Deadly Might of the Absolute Curse!

For mages, adapting Spell Mark combinations to the battlefield and changing spells accordingly to defeat an enemy was standard practice.

But not this time.

Long before his battle with Im in the One Piece World, after realizing he had taken the wrong path, Lowett had wondered whether there truly was no higher realm of magic beyond grand spells.

Was brute force all that remained?

Back when he had been a Titled Great Mage, his strongest spells had also been Rune Magic created by combining Rune Phrases. Now that path had been cut off. Were there no other paths for magic?

As everyone knew, "mana" was a measure of how much "work" a mage's Mental Power performed when casting a "spell." Before a spell was enhanced through brute force, its rating depended on the basic amount of work it could achieve.

One-star, two-star, three-star, four-star, and five-star grand spells all came from this.

It sounded vague, but it was not.

Magic was not martial arts. One could not turn every blade of grass, tree, mountain, or stone into a sword. To form a spell, one had to use the most fundamental [Spell circuits] to construct [Spell Marks], use [Spell Marks] to construct a [Spell framework], then fill that framework with Mental Power to trigger a [spell].

It was clear that what determined a spell's basic output was its [Spell framework]. It was directly tied to the Spell Marks one combined, as well as countless factors such as the stability and effectiveness of the intricate Spell circuits within those marks.

"Five-star" was the limit that a [Spell framework] could reach.

Beyond that, it was not that mages lacked computational ability or Mental Power. They simply could not construct a more stable structure.

Aside from their severe consequences, cruel activation requirements, and exterminating