Nick was still thinking about the guiding principle, where he added ‘science’ to ‘imagination’ in order to power up his spells. As inspiration struck, he wrote the formula that would essentially serve as the algorithm for the spell that he was looking to create.
He closed his eyes, breaking down the problem in his mind, and began formulating the steps.
‘Imagine a magical shield surrounding yourself + Imagine wearing a weightless Iron Armor.’
‘Imagine ‘natural iron’ deposits + think about ‘Fe’ and imagine the place of ‘Iron’ in the ‘Periodic Table’.’
Perhaps the best outcome Nick noticed at this time was that after he created a spell and successfully tested it, he did not need to make any alterations or do anything else at all. In fact, it was ready enough for him to even create a complete spellbook for others.
The content of the spells would not be seen by others but as a ‘spellbook’, the one who read about the spell would have the ability to use it. Nick did not know the reason behind this and figured that this might have something to do with his system. Maybe, System granted him this ability to make things easier.
This protected the secrets of spells and the knowledge he had. In the world he was living in, these things may not sound important, but he knew that this was his life insurance against the powerful mages who would seek out his spells.
As Nick finished creating the algorithm, he started putting it to use. He first closed his eyes and imagined his magical energy enveloping him. While he imagined this, he also controlled this energy according to the next steps of his formula.
Step by step, his mana got out of his body and formed a complete cone-like shield. It was colorless and protected him against magical attacks or physical attacks such as sword slash or projectiles like arrows.
This was the current form of the basic active magical shield spell that most mages used. Nick had learned this from the book on Basic Magical Shield. It was a strong and active spell that could be cast only when in dire need, as it consumed too much energy and had a comparatively short usability duration.
“Now, I should initiate the next step for progressing this spell.”
Nick then imagined himself in weightless iron armor. As he did this, the shield surrounding him started tightening its form, turning into the shape of armor.
He did not change the energy shield into an external armor just yet and only retained its vague form for the time being.
He took into account that imagination alone was not enough to have what he needed. Imagination worked when the mage in question had large reserves of magical energy. The mage could then wield the magical energy by using only imagination, without the need to insert any knowledge. He, however, started imagining ‘iron deposit’ and ‘iron’.
As the magical shield was still active, he moved to stage three of the algorithm, which was around ‘Fe’. He imagined the element iron and the periodic table. As he filled his mind with ‘Fe’, ‘iron’, and ‘periodic table’, the shield around him gradually turned into the color grey and the magical energy started spending at a faster rate. After about 15 seconds, the magical cone shield completely turned grey as if it was built of iron.
One part of the plan now achieved Nick started thinking about how to make this less energy-consuming. Not long after, his thinking paid off and he found what he was seeking. He smiled and stopped.
“By adding a basic rule, I can make the spell stronger and less energy-consuming. The magical energy works well with rules and simple clauses can balance the spell correctly. If there are no rules in using magical energy, it would be too strong.”
Nick was very satisfied with his logical inference and noted this down.
‘Imagine a magical shield surrounding yourself + Imagine wearing a weightless Iron Armor’
‘Imagine ‘natural iron deposit’ + think about ‘Fe’ and imagine the place of ‘iron’ in the ‘periodic table’.’
‘Rule 1 – ‘User needs to hold or carry some kind of iron on his body’.’
As Nick wrote this rule, he looked around his office and found an iron fork on the shelves. This was placed among other cutlery with perhaps the purpose to let him dine inside his workspace in eating hours, in cases when he would be too busy to step out.
He held the iron fork and cast the spell once again. He first imagined the shield, then imagined wearing a weightless iron armor and natural iron deposits. After this step was completed, he added knowledge to this by thinking ‘Fe’, ‘iron’, ‘periodic table’, and boom — the spell activated.
A grey-colored powerful energy shield manifested itself. It was much stronger than any of his preceding attempts. He also noticed that the consumed magical energy was down by over 40%. It was a significant qualitative change from the original version of this basic active magical shield spell. The fact that it required less than half the magical energy that it did when he first tested the spell, in itself was a big step forward.
The change was too drastic. Given his current power level, Nick calculated that he could keep up this shield for more than three hours, and at the same time use other spells for attacking purposes.
A single rule changed the outcome completely, and the change was so substantial that it even exceeded Nick’s own expectations.
“With this protective spell, ordinary arrows or even arrows from undead creatures such as the ones who attacked me will be deflected easily. Even a strong warrior with a battle-ax could not pass this energy shield as long as I do not want him to.”
Nick stopped using the spell and started thinking further. As a worldly-wise person, who knew a thing or two about surviving the harsh human world, he understood that this spell was too powerful. If he could change this spell from active to passive, and make it consume lesser energy while still keeping it powerful enough as an active spell, which would not be very different from how he used it just now, the quality and power of the spell would transform itself.
He did not know how much did 50 Ether Stones or 50 Magical Stones amount to, but he was certain that he could sell the copy of this spell for more than 1000 to 5000 Ether Stones — at the very least, this is what he thought he could achieve.
Sometime later, he smiled and whispered to himself.
“I will hand over the active type of this spell to Werfur and Rabial, but I will change it into passive for myself.”
