The Truth of Magic - Chapter 24

Chapter 24: Cantrips
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

“I made it?” Even though Zhao Xu could see the result for himself, he still murmured in surprise.
“You could say it half worked.” 1
“Half?” Zhao Xu was confused. You could do half a ceremony?
“It’s probably because all of you are projections. To complete the ceremony, you probably have to wait for a chance to become real before you truly get this ability. But it doesn’t affect anything at the moment, and you can already memorize spells.” 1
Zhao Xu felt relieved. And as for that chance to become real that Antonya mentioned…
She was probably referring to how everyone would transmigrate to Arthur in a year. 2
Zhao Xu, and many other people on Earth, had suspected in his previous life that this game itself was just an initial selection.
If six or seven billion earthlings suddenly arrived in Arthur, it would be hard to deal with the sudden influx of people even though Arthur had plenty of resources and space and was practically boundless.
So the players who had knowledge of the world of Arthur were meant to be the guides for the rest of humanity.
As for how TC ended up being the ones releasing the game: Firstly, everything in the game was determined by an AI.
Secondly, there were plenty of arcane spells that could either manipulate others or confuse others. That wasn’t a problem at all.
There were even some who suspected that some of the deities had gone to earth during this one year of gameplay in human form.
But none of these things had anything to do with Zhao Xu. Even if he knew who was actually a deity in human form, he wasn’t going to do anything crazy like try to befriend that person.
He just needed to wait patiently now.
But, as for whether that super meteorite that fell on earth to destroy all mankind was a coincidence or deliberately planned, nobody could find an answer even after ten years had passed. 5
From the night the game servers opened on Monday until the next week, it took a full seven days before the very first wizard in the game could make it past his training.
Even though a lot of players already knew how complicated the training for a wizard was from the complaints posted in the forums.
But a full seven days was still beyond what many people had expected. 1
On top of that, the power of those Level 1 spells and the limited number of spell slots that wizards had disappointed a lot of people when they found out.
A survey in the forum discovered that—out of the new players who joined the game every day— the number of players who chose to become a wizard was falling, and now it was pretty much at the bottom of the list.
And this happened despite how wizards were traditionally popular and well-loved in most other MMORPGs.
Nobody knew that once you hit Level 5 Wizard, then a wizard would be on par or even surpass other melee attack classes. Once you hit Level 10 Wizard, then you were miles ahead of everyone else. 1
At the moment, it was impossible for the players to know how a high-level wizard could fight.
Besides scrolling through the forums and maintaining some form of exercise, Zhao Xu spent most of his time on Arthur.
He had finally gotten through memorizing the basic formations and all the incantations and gestures of spellcasting.
Now he had reached the point where he could start studying cantrips.
Zhao Xu wasn’t trailing too far behind the first wizard player to complete his training.
Three Level 1 spells required 24 hours of studying, then he had to subtract four hours of deep sleep per day.
He would still need at least 3.5 days. 1
So that meant that the first wizard player to complete this only used 3.5 days to finish his study of spell formation, incantations, and gestures, and also mastered Summon Familiar and Scribe Scroll.
As for the skills training that came later on, apparently that player took a break first and was going to make up for it later. He just wanted the record of being first.
Everyone also found out that the association in any town would reward the first person in their town to complete his training course. 1
But there was no fancy halo on the player’s head or any additional titles or anything like that.
Zhao Xu also spent 3.5 days and he was still stuck at cantrips. And this was despite not needing to learn the features Summon Familiar and Scribe Scroll.
This made him realize the difference between himself and those players who were truly cut out to be wizards.
But even though those naturally gifted players took the lead at the beginning of the game, Zhao Xu didn’t really hear about them after that.
And that was including that player who was the first to complete wizard training.
The five revival stones were both a player’s hope as well as a poison that numbed the players.
Only players who could revive would dare to gamble with their lives.
Zhao Xu was leaning against the desk with a magic desk lamp that would never go out to one side. He had one hand propped under his chin and the other held the Encyclopedia of Cantrips open for him to read.
From Read Magic to Mage Hand, there were a total of 19 cantrips and they were all spells that new wizards had to learn. 1
Some unorthodox wizards out there might skip a few, but as long as you were enrolled with a Wizard Association in a major town, copying these cantrips down wasn’t anything difficult.
Zhao Xu had heard Antonya mention Read Magic much earlier on.
After casting that spell, you could read an arcane text without using Arcana, and the duration was ten minutes per level.
Even though Zhao Xu wasn’t a Level 1 Wizard officially yet, he could be sort-of considered Level 1, so this spell would last ten minutes if he cast it. 1
If he could read one minute per page, it would be enough to read ten pages.
If reading about components of a spell was all about concepts, then the actual spells he was learning now could be considered the formula to solving problems.
Actually copying a cantrip only took half a page in a spellbook, and he just needed to copy the components.
But in this Encyclopedia of Cantrips, each article spanned a few dozen pages. All sorts of experiences, philosophies, and possible traps that the wizards before him had run into were all listed there.
Zhao Xu now realized that the 24 hours of reading time didn’t include reading all these additional pieces of information.
If you were unable to completely grasp a spell within 24 hours, then some wizards would borrow some notes or summaries from others who had gone before them. They were available from local Wizard Association libraries.
The encyclopedia in Zhao Xu’s hand was that sort of book.
Otherwise, Antonya just needed to provide him with a spellbook with nine and a half pages.
And he would only get the magic symbol of the Wizard Association if he successfully copied the spell into his own spellbook.
Once he could copy it into the spellbook, then he could prepare the spell the next day.
So it was easy to tell whether Zhao Xu could move into the first level of arcane magic or not. It just depended on when he could copy all 19 cantrips into his memory.
Cantrips were the only spells that he could copy without needing a potion to increase his energy levels.
But Level 1 spells were different. A total of three bottles of potions to increase his vitality, costing 50 gold pieces each, had been placed on his desk by Antonya while he was still studying cantrips.
As far as he knew, any wizard with some sort of alchemy skill could spend some money to brew these potions themselves, and the source of the ingredients didn’t become a burden to wizards.
The materials for copying spells into a spellbook were also as readily available as the potions. Once a wizard reached a sufficiently high level, they could also use spells and spend some money to create the materials themselves.
Besides requiring a senior to guide them in learning spells, wizards enjoyed the fewest limits in other aspects. At most they could just learn a feat and create items.