Hogwarts... late at night...
"A book... a shovel... a pickaxe... an iron axe... an iron sword..."
After tinkering at the workbench all morning, Professor Kayson finally succeeded in crafting the novice spellbook from Newborn Magic Arts.
"Holy crap, doesn't this look way more advanced than the Magic Guidebook?"
He looked at the magical book floating beside him—purple cover, gold trim, looking unbelievably badass—and sighed in admiration.
With a wave of his hand, the spellbook flew into his grasp. When he opened it, there were only five most basic magic glyphs inside. Three were casting delivery methods—projectile, self, and touch—while the other two were spell effects: damage and destruction.
For example, the projectile delivery method sent a spell flying forward. Pairing the projectile glyph with the damage glyph created the most basic damage spell.
Emmmmmmmmm.
Its lethality could probably take away a quarter of a person's life. A healthy, normal person would basically get to meet Death after taking four hits.
As for the spell's presentation... Kayson recalled the magic used by the Hogwarts professors he knew, as well as the magic originally found in this world. The damage spell simply inflicted harm upon life itself.
Neither the body nor the mind would suffer any other effects. If he had to find a spell to compare it to...
Avada Kedavra. That was the only one. Though their power differed, their underlying logic was terrifyingly similar.
Of course, instead of firing it, one could choose touch. Touch plus damage was basically equivalent to slapping an enemy four times and sending them off to join Death for a group outing.
As for the other spell-effect glyph, destruction was easy enough to understand. It destroyed matter and was useless against life or flesh. At least, according to Kayson's experiments, it could only destroy lifeless