Nick sighed deeply as he entered his office. This office that given to him by the Werfur Race and by Rabial, was moderate-sized and adequately furnished. While he did take a cursory look around when he had just entered it with Rabial, now, as he was all alone, Nick closely observed his workspace.
“Things sure are changing rapidly in this world.”
Nick whispered to himself. Just a day ago, he had lost his arm and was on the run from an empire and a school. Most likely, a family with strong magical power, connections, and financial ability was hunting him for murder.
Now even though regenerated, he had an as-good-as-original arm back. He occupied a respectable enough office, was a salary-earning mage, had a room and a place to live without fearing anyone. Most importantly, he was now in a place where he could sharpen his magical power and improve his overall mindset.
As Nick took stock of his current circumstances, someone knocked on his office door. Two Werfur beings entered soon after, carrying some papers and books.
Nick was already able to identify their genders from their appearances alone — these two Werfurs were both male and looked at him with neutral eyes. It seemed that Rabial had warned them against showing any hostility towards him due to his human pedigree.
One of the Werfurs started speaking.
“Lord Epsilon, we are here to give you the current project materials and the books you had requested.”
Nick first whispered to himself, as if he did not understand what this Werfur just called him.
“E-Epsilon, you say…”
The Werfur immediately understood Nick’s confusion and explained.
“Mister Nick, ‘Epsilon’ is the name that our Werfur Race has given to you. We believe that it will bring you power and luck. Also, almost no mage uses their real name in the world of mages.”
As the Werfur finished his explanation, the pair of them placed the project materials on the table and the books on the shelves and just like that left the office.
Nick took a deep breath and said to himself.
“I am taking too many deep breaths…. Epsilon hah!”
He was quick to admit to himself though that he very much liked the name they had deemed fit for him, and that he would be proudly using it. In the eyes of the Werfurs, the name ‘Epsilon’ meant ‘the being with no limit’; Nick, however, did not know this for the time being.
He opened the project document and scanned it. The magical words and other such things were difficult for him but before he even took the project, Rabial had assured him that he could write in any language he had wanted and that they would still accept it.
The Werfurs were cognizant of Nick’s lack of basic magical knowledge and language skills. Hence, they did not force him and instead found a way to understand what he was saying. Because of this, Nick did not face any big problems in communicating or in explaining himself.
Nick inspected the project ‘Passive Elemental Magical Shield Generation’. As the name suggested, this project sought to find a way to create a shield around the mage or an item, or even a place.
The core problem that this project was addressing was that even though there were many ways to create a shield for a race such as the Werfurs, the consumption of the magic energy aka ‘mana’ was too high for most mages, including the Werfurs.
Nick mused over this problem. However, before he started doing anything about it, he first read a book about Basic Magical Shield. There were two types that were mentioned in this book. One was a passive magic shield spell. Once this was cast, it would stay effective all the time and protect the user. The disadvantage was that it was much weaker against most of the attack spells as it consumed only magical energy, when cast for the first time and was always active.
The active magical shield spell, on the other hand, was a short-duration spell. This spell formed a magical energy shield around the user’s body, but it could not last for more than one minute. The advantage of this spell was that it was strong and defended against many attacks. But as expected, it used too much magical energy for a very short usability time.
With the project ‘Passive Elemental Magical Shield Generation’, the Werfur Race was trying to find a way to create a passive-type magical shield spell that would still be strong but would not consume much energy and have the capability to add ‘elemental’ defense or attribute to it. Nick already had some ideas. Holding a pen and a paper, he started thinking.
“A magical shield is created by a user controlling his magical energy, outside of his body and forming a basic shield or creating a complete cone-like defensive magical energy shield that forms the body of magic.”
“According to basic understanding and use of a spell, the mage needs to have a moderate amount of magical control, enough magical energy to cast a spell, and the endurance to keep the spell on.”
“What I can do is use imagination and create a formula. With this implementation, the creation of the spell will be different than just forming a magical shield around the body. It will be more manipulative and controllable.”
Nick finished writing his basic understanding and his specific notes. He closed his eyes and started controlling his magical energy. The events that he had undergone recently had changed many things. The control of his magical energy in fact had changed completely. Compared to the last time that he used a spell, he now found it much easier to control the magical energy in his body. It was almost like controlling a limb.
“For creating a shield using my imagination, the only thing I need to imagine is the source and the image.”
Source and image were new ideas that Nick had in his mind for some time but had not found the chance to try or to note down.
Image was magical control and imagination.
Source was delving into the basic elements of what he wanted to imagine.
If he wanted to imagine ‘wearing an iron armor’ (this is image) and use this imagination to create a shield spell. He needed to imagine and support this with the right formula.
If ‘Image’ was ‘Wearing an Iron Armor’
Source was ((Fe)) — Iron (Fe), chemical element, the metal of Group 8 (VIIIb) of the periodic table.
When he added scientific facts to his imagination, the spell and the overall impact itself would become much stronger.
