Shades of the New World

Chapter 201: A complicated system

"They call this thing a Secrets Protector. As you describe your spell, we will have our hands in it and it will be listening to everything we speak of and then recording them on the Oaths inside us. I can't quite share how it works exactly, but let me show you its functions. Put your hand inside and tell me how one of your relatively common spells work," Zayev said with a sigh.

Evin warily put his hand inside the fleshy device and started describing how one of his earlier floating spells worked. He could tell that the Oath inside his heart was communicating with the Secrets Protector somehow during all this.

After he was finished, Zayev told him to pull his hand out and started to describe Evin's spell with some of the words changed a bit.

At this point, Evin noticed that the Oath inside him was starting to work on something inside his body. All of a sudden, an extremely realistic image of a doll sitting on a chair appeared in front of his vision. Weirdly, there was also a pair of giant hands near this doll. Weirdly, the doll reminded him a lot about the souls inside Four's World..

"Can you see a vision of a featureless mannequin and two hands around it?" Zayev asked.

"Yeah?"

"Can you freely control the hands by yourself?" Zayev asked.

"Yes" Evin replied after trying it out.

"Try raising one of the mannequin's arms. Be very gentle about it, please."

Evin could see what was happening here. He carefully controlled one of the hands to pinch the doll's hands and raised it up, intently looking at Zayev in the process. Just like he expected, the old man's hand was raised up alongside the doll's, assuming an identical pose.

"Shit" Evin couldn't help but curse, as he let go of the doll's hand and watched as seeing Zayev's plop down to his side. Obviously the intention was that if Zayev ever talked about Evin's spells, his life would literally fall under his hands.

"Well, now you know why the Kingdom usually puts criminals on my post," Zayev said with a chuckle.

"Isn't it enough to just forbid you from talking?" Evin couldn't understand the need for such excessive methods.

"Sure they could, but for whatever reason, the mages don't believe the Kingdom when they only do that. So they have to give part of the power to the mages so they feel safer. Didn't you just pose the same problem to me just now?" Zayev answered with a shrug.

'Well, I suppose he's right,' Evin thought.

"But to be honest, he-he, you're one of the better ones. Some of them go a bit crazy just to make sure that the Oath Protector is doing its job properly, making me assume weird and unrealistic poses Oh my poor battered body," the old man said with a chuckle.

"Well, I'll spare you from that," Evin smiled wryly.

"Now that we're done, let's get to work," the old man said, urging Evin to begin talking.

Shaking his head Evin started to describe his spells one by one. 

Two hours later, with the help of the Oath, Evin had finished speaking of everything in his knowledge.

From his earliest attempts at the World of Storms and his latest spells which incorporated the World of Space. Soul Magic, the World of Space and even his prized Battle-mode, he had to talk about all of them in great detail. Obviously, just like Twelve told him, Evin didn't have to speak anything about his usage of Divine Essence and anything that related to the age before the Empress.

As for the knowledge he got from the books, he just showed them to the old man.

Zayev's face had even turned slightly reddish at the end of it all, properly impressed at Evin's knowledge of magic. Evin was almost proud of himself for giving the old man some life back.

"Alright. Seems like I've stumbled upon a reincarnated High-Mage," Zayev said with admiration.

Evin didn't wish to deny the title, as it would be easier to explain if people just assumed that.

"Do I have to teach any of these to the kingdom?" Evin asked.

"Hmm, most of the spells you use are known by the kingdom. Even the usage of Soul magic and the use of your Time energy beams. But the main difference between you and other mages are the details that you make use of and apply to your spells. Small optimizations that add up to make your spells much stronger than most others. But those are mostly individual specialties so the kingdom is usually lenient on such details," Zayev said.

Evin didn't find it surprising that most of his spells were known by the Kingdom. After all, it was a country with an extensive history. With 80% of the mages being willpower-based ones, there were countless mages who would think of the most unique methods to use one World. 

"But, there is still one thing that falls into a grey area and it's your so-called Battle-mode. About how you create a switch to access your gestures," Zayev said and paused a bit.

"Obviously, there were people who tried to bind their spells with specific thoughts. Most of them do it in a three-word code system, where for example, if a mage thinks 'fox-system-bite' they automatically cast a certain spell."

"And at first, it really doesn't affect their lives, after all, they have to think of the words pretty clearly to make it work. But it's still not a risk-free thing, since after years of usage, their minds become so used to constructing those spells, they could end up casting a stray spell without meaning to when something or someone startles them. Aside from this, there's also the constant strain on their minds to be always ready to cast a spell at a moment's notice, especially for the mages with lacking mental fortitude."

"Your trick helps a lot to solve these latent problems. After all, as long as you don't enter your battle-mode, your mind is mostly at ease and there's no risk of accidentally setting off a spell," Zayev finished explaining and let out a small groan.

Evin heard the explanation and could see how the things that Zayev said could be harmful in the long run. 

"So what am I supposed to do?" he asked.

"Even though your method could technically be considered a supplementary detail, its effects are too good for the kingdom to ignore," Zayev concluded and explained what Evin should do next.

Basically, Evin just had to write a letter describing the details of his spell and give it to Earl Borna. Obviously, he could choose to pay the 10k gold or just offer his contributions, like some others choose to. 

Evin compared the options and found that one of the choices was by far the worst of the three.

'Well, I suppose the ridiculous price of 10k was just there to encourage mages to work for the country. After all, with 10k gold, it's completely feasible to maintain and work a small mercenary company,' Evin thought. 

While the South and North outright told its mages that they were forced to work for the country, apparently, the West tried its best to trick them into working.

Steering his head back to the topic at hand, Evin thought of what he should do. Three times to do the Kingdom's bidding was alright, but Evin really didn't want to do that. As for 10k gold, the price was simply too much for the spell, which could almost be considered a convenience buff to a mage. 

Comparing it like that, Evin's decision was obvious: he would give the kingdom what the wanted. But there were some stuff that Evin was curious about.

"Do you know how other mages in the kingdom can access my spell?"

"Ah, let's explain to you how exchanging contributions work in the kingdom," Zayev said, as if remembering something.

The old man explained that every new spell or detail that Evin contributed to the kingdom would give him what was called a spell token and between 10-1000 contribution points. A spell token could be used for Evin to learn a spell from the kingdom's archive and the amount of contribution points he had would decide the quality of the spells that were available to him.

There were also many other ways for a mage to get spell points and contribution points, mostly through the war with the South. Moreover, since Evin was still 'young', he could go to the academy and farm up contribution points and spell tokens that way. 

"What decides the amount of contribution points I get for my spells?" Evin asked.

"It depends on various factors. The first one will be the evaluation that the Western Spell Committee of the kingdom gives. They will classify whether it's an offensive, defensive, supportive, or just a convenience upgrade like in your case and then give it a ranking from one to ten, with Ten being the highest. Then, they will put it in the Kingdom's catalogue of spells, and give it a fitting name. Yours will probably be named Gesture Optimization and put in perhaps rank 6 or 7, since Gestures are usually considered something relatively high-level."

"And when a mage from the kingdom chooses it and starts using it, they can give your spell a rating that ranges between one to five stars. Obviously, the better your rating, the more people would try it out. And the more people use it, the more contribution points you will receive," Zayev explained.