Chapter 186: The Results of Endless Mana

Complexity—that was the simplest way to describe what separated an Apprentice from an Adept in spell modification.

An Apprentice-level mage worked within constraints. They could adjust a spell, sure—like taking a standard mana sphere and tweaking it to fly faster than usual, or penetrate deeper into solid material on impact. But that came with a cost: more mana consumption. Even changing a spell's size was just a minor variation, a small alteration. It wasn't revolutionary.

But when a spell underwent so much change that it barely resembled its original form, it stopped being a mere variation. It became something entirely new. A new spell. Just like how most mana barriers, no matter what they do, still share the same core structure. And once you've made something new? That could become the base for something even more complex. Modifying the modification. Layering one effect over another.

Adept-level mages couldn't fully reach the point of creating brand-new spells, but they edged close to it. Magnus was beginning to understand this now, as he watched the twins continue evading the attack he had launched nearly two minutes ago.

That wall I made—the mana construct—at first, I couldn't tell exactly what it was. But it wasn't a simple spell. There was a modification in its formation. A new property, a new function that allows it to redirect kinetic energy. Not, actually not just redirect—reflect completely.

As for the ball of mana he'd launched? That was a modified version of a basic, uncategorized spell. Just a simple mana construct at its core.

If I had to break it down, it might look something like this: [Mana Construct: Sphere] + [Levitation: Ascend to Fixed Altitude] + [Anchor: Lock at Altitude] + [Branch: Dual Piercing Protrusions] + [Homing] + [Reactive Branching: Miss-Trigger Propagation].

In fact, Magnus realized, maybe all spells could be broken down this way. Even something as basic as a fireball was just a series of combined functions: [Mana Condensation] + [Elemental Transmutation: Fire] + [Mana Shape: Sphere] + [Propulsion: Linear Forward] + [Trigger: Impact Detonation].

Of course, he knew this was a gross oversimplification. Some fireballs could be guided by thought, others had homing capabilities, and the process of turning mana into fire involved countless smaller steps. Still, the concept held true.

Apprentices could only make straightforward modifications—simple layers stacked onto existing spells. Adepts, however, could incorporate entirely new, complex functions. While they weren't creating brand-new spells from the ground up, their modifications could still result in fundamentally different, highly advanced magic, like an attack that could split and strike again if it missed.

In that case, what about Master-level mages? Would they be able to keep layering so many functions onto a basic spell that it turns into something entirely new? Actually, what am I even asking? That's exactly how it works, isn't it? That's how all categorized spells came to exist in the first place. Every spell a mage uses is just a chain of modifications someone else discovered and perfected. When they tweak it, it becomes a variation. But if someone skilled enough comes along and changes it enough, it stops being a variation. It becomes something new. A spell of its own. Each generation builds off the last, using the past as a stepping stone for the future. That's the foundation of magic itself.

Thinking back, Magnus finally understood why Eveline always mocked the magic from centuries ago, or what people sometimes uncovered in ancient ruins. "Old Magic" was just that: old. Outdated. Inefficient. Sure, some of it helped shape what mages use today, just like how clunky old computers had to exist before better ones could be built. But in the end, the modern stuff was simply that much stronger. Cleaner. More effective. Better in every way that counted.

He was right in the middle of that thought when his focus snapped back to the match.

Sylas had moved.

He leapt into the air to dodge another spike, but instead of landing on the ground, he landed on the spike itself. The moment his foot touched it, the spike shifted, morphing and spawning a new spike beneath him. Sylas reacted instantly, rushing forward to avoid it. By now, the once-simple mana sphere Magnus had launched had completely transformed the battlefield. The Academy Arena in front of him had become a sprawling net of split-off mana constructs, spreading in all directions like an endless, shifting trap.

