Reborn With a Magic System

During his Magical Law and Ethics class with Mage Teft later that week, Damion had the opportunity, under Mage Teft's strict supervision, to examine the testing crystals.

Mage Teft took out from her spatial artifact a small box and upon opening the box, Damion saw three crystals. There was a clear one, a light green one and the final one was blood red. He recalled what each of them did. The clear crystal would test magic affinity. Green, magical talent. While the blood red one would test magic power and capacity.

Since he was not looking to be tested himself, Damion did not reach out to grab any of the crystals. When he had been tested after the Magic System unlocked he did not have an opportunity to examine a crystal, nor did he when he first encountered former Dean Thorn. Of course, at the time he had no reason to want to take a closer look either.

Now, Damion could see etched in the surface of each crystal glyphs of the ancient language. Taking out his tablet, he began to record the glyphs on each one and even asked Mage Teft to rotate the crystals in the box so he could record all sides.

Thankfully, Mage Teft did not question why he did not just move them himself. The answer of course was that he was afraid of what would happen if he did. The clear crystal especially, how would it react to eight affinities.

The more Damion looked at the crystals and their glyphs, the more puzzled he became. Ordinarily, the enchantments on artifacts were laid inside the artifact, or concealed. Take Damion's cherished spatha, the enchantments were etched on the tang of the blade, hidden from view, even the most common enchantments, that almost every weapon had, were concealed. However, on the testing crystals, the enchantments lined the surface, and what was more, they did not make any sense.

While Damion could not claim to know everything about Nashto, he did know a lot. Enough to create a tier 2 magic seal, which to most would make him an expert. And he could see glyphs that made no sense, that were, as far as he could tell, just gibberish.

Many of the glyphs made sense to Damion. As he traced the lines of glyphs he could see the enchantments and how they worked, but then the enchantment would be interrupted by gibberish. If he ignored the glyphs that made no sense, he thought he understood how the enchantments of the crystal worked.

The clear testing crystal sent out a pulse of Holy affinity mana that interacted with a person's core and then returned to the crystal to display the information it found. The green crystal worked basically the same way, except it checked a person's mind, so Damion guessed magic talent had something to do with the brain.

The blood red crystal, however, functioned differently. Instead of it sending a pulse out, a person had to channel their mana in. When Damion examined this one, he noticed significant differences in the enchantments on the surface of the crystal, chiefly, that there were no meaningless glyphs. There was also no mana absorbing enchantment to power the artifact or generate a separate pulse of mana.

As Damion continued to examine the crystals, he noticed above the blood red crystal an A Rank notice from the Magic System. When he saw this he suddenly realized he overlooked a crucial detail. He was so used to seeing the Ranks of people and artifacts through True Sight he hardly paid any attention to them anymore. Unless he was actively looking to find out about something, he largely ignored the tags.. Because of his oversight, Damion had not realized that the clear crystal and the green crystal both registered as 0 Rank artifacts.

Normally, this meant that the artifacts were single use, which Damion knew was not the case for the testing crystals. It was possible to make a 0 Rank artifact that lasted more than one use, as evidenced by the sword Mage Teft had used for his early training. Such artifacts were made of normal materials and enchanted just to channel mana around them, not through them.

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Taking a look at the enchantments on the green and clear testing crystals again, Damion could not see any enchantments that strengthened the testing crystal. He did, however, notice that aside from the Mana Absorbing enchantment that moved mana along the surface of the crystals before directing it into a person, there were no enchantments to channel mana through the crystal itself.

"The crystals are a sham!" Damion exclaimed.

"What!?" Shouted both Elicia and Mage Teft.

"The testing crystals for magic talent and magic affinity are 0 Rank artifacts and their enchantments are all visible on the surface."

"So?" Elicia questioned, but Mage Teft realized what it meant.

"You only ever leave enchantments visible if they are very mundane. However, if the testing crystal's enchantments are all visible, it means either they can't conceal them, or they know it doesn't matter if they do."

"It is a bit of both," Damion told them. "The enchantments are filled with, what I think are fake glyphs. They look real enough, but if you take them out, then the glyphs that are there make sense, and I can understand roughly how the enchantments work. This makes me think those ones I can't understand are completely fake and aren't even part of the enchantment, just added afterwards to confuse people. I can't replicate my own version of the enchantments yet, but with the recordings of them I made, I should be able to combine what I learned from the recon drone to make a working model. It might take a few tries to get it to work how I want though."

"The enchantments being filled with fake glyphs I understand, a good security measure for when you can't conceal the enchantments. But what makes you think the testing crystals are 0 Rank artifacts?" Mage Teft asked.

"Two things. The first is the result of the one I destroyed as a kid. All that happened is my seal reflected the mana pulse back at it, but the artifact could not handle its own mana. The other is the material the testing crystals are made of."

Mage Teft eyed the crystals trying to get an understanding of what Damion meant. To her, the crystals looked like precious gemstones with the enchantments carved into the surface.

"They are precious stones, why would you think the materials are a problem?"

"Just because a gemstone is precious, it does not mean it is a magical material. I think most likely, especially if all testing crystals look roughly the same, the gems are magic creations, but not magical themselves."

"You mean an Earth mage created the gems and then they engraved the enchantments onto them?" Elicia questioned.

"An Earth mage or a mage with a similar affinity. Think about it, have you ever seen a gemstone this big?"

"No," the two women answered at the same time.

"Exactly. Seeing one this big, makes you think, hey it must be a magical material, but it's not, it's just an ordinary gemstone. That leaves where it came from. If it isn't natural, then it had to be either created by a mage, manufactured in some other form or possibly a smaller gemstone enlarged by a mage. Those are the only three solutions to the problem I can think of, not that it matters."

"Why wouldn't it matter?" Elicia asked.

"Because the gemstone isn't important. These are 0 Rank artifacts, well except for the bloodred one that reads magic power and capacity, but I'll get to that one in a moment. The affinity and the talent crystals don't have to be crystals for the enchantments to work. The crystals are…"

"A diversion," Mage Teft finished.

"Exactly. They used such large gemstones because they are impossible to find and it makes you think it is magical, so anyone trying to create their own testing crystals will look at the gemstones and the fake glyphs and think they are somehow linked and needed, so they will keep looking and searching for this 'rare' magical material to make their crystal work, but it never will."

"Quite the deductions you have made," Mage Teft congratulated him. "Now, you said the blood red one is different?"

"This one, is an A Rank artifact and the crystal is a real magic crystal. Maybe they used a real crystal for this one to throw people off the scent of the others, I don't know. Or maybe they don't care since this testing crystal is for magic power and mana capacity it doesn't matter if the noble families can duplicate it in secret. If they do, they probably spent a fortune on this magic crystal and the Mage Association is probably laughing at them for wasting money."

"I can see that. Yes, I think you are right," Mage Teft said, her eyes were gleaming as if she had figured out more than Damion had. "Well, I have to be off to the schools in the Green and Yellow Zones. Don't get into too much trouble while I'm gone. And be careful on your wilderness excursion."

"Of course I'll be careful," Damion said, without much thought.

"Not of Ferocious Beasts or other students, of anyone else. I don't think it is a coincidence that I'm being sent to do this year's testing at the same time you will be out of the safety of the school campus."