Chapter 126 – Strength of Spellcasting

When he opened his eyes in the morning, Jess was still a little dizzy.

He wasn’t sure about the degree of that sweet wine, he heard it was quite high, but he didn’t feel anything when he drank it.

I didn’t feel like drinking much while talking with Grid, it wasn’t very high in degrees on the palate after all, but the road was all over the place by the time I got home in the evening, and I almost swooped into the canal a couple of times to bid an early farewell to my trip to Azeroth.

Jace ran straight downstairs without his clothes on and jumped into the river with a strip of his clothes and took a plunge, then lifted his head and washed his face, feeling much more awake.

He had to be awake today because there was an extremely important task, and that was to memorize the Mage Armor spell.

Last time, despite having Arcane Wisdom to augment it, he later cast Arcane Wisdom again to try to mime what he remembered from that time, but how he was unsure of the order of the two statements before and after, and how to pronounce a few of the syllables.

After all, the spell was far too long, and in a dragon language that Jace didn’t understand at all, to recite it in its entirety, even with Arcane Wisdom augmentation.

And now, Marin made a point of not letting him remember, and made it clear that he could only practice mage armor when Marin was present.

But how is it possible to do everything they say?

On this trip to the continent of Lordaeron, Jace thought about learning mage armor, and even if he couldn’t learn it, he should at least practice it on his own as a milestone.

Especially considering that the entire continent of Lordaeron’s magical abundance far exceeded that of the Stormwind Kingdom, and that most of the veins and nodes of the magical network, with the exception of the Tower of Karazhan, were starred and dotted north of the Sador Bridge, Jace had to seize this opportunity to practice the top spells of this protective school of magic.

With the experience of the last rollover, Jace would be much more cautious this time, and he planned to have Grider watch over him so he could help take care of any messes that might come up, such as the elements getting out of control or something like that.

He was leaving tomorrow, and he had to take his last chance …… to memorize the spell as completely as possible when he got Marin to practice today, so he was going to play it big.

“Saeuno, get out of there.”

“Yes!” The Kid appeared in a flash of light and turned to Jace, “Any orders, Master!”

“How confident are you that you can hide yourself from a mage?” Jace asked.

“One hundred percent confidence.” Saeuno smiled wryly and said, “The demon’s entire focus is on hunting arcane users la, my master, we were born to avoid those mages’ scouting, and my spells and knowledge are many times more powerful than those inferior brats! Even if it’s an Eredar …… Of course, it depends on which Eredar it is, if it’s Akmund trying to capture me, then I’m screwed.”

“And I didn’t expect to keep you off Akmund’s trail.” Jace said smoothly, “Just a human mage.”

“Do you know who Akmund is?” Sëanor asked suddenly.

Jace stared up at Saeuno, realizing that he seemed to have said a little too much.

He coughed unnaturally and said, “What’s wrong with knowing, it’s not like Arkmund hasn’t invaded Azeroth before.”

Arkmund, one of the two Eredar heads of the Burning Legion.

He, along with Kilgardan, and Velen were once the three leaders of the Ancient One’s mighty Eredar civilization, of which Akmund was the youngest.

When the Dark Titan Sargeras corrupted the Aeridans and used them as the backbone of the Burning Legion, Velen fled Aerida’s home planet of Argus, and Akmund and Kilgardan became two of Sargeras’ toughest lieutenants.

Compared to Kilgardan, who liked to hide behind the scenes and manipulate different races to fight with each other, Akmund’s style was more direct – jumping onto a planet and using his unrivaled mana to erase all obstacles in front of his eyes, and then plundering all the energy that could be sucked out of the planet for his own use.

Arkmund invaded the Khadoran Empire, but that was 10,000 years ago, and the invincible Arkmund suffered a serious defeat when the Dragon Kings created the artifact to repel the Burning Legion, the Dragon’s Soul, which was the soul of a demon before it was demonized.

He was wounded and had to withdraw to recuperate, but never forgot to descend on this world again to avenge his death. Ten thousand years later, the torment and destruction that the Khadoran Empire went through back then has been turned into myths and legends hidden in the libraries of Quel’thalas.

A human archmage who is knowledgeable and communicates a lot with elves knows the name of Ackermonde is normal, but for a small apprentice like Jace …… to be so familiar with Ackermonde is a little strange.

