The Black Iron Glory
Basic mantra

Chapter 78

Basic mantra

Several pages of the second diary correspond to the seven basic Landes spells. Landes even drew formation sketches. And explain the principles behind the way they work.

Claude didn't really understand why Landes wrote such diaries. It felt less like a diary and more like a textbook, not because he was complaining. If not for that, the diary would have been useless to him as a way to learn about magic.

The core mantra of Landes is the Magus Hand. It was one of the most popular choices for rune magi. That's an important mantra for experimentation. The diary says that some experiments require ten casts or more. There were no magus runes comparable to its salt etched anywhere except the hexagon.

The spell creates a mana manifestation of the hand that the mind can control, allowing a magus to conduct its own experiments that otherwise require a certain amount of help. Once a person is used to working with several times more hands than a natural one, it is much more efficient than trying to coordinate the movements of multiple assistants. It is also important to conduct experiments that use toxic, corrosive, or very hot or cold materials such as acids or molten metals.

His first slave spell was the Eye of Appraisal. It allowed a magus to research objects, especially runes and rune formations much closer than the human eye, even the mana-powered eye of the magus. Not only that, but the caster can shift his point of view relative to the target as he wishes and view it from all angles.

The slave mantra of both is Good Control. It was an additional spell for the Magus Hand that increased their dexterity; it also allowed the manifestations to be transformed into different shapes, allowing them to transform into all sorts of useful tools such as knives, hammers, hammers, needles, and so on.

The third is Decomposition. The key and only role of the one ring rune magi is to do preparatory work for experiments performed or performed by senior magi themselves, and these spells are essential to that. It decomposes the object or material into its constituent parts as far as the caster understands. Magus, for example, which does not know about atoms, for example, cannot decompose water into atoms of hydrogen and oxygen. However, they can decompose stone into various constituent materials such as silica sand, organic materials, and individual ores.

That arrangement again made sense to Claude. Their research projects and experiments are usually handled by professors or senior researchers, while juniors under their tutelage or supervision will handle rough preparation and documentary assignments. Fewer junior assistants may be assigned to smaller component experiments, and lead researchers will only review their reports for inclusion in the primary experiment.

The fourth slave mantra is Reconstruction, the opposite of Decomposition. It allowed the casters to assemble the materials into a larger matrix, to recreate the stones from the ore, as if. Both of them are core spells in potion making. The base material is decomposed into its constituent elements, and the desired material is selected from them and then reconstructed into a potion. More effective or complex herbs will require additional spells or rune formations, but they all function on the same basic principles.

The Landes fifth slave spell was his combat spell, the Magic Missile. The mana channeled through the formation froze into semi-solid projectiles, like plasma that could even pierce through thick metal plates. It feels a lot like a plasma weapon that is so popular in earth science fiction.

The projectile took on the properties of mana used to shape it, so Landes was much like a small fireball. In his case, his affinity made the projectile stronger, while others might have him freeze the area around the impact, or shock whatever he touched. Each element gives its weaknesses to the projectile as well. In the case of Landes, although where fire makes projectiles more powerful, it also severely limits its range. Like a piece of burning wood floating in the air, it quickly extinguished. It could quickly reduce the damage to only about ten meters. If he really pushed it, he might be able to burn the meat or clothes that were open up to twenty meters away, but the projectile disappeared at that moment.

For Claude, it was 'true magic'. He remembered a video game he used to play that his magi people threw fireballs with their bare hands. At least partly because of his age back then, but he always thought such things were really cool. He imagined Missile Magic in almost the same way. He did not care about the range restriction, he could only shoot anything more than ten meters away from him with his rifle.

If he knew the spell, he would not have to worry about things like crocodile niros or villains anymore. In fact, he would love to draw poor lands up close and then hit them with fireballs out of nowhere. However, in his excitement, he forgot how taboo magic was. If he left a witness, his life would end not long after.

The sterilizing agents that he had to use when doing it by hand also burned his hands, so they always changed color and blistered. Claude didn't think Landes was thinking far enough ahead, however. His complaint was only relevant for a few years he had to become an intern and help with experiments. In the long run, once he became more senior, he would hand over those tasks to his juniors, and then the spells were mostly useless to him. A combat spell, or indeed one of the other simple spells, which Claude had no idea, would be worth more than Bersih.

The last spell made Claude look twice. That's a real joke. Mental Shock is one of Landes 'original – read' plagiarized'- spells.

His main assistant role is as a feeder. He was responsible for feeding the ferocious beasts kept by the tower for his experiments. Most of them are small creatures, but some are more terrifying. The tower houses several crocodiles, snakes and dragons.

Standard research procedures in most towers are as follows. The tower chief decided what research would be done, and handed his decision to the most senior Rune magi, who would design the experiment and pass on the material request to their students. It will explore the tower shops to collect such materials. If the tower does not have one or more materials, the battlemagi will be sent to find it.

The towers do not breed wild animals or keep them permanently. Instead they are caught in the wild a few weeks or months before an experiment is scheduled to be conducted, and stored in or near the tower until they are used. Niros crocodiles, for example, are most commonly captured for their skin, which is used to make amulets for use in low-level spells.

Shortly after Landes' arrival at the tower, the towermaster decides to investigate the devolution of the niros crocodile from a savage beast to a normal animal. He suspected that where the high level of mana and magic materials was what triggered the evolution of animals into magical beasts, and without them, they would return to being ordinary animals. Naturally, this requires testing.

He sent Tawari and several other battlemagi to Kemda to catch a pair of crocodiles. They were kept near the tower inside a cage surrounded by a large formation that channeled magic into the cage. Some poor first rank sod had to inject mana into the formation every day, and some other poor sod had to feed the beasts.

Landes and his colleagues were the living batteries for the experiment. Loenk wanted to test whether a creature that had always been a normal animal would evolve into a magical beast if given enough mana, so he had several other species captured and caged as well.

Landes was chosen for the poor feeding job. He came from a fisherman's house, and was therefore afraid of the wild beasts that were now to be fed. He completely destroyed himself when he realized that if they ever turned into magical beasts, they could easily break through the formation holding them now and eat them.

It was that fear that prompted him to finally accept Tawari's suggestion to carve a combat spell in one of his triangles. Tawari also taught him another spell to use with a temporary formation: Banshee's Howl.

Spells could not kill ferocious beasts if they were strong enough to break through the formation holding them back, but they might just give him enough time to get out of there, alive.

Banshee's Howl is a psychic spell that sends his target into a frantic frenzy. The effect was too strong for the comfort of the Landes, and it used too much mana. So Landes decided to take down a simplified version of Banshee's Howl that used less and did not have widespread effects. The original spell was a crowd control spell that affected everything within a certain range, which was the main reason for the heavy mana cost. Spells emanating from the Landes, on the other hand, focused on only one target and only paralyzed the opponent for a moment, rather than sending him into a frenzy. He decided to call it Mental Surprise.

Tawari nearly slapped the hexagram straight out of his empty space when he heard what the idiot had done. Not just a weak spell, it could only be used up to ten meters.