[God of Games] 7 – Learning about Magic

[One Week Later, in the Domicile of Sirus, God of Games]

I watched Otis as he continued to flee North, and much to my surprise, even with his...intelligence, he was making significant progress with the status, though his leveling speed was slowing down with most dangers becoming less than what he needed to grow. Still, at this time, I had not been sitting idly.

Through a trade of what little faith Otis had given me so far, I managed to obtain a tome on the subject of Magic. You see, my system was just a...framework of what it could be. There were no classes in the system yet, meaning that until I made some, Otis would remain classless and have far less potential and fewer chances of surviving and running from the Demonic Horde he was fleeing, but I've come across another problem. 

The classes I could make were...Mundane, I needed a...spark to make truly unique or powerful classes, a spark in the form of Divinity or Concepts.

To explain, I could make a class to make a supernaturally skilled Cook or Thief, but the class would only give mundane bonuses, like a stat increase or proficiency increase. However, if I added a spark of Divinity to the mix, I could etch magical skills into these classes to give the class user an extraordinary or supernatural skill. In the Cook's case, if I got the spark of a God of Cooking, I could create a skill to make the food taste better, or give special buffs or debuffs, even if their skill in cooking was not up to par.  Using a basic Warrior Class as another example, I could give them skills like Taunt, forcing enemies to focus solely upon them, or Swing to fill them with supernatural strength for a brief moment.

Of course, these skills couldn't work from nothing; they'd have to be fueled by a mortal's life essence, their HP, their energy, their SP, or their Mana, their MP. 

Using these as a basis, I started making classes based on four classic archetypes, the Warrior, the Rogue, the Mage, and the Worker. The first three were your typical fantasy combat classes, while the last archetype would be dedicated to lifestyle classes, such as Bakers, Blacksmiths, Tailors, etc.

But, no matter how much I did, I was still stuck behind the hurdle of gaining these 'sparks' to make custom or magic classes, sure, I could make whatever basic class I wished, but if I stuck with just those, all my followers that chose these 'basic' classes would be trampled over by any future classes I made with these 'special skills.'

So, I made a class tier system based on how they function.

This required me to mess with the system for a bit until I came to a choice: class evolution.

The system would work like this: if someone chose a Basic or 'Common' tier class, they could evolve it at the cap, level 100. This does not mean they were limited to only Common tier classes at the start. I wanted to make a sort of achievement system to unlock certain classes. After all, someone who has trained their entire life to be a Lumberjack shouldn't suddenly have the choice to become a Mage, however, if they spent time learning magic in their free time, they could unlock something like a future 'Druid' Class to sort of mix their experiences into a single archtype.

Hence, I was currently reading through a dusty tome made around a thousand years ago on the topic of magic. As one may have come to expect, with Gods having seemingly infinite lifespans with enough Faith, Magic was a field that was mastered long ago. Like any capitalist nation, such secrets were locked behind a myriad of paywalls, meaning I had to go down the arduous route of learning this all myself, not that I was complaining, as I was excited to learn about Magic.

However, most gods did not even bother learning Magic, as our Divine Energy was superior in every way but utility and versatility. Most did not like converting our Divine Energy into Mana when we could instead use our energy for something else. 

While this was a used tome, it was in good condition and was meant more for beginners, so it lacked much information, even then, there was enough to teach the average God how to shift your Divine Energy into Mana, and how to manipulate mana, it also had some other details and information, but much was missing, as it only mentioned the most basic elemental affinities, such as Earth, Water, Fire, and Air.

It didn't go further than that; there were no starter spells, no tips or tricks, and it was just a thing tome with the most basic of basics when it came to magic. Though curiously, it did mention that Magic came in many different forms.

Sacrificial, Ritual, Symbolic, Internal, External, and Conceptual.

Sacrificial Magic was relatively simple, as you'd sacrifice your blood, your soul, to even concepts such as taking an oath never to have children or feel the pleasure of procreation. Ritualistic magic involves performing rituals using complex arrays, formations, and regents to achieve effects, such as a simple array to draw mana into the circle. Symbolic magic consists of things like sigils, runes, and symbolic images infused with mana to perform very specific effects. Internal magic was more like Chinese cultivation at first glance, as it required cultivating the mana within yourself to become stronger, more durable, or just plain superhuman. External magic was the opposite of internal magic, as it was more focused on controlling the mana around the user via willpower or a focus like a staff, wand, charm, or something else, and casting magic that way, much like Harry Potter. However, those 'Wizards' had internal Mana as well. Conceptual Magic was in the realm of the Gods and very rare among Mortals. As I read it, I realized it seemed similar to the fictional late-stage Chinese Cultivators who could embody concepts like fire, ice, swords, death, etc. 

It was all fascinating, and what made it even better was that many worlds and magic systems used a combination of multiple types of magic, with few worlds supposedly ever focusing on only one method of using magic. However, I noted that it said nothing about worlds that had no magic, like Earth. 

With that information in mind, I sat on my living room floor and focused on the Divine Energy that filled my being. Divine Energy was somewhat unique to each God, and I could tell that if any mortal had such pure and exotic energy within them, they'd likely suffer a horrifying death. Focusing on a single strand of my Divine Energy, I dragged it to my center, where I began the slow and agonizing process of morphing this strand of energy into Pure and Condensed Mana, taking note to be extremely careful as this would likely end with the strand collapsing into an extreme amount of Mana that would literally disintegrate most mortals into ash in an instant. That was written in the tome as a mere side note, just a single strand of my Divine Energy contained so much mana, that it would Thanos Snap a Mortal to death.