CH759

“Thank you for joining us today, Ben,” Spoke Speni, the herring-like head of the mages’ guild once he arrived and told the front desk what he was there for, being led to the guild master himself.

As promised, back when he’d completed all of the available books at the magic towers’ library, he’d come to give a talk. An event that wasn’t the best use of his time that he’d nonetheless agreed to, if only for a change of pace as much as anything else. It was just one day but it was also a unique opportunity and even if he wasn’t going to get anything significant for it, it was also a good way to spread Myriad’s name and fame just a bit more.

Of course, along with that, it never hurt to have one of the people in charge of one of the world’s major guilds viewing him positively.

Especially when I just got the head of the adventurers’ guild fired and the old head of the craftsmans’ guild is in the middle of being tortured… Huh, that means I don’t currently know who’s running either of those two guilds. Oh well, not important.

He pushed those thoughts to the side to instead focus on Speni, giving the man a smile.

“It’s my pleasure to be here, can I ask how many I’ll be talking to today?”

“About a hundred, I reached out to some the guild considers our more promising and passionate mages and while some were unreachable while many others too busy hunting down the demons, either by themselves or with different armies, I’d say we got a decent turnout.”

“Interesting, interesting. Then just out of curiosity, how promising does the guild rank me?”

The other man laughed at that. “Well, while you haven’t involved yourself with us too deeply I can at least tell you that from what we know we’ve been forced to give you a rather high evaluation. The holder of what? Two awakened magics and likely at a high level as well? Not to mention how things turned out at the library and Killi’s evaluation of you, which holds plenty of weight in these walls, you can consider yourself near the top when it comes to our registered second-tier mages.”

“Love hearing that. In that case, shall we go?”

“Of course, they should all be seated by now, I hope you’ve prepared something interesting for them.”

“Ha, I’ve done my best.”

He was led to a small auditorium from there, up to a stage that stared out to the small crowd before him while Speni stood at the front.

“Hello everyone, thank you for making some time for the guest speaker we’ve brought in. More than a few of you likely recognize him yourselves if you’d been lucky enough to have gotten some of his time at the library. I hope you all give a warm welcome to the apostle of Myriad, Ben.”

The introduction was met with polite applause while he looked out into the crowd with their focus firmly on him. He could recognize a few, both from the help he’d given at the library as well from his mass awakening event and it was clear that even the ones who hadn’t seen him before were aware of him to one extent or another and were all interested to hear whatever he had to talk about.

“Hello everyone, thank you for having me today, I wanted to start things off with a show of hands. How many of you are enchanters?” Not a single hand went up and left Ben to chuckle, having expected as much as he went on. “In that case, bestowers then?”

Still no one raised their hands, not that he was shocked. “Ah, too bad, I’m not a bestower myself but I’ve only met one and I’m always hoping to come across more. In that case, let’s go even broader. How many of you have a non-affinitied magic?”

This time three hands went up and he pointed to the first. “Perfect. You there, would you be willing to share what magics you hold? Affinitied and otherwise?”

“Sure, I use mainly space and clairvoyance.”

“Wonderful, both awakened?”

“Just the space.”

“Okay, and I’d assume the clairvoyance is used to aid your space magic? Helping you get the lay of the land before teleporting perhaps?”

“That’s correct.”

“Very good. Alright, and next, you,” He said as he pointed to the second person, with them answering in turn.

“An awakened air, along with a fire and strengthening.”

“An interesting combination, Should I take it you use your air magic to empower and exert more control over your flames?”

“That’s right.”

“And then why strengthening as well?”

“I work as a rank two adventurer, strengthening allows me to empower my party when we fight if need be as well as myself if anything gets closer than I was expecting to handle, and in an emergency, it can help me ensure that everyone I’m with can escape.”

“I see, is that why you learned it?”

“It is.”

“Good. And finally you,” He said, pointing out the final person to raise their hand. “Your magics?”

“An awakened death along with corpse song.”

“Huh, you know, that’s supposed to be one of the rarer non-affinitied branches in the world and yet you’re now the third holder of it I’ve met. Any chance you acquired it with the help of Zandale or one of his apprentices?”

“It was an apprentice of the skill master. I was lucky enough to make his acquaintance and he helped me gain the magic in the time the two of us were working together.”

“I see, and I’m assuming you chose it because it pairs well with death magic? Kill something and then see its history for any other useful information?”

“That’s correct, I thought it would be a potent combination once the waves arrived and so far it has been, I’ve been able to aid my team in tracking down a few different demon groups.”

“A noble goal but if there’s one thing for everyone here to take away, it’s both how few of you hold a non-affinitied magic and that none of you hold an awakened one. Now, there’s nothing wrong with that, there’s only so many hours in the day to practice and learn and train so why take the time? Many of you were probably born with at least one magic as your blessed skill and the rest that didn’t still likely trained in magics you had a high affinity for. It only makes sense, your affinity lowers the mana cost, along with the difficulty in gaining and leveling skills the higher it is. Anyone who wants to be a mage should at least focus on the area they’re most compatible with in the beginning to help grow their mana pool to pursue other areas of interest but from here, I’m going to take some time to try and convince you all of the value of non-affinitied magics and why even now, with the third wave on the way, it could be worth your while to try and gain one.”

