your condition and the condition where you want to appear, and the addition of both isn't just two. It is more like four or six or even more, depending on the distance you want to teleport. The array can deduce these to simply one, or two if the distance is large.

"Thanks." Eldrian replied, thinking, 'So it is an exponential increase in difficulty and an array can make it linear. Can't wait until I can play with it.!' Feeling excited, Eldrian hoped to be able to actually try it.

After this Eldrian stood up, feeling completely rested.

"Are you ready to go?" Dave asked.

"Yeah, thanks for waiting and keeping me company."

"No problem, it isn't like I am all that busy." Dave replied, starting to cast the teleportation spell again. A few seconds later Eldrian found himself again inside the large floor which was the ground floor.

"Do you want to try again tomorrow?" Dave asked just as Eldrian started heading to his room. Considering for a few seconds Eldrian replied.

"I think so, it wasn't too bad this time."

"Great, you know where I will be, so just come and get me when you are ready."

Having said this they both headed up the stairs. Eldrian leaving after the first flight. Climbing onto his bed he quickly logged out.

...

Waking up on his bed Eldrian saw that he had only around an hour until classes start. Not having time to laze around he quickly ate some breakfast, changed and headed to class.

During the day he found that his easy life was going to become really busy, having gotten an assignment in one of his classes. Luckily he believed he would manage to finish it if he used his free hours during the day. He even managed to almost finish it during his free hours.

...

Back home Eldrian prepared himself some two-minute noodles along with some viennas. Cutting the viennas into the noodles along with some cheese, he headed to his PC and opened the forums.

The first thing he found on opening it was a reply to his question on if he could make a protected post. The reply said that he could and that he could choose either a contract or simply a none-disclose condition.

With the none-disclose, the player would be punished if they shared the information on the forum. But other methods wouldn't be covered. Reading this Eldrian felt that it wouldn't really work for what he had planned.

The contract instead he could complete from a template. This would be enforced both on the forum and in the game. Where the actions of a player can also be checked.

'This sounds promising,' Eldrian thought after reading that. Next, he downloaded the template and started playing with it. Yet he couldn't decide what to include and limit people on, thus he put it off for now.

Having finished playing with the contract he looked at the tops posts, not finding something too interesting. The only thing which caught his eye was that over half the players in the Inglas kingdom had recreated their in-game character. Stating that it was impossible for them to do anything in the kingdom.

Next, he moved on to his inbox, looking at the feedback on the posts he had made.

[Learning Magic.]

This one had netted him around 20 dollars in tips, with players having found that it was indeed possible to learn new spells from magic towers. Yet his post had soon become obsolete as players had started exploring the city and asking NPCs if they would take them as students.

Surprisingly around ten present of these players had succeeded, becoming students of Tier 2 and Tier 3 NPCs, who had then given them access to a single Tier 1 spell or skill, which the players had to learn to cast and use effectively.

Currently, none of the players had managed that yet, as the proof of this was them reaching Tier 1. But a few bragged that they were really close.

"Guess I am really going to fall behind here." Eldrian grumbled, thinking back to how he still couldn't even feel mana. Not even to talk about moving or using it. "Price of being a High Elf" He conceded, feeling too invested to restart his character. Especially after everything he had already gone through.

[On Mastering Weapons.]

This one did even worse, only netting him around 10 dollars in tips. Most of the comments claiming that he was only voicing the obvious, which was clearly not obvious since most people had overlooked the things he had mentioned.

Still, he didn't worry about that, feeling that these two posts had at least made the players look at the game in a more realistic way. At least it did, along with all the shit everyone had gone through with the event.

[High Elves Group.]

This one had collected no tips, but Eldrian had indeed gotten replies from many players. Much more than he had been expected since he had yet to see other High Elves in Phallos.

Yet here he already had over ten thousand people who replied, stating that they were High Elves. Meaning that around 0.33% of players had chosen this race. Naturally, this was a conservative estimate, since only people who commented and added their information was included.

Eldrian also saw that these players had taken the initiative and created more forums for High Elves to talk over.

Looking over these Eldrian found that they were brilliant. They had made threads to share magic learning, which the others had also found was much harder now.

They had also made threads to discuss the limitation of the system, the effect it had on gameplay, one about their experience in-game. Even one to just rant about things they wanted to, like the fact that other players were seemingly going to speed past them at this stage.

Eldrian decided not to mention the method he was using to try and learn magic quicker. For one, he didn't even know if it worked and two, he didn't really want to promote such a painful experience. Feeling that it would turn more people off of High Elves, rather than give them hope and drive.

Finishing looking through these Eldrian felt relieved that he wasn't the only High Elf in the game. He also became more curious about all the playable races, thus he created a new post to ask people to list the races they knew of.

Taking a few minutes to learn a feature of the forum Eldrian managed to make a self-updating table. Which would go through the comments and add all those which weren't already in the table. He just didn't know if it would check for validation, but it would give him a quick idea.

Finally done on the forum Eldrian saw that he hadn't really eaten yet. Reheating the food he watched some series while eating, finishing the episode before logging back into the game.

...