Chapter 6: Chapter 6 : Magic Theory
For Lee Min-Ho, time passed so slowly. It had only been three years since he successfully awakened his magical circuit, yet it felt like barely a month or two.
His routine was the same every day: he would wake up in the morning, train, go to elementary school, interact with Park Eun-Ha, return home, eat, and then train again before going to sleep.
In his past life, although he studied magic all day, whether it was searching to create new spells or studying existing ones, his routine was often disrupted by magic tournaments he participated in. He was also frequently involved in archaeological expeditions where he risked his life in ancient tombs filled with traps and magical creatures of all kinds. These perilous adventures added a dose of excitement to his life, in addition to his regular battles against the executioners of the Holy Church.
The only time his routine was truly disrupted was when a group of three foolish kids threatened him, ordering him not to approach Park Eun-Ha or they would beat him up. Of course, this posed no problem for him. The moment they tried to lay a hand on him, they were neutralized without even having time to react. After this incident, they didn't dare to come near him again.
When he entered elementary school, Min-ho wasn't placed in the same class as Park Eun-Ha, but that didn't stop the girl from coming to see him whenever she had the chance during break times.
According to rumors he managed to overhear, she wasn't well-liked by other girls because of her authoritative attitude, although she was appreciated by boys for her beauty. But nobody dared to mess with her because of her brother, who seemed to be some sort of delinquent despite coming from a wealthy family. He exerted significant influence over the other students, making her a sort of untouchable figure in the school.
After the end of classes, Min-ho returned home, aware that he had something important planned for today.
Lee Min-Ho entered his home and was greeted by his father in the living room, engrossed in reading the evening paper. His father was an imposing man, with stern features that reflected his successful status in business. His gaze was rather distant, as if he were lost in his own thoughts and concerns.
"Good evening, father," said Lee Min-Ho, bowing slightly.
His father barely glanced up from the newspaper to give him a brief nod in return. "Good evening, Min-Ho. Your mother is in the kitchen; she might need help with dinner."
Lee Min-Ho nodded and made his way to the kitchen to join his mother. She was busy at the stove, handling the cooking with remarkable grace and skill. She warmly smiled at her son upon seeing him enter.
"Hello, my dear," she said, wiping her hands on her apron. "Could you help me prepare the kimchi while I check on the stew?"
Lee Min-Ho nodded and began preparing the salad under his mother's careful supervision. Despite their social status, they formed a united team in the kitchen, working in harmony to prepare the family meal.
Once dinner was ready, the family sat down at the table to share the meal. Although his father was often preoccupied with his own concerns, they exchanged small talk about their day.
After dinner, Lee Min-Ho retired to his room to train. Once he confirmed that everyone in the house was asleep, he silently got up from his bed and stealthily made his way to his parents' room. His steps were light, almost imperceptible on the polished wooden floor.
Arriving at their bedroom door, Lee Min-Ho paused for a moment, gently pushed the door open, and peeked inside.
His father and mother were lying on the bed, seemingly asleep. Lee Min-Ho had spent three years of intense magical training. He had devoted much time to mastering the basics, including hypnosis. While he wasn't yet considered a great mage, his thaumaturgic key allowed him to use spells he hadn't trained for yet and enhance those he already knew.
Indeed, by putting his father in a hypnotic state, Lee Min-Ho would be able to influence his decisions and obtain the necessary materials without arousing suspicion.
He needed various expensive materials available on the market, and this approach would allow him to obtain what he needed efficiently and discreetly. Mentally manipulating his father was a clever strategy to achieve his goals without encountering resistance.
Approaching the bed cautiously, Min-ho began by tracing a circle with his finger, then he placed his finger on the man's forehead who was asleep.
"Lapse," as he pronounced the word, the image of a clock's needle appeared in his mind, activating his magical circuit completely.
"In the darkness of the mind, I plunge."
"In the shadow, I reign, sovereign."
"I weave dreams, my enchantment."
"At my voice, they freeze, they reveal."
"My key, Edelsteine."
Satisfied with the result obtained with his father, Lee Min-Ho decided to reproduce the process once again, but this time on his mother.
Mind manipulation spells were often ineffective against mages and espers, as any mage with minimal training could resist such manipulations directly targeting their mind. However, these spells were very effective against ordinary humans who couldn't defend themselves against them. Nevertheless, the more complex the manipulation, the more complicated the spell became to maintain. Fortunately, what he had done was rather simple; he had just placed a lock in their minds, and if he uttered the key "Edelsteine," he could put them in a secondary state where he could give them numerous suggestions to influence their actions as he wished. These spells were often used to make certain human witnesses forget events they shouldn't have seen.
