Chapter 385 What is a Mage?
Shoutout to Bruh_Vista for beta-reading and providing extensive feedback for this chapter!
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Although Revian found out that his life as a mage hadn't reached a dead end, it did not wholly take him out of his dismayed emotional state. Because, technically speaking, Revian wasn't a mage anymore. And if Teacher Jeeves' evaluation was to be taken as fact, he wouldn't be walking down a mage's path anymore.
For all intents and purposes, Revian was an anti-mage - a perfect counter to whatever a mage was supposed to be. He would be walking down a road that would be parallel to a mage's, but true to the definition of parallel lines they would never be destined to converge or intersect.
Was this what Revian wanted out of his life? Not exactly. From the beginning, his motion was to become a mage and cultivate immortality, which is the underlying goal of every mage aspirant.
So what defines a mage?
Is it solely defined by one's ability to sling spells, craft Enchantments, brew Potions, and tame Beasts?
If Revian was asked this question before joining the True World Sect, he would answer, "Yes to all of the above!" in a heartbeat. Every aspiring mage dreams of one day controlling the elements and changing the very landscape of the world they live in with powerful spells and destructive weapons. They dream of one day creating potions that unlock their hidden potentials and overturn their destinies. They dream of riding atop a ferocious dragon, capable of laying waste to large swathes of land with a single burgeoning breath of fire.
But the reality was sobering. It didn't take long for Revian to understand that getting to that point was a whole other matter. No one was born with a dragon whelp by their side unless they were part of a powerful Clan or Sect. No one could toss out unsurpassable spells borne of powerful physiques or bloodlines if they weren't born to a storeyed parentage. No one could learn rare techniques to craft Enchantment or brew Potions that could overturn any situation without being under the tutelage of secretive masters in the field.
Fortune - that is what makes or breaks you. The kind of fortune that can completely change the trajectory of your life instantly is either something you are born with, or gifted at opportune moments in your lifetime. The former is a game of chance, true to the nature of fortune. The latter is all about one's ability to take advantage of a horrible situation. If you succeed and walk out the other side in one piece, you are considered lucky. If you fail, you are unlucky. Success defines the interaction as fortune. Failure labels it as a misfortune.
Revian wasn't born fortunate. And while joining the True World Sect changed the trajectory of his life, it wasn't "found" fortune either. He had to work hard and toil to reap the change in his life.
His venture to investigate the second law of thermodynamics and conceptualise its interaction was a juncture. The same kind of juncture where one either walks out with a notch of fortune or misfortune in their belts.
So, as he stood before the Sect's library, Revian wondered: was it a gift of fortune or a curse of misfortune?
"You've been standing here for twenty minutes now," Markus commented as he walked next to Revian.
"Senior Brother Markus! Were you watching me the entire time?" Revian responded.
"You don't need to call me Senior Brother anymore. Our cultivations are at the same level now," Markus informed.
"But you advanced before me," Revian rebutted.
"Because I started before you," Markus reminded him. "Let us not argue about such trivial topics. I prefer to keep things casual. Just call me Markus."
"Sure, Sen- Markus," Revian affirmed, biting his tongue at his inadvertent faux pas.
"You haven't answered my question, though," Markus hinted.
"I didn't hear a question," Revian said with a mischievous smile that slowly dispersed, replacing itself with a wistful expression.
Markus returned an, 'Are you kidding me?' blank expression, which Revian interpreted and asked, "What defines a mage?"
"That's random," Markus commented. "I guess a mage is someone who investigates reality. A scientist that specialises in the interaction of mana and magic with the world around us."
"Huh..." Revian emoted in surprise. "Do you think others would agree with your definition?"
"Maybe others in the Sect, sure!" Markus answered. "I wouldn't be so certain if you asked this question to those outside the Sect, though."