And yet, Sylas moved through it, jumping from branch to branch, spike to spike, weaving his way through the tangled structure like he'd trained for it. Above, in midair. Below, his sister Syrna still ran across the ground, dodging just as quickly. They were fast. Faster than Magnus's spell. But the spell wasn't slowing down—it was only growing. Gaining more paths, more angles, more ways to trap them.

But every spell has a weakness. And this one's right there.

Sylas blurred forward, speeding through the dense mesh of mana. Then he jumped straight toward the core. The orb of mana at the center of it all. From behind him, a spear shot out from one of the branches, aimed right for his back.

But he didn't stop.

He swung.

The blow struck the sphere dead on. The structure rippled, then crumbled. The core destabilized, and with it, the entire formation unraveled. One by one, the branches began to collapse, the whole network dissolving into flickering fragments of mana as spirit suppression kicked in.

Sylas landed on the ground hard, and the last of the splitting stopped. Up in the stands, the crowd went quiet. They'd seen the whole thing—the way a single ball of mana had spawned a massive, spreading attack that covered nearly the entire field. Some had even lost sight of the fight entirely as the spell grew.

Down below, Syrna finally stopped running. She caught her breath and shot Magnus a look, part frustration, part thrill.

"Now, when the hell did you learn a spell like that? Is this the kind of stuff you pick up on assignments? Some crazy new trick?" Syrna asked, causing Magnus to turn toward her, nodding slightly.

"The assignment helped, sure. But this isn't a new spell—just a modification," he replied.

"A modification?" Sylas's voice carried a note of disbelief. How could anyone call something like that a mere tweak? If they were still at the Apprentice level instead of approaching Adept, that single spell would have wiped them out. It multiplied too fast, too dangerously.

Ithra, who had been watching silently, now fixed Magnus with a sharp, calculating gaze.

I see... so that's why they call him Pseudo-Master level. His magical knowledge might not be there yet, but everything else...

She could understand Magnus's claim—it was, technically, a modification. A semi-advanced one, sure, but nothing an experienced Adept couldn't replicate with enough training. But that wasn't what made it dangerous.

It's not the spell—it's the scale.

Letting a spell like that split four or five times? Manageable. That would push an Adept's mana pool, but it was doable. But the number of times Magnus had let it branch and sustain itself? No Adept had that much mana. Not just raw power, either—the control needed to keep something that massive stable, especially under spirit suppression? It was unheard of. That wasn't something any Adept could pull off. That was a Master-level feat. And she still had to remind herself of the fact that Magnus was seventeen. No prestigious background. No famous lineage. Just talent—and somehow, this much mana?

Adepts spent years, even decades, gathering mana, mastering their spells, and perfecting their control—all with the hope of one day reaching Master-level. And here she was, being told that a seventeen-year-old boy with no background had somehow managed to do it?

Suddenly, the order to have him watched made sense to Ithra.

Magnus finally moved, taking his first step since the match had started. He spoke to the twins as he did.

"Sylas, Syrna. I told you I wanted to duel you two. So, I'm sorry, but... I'm going to experiment a bit." Sylas and Syrna exchanged a look. Not because they didn't understand what Magnus meant by "experiment," but because it meant he intended to experiment while fighting them.

"You know, Cain, for someone who doesn't talk much..." Syrna muttered, her grin shifting into something tighter, her muscles coiled in anticipation as she lowered her stance.

"You really know how to get under our skin," Sylas added. Without another word, both twins charged at him together.

Both twins rushed in an arc, closing in on Magnus from either side. In response, Magnus didn't move a muscle—but just before they reached him, he shot up into the air like a rocket, soaring over twenty meters. Sylas and Syrna skidded to a halt, staring at the spot where he'd just been. A simple mana construct platform lay on the ground, paired with a repulsing modifier that pushed anything it touched away. Magnus was sticking to his principles, relying on magic not just to fight, but to avoid them as well.