The Kid bounced back and forth, saying excitedly, “You know far more about the Burning Legion than I ever imagined, Master!”

Jace interrupted his rambling thoughts and said, “Cut the crap and listen to your mission.”

“Yes!”

“Stay in my bag, listen carefully to the old mage reciting the incantation, memorize the incantation, you’d better memorize it all, and proofread it with me when you come back, do you understand? If you dare to forget to memorize it, or come back and say that you didn’t hear anything clearly, I’ll lock you up for two months, and if you dare to expose yourself for others to find out …….”

“Then the strangulation spell!” The Kid picked up loudly.

“Don’t worry, little thing.” Jace said, “Once you’re discovered, there’s no need for me to recite any summoner strangulation spells, because you’ll meet a far more tragic fate. Think you can go back to the Twisted Void when you die, right? Well, you’re overthinking it. The mages here will lock you up in a specialized demon banning prison, study and torture you every day to see what kind of magic you can withstand, and then summarize the spells that can deal with and make demons suffer, so you’ll just wait for a few thousand years of being abused, and by then you’ll be crying out every day to go back to the Twisted Void!”

The kid gulped and said, “Guarantee …… that you won’t let those mages notice the traces!”

“In the unlikely event that if you are found out, don’t expect me to help you.” Jace said, “I’ll do everything I can to get rid of the suspicion between myself and you, you’ll be treated as the evil thing that comes with this warlock’s bag, and I’ll be just a pathetic treasure-hungry scavenger who accidentally brought this bag to Stormwind by accident in the wilds, and a stupid, stupid naive apprentice. I may be punished and locked up for a few months and years, but you’ll just give me a bye bye, and if I don’t die, our contract won’t end, you can’t even give me up if you want to, see what you’re getting yourself into, little thing? I’ll visit you in your prison when I’m fine.”

With a sobbing voice, the little ghost said, “Master, is there any interest in throwing your soul into the Twisted Void to be reborn in a demonic body after you die, the Burning Legion will need a talent like yours!”

“That’s for another life too.” Jace pointed to the bag and said, “Now go in first.”

“Yes!”

The Kid leapt into the Warlock’s bag in a flash of light, and Jace tied his mouth shut.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t taken the brat into the mage area before, but it was definitely a first for him to take it into Marin’s house.

Jace cast an Arcane Wisdom on himself outside the mage area and waited until the traces of the Arcane Wisdom had faded a bit before going in, and when he walked out into the garden, he looked away from the entrance to Marin’s study, and it felt as if several surveillance cameras had suddenly been installed around him. However, he also knew that the more he acted strangely like this, the easier it would be to get suspicious, and anyway, it wasn’t the first time he had done this kind of bad thing, so why not just let go and go with the flow?

Jess pushed the door open, but didn’t want Marin to be inside already.

Marin was organizing her bookcase when she heard someone enter and say, “My dear Miss Marin, remember to make me a pot of tea before you go to class, that Jace Sesso boy shouldn’t be coming.”

“Uh …… Master?”

Marin looked back, picked up his glasses and asked, “You’re still here?”

“Boat tomorrow morning.” Jace scratched his head and said, “I can do one more job.”

“Great.” Marin immediately put his rolled up sleeves down and sat behind the table, sighed and said, “A day off is a day off, it’s so hard to get older.”

Jace set his bag down next to him at the foot of the bookcase and immediately got to work cleaning up skillfully, and Marin even put his book down to watch as he skillfully cleaned up each spot.

“You came here today with the intention of practicing that last spell again, didn’t you, Mr. Sesso?”

“Yes.” Jace smiled shyly and said, “Today is the last day in Stormwind City, Master, I really want to try again, after all, the next time will be next year, and if I don’t have a good result, I’m afraid that I won’t be able to sleep well for the past few months, and I’ve been thinking about it all the time.”

Marin said, ”There’s no need to be in such a hurry, do you want to master such a complicated spell in just a week? Why don’t we give you two months to think carefully about the reasons for your last failure, summarize what you didn’t do well enough, and it will definitely go much smoother when you return. If you’re willing to stay here this morning, I can give you a slight lecture about some of the essentials of casting spells from the Protection School, and then when you return to the Kingdom of Lordaeron you can always recall it and slowly digest it, it will also help you grow.”

