Spell Slots

The novice wizards at Mage Association branches only needed to learn how to cast spells, like elementary school students being tested on applying the commutative and associative laws.

But someone like him, starting from the theory at the very beginning, was essentially being handed the Peano Axioms and told to derive the entire system of arithmetic axioms.

It was not useless; it was simply unnecessary for now.

Zhao Xu had ambitions, but no matter how solid a foundation he built, he could not spend several years or even over a decade becoming a First-level Mage like Arthurian World's native wizards.

Players generally took the crash-course route. They learned how to cast and apply spells directly, just like high school students who did not study calculus but memorized a pile of differentiation formulas.

It was enough to know how without knowing why. Otherwise, the top wizard among players would graduate in a year rather than a week.

Fast-track wizard training was a privilege Arthurian World granted to Earth's players.

After all, once the players entered Arthurian World a year later, their Intelligence would rise to the value on their Character Card, and the corresponding spell knowledge would be instilled into them as well.

Even if they talked big, they could withstand the scrutiny of native wizards at the same level.

That would be the natural course of things.

Since Zhao Xu knew he could cheat a year later, he naturally had no desire to gnaw through this hard bone now.

In his Previous Life, wizard players who crossed over generally spent anywhere from half a year to a full year fully digesting the knowledge the system had given them. Before that, very few wizards could continue leveling smoothly.

"Gate of Arcane teaches differently from ordinary branches," Antinoa said. "If we truly wanted to mass-produce low- and mid-level wizards, we have more than enough means to do so. Or rather, local branches are already doing precisely that."

"So from the beginning, our training target has been Legendary Mages. Naturally, there is no need to rush you into becoming First-level Mages."

Hearing Antinoa's words, Zhao Xu was a little stunned.

It was like arriving at university with an admission notice for a top-up bachelor's program, only to discover he had enrolled in an eight-year direct doctoral track.

Even his current undergraduate education gave him that same feeling. If one simply wanted to get to work, a vocational technical school would have been enough. Their undergraduate courses were more of a knowledge system prepared in advance for graduate study.

Most people were merely part of the base number.

Zhao Xu understood and even approved of this approach. Having reached the highest institution among wizards, if one did not have even a small goal, one might as well have lived like a dog.

The problem was that he only wanted to lie low for now.

He had the patience to spend more time training, even several times longer than other players. It did not matter. It was just that—

That was contingent on being able to learn more spells, come into contact with more powerful hidden Feats, and pave the way for future Advanced Professions.

He could trade time for greater combat power in the future.

Not for a wizardly knowledge system more solid and reliable than other players'.

Because the promise of becoming a Legendary Mage was simply too distant for him. He could not swallow it within a year.

A solid knowledge system would let him draw spell models, derive how Prophecy Spells underwent structural transformations, and understand the casting thresholds of Evocation Spells, but none of that would increase the power of his Fireball by even the slightest bit.

What could increase a spell's power was either Caster Level or abilities such as Feats.

If Zhao Xu were following a path of researching spells to raise his level, then sharpening the knife before chopping wood would certainly not delay the work.

Unfortunately, he had no such path to take, unless Earth would not cross over to Arthurian World for another twenty years.

But Zhao Xu had no way to argue any of this with Antinoa.

Having understood that, Zhao Xu could only furrow his brow and painfully study the book.

No wonder he had barely heard of any player wizards from Mystra in his Previous Life. It seemed they had all been trapped studying at Mystra before crossing over.

Faced with this situation, Zhao Xu could only wear a blank expression. It felt as though he had returned to his senior year of high school; even the cashmere cushion on his chair suddenly seemed much harder, digging painfully into his backside.

If The Arcane Path had merely been a straightforward history of magic, he would have had no trouble chewing through it. Zhao Xu could read everything from the histories of physics and mathematics to the chronologies of certain games and anime with great interest.

Yet although the book began in the ancient era of the Outer Gods, it only used the evolution of spells as its thread, constantly mentioning all kinds of mysterious concepts.

Toward the end of their vocational training, players would determine their own skill systems and decide whether to invest points in them.

But even when investing points, they had to meet the prerequisites before they could invest points to improve them.

It was like leveling up not being something that simply happened naturally. One first had to gather enough experience, then clear the trial to determine whether one could level up.

Among those skill systems were Knowledge skills, divided into many categories, each requiring separate point investment to advance.

If Zhao Xu had an adjustment bonus above thirty in Knowledge (Arcana), he could make a Knowledge Check and see whether he could automatically retrieve the meanings of certain terms.

As things stood, he could only treat Antinoa across from him as a human dictionary, constantly looking things up as he read. Naturally, his efficiency was extremely low.

But Zhao Xu did not know at the time that being able to open this book without having his mind confused was itself proof that he had received some form of protection.

As he read deeper, Zhao Xu could still roughly follow the text despite not fully understanding it. He only became more and more confused, until he read—

That Spell Slots were explicitly defined by the Goddess of Magic. That immediately stirred his emotions.

Arthurian World's spell system used Spell Slots for everyone, regardless of profession, rather than traditional mana points.

How many spells a person could cast each day was determined by their Class Level, with additional Spell Slots granted by Attribute Values stacked on top.

At the same time, every wizard had to rest for eight full hours, then spend an hour meditating to determine their spells before they could draw upon those Spell Slots.

That was right. Both wizards and Clerics had to spend an hour deciding which spells they would cast that day. They could not wait until the last moment to decide what spell to use a Third-level Spell Slot for.

And once a Spell Slot was used, it was gone. Sitting down for a while would not restore it; they still needed a full eight hours of rest before they could Prepare Spell Slots again the next day.

When wizards learned spells, they had to copy them into their own Spellbooks. Only then could those spells be used to Prepare Spell.

Moreover, as spell level increased, so did the number of pages required for copying.

Thus, unless wizards used a Blessing Book of the Goddess to Scribe Spell, they had to carry around thick Spellbooks.

If a wizard lost their Spellbook, it was like a chef losing their cooking utensils. No matter how many ingredients they had, they could not produce anything fancy.

Many wizards were dragged below the poverty line simply by the cost of Scribe Spell. Clerics were different: Divine Spells were granted by the gods, who simply let them choose what to prepare, without all this troublesome nonsense.

Even under such harsh conditions, wizards still defied the heavens, precisely because their Spell Lists, Feats, advancements, and items were absurdly powerful.

Zhao Xu, however, was more concerned with what he should choose. Under Arthurian World's traditional rules, novice wizards were given an ordinary Spellbook for free, and apprentices could copy every Zero-level Spell into it free of charge.

Generally, a Zero-level Spell took up half a page in a Spellbook, while a First-level Spell occupied one full page.

They could also choose three spells from the local Mage Association's inventory to copy for free.

Back when everyone was broke, these three starting spells actually determined a novice wizard's initial combat power.

Zhao Xu stared at the book, but he could not stop imagining which First-level Spells he ought to choose.

Of course, nothing was absolute. The Enlightened Caster Feat did not require a Spellbook, but bringing up every exception was rather cumbersome, especially since there were things even the protagonist had not encountered in his Previous Life.