Aethernea : Soulbound [Book 1]

Episode 134 - Special Gift

Previously:

It's Friday, the last day of Muni entrance exams. It is time for the last exam of the day – Special exam. Kiel and Elaru make their way towards Sapphire Quarters where their special exams will take place. Elaru's special exam starts and she is confronted by three old geezers.

* * *

"Young one, you think you have what it takes to become a spell breaker?" Moustache gave Elaru a penetrating look as if he was trying to see right through her.

Naturally, Elaru could come up with plenty of witty responses, however, she had no choice but to stay silent, lest she burst out into uncontrollable laughter.

"Many dream of becoming esteemed spell breakers. Alas..." Eyebrows let out a heavy sigh as if lamenting the cruelty of fate.

Finally, after successfully stifling her laughter, all that Elaru could do was just to stare at the trio speechlessly. Must you guys be so dramatic...?

Episode 134 – Special Gift

Unaware of the redhead's internal thoughts, Beard shook his head dejectedly, his long beard undulating left and right like a ribbon. "Unfortunately, our department of spell breaking is destined to remain the university department with the least number of members..."

Ah, no wonder you are putting on airs of esteemed experts that are above the mundane world...

Three old geezers were clearly gloating about being among the rare individuals capable enough to become spell breakers. The fact that spell breakers were a very sought-after bunch only served to enhance their pride.

After all, if someone wanted to remove unwanted enchantments the only way to do it was to break the enchantment. Which meant that if enchanters wanted to fix defective magical artifacts, change their enchantments or even upgrade them, they needed a spell breaker to remove the previous enchantment.

Of course, there were, even more, people who sought them for other, often times, less legal activities. Such as opening magically locked chests, safes, and doors or to enter magic protected areas. Breaking unwanted arcane contracts was also a popular request in the Shadow Lodge.

Unfortunately, spell breaking required high skill requirements thus the demand for spell breaking services was high and supply far too low.

The first requirement, an extremely sensitive and precise mana sense, already eliminated the vast majority of candidates. It was impossible to become a spell breaker if one couldn't see the details and intricacies of the spell they were trying to break.

The second requirement, which eliminated the remaining candidates, was the ability to compress mana into a density that surpassed the density of solidified mana.

When one weaved a spell pattern, the activation of the spell would cause the mana forming the spell pattern to solidify into a denser form. Since it was impossible to trigger mana solidification without the activation of a spell, trying to surpass the density of solidified mana without solidifying it was something that most people would never be able to do.

It was like taking a bottle of water vapor and trying to compress it enough, through sheer force of will, so that it turns into liquid water. Theoretically possible, in practice downright implausible.

And that wasn't even the last requirement.

The last requirement was the ability to pinpoint critical points of a spell.

While it was possible to break spells through sheer force by demolishing the entirety of the spell pattern, often times, the amount of mana needed to create a large high density mana blast was far beyond what even the best of mages could possess and control. Thus, mages had no choice but to resort to targeting specific areas of the spell pattern instead of targeting the whole spell.