That same night, I decided on two more things, one was that I would push my magic reserves to its limit every day to maximise my growth. It's something which could speed up the process after all, better use it as much as possible.
The second thing I decided that same night was during the time I pushed the limit on my mana pool, I would steadily learn and use new incantations; hopefully, I can do one new incantation per week.
It's an effective strategy, I would be basically multi-tasking without much extra effort…
It's the perfect plan.
I have mentioned this term a few times before, 'Beginner level incantations', it's a term used a lot in the textbook, throughout the first seventy or so pages at least.
To clarify the term 'Beginner level incantation' I meant basic incantations, the easiest to learn, the basics.
These incantations are mostly of the offensive category, in other words, attacking incantations. There's also a tiny bit of supporting incantations mixed in; it's not until the next tier or class of incantation that we see cleansing and healing incantations.
Some incantations in the beginner category include: 'Torch', 'Waterball', 'Fireball', and all that sorta stuff, the entry-level magic if I had not explained myself well enough.
On the surface level of understanding, there are two majorly scaling systems, the Barista system and the Aether system. The textbook only explains the Barista system, so I don't really have enough understanding to explain the Aether system, but apparently, it's used the most by adventurers and mercenaries.
In the Barista system, there are a basic seven levels to magic: Beginner, Elementary, Intermediate, Advanced, Imperial, Calamity, and Divine. If you were to dive in deeper, there are a bunch of sub-categories in each one of the tiers; a few examples are Beginner I or Beginner II, but for now, that is really not important at all.
Calamity class magic seems so cool to me. I wish I could one day become a calamity class gladr, it just sounds cool as fuck.
But how am I supposed to get there? I know I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but this textbook here only teaches up to the Advanced level. If I was actually to become a competent gladr I would need to learn some of the higher class magic right?
I shouldn't think that far now; I should just focus on the task at hand.
In my gaming and anime watching experience, I know that if the mc goes after the strongest monsters, they would get absolutely destroyed, burnt to a crisp. It's just going to be annoying when your attacks don't do a single bit of damage while the enemy can just one-shot you.
I learnt that the hard way in one of the Souls games…
The more realistic approach was to start off from the weak ones first, like goblins and slimes.
Fire seemed like the best affinity to have, so I'll start with it, I suppose.
The beginner-level fire incantations are listed here in the catalogue as follows:
Torch: a tiny flickering flame for lighting candles and for a dim light. (Beginner I)
Fireball: a fist-sized orb of flame which hurls at the target. (Beginner I)
Flare shot: a small but fast bullet of flame that goes in a straight line. (Beginner II)
Scorch: allows your hands to have flames on them and can burn targets. (Beginner II)
Heated Strength: allows the body to be heated up and hence makes the body more powerful. (Beginner II)
Catch Flame: makes touched targets burn and catch fire. (Beginner II)
Flame Sling: a burning projectile which is launched like a catapult. (Beginner III)
Greater Flare shot: a bigger but slower bullet of flame which launches in a straight line. (Beginner III)
Greater Heated Strength: burns the body more, but makes the bodily functions even stronger. (Beginner IV)
Flaming Burst: creates an explosion around the user. (Beginner V)
These are all classified as beginner-level incantations, but the mana needed to cast each one are like night and day. For example, 'Torch' takes about one percent of my total mana to cast, while 'Flare shot' takes around two to four percent, determined by size. The range wasn't really large, but the difference could be felt.
There was also another factor that impacts the mana consumption, this only applies to fire incantations, but when using a fire incantation, the temperature fully determines on how much mana is put in, it could range from lukewarm to a three-hundred-degree oven.
The basic linear equation looks like: more mana equals higher temperature. It's really simple if you learn basic maths in primary school.
There is one problem though, all my incantations just fall to the floor and extinguish instead of hurling forward like the textbook said.
It's like there wasn't any force pushing my incantations forward.
I couldn't get the incantations flying both with and without chants. Was I doing something wrong? I couldn't really tell because I was still pretty new to this.
Maybe I had to put more mana in there. I held out my hand and stood in position to cast 'Fireball'.
Let's try that.
I began imagining the incantation in my head; by the end of the day, magic was just envisioning, as long as it's within the bounds of one's imagination, it could happen, just a matter of how much mana you have.
I applied a little more condensed mana into the incantation. I opened my left eye to check on the incantation, "Huh?"
I saw the fireball hovering in the air, but it wasn't flying forward like I had hoped it would.
Is it a little bigger than normal? I thought as I went through the possibilities of what's happening.
It seems like putting more mana into the incantation doesn't automatically make it fly forward; instead, it just makes the size of the incantation bigger.
I continued to experiment with different methods to make the incantations fly forward. It wasn't an easy task. I could increase the temperature, make the fireball bigger or smaller, pressure the flames so that they'll create a mini explosion, but still, I can't get it to hurl forward like how the textbook says it can.
I tried to cast fireball again, this should be my one hundred and twenty-ninth attempt today.
I got in position… "Damn… I ran out of mana aga—"
Thump.
I fell to the floor, blacking out once again.