“But ……” said Jace, “It was this close last time, teacher.”

Marin lowered his eyebrows helplessly and said, “Since you want to try again so badly, I’ll talk to you more closely about the last time. In fact, I thought about the process of casting your spell afterwards, Mr. Sesso.”

He closed the book and put it aside, plopped down on the table, and said, “Your spell mimicry is very standard, which is your strength, so much so that the arcane energies that you summoned at the very beginning were overly aggressive, but correspondingly, your energies were overly aggressive due to the fact that you were involving too many of them, and they were avidly hunting down the elements for you, and building your elemental armor like a palace for you of prototypes, which in turn slows down your spellcasting process, making the mage armor you channel overly powerful, but also overly heavy.”

“Note that powerful is not a good word here.”

“More like the Enhancement school of magic than Boundary magic, such as the Ice Armor spell, or the Shell of Elements like the Lava Armor spell, Mage Armor is more like the Enhancement school of magic, which is to say – the power of Enchantment. Only instead of an item, the enchantment is the caster himself, somewhat like Arcane Wisdom. Powerful enhancement magic also requires the caster to have a strong enough tolerance, which is a mentally draining process in itself, Mr. Sesso.”

“Arcane magic isn’t a prayer made by priests with a conciliatory force like holy light that a random child, a sick person who hasn’t been exposed to magic can withstand. So you know what went wrong, one big difference between you and the other apprentices is that you didn’t fail because of substandard spell casting, you failed because you summoned a huge amount of arcane energy that didn’t match your tolerance at this stage, causing an early overload of your body. Even when I was giving you a demonstration, I didn’t summon that massive amount of arcane energy.”

“Combined with the fact that you hesitated several times during your spell casting, resulting in a doubling of energy loss, my previous viewing of you casting the Light spell gave me a bit of a false impression of your energy level, and in fact you’re still a bit short of that, but it’s something that can be easily overcome.”

After listening to Marin’s explanation, Jace thought darkly for a moment and asked tentatively, “The spell effect is too strong so it’s unaffordable, do I have to do it substandard to make it less effective if I want to succeed once?”

The old mage laughed and said, “Wouldn’t doing it substandard increase the consumption and decrease the magical effect even more severely?”

“Yeah.” Jess said, “So ……”

“That’s why it’s going to be important for you to take a course in the School of Protection first.” Marin immediately emphasized, “Mastering ways to weaken the strength of one’s spells while reducing consumption. That is to say, actively casting a weak spell to achieve one’s purpose at the lightest cost is a skill that every senior caster of the School of Protection must master.”

It reminded Jace of the mages in the game who either consumed their enemies with level 1 Chill Arrows or started group slowdowns with level 1 Blizzards, which was a way to reach a goal with the same magic that consumed less and had a weaker effect, given the lack of resources.

Sure enough, there were similar applications in the real world. Marin went on to explain, “Why do you say that the School of Protection is the foundation of many schools? If you’ve carefully read the ‘School of Arcane Magic I Protection’ written by Master Anslem Ruinwovil, you should know that many magical researches need to be carried out at great risk, and that the research process often encounters situations where magical energies are slightly out of control. One of the existential values of short duration boundary magic is to quickly and effectively protect the caster from specific types of elemental damage in such situations, rather than simply for combat.”

“However there is no need to cast a full and powerful conjuration spell before every study, sometimes you are faced with only minor risks, such as the occasional flashes of light, small explosions and combustions from the combination of different alchemical reagents, and all you need is a light protective conjunction of flames, not a huge rampart that can withstand the fires of the Red Dragon. But sometimes this rampart and a small flame boundary film can be conjured by the same spell, and you can think of this as the intensity of the casting, or the strength of the spell.”

Jace said, “It’s like when I first learned Arcane Wisdom and summoned those effects that only lasted a few minutes, was that a weak spell?”

“Well.” Marin said, “I think that was simply substandard on your part, expending no less energy, if not more, and only ending up with an inferior spell effect. I don’t even know if that qualifies as Arcane Wisdom, after all, it’s not like I’m a sheep you use for practice.”