Death, Devotion, Dissonance

Chapter 30 - Mage Specializations

"Are there any other cases similar to mine?" Evin asked, "Where newly awakened mages can effortlessly cast magic like I do?"

Alvert thought a bit, before nodding slowly.

"There are. But most of them show talent in the other casting methods, like Chanting or Gesturing. As far as I know, there was one case similar to yours, but it was with someone already 40 years of age. A scholar who grew up poor but managed to find some success with an invention of some sorts. When he got rich off his sales, he decided to see if he was a mage, and it turned out he was. He wasn't as shocking as your case, but he worked out Imagination Casting in a few hours, I believe."

<Play dumb,> the voice suddenly intervened, <Ask him how being old affect his Casting.>

Evin was a bit confused, but he did as ordered.

"Was he able to do that because he was old?"

Alvert looked at him with a face of puzzlement, trying to work out something from Evin's expression.

"Well, you'll learn about that in the Chairman's class," Alvert finally said, shrugging lightly as if saying it wasn't his problem. "But for now, it's break time."

With that, the teacher walked out the classroom and told the rest of the group to take a break and gather again in twenty minutes. Almost everyone, Arza included, went off to do fuck all, while only a few of the children stayed back in the classroom.

Evin spent his time talking some more with Kona, as the latter struggled to write in western. The written form of the kingdom's language was very simple, although tedious. Each letter was some combination of a consonant and a vowel, and those were usually made of either lines, dots. For a word that ended with a consonant, they simply had a circle (to represent emptiness).

There weren't any exceptions to this rule, so it was a very easy language to learn to write in. But each individual line or dot had to be written separately, so it was super tedious to do in practice. Moreover, these lines and dots could very easily be mistaken with each other, so one had to be very, very diligent in their writing.

Evin heard that a lot of people just decide to switch to Imperial completely after learning it, as it was simply much easier to write and understand. Well, Evin expected nothing less from the language that the Empress created, though he did dread learning it himself.

In any case, with some tips and tricks from Evin, Kona very quickly learned to write more effectively and Alvert's class resumed once more.

"Alright, everyone's here, so let's start the class."

Alvert said as he looked around the classroom. Seeing that everyone was listening properly, he continued.

"So, Mage Specializations. Broadly, mages are divided into two categories: Combat mages and Non-combat mages. We'll start with the latter."

"Non-combat mages, as you may be able to guess from the name, are mages that use their powers for situations that don't require them to be in a combat situation. I'll give you a list of all the available professions here and its most notable sub professions. So if you have any questions, you can ask me," Alvert said and gave everyone a piece of paper.

Evin looked through the list and saw the following:

[1. Healer – Disease, First Aid, Regeneration, Surgery, Anti-aging, Research.

2. Magical Engineer – Engraver, Research. Upon further study, you'll be able to do much more, but for a comprehensive education, you'll need 5 years total and lots of money (1200 gold coins minimum.)

3. Runes – Affixer, Engraver, Calligrapher, Papermaker, Research. Might need money if you're bad at calligraphy.

4. Infrastructure and Construction – Water supply, Lighting, Bridges, Roads, Architecture, Research.

5. Illusionist – Illusion detector, Illusion Security, Maze Designer, Performer, Special effects for plays and theatre, Special tastes made with sensory illusions. Basically, anything you can think of, as long as it's legal.]

<Well, we can ignore option 2 for now, considering its requirements,> the voice said wryly.

'Who the hell in this room has hundreds of gold coins lying around?' Evin thought with outrage, as he finished reading.

The other teens started asking a bunch of questions, which created a comprehensive image for Evin as well.

Healers were the simplest of the bunch. They healed people. If Evin had to rank the sub professions by its difficulty (judging by what he was hearing from the teacher), he probably would've made something like this: from hardest to easiest - Research, Regeneration, Surgery, Anti-aging, Disease, First-Aid.

Magical engineers were the people that created machinery and devices that had magical properties. They were also encouraged to learn a lot about runes as well, as most of the magic came from these mystical drawings. And Evin wasn't going to worry about Runes, as he was going to learn more about them in a dedicated class, anyway.

Infrastructure and Construction seemed cool to Evin, but it probably wasn't something for him. The same with Illusionists.

"Now that we're done with Non-combat stuff, let's get you acquainted with the other list," Alvert said and gave the students another piece of paper.

[1. Heavy Mage – mages that specialized in highly destructive spells, that usually take a long time to cast.

2. Light Mage – mages that specialize in close quarter combat, and specialize in many small, yet quickly executed spells.

3. Enchanters – mages that specialize in buffing and strengthening their own bodies with the World energies.

4. Area-control Mages – mages that specialize in controlling and dominating a specific area.

5. Manipulators – mages that specialize in controlling or guiding others.]

Different from the previous list, this one already had brief explanations about them, so they were much easier to understand.

"I'm guessing it would be much easier to explain these to you through example," Alvert said as he pointed towards Evin once again.

"Evin here would be a great Heavy Mage, considering the huge explosion that took him almost 10 minutes to create. If he were to walk this path in the future, he would need to consume a lot of World Shards, and he would learn how to cast these big spells in the least amount of time possible. If he ever goes to the army and joins a battle of some sorts, he'd be staying back line of the army, alongside the other Heavy Mages and he would chuck huge spells at the enemies under his army commander's orders."

<Ooh, you'll be artillery in that case. I'm sure the soldiers from the frontlines will start praying to you at some point as well, he-he> the voice chuckled with satisfaction.

Evin didn't understand what it was talking about, but since it seemed very content with his joke, he let it be.

"A Light Mage, on the other hand, will be someone who's much more flexible and adaptable. Let's take the army example once again. In an actual fight, a Light Mage will be in the thick of things, fighting a melee battle most of the time. They will not be casting anything grand like a Heavy Mage, but their spells will be swift and effective, despite their lack of firepower. They are also very popular as mercenaries and bodyguards, so there's that as well."

"Enchanters, as the description explains, are mages that learn how to absorb the World energies into their bodies and harness their powers. Absorbing different World energies will achieve different effects and of course, these effects will differ greatly from mage to mage. But one thing that's common among these mages is that their bodies become much more durable over the years and years of practicing this method. This makes it a very popular path for the ones that want to become Light Mages as well, as it helps a lot to survive those messy fights."

Alvert was about to say something, but he paused, seemingly remembering something.

"I probably don't need to remind you of this, but of course, you can be a Light Mage and know big, flashy spells. And conversely, you can be a Heavy Mage and still be adept at close combat. You can even strive to become a master of all these things that I've listed, but like you've seen with the case of Magical Engineering, learning these things takes a lot of time. One might even learn only one of these things their entire life and still be unable to unravel all its secrets," Alvert reminded.

The students nodded thoughtfully, and he continued his speech.

"Anyhow, Area-control mages, or Control Mages for short. The biggest example for this type of mages would be Chairman Kent. He is most famous for his Conditional Absolute, that makes it almost impossible for anyone caught in his trap to escape or retaliate," Alvert began and explained the Chairman's spell in great detail.

Evin was a bit confused about why they were so open about his spell, but when Alvert explained to him what Conditional Absolutes were, he understood why. Evin fantasized for a moment about his own special Absolute, but he couldn't really fall on something specific. As he was thinking about these, Alvert reached the last group of mages.

"And finally, Manipulators... I suppose this would be a great opportunity to talk about the Griffins of the South."