Reborn With a Magic System

The next day, Damion received the reconnaissance drone from Mage Veers. Not long after receiving it, the drone was in pieces on his table. To Damion's surprise, the artifact was much simpler than he imaged it to be. The most complex part of the enchantments was actually the magic battery. Since the drone operated independent of a person and was not actively receiving channeled mana, it needed to have a good reserve of mana to be able to operate.

The scan and transmit functions were actually much simpler than what Damion had worked out from True Sight, but he could still see similarities in the glyphs of the ancient language. He supposed the glyphs were simpler because with True Sight the spell was identifying the Rank of the things he looked at, while the drone merely transmitted exact information.

Now that Damion had a working artifact that did almost everything he needed, he was back to figuring out how to make it possible for his artifact to look inside something. Which meant he either had to figure it out himself, or he needed to examine something that could already do that, which meant he was back to examining a testing crystal. When class started the next day he decided he would ask Mage Teft for help.

"Would it be possible for me to take a look at one of the school's testing crystals?"

"Take a look at?" Mage Teft questioned.

"I want to figure out how it works."

Mage Teft hesitated for a moment before responding to Damion.

"Testing crystals are very delicate artifacts. If you remember, one broke just from not being able to read your core when you were six."

Damion remembered those events slightly differently. The testing crystal was not just unable to read his core, the Magic System had blocked it. Thinking back to that moment he tried to recall what the System notification had told him.

'System, when you destroyed the testing crystal, how did you do it?'

{The energy of the testing crystal was reflected back into the crystal resulting in its collapse.}

"That first crystal was destroyed because my core was sealed and the energy from the crystal was reflected back to the crystal. I'm trying to figure out how the energy from the testing crystal enters a body and reads a person's affinity."

"Why?"

Damion was somewhat surprised by Mage Teft's question. Usually, she indulged him and would just answer his questions. Equally surprised was Elicia. The young attendant had already put most of the pieces together of what Damion was trying to do. And she could not figure out the reason Dean Teft would not just give him the information. He was building an artifact to look inside people, certainly an unusual artifact, but what was its purpose, why would he want to build one? Those were the questions Elicia had not figured out.

"You once told me it was illegal to study a magic core, because you'd have to cut open a person to view their core. I am trying to design an artifact to scan a person and then display their information, including their core."

"And you think examining a testing crystal will let you figure out how to do this."

"I've already worked out most of the other enchantments for the artifact," Damion said, taking out his tablet and activated its projection mode.

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Damion's schematic of the enchantments for the artifact were nearing completion. Mage Teft was an experienced S Rank mage and had a working knowledge of the ancient language, but had little experience with creating artifacts, that was where Demetri Leland and Thelma Gerrard had excelled. To her, Damion's schematic looked intriguing, but she still did not understand the purpose.

Was it really just to look at a core to study? Such a device could upset the balance of power for all mages, noble and commoner alike. If a person's core could be studied, their spells could be revealed and possibly stolen. Any noble would treat this invention as a threat to their power, after all, what kept the nobles in power was not their magical strength, it was their stranglehold on magic seals.

"Do you intend to steal the magic seals of people with this artifact?" Mage Teft asked.

"What?" Damion was somewhat shocked by the question.

'I would never deign to steal magic seals…' Damion thought, but then he realized something. He already had stolen quite a number of magic seals. Even from unsuspecting people like Gene. Of course, each time he let the Magic System record a spell, he rationalized it as his right, because of the System or because he wanted to learn more about Nashto. But in the end, he had still stolen them.

"That isn't my intention. I was just thinking that if we can learn more about the workings of a core, we could further our understanding of magic," Damion told her. "Maybe figure out why there is a spell limit, or maybe discover a way to use spells other than our individual affinities. There is no way to know for sure what we can learn from this until we start investigating."

"I think you are right. There is a lot of potential for magic research in your artifact. But also, a lot of potential for chaos. Imagine if your artifact is controlled by one noble family, they could capture and steal the magic seals of another noble family. And don't think they won't attempt such actions."

"You once told me not to worry about 'what ifs.' I can't limit my thinking because of something that may happen or how someone else might misuse my artifact."

"Fair enough," Mage Teft told him. "The testing crystals are regulated by the Mage Association. No family, or school, is permitted to 'own' them. When school officials are sent out to test children in their respective zones, they check out a testing crystal, and then, after use, have to return it."

"Is that why Richard Thorn was so mad at me when his crystal broke from being used on me?"

"Partially. You see, he had to go through a whole series of interrogations and investigations from the Association to ensure that he had not stolen the testing crystal. Thankfully there was a witness to what happened, other than you and your mother of course. So, all he ended up having to do in the end was pay for broken one."

"Why does the Association control the crystals so much? They aren't exactly a dangerous item."

"They claim they limit their use and distribution so that noble families can't search commoners to find potential strong mages ahead of school recruitments. After all, the younger a mage is identified, the easier it is to manipulate them. That is one of the reasons I concealed you until your seal lifted, you would have been a prime target for schemes like dropping a beautiful attendant in your lap to manipulate you."

Both Elicia and Damion blushed at Mage Teft's comment but could not deny that the Sorin family had indeed done that.

"You were old enough to see through the ploy, most mages start schooling when they are only 15. Hormones are an easy way to get control, though it doesn't always work. Sometimes they use money or promises of power. Sometimes all three. But if they could identify potential mages before the Mage Association was aware of them, they could approach them and recruit them and their commoner families influencing their upbringing from a young age."

"That would be a rough way to live your life, to be a prisoner and not even know it," Damion commented.

"Oh, no doubt," Mage Teft replied while looking to Elicia who was staring at the floor. "Though, I think the noble families would put your artifact to a different use, even just a testing crystal would be disastrous in their hands. They would use them to pick and choose which of their family members were worthy to receive resources or even learn magic."

"What?"

"Think about it, if they could know early on what the Rank of a child's affinity or talent was, they would simply exclude the weaker ones from ever learning spells or using rare resources to boost their abilities. It would result in mediocre talents, like Elicia, being completely left behind."