Noticing Revian's intrigued expression, Markus hummed in thought before elaborating. "People have different reasons to pursue the mage's path. I am not in any position to judge whether their purpose is right or wrong. Sure, you can say that becoming a mage to exact revenge is wrong. And I can say that becoming a mage to protect a community from external threats is right. But what if the nature of revenge is to eliminate a threat that endangers the lives of many more people? What if instead of protecting a community, you become proactive and eliminate perceived threats before they become one?"
"I think that when choosing something that will become your life and define your lifetime, you shouldn't choose a goal that has a certain end. You need to choose something that will keep you moving forward. Revenge has a deadline, and so does protecting a community (it ends when the community is all that is left in the world). Having the ability to ride powerful beasts ends the moment you tame one. Achieving immortality, though very difficult, ends with reaching the Tesseract Transformation realm. But being in the constant pursuit of the world's truth and how magic plays a role in twisting and warping it is endless. I don't think anyone can learn the entire truth of the world in a single lifetime. Not even an immortal. Because the more you know, the more you realise how little you actually know."
Revian's eyes widened as he internalised Markus' explanation.
"Does my current... condition... preclude me from being a mage?" Revian then asked apprehensively.
"If you want to hold my definition as THE definition of being a mage, then ask yourself this: will you stop investigating the truth of the world because of your condition?"
Revian didn't hesitate before saying, "No, not really. I mean there will be limitations to what I can do, but I can always ask for help when it comes to it."
"There's your answer to your question, then," Markus exclaimed while patting Revian's back. "In fact, I think your condition gives you a unique advantage. It has placed you in a specialised track, like with me and gravity. You can do something that no other person in the Sect can do, which means that you have a portal to investigate a segment of reality that will forever remain hidden from others (unless someone achieves the same cultivation as you did in the future)."
Revian let out a relieved breath as Markus bid him farewell and entered the library. It was as if a heavy weight was lifted off his heart.
'Senior Brother Markus is right,' Revian said to himself. 'Fortune is just taking advantage of a bad situation. As long as I keep a positive attitude and view my limitations as opportunities, things will work out all by themselves.'
Revian found himself a quiet corner in the library, pulled out an empty roll of parchment from his bag and wrote, "Nature of Volatile Mana" at the very top.
Since his cultivation was now hinging on the absorption and use of volatile mana, it was only right for him to know what it was all about. He scoured the library in search of books that addressed volatile mana, or just spell byproducts in general and was dismayed to find such a scarce collection. So, after retrieving all that was available, he also found himself the requisition form available at the Sect's entrance and jotted down his requirement.
The Sect's library had a feature through which if there was a lack of content, be it from a particular author, on a particular topic, or even a particular book, then a requisition order could be filed to obtain said content. Basically, a request would be sent to all subsidiaries of Verum Trading Company to find the content according to the requisition order and then be shipped back to the Sect. It was a costlier process, compared to just putting out a similar request to any merchant caravans that stopped by Twilight Village, but it was also proven to be highly potent, as not all merchants had access to books that were restricted or limited in circulation.
"Volatile mana is said to embody the contradiction of the spell it was originally used to cast. To that end, understanding this contradiction can provide insight into how a spell works," Revian read from a very thin and battered book hidden in an unexplored region of the library. The book seemed to be a diary or a journal but was extremely short and not at all proofread. The author made a lot of spelling and grammatical mistakes. The same word was spelt incorrectly the same way on the same page in five different locations. A letter was written backwards infrequently. Reading the journal was like decrypting some sort of covert code, which really detracted from the reading experience. But Revian managed to read the whole thing and made it to the end.
Yet the final paragraph in the text gave him pause.
"While volatile mana tells you the nature of the spell being cast, to take advantage of it you need to know the nature of the spell that was cast. It is circular. I made the mistake of being half-informed when exploiting volatile mana, because of which my life is now cut short and my cultivation has turned painfully static. If you are reading this and are unfortunate enough to walk the same path as me, I wish you all the best!"
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