Netheril’s Glory
Chapter 5: The beginning of a Mage.

Punk had already decided to become a mage. On the one hand, he liked the concept of Mage very much. On the other hand, This was also the best choice at this moment.

Punk could be considered very lucky in this aspect, because as a half ancient elf, he was born with two classes, Mage and Ranger. That also meant that he was born as a level 2 Mage and Ranger apprentice. But Punk has decided to specialize in mage class.

It might seem like a two-level upgrade was very low, but this step was a huge threshold that had stopped many youngsters with dreams of becoming a professional, So this was a massive help in Punk's path of becoming a Mage apprentice.

It was not too easy to become a professional; it required many qualifications, like- aptitude, comprehension ability, and even a little bit of luck. There was a one-in-a-hundred thousand chance of someone having the talent to become a Professional.

That was why It was just too hard for ordinary peoples to become professional.

The reason why there was such a large number of professionals in the Universe, was entirely due to the vast and exaggerated presence of ordinary life forms. And the Pheren plane, as the biggest and most populated plane, had an amazing amount of professionals.

Also, because of such numbers, proper development in the Pheren plane was almost impossible, which created an environment similar to that of the middle ages, and professionals existed as a kind of "Legendary existence."

……

Punk realized that the amount of information he inherited was enough for him until he became an official-level professional. Moreover, he had a system.

And if he practices magic with the system's help, it would yield twice the result with half the effort.

Punk was relieved, because now he would be able to learn one or two magic spells for self-defense. And he didn't have to worry about being eaten as breakfast by some beast just after his birth.

With a lot of pressure lifted, Punk began to concentrate on learning the information about magic!

The magic of this World entirely depended on the soul. The soul generated the elements and then brought them into reality. After that, a spell model was used to manipulate the Elements and to produce various magical effects. The elements were the fundamental constituent of this World, and all matters were composed of pure energy Elements. Elements were divided into ten types: Water, Fire, Earth, Wind, Lightning, Light, Darkness, Life, Space, and Ether.

The first nine of the ten elements complemented and restrained each other, but the Ether was special. Not only could it be transformed into any of the other elements, but it also could convert other elements into different elements, including elemental energy. The most important thing was that only the Ether could be directly transformed into all kinds of other non-elemental energy, such as- magnetic force, gravity, kinetic energy, and so on. This had established Ether Element as the "Primary Element" with unparalleled flexibility and applicability.

But if someone wanted to transform elements into different types of elemental or non-elemental energy, it had to be transformed into Ether first. Also, the Ether element had a very gentle nature. Because of these, some energy would be lost during the transformation, so the etheric energy's attack power at the same level was not as powerful as the other elemental energy.

That's why those schools that directly used elemental energy were recognized as the most destructive among mages. Punk learned that there were eight schools of Magic (Note: the schools here only refer to the direction of cultivation):

Elemental (creating elements directly from the soul)

Incantation (creates Ether from the soul and then use the Eatherial energy)

Enchantment (giving attributes to an object)

Alchemy (merging and separating objects or elements)

Prophecy (using soul's perception to obtain information)

Summoning (create creatures or other things in the soul, and materialize them in the Real World.)

Advent/dream (Using the concepts in the soul to erode the real World)

Sprit (influencing the reality with the help of absolute will and soul)

These schools each had their own advantages and disadvantages. Regardless of school or Element, Warrior's battle Qi or Mage's magic, these were all primary applications of the soul, and all these different routes had the same destination, "Legend." And when someone reached this level, the soul could directly grasp the higher-level power of the law, then it didn't matter whether it was a different faction or profession.

(Note: the spells below Legend use clever tricks to touch the rules).

But of course, in the early stages, the advantages and disadvantages of these various factions and professions were undeniable.

In the early stage, most Mages choose two factions as their major and two as their minor. It was to ensure that they complemented each other so as to reduce their shortcomings as much as possible.

Of course, this didn't mean that the knowledge of other factions didn't have any use. One should know that all spells were the application of the soul. So not only the knowledge of other schools gave enlightenment and inspiration, but it also lets one take appropriate contingency measures against them. And, of course, nobody wanted to face an enemy they didn't know anything about.

After careful consideration, Punk decided to choose Summoning and Incantation as his major because these two covered both the "crowd control" and "Long-range" ability.

And choose Alchemy and Prophecy as his minor, alchemy could provide funds for himself in the early stage. After all, The God of knowledge Oghma himself said: "knowledge is wealth." But to gain knowledge, wealth was needed. And normally, intelligent creatures had the bad habit of keeping secrets, so the knowledge of various spells and super Magic Skills was ridiculously expensive in this World, not to mention those heavenly materials and earthly treasures. And these training Resources were undoubtedly necessary, at least in the early stages, but to get them, a large amount of wealth was needed.

As for the prophecy class, It was needless to say the importance of intelligence, countless wars on earth had already fully proved that.

…..

A lot of apprentice and trainee level spells were left by the original body's parents, but there were very few spells of official level and above. So, at least before the official level, these spells were enough for Punk.

For Punk, who had a system, apprentice-level spells were not a problem. He very quickly learned a few magic spells; However, Punk found out that with the improvement of knowledge and strength, the learning difficulty also increased geometrically. Punk estimated that after the official level, even with the system's help, the learning and cultivation efficiency would only be 30% or 40% higher than that of the same level Mage. But even this could lead to a bloody battle amongst ordinary mages, if revealed.

Generally speaking, when practicing a new spell, one needed to use incantations, hand gestures, and casting materials. These auxiliary means could deepen the Mage's understanding of the spell and reduce the difficulty of controlling an unfamiliar spell. To put it bluntly, one can prevent the spell from exploding in their hand before it was thrown out. And when a Mage was proficient enough with a particular spell, they could skip these time-consuming means and could directly use the soul power to cast a spell. Also, there was a super magic skill called "instant casting," which let someone cast a spell instantly, even a very high-level spell.

However, if there was a chance in a battle, Mages would still use the auxiliary methods as much as possible. After all, these supplementary methods could increase the effect and power of a spell to a certain extent.

These gestures and materials provide the greatest bonus to a spell when casting a high-level spell. And a slight advantage in a label-battle could tilt the balance toward victory.

However, the original body's cheap parents only had one or two sets of ubiquitous hand gestures and spells, and they didn't even leave any spell materials. Also, there was no tutor around to guide and protect Punk. So Punk, without any prior experience, was very careful and also asked the system to set a reminder that will remind him not to experiment with a spell that was too powerful.

After all, even if it was just an apprentice-level spell, there were huge differences in its power, characteristics, and other effects, as well as the difficulty of learning.

Even though learning simple minor spells was easy and, But if someone underestimated advanced spells, then one day they will be pitted to death by themselves!

After studying for more than a month, Punk finally compiled the entire "memory inheritance." Because of this, he accumulated a solid magic foundation in theory, and he also learned several apprentice-level spells.

Now finally, Punk was ready for the day he would come out from his shell.

*Note: that an Element is not an atom. The Law of this Universe is different.