Aether—just hearing the name made it sound like some riddle-speaker's term. It was hard to tell what it meant just sitting there.
In the magical world's view, aether was an element.
A very "awkward" element.
Compared with the four most commonly studied elemental constituents—earth, water, fire, and wind—aether was far harder to observe. Unlike those four elements, its form of existence was far from obvious, and it was not usually invoked by elemental spells.
Likewise, because it was not used for spellcasting, research surrounding it was far scarcer than research into the other four elements. There were few specialized observation magic devices and spells for it, and it was often overlooked.
For quite a long time, the magical world had even believed that aether was a useless element. Its existence was merely existence itself and did not affect anything else.
An element "without elemental properties."
And interestingly enough, aether was also the most ubiquitous element in existence, without question.
It was widespread throughout the world, covering an even greater range than gases did.
So much so that some scholars suspected aether might be something like the foundation of the world's composition.
Breakthroughs in aether research had only appeared within the past few decades.
After years of research by a legendary evocation mage—yes, even among the "magic barbarians" who specialized in evocation spells, there were a few people who did research—it was discovered that aether was connected to the vibrational phenomena of other elements.
Put simply, in an environment rich in elements, when the other four elements vibrated under magical guidance, they would cause aether, which had not been stimulated by magic, to vibrate along with them. Conversely, using magic to guide aether into vibrating first could also set the four elements vibrating.
This phenomenon did not occur among the four