Chương 61: Chapter 60 Rewriting Magic

One month passed after Karath withdrew from his ordinary duties. Calling it secluded training made the arrangement sound far more impressive than it truly was. The Bloodclaw settlement had no isolated cultivation cave like those found in martial arts stories. Such a thing could hardly exist within a primitive society. Karath simply remained inside his house. Each day, he reread the books brought from the laboratory, accumulated mana, and repeatedly practiced spells.

"Fire Arrow." A month of training produced significant results. Karath could now use Second Circle magic with reasonable ease. First Circle spells activated almost as soon as he formed the intention. Even Second Circle spells required only around five seconds.

"It really is similar to coding." The habit of speaking to himself had grown stronger during a month spent researching alone. A First Circle spell required the creation of one mana pattern. Second Circle magic demanded that two different patterns be controlled and combined simultaneously. A Third Circle spell required three. As the circle increased, both the number of calculations and the volume of mana being manipulated rose multiplicatively rather than additively. It resembled writing nested loops in a program.

The difference was that a programmer only wrote the code and allowed a computer to perform the calculations. With magic, Karath had to calculate every overlapping process personally while manipulating mana to match it. Now that he could use Second Circle spells freely, Karath also understood the theory behind several Third Circle spells. His mana control was not yet refined enough to manage the required complexity reliably.

More importantly, his mana reserves were pathetically small for unrestricted Third Circle casting. That did not mean Third Circle magic was completely beyond his reach.

"Fireball." Karath spoke the activation phrase, although the words themselves contributed nothing to the spell. After a month of solitary research, meaningless incantations had simply become another form of talking to himself. He manipulated mana. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. A crimson sphere appeared above his palm. It was a simplified Fireball created through a shortcut of Karath's own design.

The difficulty of a spell increased according to the number of patterns it required. The circle system described in the books was essentially a classification based upon how many separate mana structures composed the spell. Fire Arrow, the Second Circle spell Karath had cast earlier, combined the First Circle elemental spell Fire with a directional pattern that launched the flame toward a target. The spell received its name because the moving fire resembled an arrow.

A standard Third Circle Fireball added compression to the structure of Fire Arrow. Once the condensed flames reached their destination, they exploded like a grenade. That explanation gave Karath an idea. He modified the written formula for Fireball and removed every component related to direction. The result was a spell containing only two patterns, flame and compression. Its complexity therefore fell to the level of a Second Circle spell. The drawback was obvious.

Without the directional structure, the sphere could not fly. Karath would need to carry it personally and detonate it at close range. The spell showed remarkably little concern for the safety of its caster. Even if it lacked immediate practical value, creating the simplified Fireball remained important. Renstein's books appeared to have been written for teaching. They broke down the calculation process of spells from every circle and even quantified the amount of mana required during each step.

Every spell had been formalized. Karath did not have enough time to follow the books exactly and master magic through the slow, traditional sequence they recommended. The drake had not attacked during the previous month. Perhaps the fading monsoon kept it away. Perhaps it had moved into another region. That did not matter. The creature could eventually approach the settlement again. Other monsters equally powerful might also be hiding elsewhere in the Grimwood Mountains.

With Karath's current mana reserves, freely casting Third Circle spells remained impossible. Mana capacity could only be increased through persistent training over time. According to the standardized magic described in the books, harming the drake would require at least Fourth Circle magic. Realistically, Karath suspected even that might be insufficient. A Fifth Circle spell would offer a better chance. Unfortunately, each increase in circle multiplied both the difficulty of mana control and the energy required.

Karath might need several years before reaching that level. The tribe did not possess several years to wait safely. He needed shortcuts. Karath would dismantle standardized spells into their individual components, combine them differently, and incorporate modern knowledge to create dramatically more efficient weapons. Fortunately, that kind of work felt familiar. Few developers or programmers wrote every line of code entirely by themselves.

Whenever they needed an unfamiliar function or encountered a problem, they searched through online documentation, technical blogs, public repositories, and programming forums. The important distinction was whether someone copied the borrowed code without understanding it or dismantled it, understood every part, and optimized it for the specific program being created. Karath had always belonged to the second type. Someone else's code rarely fit perfectly into his own work.

More importantly, analyzing and adapting code had felt like a game to him during university. Breaking apart Renstein's standardized spells by pattern and recombining them into new structures therefore felt remarkably similar to programming. That did not mean Karath was enjoying himself. The emotion inside him resembled something else entirely.

"Damn it. This feels exactly like the days before Karath worked himself to death." Running a small company had never been comfortable. The futures of dozens of employees depended upon his decisions. That responsibility created unbearable pressure. The final project of Arnold's life had determined whether the company would survive. As the contract deadline approached, the unfinished software drove him toward madness. He worked through night after night until overwork ended his life.

The current situation felt almost identical. In truth, it was worse. If the company had failed, Arnold's employees would not have died immediately. This time, failure could mean the destruction of everyone Karath considered family. Unless he found a method of killing the drake and other monsters of similar power, the Bloodclaw Tribe might eventually be slaughtered. Under that pressure, Karath continued his research. This time, he would not allow his life to end meaninglessly.

He would protect his family until the very end. Though he remained only a Second Circle mage, Karath continued dismantling and rebuilding magic.