Without even glancing at one another, the twins crouched and jumped, chasing Magnus through the air as he looked down at them. He extended his hand, and in a blink, mana condensed and transmuted into ice. What formed below him, just in front of his hand, was a large, beautifully intricate flower, each petal crisp and delicate, thousands of them clustered together. It was easily bigger than a person.

The very next moment, it shattered. The petals broke free, swirling around like rain, headed straight for the twins.

"Sylas!" Syrna shouted, and he nodded in reply without even making eye contact. His aura flared, shimmering like moonlight, spotted with tiny stars.

"Aerial Arts: Aura Slash!" Sylas swung his crescent blade upward. As the petals fell, his aura expanded far beyond him, forming a sweeping slash far larger than his weapon. The force alone shattered the falling petals into countless fragments before the slash even reached them.

At the same time, Magnus spawned another mana platform beneath his feet. It moved backward, taking him with it, just narrowly avoiding the aura slash, which faded as it soared higher into the sky, eventually dispersing as the aura returned to Sylas.

But that wasn't the end of it. The ice fragments in the air started to collide, each one connecting with another, causing new flowers to bloom—smaller, but still intricate, with thousands of petals. The twins' eyes widened, and they exchanged a quick look before kicking off each other's feet and darting in opposite directions, dodging the incoming flowers. More fragments collided, creating more ice flowers that bloomed, shattered, and bloomed again in an endless cycle.

As Sylas and Syrna landed, they could see the result: a massive, towering field of shattering ice flowers stretched across the ground and into the sky, growing higher and higher, stacking on itself.

So this variation of the ice flower creates endless copies of itself? Interesting... What if I do this?

Having an idea, Magnus, still hovering on his mana platform in the air, snapped his fingers. Ten black-and-white mana spheres appeared around the base of the growing ice tower. In an instant, they exploded with violent force. The shockwaves shattered the tower's base, causing it to collapse under its own weight, sending a rain of ice fragments crashing to the ground.

"Oh..." Syrna muttered as she watched the ice tower crash to the ground. It shattered into what could only be described as a tsunami of ice fragments, which immediately turned into ice flowers that shattered just as quickly. Once again, the chain reaction had begun, but this time it spread wide—far wider than before.

"You've gotta be kidding me," Sylas muttered, looking around, but quickly realizing there was nowhere to go. The Academy Arena's field was circular—no corners to escape to—and although slower, the tower's expansion was still climbing. Even if they tried jumping, the ice flowers would catch them on the way down. The only one safe was Magnus, who could just raise his mana platform higher into the sky.

"Well, if they move through the air!" Syrna declared, holding both of her crescent blades out to her sides. As her aura flared around her, the blades began to act like vacuums. The sudden suction blew her hair and clothes violently as she swung both weapons at the oncoming storm of ice.

"Wait, Syrna, don't!" Sylas shouted, but his warning came too late.

"Aerial Arts: Tempest Blade!" Syrna yelled, unleashing an endless torrent of wind towards Magnus's wall of ice flowers. The attack didn't stop everything, but the flowers were fragile. On impact, the wind shattered them, sending the ice fragments flying into the air, scattered above them.

"Gotcha!" Syrna cheered, watching the winds die down.

"Dammit, Syrna," Sylas groaned, while Syrna slowly realized exactly why he'd told her to stop. Her attack had redirected the ice, sure, but now it was snowing. The flowers were still floating, touching one another, blooming into new ice flowers. She'd inadvertently made the problem worse. The storm had gotten bigger, spreading across the sky and crashing toward them, growing in every direction.

As the first flower neared, Sylas had no choice but to strike. He slashed at it, trying to make the cut clean enough so that it didn't explode. But regardless of how cleanly he cut it in half, the attack made it burst, sending even more fragments raining down on him—and his weapon, every swing making his blade heavier. Syrna wasn't faring much better, especially since her weapon needed her to be closer. They could move at nearly sonic speeds, their attacks coming fast and furiously, more than anyone could count in an instant. But every strike only multiplied the storm. Thousands of flowers gave birth to thousands more.

