Chapter 692: Ice and Snow

Science was the accumulated knowledge of humans’ understanding of the natural laws. Physics, math, chemistry, and so on would all find their own objective laws. Once everything was classified into the most basic molecules and atoms for each substance, science in my original world started its greatest developments of all.

But in the world of Eich, the elements were the basic unit of everything. All substances would be composed of the elements. Research and knowledge about elemental magic would be a constant of all civilizations and cultures as they developed. It was common sense in this world that magic existed.

Mages were scholars. They would need to study and learn in order to accumulate knowledge and power. Myths about people who mysteriously obtained powerful magic and were able to instantly cast forbidden spells and high-level spells were completely impossible in magic theory. It would be the equivalent of how impossible it would be for a seven- or eight-year old to become a professional scientist in my original world. If such a thing really happened in this world, it would either be the result of a reincarnated spirit, or a demon/devil pretending to be human.

Even though magical knowledge was now commonplace and complete, all sorts of mysterious magical secrets would still attract a great deal of attention. However, the most fundamental part of magic was how to use the basic elements.

Enchanting something with flames at high temperature would often cause explosions. The burning point of a substance would often mean the temperature at which it would die. Powerful winds would have powerful pushing and cutting force, a direct representation of power that wasn’t visible to the naked eye. The penetrative properties of water were as important as it itself was for all life. The earth silently bore everything upon it, and all mortals also required the earth to survive.

This was why fire magic had been developed to include all sorts of AOE magic attack spells. Fire magic had large AOEs, high temperature, and tremendous attack power. Water magic had the weakest attack power, but was the most flexible, and even had healing properties. Low-level earth magic was focused on defensive spells, but when you reached high-level earth magic, no matter if it was building walls or destroying walls, no other magic type could compare.

This was all similar to how science in my original world had been developed by using the laws of nature. Didn’t electricity, magnetism, force, and other such scientific fields all come about this way? A scientist would have to start from the effects that appeared to occur on the surface, gradually analyze and understand the reason why such a thing occurred, and then use the natural laws and technologies discovered to change nature, using special man-made tools to create a higher-level civilization of one’s own.

“…So, I had been wrong from the very beginning.”

Learning through Harloys’ soul books was far more effective than “starting over from the very beginning”. This was especially more so because the ice mages had all been quite successful. If I still couldn’t understand after gaining all of their personal experiences, I would be dumber than a pig.

Harloys hadn’t simply just given me a pile of ice magic mages’ soul books. As she was a master of all magic types, her understanding of magic had long since surpassed that of the mages in the soul books. She classified all of magic into specific categories and subcategories, and had a deep understanding of all main and even uncommon schools of thought. With that as the foundation, she had specially picked a “list of books” just for me so that I could have a God’s eye view and understanding of the entirety of ice magic. Then, she would base the next books for me on my personal condition and needs, picking the necessary magical school of thought and giving me more knowledge from a mage of that school of thought.

“Although ice and snow are elements that exist in the natural world, they aren’t basic elements. Ice and snow are compound Concepts that are the combination of two more basic Concepts. The first basic Concept is Water, while the second basic Concept is Low Temperature. Only when both basic Concepts are present will ice and snow be produced.

“This is the reason why the majority of ice mages will also study water magic as a sub-specialization. Perhaps it should be said that the job class known as ice mage was just another job class under water mage to begin with. It will be quite difficult to proceed down the path of ice magic cultivation without knowledge of water magic… Don’t ask me how you managed to learn ice magic without water magic. Just think of it as your wild bestial instinct.”

Harloys’ categorization of all magic completely abandoned the magic society’s typical classification of magic by spell effects and historical inheritance. Instead, she classified magic in a more encyclopedic style.

“Many ice magic spells are simply extensions of water magic spells. A regular water wall magic spell can be cast just by summoning the water element. If you add low temperature to that, it will transform into an excellent defensive ice wall magic spell instead. As for icicle blast, the ice magic spell known for astonishing killing power, more than 70% of its magical formula is identical to the famously weak two-circle water magic spell, waterball.”

The entirety of ice magic was taught to me by Harloys. This all came from the research results of countless people. However, their knowledge had all been only partial.

And yet, when all that knowledge was combined in Harloys, she was able to explain the entire magical system of ice.

Under Harloys’ classification, there were two major categories of ice magic. One was ice magic itself, and the other was snow magic. In her eyes, snow magic was actually a completely different magic system from ice magic.

