Chapter 56: Scan

After showing Taryeon who’s the boss, Alec indeed went to tell the others about his victory before finding an available study room to focus. He had more important things to do than revel in winning a spar against a kid by cheating.

Learning to use Scan wasn’t difficult. Unlike other mages, Alec could just use the image produced by [Reader] and copy it with his mana. Other mages had to memorize and draw from memory or try to look at a written spell formation while simultaneously casting.

Spells were also easier to cast the better a mage understood them. [Reader] gave Alec a decent understanding, even with just a glance.

After studying the spell formation a little, Alec held his hand in front of himself with his palm facing his chest.

A light green spell formation slowly came into existence as Alec drew the runes with his mana. He wasn’t in a rush, so he took his time to feel the spell take effect and his mana sink into the formation, transforming into the life attribute.

Almost a minute later, the spell formation was completed, and turned into a puff of light that escaped into Alec’s body. The puff of light expanded until it covered all of Alec’s insides before bouncing back like an echo and returning to Alec in the form of a mental image.

Alec blinked. It was similar to how he sensed his own body when condensing mana, but at the same time, different.

Scan was purely physical. It didn’t see anything about his magic or mana other than the fact that his heart was acting a little strange. It gave him an idea how how his body looked.

’It’s not enough.’

Alec could tell from just that impression that Scan wasn’t detailed enough. If he had any internal injuries or fractured bones, Scan would have revealed them. It did not reveal the mechanisms and inner workings of his cells. It did not expose the details of the digestion process.

Alec frowned slightly.

’But then how could the nurse be so confident that I was fine?’

After he returned from the forest, the nurse who was there when he woke up told him he was fine—that they had used Scan to check and confirm that there was nothing wrong with him.

’How could they have known that if this is all that Scan can do?’

Alec looked at the spell formation again. It had taken him almost a minute to cast it. He had tried to make sure there weren’t any errors.

There could be a couple of reasons for the nurse’s confidence.

She wasn’t someone who used Scan or knew its limitations and thus trusted the words of those who did. Unlikely. She had spoken with too much confidence.

There were multiple versions of Scan, and the Academy’s infirmary had access to a better one than Reina. Very likely. Reina is a teacher for the commoner division first-year mages.

There was more to a spell than just casting it.

Runes were sensitive. In a spell with over a hundred runes, that sensitivity compounded. The slightest error in construction of the formation could lead to failure.

At the same time, there were probably slight tweaks to the design that would lead to a better result that could only be discovered through practice. The tip of one rune might need to be a little more curved. The center of another might need to be a little wider.

Out of the three reasons Alec could think of, there was only one he could do anything about right now.

He focused his attention on the spell formation before him.

He used all of his skill energy to [Read] it.

The Core was a set of three runes that together meant something along the lines of ’life form’ and ’chamber’ or ’vessel.’ Alec couldn’t quite put the other part into words. He understood it to a certain degree. It was something that held something, but not because it could be emptied or filled.

If he had to guess, it would refer to the insides of a living being, a life form.

The Regulator had barely a dozen runes, which surprised Alec when he first noticed it. For a pretty advanced spell, at least compared to the ones he was used to, it was a lot less than he expected.

But when he read, he understood why.

The demands on the Regulator weren’t strict. Scan didn’t use a lot of mana, and thanks to the Frame, there wasn’t a tremendous need to control it.

After Scan was cast, the Frame told the mana to bounce around the targeted life form’s vessel and provide a visualization of its condition. That was where over ninety runes were used.

It was a detailed spell that didn’t allow for poor mana control in the first place.

A Fireball with a poor Regulator could drain a newbie mage of all their mana and make the Fireball explode in their face.

If Scan had used a worse Regulator, the spell just wouldn’t activate. Even if it somehow did, the one who used it would only receive an unnecessarily bright and loud mental image of the target’s condition.

’Interesting. Does that mean an advanced enough Frame doesn’t need a Regulator? Or that a mage skilled enough doesn’t need it?’

The Regulator was there to control mana, after all. If the mage could control it on their own, wouldn’t that mean it was unnecessary? In that case, couldn’t they skip it when casting the spell?

If they skipped it, they could save time while casting. Although the Regulator wasn’t the biggest part, even a fraction of a second could change the tides of battle.

Alec froze with the pen in his hand just above a piece of paper. He didn’t even know when he had grabbed them.

’Focus, Alec. Experimenting with stuff like that can come after you’ve fixed your impending monsterification.’ Alec set himself on the right path and cast Scan again instead of rewriting it without the Regulator.

If another mage had learned that Alec had not only learned a new spell instantly but also started thinking about how to alter and improve it, they would have most likely bit their tongues and collapsed in jealousy and outrage.

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