Even a true Adept-level knight would have struggled to fend off such an exponential increase. Sylas was the first to stop, glancing up at Magnus, who was watching calmly from his platform.

What the hell happened while I was away from him that he's able to unleash spells like this so casually?

It was a question he probably wouldn't get an answer to, as the ice finally engulfed him. His aura protected him from freezing directly, but he was encased. Any effort to break free only made the ice thicker, the weight mounting by the second.

Seeing her brother trapped, Syrna groaned in irritation, muttering to herself.

"Dammit, I thought we'd at least land a single hit..." And with that, she too was encased.

By the time Magnus cut off his connection to the spell, the entire dirt field had been replaced with a sea of flowers. Frozen ice crystals glistened under the sun, their beauty almost deceptive. The only thing that made them terrifying was how they had overtaken everything, stretching all the way to the walls of the field. The barrier stopped them from spilling into the spectator area, but it was still an overwhelming sight for anyone who saw it.

"Holy shit..." Someone in the spectator seating muttered, watching Magnus slowly descend on his mana platform before stepping off onto the sea of ice flowers.

"Is this what a Pseudo-Master level mage is capable of? How is anyone supposed to beat that?" Another student said, his voice a mix of awe and disbelief. His words mirrored everyone's thoughts. How could anyone fight against something like that? You couldn't destroy it, and if Magnus flew high enough, targeting the caster would be impossible. In the end, wasn't running the only option? Run until the spells grew too large and the mana reserves ran low? But even then, Magnus had shown them he could easily cover a two-hundred-meter-wide field without breaking a sweat.

"I didn't think it was possible... part of me was hoping it wasn't," Reimun muttered to himself, but his conclusion was something everyone had already realized.

"But he's gotten even stronger since the Live Examination. There's no comparison now." Everyone had known Cain was strong back then, unbelievably so. But at least Jalud had put up a fight. Now? They were having a hard time imagining anyone posing a real challenge.

As Magnus slowly walked atop the ice, Syrna and Sylas buried somewhere beneath him, he let out a small chuckle. It wasn't one of amusement, but disbelief. He was just as surprised as everyone else—but for a different reason.

When I first unlocked Adept-level magic, I thought it would just make my spells more efficient, more powerful, and give me more variations. But I guess I forgot what it means to have endless mana...

It was a simple thing, but Magnus had forgotten it. For so long, it hadn't really mattered. When a spell was replicated using the Command Console, the mana used to form that spell came from nothing; it was created.

If a mana sphere required ten mana to form, and one mana per second to sustain, that latter number would slowly increase over time due to the spirit suppression effect. Modifying the spell would raise the cost. Boosting the mana sphere's speed might cost two mana per second instead. Modifying it to split into more spheres every time it missed its target could make the cost ten per second, and so on. Not to mention, all those numbers would rise the more spirit suppression kicked in, trying to snuff out the abnormality of the magic.

But none of that applied to Magnus. Because the mana used to cast the spell didn't need to come from a core. It was created out of nothing to fuel the spell, and the mana needed to sustain it was the same. Magnus didn't have a mana core of his own, so the Command Console generated the mana for him.

The result of this? It was what was below his feet now.

It was like playing with a health bar that never drained. Every time the bar dropped, it was instantly refilled. It didn't matter how much damage you were taking—so long as the damage didn't push you to zero in a single hit, you could never die. That was why Magnus's mana barriers either shattered or stood firm. If the damage was too much at once, they shattered. If it wasn't, they held strong, never faltering for more than a fraction of a second.

Which means... theoretically, if I unleashed this ice flower spell- Wait, no. As long as I unleash any spell that multiplies itself, as long as I can pay the mana cost, I could keep them running forever.

A single petal, capable of freezing a city—if given enough time. Or even the world.

That was the result of combining endless mana with Adept-level magic.