“Ice is a special form of water in low temperature. Ice magic spells are relatively simple in regard to magic formulas. Typically, you only need to swiftly freeze water, and then kill your enemy with the hardness and sharpness of ice, or with low temperature. If you want to become skilled in ice magic, you must also have high skill in water magic in order to make the ice difficult to analyze and defend against.”

Harloys showed me a little performance. A waterball on her arm froze into ice, and then easily changed into forms such as ice sword, ice hammer, ice shield, and so on. The most ridiculous transformation of all was transforming it into a gigantic electric saw, with the water portion responsible for keeping everything smooth and flexible, and the sharp ice portion responsible for killing.

She also transformed her ice and water into a nine-sectioned whip, a three-sectioned staff, and an ice spear that she could extend or shorten the length of at will. Perhaps I had always been mistaken about how I had used my weapons of ice before.

“Some famous ice magic schools include the snow dancers from the northern glaciers and the armed snowmen of the Bearmen. Many of them are magical warriors who cultivate both magic and martial arts. This is because large AOE ice magic spells use far too much mana, and are far too slow. This makes ice magic actually inefficient for pure mages. Mixing some ice magic techniques with martial techniques is an excellent combination. Among all ice magic warriors, your Aurora Knights are the best of all. Their ice swords and ice armor that they can change the shape of have incredible power. However, even though the Aurora Knights have the largest mana pools out of all ice magic warriors, their use of ice magic is far too rough. They’re basically no different from a group of magical beasts with how undeveloped they are.”

I silently nodded in agreement. Indeed, the Aurora Knights’ combat techniques were quite rough. When in the air, they would simply shoot ice shards and charge with ice spears. When on the ground, the Frigid Nightmares would become the primary fighters, with the Aurora Knights as their support. Even though the Aurora Knights clearly had good mana pools, their destructive power and combat strength in magic wasn’t even close to mages of the same level. This was because Aurora Knights only knew how to charge and attack with ice shards.

“Snow magic is also a major type of ice magic that I categorized myself. Basically, snow magic imitates snow calamities in the natural world, mainly using low temperature to kill your enemies. There’s far too many examples of snow magic, such as blizzard magic, avalanche magic, hail magic, and so on. Your Ice Aeon is also categorized as snow magic.

“The benefit of imitating the natural world’s snow calamities is that it’s easy to create the magic formulas. The attack power and area of effect are also quite satisfactory. There also won’t be any laughable scenes such as spending 10 times the amount of mana for only 1% of results, which is quite common in ice magic. However, the weakness of snow magic is that its magic formulas are quite standardized, with the effects of the magic being obvious. It’s easy for enemies to anticipate what you will do beforehand and easily avoid the spell.

“Also, the larger in scale the snow magic, the more of a low temperature prerequisite there will be. This will require a tremendous amount of mana required as payment together with a long incantation time. What meaning is there in having such a slow-casting spell, no matter how powerful it is? Still, there’s a certain idiot who created a spell where it didn’t matter how slow it was, because it would cleanse the entire map, so what am I supposed to say? It’s not mage-like at all; it’s a pure and utter waste of mana; it’s foolish to the point where I don’t want to comment… If I said that I wasn’t talking about you, would you believe me?”

Harloys explained the entirety of ice magic to me. But, the scary part was that this was only the beginning.

“…This, this, this, and this are all books that you must read. After learning all these, your incredibly tiny list of magic spells that you know how to cast can finally be expanded. If you only know how to play with ice swords and cast forbidden spells, don’t dare to call yourself my disciple. That would be far too humiliating for me.”

Harloys gave me more than 30 soul books, and more than 400 ordinary magic textbooks to read through. I instantly wanted to become a truant.

Previously, it took me an entire night to finish reading my first ice magic soul book. I also sunk into a state of “Who am I?” confusion for a short period of time. Forcing another person’s entire soul’s worth of knowledge into one’s head as a method of learning wasn’t something that ordinary people would be able to deal with easily.

Soon after, Harloys piled yet another mountain of books on another table next to me. This pile actually included more than 60 soul books.

“As a top-level ice and snow magic mage, you need to at least learn enough water magic knowledge to match Legend-ranked water mages. Even if you don’t know how to cast a single water magic spell, you at least need to match them in theoretical knowledge. You’re truly fortunate as water is one of the major four elements. I have far, far more water magic knowledge accumulated here than for ice magic.”

Soon, another floating disc brought yet another pile of books.

“Right, since your method of using magic is just like that of the magical beasts who rely on their natural talents, there’s actually many warlocks and dragon bloodline mages who also do the same thing. You can try learning from their memories and combat experience… Where did Roland go? I’m being nice enough to teach you, yet you dare to play truant on me!?”

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