Chapter 187: CH.186 Jonathan VS Nightmare Horse

As the girls were recovering from their fight with the Giant Orc, I summoned Cosmo Queen to act as my practice partner. No, I’m not going to fight her. I’m not that crazy. Just some space magic practice. Getting that skill will be immensely useful, so I can level it up with Level Up! I also summoned Gemini Elf and Aqua Madoor after Paulina requested some earth and water attribute monsters that could teach her.

I guess I should also add a small mention here. The reason I last time went inside the factory to practice was to limit the steps needed to do magic. Normally, magic has two steps. Some might say three, but one of them isn’t actually necessary. 

You need to have the correct mental image of what the spell will do and you have to do the correct mana control for it. Normally, the mana control part is done by the chant, but you can do it completely without a chant. But of course the mana control is massively more difficult without the chant.

I guess if I put it into terms that a person living in the 21st century would understand, it is like a program. If you use a chant, you have a programming code you use, and the mana inside of you follows the programming code. It sorts out your mana pulses correctly, and all you have to do is let them out. The chant also buys you time to send out all of those mana pulses, as each needs their own clean ‘channel’. This is why mana circuits inside your body need to be sufficiently advanced before you can use high tier spells. You just don’t have enough channels to send out more advanced spells, if you don’t have multiple channels for the mana to move through. I guess you could compare it to using a dial-up internet connection to try to surf the web these days. It would just take too long for anything to happen.

Anyway, back to the chantless variants. So if a chanted spell is like using a programming code, chantless magic is like coding in binary. You have to really know what you are doing. You have to control each mana pulse that you send out, which order you send them out in, how strong they are, etc. If you make a mistake, it can drastically alter the power, target location, timing and other things of the spell.

And as to why everything is easier in the factory, well simply put, inside the factory I don’t have to worry about mana control at all. As long as I have the correct mental image, the spell will activate. Then when I have that part correct, I can come back here and try to do it while having to actually control the mana.

Of course the problem was that I didn’t actually manage to do any space magic spells inside the factory, only factory shenanigans. So I was still going in with potentially the wrong mental image, but better to try and fail than not try at all. And the chants do help with the imagination, as well as fixing small problems with the spell.

 

After they had fully recovered, Alice practiced with Mana and I summoned Vampire Grace for Ria. She actually asked for a fire magic teacher, but I said that would only happen after her blood magic is true blood magic. I promised Lua that I would make sure Ria learns true blood magic, and I’m planning on keeping that promise.

 

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Our magic practice kept up till lunch. Our lunch was chicken. Well cockatrice. And it was amazing. Probably the best chicken I’ve ever eaten. It had just been cut into thin strips and cooked over a fire and then some sauce was drizzled on top. Our sides were some rice and boiled vegetables. 

Remind me to pick up some vegetables so I can cook stuff that isn’t just meat with Mystik Wok. I really need a better lineup of plant-type monsters. The only one I would even consider eating is Mystic Tomato.

 

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After lunch, we returned to the practice grounds with a few more people this time. Angelina, Jonathan and two maids came there. Mateo, Angelina’s husband, also joined up on the way, as he wanted to see his son fight one of my monsters. Jonathan’s instructor, a magic swordsman in his early 30s, was also there. He was actually part of the knight order, but his current orders were to act as an instructor for Jonathan.

 

I had spent the lunch searching my collection for something interesting and I found a few things. First I was thinking of Mighty Guard as it has lower attack than Winged Minion, but has a lot more defense, but then I noticed something that might be better.