Indeed, this kind of spell, while simple to use, required a lot of concentration and could only be used on one person at a time, which made it unpopular among the mages of his world. After all, why bother mentally manipulating people when one could simply eliminate witnesses of supernatural anomalies and pass it off as an accident?
After finishing stabilizing the spell, Lee Min-Ho returned to his room, satisfied with the work done.
Upon returning to his room, he looked at his two arms with a certain recognition. What he was actually looking at was the Almighty Key engraved in his soul. When he used magic, this same Key appeared on his two arms in the form of a complex pattern, violet on one and red on the other. These two wrists were surrounded by magical circles every time he activated them.
It was the greatest proof of a mage's status in the mage tower of his world
Indeed, while the Mage Tower is an organization that prioritizes talent above all, the old mage families were much more respected than the new ones, and for two good reasons. Firstly, magical talent was passed down through bloodlines, and the old mage families carefully selected their heirs. By marrying them to similarly talented women, they strengthened their lineage with each generation, thus producing increasingly gifted and powerful heirs. This tradition of rigorous selection and strategic alliances ensured the longevity and renown of the old mage families within the magical community.
The second reason was their thaumaturgic key. The longest process in learning a spell or creating one is neither its process nor the training of the circuit to make the use of the spell more precise but rather the learning and creation of its pattern.
Each spell possesses what is called a pattern or motif; it is a lock engraved in the world that is necessary to connect to the world to activate a mystery, and knowing the key is necessary to use it. Every spell has its own unique pattern that a mage engraved in the world when they created the spell. There are also patterns that were already there before mages discovered magic, which are the first patterns humans discovered before the discovery of the possibility of creating them. These are the origin of all magical patterns and are the basis of all the spells that have subsequently emerged following their discovery and all the different magical systems that have emerged.
The first person who learns a pattern also has the privilege of fully tapping into it, while the second who discovers the same pattern will see the power of the spell reduced compared to the first.
As the process for learning a spell is lengthy, mages have developed what is called a thaumaturgic key. In each generation of mages, the heir of the key engraves all the patterns of the spells they have learned throughout their life before passing the key to their heir, who will do the same. This greatly accelerates their learning for the one who inherits the key. Even if a mage does not fully master a spell, they can use it thanks to the key, in addition to reinforcing the spells they already know. This is why mages from old families are considered more talented; they have accumulated knowledge and many patterns that are older and therefore more powerful compared to families of newer mages.
If Lee Min-Ho were to summarize how magic works in order, he would do it like this:
To begin with, mages are grouped into different magic schools, also called magical systems, where they use spells with a common origin. The magical patterns of these schools are similar in their composition, and the members of each school follow a set of common rules that reinforce and stabilize this magic. This makes learning magic easier, as all schools share a fundamental basis: the use of magical circuits.
There are several schools of magic also know as Thamaturgical system , such as alchemy, numerology, necromancy, astrology, and more. Each of these schools has its own practices, traditions, and specializations, but they all share a common foundation of knowledge and methods.
Next come the magical patterns, which are essentially locks engraved in the fabric of the world, allowing access to a particular spell. These patterns require a key to be used. For the same mystery or the same school of magic, the patterns may have similarities, but they are different enough to be considered distinct spells, requiring specific learning of the pattern from the beginning.
The first person to create or learn a pattern can fully tap into its power, while the second will see the spell weakened compared to the first. Therefore, all other things being equal, for the same spell, the one who learned it first will be more powerful. This distinction is one of the reasons why old mage families are more respected than new ones.
Finally, thaumaturgic keys constitute a library of magical patterns stored in the soul of the heir of a mage family. These keys can only be passed down within the same lineage and contain all the patterns of spells transmitted by the heirs of that lineage to future generations. The key that Lee Min-Ho possessed was somewhat different from others because it consisted of both the Faust family key and the Almighty Key, which was the very first thaumaturgic key ever created. It thus contained the patterns at the origin of all existing spells, theoretically offering the possibility to use all spells that have been created. This allowed its possessor to use any spell derived from these original patterns.
It was thanks to this same key that he had the ability to use the same spells that came from his world because when he reincarnated, the patterns it contained were engraved in the world where he found himself.
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