“The first reason and what is admittedly the weakest one I’ll present to you is that it can help with your overall magic control. In all of my reading, it’s not something I’ve actually seen recorded in any books… Which reminds me, I really do need to write this down but back on track. This is something confirmed by the goddess Anailia that I’ve personally seen verified through a friend who originally had terrible control of their magic. The more branches you have access to and the higher their level, the better your overall control of magic will be. Now, that probably doesn’t matter to most of you. It’s pretty easy to think that you just need to level your current magics and that will help with your overall control immediately, and while that might be true, the question then becomes if you can. Each of you here is a high-level mage, to the point that when you consider the jobs you might have gone through already and the mana pools you all must hold, it might actually be easier to gain a new branch of magic instead of leveling your skills. Of course, gaining the zeroth level of a tier one skill is not going to grant you a fraction of the control you’d gain from leveling an awakened magic but if you don’t think you’ll be able to achieve a new level in what you already have before the next wave then trying to gain a new one might help you save one or two points of mana on everything you cast and as small as that may sound, it could be the difference between life and death for you and the people around you.”

“Second then is just what non-affinitied magics can do,” He told them as he looked across the stage, seeing they were all still watching to see just where he was going with things. “Unlike the affinitied branches with their clear, distinct roles, non-affinitied magic is harder to pin down. There’s been a few different works on the topic and different theories on it but seeing as how this is my presentation, you’re all going to hear the one I subscribe to. Everything. The base component of any affinitied mana is plain mana and without the affinity, it can still be wielded in the same way, only at a greater mana cost and once you think about things that way, so much more becomes possible. For example, this.”

He materialized a blackboard and some chalk as he said it, getting to see a few in the room sit up a bit straighter for the display of power and he smiled at them all while he went on.

“I’ll make things clear to you here. I have no affinitied magics. I am incapable of ever getting any affinitied magics, the highest one my card shows to be reflected in my soul is time with the oh-so-grand value of five. The materialization you just witnessed is because after raising up my skill ‘material user’ I was able to look past some preconceived assumptions about what magic can and can’t do to force my will on the world and as a result it awakened the skill, pulling in another non-affinitied magic simply called destruction to let it awaken to my final, tier two option of material manipulation. And the most interesting thing is that when I first started researching those two original magics, I’d only found one book on each of them within this city’s great library. While some might see becoming a non-affinitied mage to be the end goal of anyone who learns a non-affinitied magic, there’s plenty of value to find in pushing it as far as it will go in a slightly less broad form. Why, even the corpse song one of you holds could be positively brimming with potential. While this doesn’t mean no one has ever achieved it, in all of my reading I’ve never seen any records of what is possible for it once it becomes a second-tier skill, let alone a third-tier one if you’re feeling ambitious. If you take the time to read through the library's books on the topic, you’ll potentially find branches of it you never imagined which might let you achieve things you’re currently incapable of with the affinities you hold, increasing both your overall options and power as a result.”

He could see that if he’d had their attention before, he had their investment now with more than a few eyes gleaming and the minds he could reach from where he stood already considering making a stop at the library once he was done to explore just what options they might not have given proper consideration before, just to see what resonated with them, but Ben wasn’t done there. All of that was just the leadup to the main topic he had been looking to discuss and he began putting the blackboard he’d created to use, drawing diagrams on it while he spoke up.

“That brings us to my final talking point on the value of learning a non-affinitied magic; mana modifiers. If you haven’t heard of them, that’s okay, they’re a fairly new area of research. One I’ve been conducting with both the gods and a small research institution I’d set up that were found while studying a different topic. You’re all surely aware of the summoned of course, the two hundred brought to this world from other realities whose souls ended up empowered by the experience and resulted in some extra powerful hands that were brought to the planet but what is less widely known about is the spell that was used to bring them here. A spell that the gods of this world didn’t create, with a couple of them each instead independently buying it from passing void gods back before their worlds fell, with the original creators of it lost to time. All we do know is that it’s advanced in a way that the magic of this world simply isn’t, a precision piece of magic engineering in comparison to how what currently exists is treated somewhere more between a science and an art form but that is a gap that can slowly be bridged with time and study. While magic modifiers of all affinities have been found and usually require precise mixtures of affinities, what I’m currently going to teach you about is only a small combination of them that, when used together in the correct arrangement, can strengthen most affinitied spells if a bit of non-affinitied mana is applied correctly during the casting process to whatever else you’re working with, enhancing the effect of your spell without significantly raising the mana cost that you’d all be able to pull off so long as you can acquire even the zeroth level of a non-affinitied magic of your choice.”

He didn’t need to read any minds to understand their investment at that point, it was clear as day and with their full attention he went on, detailing the discoveries he and his team had made while giving examples he’d seen tested as the rest of his talk went on.