Chapter 116: The Limitations of Spellbooks
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 116: The Limitations of Spellbooks
The hour flew by. I didn't pay for an extension; that would have been a pure waste of money. I figured it was better to just give the extra cash to Dongli Yiren as a tip.
Before leaving, I made sure to give Dongli Yiren a five-star review. I walked out feeling quite satisfied, carrying a signed photo of her in her private maid outfit.
I looked back at the maids who were still waving goodbye. This money definitely wasn't wasted; it was a fascinating experience.
It was also an unexpected revelation. After all, you never know just how wild your roommates are getting behind your back.
Speaking of which, what was Guan Qiuling doing right now?
She said she was going to find a Senior Sister, so she was probably engaged in some "high-intensity activities." I just hoped I wouldn't accidentally stumble upon anything like that.
While at the cafe, I hadn't just been dealing with the class group chat. I’d also asked Dongli Yiren about her class. She had been assigned to Class 105. The gap in class numbers was massive; we might not even be in the same teaching building. Then again, classes didn't have fixed rooms anyway, so it was hard to say for sure.
However, at this stage, she hadn't received an invite to a group chat from her Class Monitor. She didn't even know what her Counselor looked like, let alone who the Class Monitor was.
It seemed my situation was a "special case." The position of Class Monitor probably wasn't that easy to fill, so there was likely no rush to set up the class chats.
After all, not everyone in the classes had even arrived yet.
I spent the rest of my time at the cafe continuing to read Analysis of Spellbook Construction.
Even though it was a popular science book, the content covered the exact common sense I desperately needed to understand.
For instance, regarding the existence of spellbooks: the threshold for creating one was the level of a Transcendent Witch. Therefore, I could set aside any thoughts of self-researching or crafting my own for now.
If you were to deconstruct a spellbook, you would find that this non-physical entity—designed for one-touch, foolproof operation—was actually a complex synthesis of spells and rituals.
The book went on to explain what spells and rituals actually were.
A spell is a means of triggering a phenomenon that transcends nature through a series of operations. To master these means "effectively" and "scientifically," one needs to coordinate them with the corresponding Transcendent Knowledge and Mysticism.
A ritual, on the other hand, is an action used to enhance the effect of a spell. Any operation that forms part of a spell but cannot be explained by current Transcendent Knowledge or the principles of Mysticism is categorized as a "ritual."
This was a relatively "scientific" summary—or perhaps a somewhat narrow explanation of "rituals."
Then again, this was a popular science book. If the explanations weren't easy to understand, that would be a major problem.
Of course, spellbooks contained more than just those two elements. They had many other functions. For example, the Cleaning Spell the Shopkeeper gave me included "operating instructions" for the spell. That was another type of information that could be embedded.
What surprised me even more was that spellbooks could be transferred. While I couldn't do such a thing at my current level, the fact that it was possible spoke volumes.
Furthermore, the human body was merely a high-quality carrier for a spellbook, not the only one.
This led to cases where spellbooks were hosted by non-human entities.
These were classified as magic props. Their function overlapped somewhat with methods like Solidification Spells, but if one could find a medium with high compatibility, it served as an excellent storage device for a spellbook.
Most spellbooks were collected in this form. For instance, Xia Li had many such spellbooks in the Manager's Private Stash.
Because the compatibility of a spellbook varied depending on the carrier, different people using the same spellbook would achieve different results. As the saying goes, "one cannot generalize about human constitutions," and the same applied here.
The effectiveness of a spell depended not only on personal constitution but also heavily on the Mental Power mobilized. In my case, my Mental Power had been tested as having a Pan-Affinity attribute.
I was essentially a jack-of-all-trades; I had no bonuses for any specific effect. Fortunately, I didn't have any penalties either, which was good enough.
If someone had Mental Power leaning toward Elemental Fire Affinity, their Fireball Spell would likely be significantly more powerful.
That covered the basic relationship between a spellbook and its user.
The spellbook itself also came with many operating regulations and limitations, which was the primary focus of this book.
To put it simply, a spellbook could be classified as a "tool" that helped people use magic.
Viewed this way, it naturally involved many parameters: casting time, lock-on capability, failure rate, burst potential, stability, durability, cooldown intervals, and so on.
Even identical spellbooks might have subtle differences.
After skimming through all this, only one thought remained in my mind: If a person moved beyond the spellbook, could they cast spells independently?
If a person were powerful enough, they wouldn't be restricted by these parameters. Cooldowns, casting speeds—none of it would matter.
Could a human truly reach that level? Perhaps not. But what about a Transcendent Witch who had reached the Transcendent level?
It should be possible, right?
Even now, my Mental Power was sufficient to disturb the energy in the air, yet I couldn't use spells.
It was as if I were in water. My Mental Power was my hand, and the water represented the Transcendent Elements in the air.
My hand could easily churn the water, but I couldn't freely control the water to do exactly what I wanted.
At this moment, the spellbook was like a water gun. By holding it, I could use the water in a specific, fixed way.
If one day I became a master of water—forming walls of water with a wave of my hand, or splashing a sphere of water with a mere gesture—that would be truly aspirational. It would be far more liberating than using a water gun.
But that wasn't something that happened overnight.
If I wanted to grasp power now, I should master more "water guns." If I wanted to break free from their limitations, I should take them apart and see the principles they used to manipulate the "water."
As for how to deconstruct a spellbook... wasn't Spirit Vision my best tool for that?
Spirit Vision was a different perspective for observing the Transcendent world. It would reveal everything to me in exhaustive detail. The problem was that I couldn't read or understand what I was seeing yet. What I needed now was to learn how to use Spirit Vision properly.
It looked like it was time to head to the library and find a book on Spirit Vision.
Back before I had any contact with the Transcendent Academy, the explanations and theories about Spirit Vision provided by ordinary people were just for entertainment. They performed feats of self-consistent logic just to farm likes; taking them seriously would be a joke.
Of course, I couldn't deny that their "pseudo-science" had, for a time, built up my longing for the Transcendent.
Sometimes, people just want an answer. Whether it's right or wrong doesn't matter; they just need something to believe in.
As long as the process of derivation is polished enough to be convincing, it has meaning.
It's just like how people view the world—emotional or rational, materialist or idealist. I, too, needed to find a way that I could accept to understand this Transcendent world.