Rivers of the Night
Chapter 446 - 446: The Gist

Theron put all the beast books back and pulled out the Dark Mana Spell again. This time, he traced out the Dark Mancer channels in his mind, and then cross-referenced them with the channels he knew existed already.

'I see…'

Reading a Spell wasn't as simple as reading the Meridian channels like a map and then copying it. The Meridians were too complicated, and trying to control a fine line of Mana in the middle of battle—especially for Spells that had longer casting times—was a recipe for disaster.

Instead, Mancers relied on a comprehension of the Runes.

There were three steps to casting a Spell: Quantization, Circulation, and Manifestation. For laymen, Runes only really came into play during the last and final step. But for most, there was a lot of overlap between the final two. Only when these two last steps were almost one and the same would one reach the highest levels of mastery. That was when one could even start playing with the effects of Spells like Theron did—not to mention casting with much greater speed.

Due to this, the highest-order Spells didn't even have circulation patterns in them. Instead, they were just full of concepts and runic breakdowns. As such, they needed to be deciphered.

Many of them were just theories that needed to be broken down and comprehended by the individual Mancer.

It had to be remembered that the Circulation stage was only known as the priming stage. It let Mana prepare for the general gist of what it was about to do before Runes took over for the rest, helping the primed Mana to communicate with the outside world and form a bridge between it and the Mancer—ultimately resulting in a Spell.

How to prime the Mana—and how to do so effectively—would vary.

It had to be remembered that no two bodies were the exact same, so how could all Meridians be the exact same? Even if two Mancers circulated at the same exact speed, for the same exact Spell, there would be minor differences in length and timing nonetheless.

This was why every Spell had to be tweaked to match the unique aspect of every Mancer. At the very least, that was what the best geniuses did.

So what was the point of all of this? It was to say that whoever had written the description of this Dark Mana Spell hadn't had the comprehension ability to understand the full scope of it—and also didn't have the Meridians to notice their mistake.

They had only understood a minor portion of the Spell, and thus moved forward like that.

'The gist… the gist…'

If you could dumb down a stronger Spell, then why couldn't you do the opposite?

The question was how?

It was easy to stumble your way through making something more difficult easier. All you had to do was cut corners—anyone could do that.

Of course, Theron was being a bit ridiculous when he thought this. Not just anyone would simplify such a strong Spell, and even fewer could comprehend a Spell that wasn't even of their own affinity like he could right now. Whoever had managed to find a way to cast this Spell at all was a genius in their own right.

Theron just wasn't impressed.

What he wanted to do was most certainly far harder, and he felt that he had already comprehended how to do it. The answer was already in him. This content originates from NovelFire, My Virtual Library Empire.

Resonance.

What was a Resonance if not a comprehension of a Mancy Path that helped to distill and simplify things? Depending on the Resonance type, what it helped with could do different things.

For example, Thralix of the Ironharts. He had assassinated him a long time ago, and this Clan of people had a Resonance that allowed their Earth Mana to become something far stronger—a particularly powerful Metal Mana.

Controlling Earth was difficult because the ground was the root of all things. It took particularly powerful Earth Mancers to manipulate the ground on a large scale. However, with a Resonance… this difficult task could be made just a little bit easier. The more powerful the Resonance, the easier it was.

A Resonance did exactly as its name suggested. It helped you to better resonate with your Mana, better control it, better direct it.

Theron was wondering… if just the gist of a Spell was enough to get it to work, why didn't he try to work in reverse?

What if he focused on the Runes of the Black Limbo Tortoise, activated his Arcane Resonance to the fullest extent, and then poured his Mana toward his Water Mancy Meridians…

Then let his Resonance lead him?

Would he be able to feel out Spells all on his own?

What about if he did the same for the Immortal Jellyfish and the Blue Pufferfish? What about the unnamed Beast Core in his storage treasures right now?

A world of possibilities was suddenly opening up to Theron.

Before, his Meridians were only made up of 2–3% Water Mancy channels. But now… it was more like 4–5%. It was an increase of almost 100%, and all of those channels had completely unknown functions to him.

Would they hold the secrets that would allow him to easily integrate his Laws into his Meridians?

He was willing to bet that the answer to that question was yes.

Theron didn't want to wait. With the Alpha right by his side, he didn't need to worry about his safety in this place. Closing his eyes, he activated his Arcane Resonance, a rushing air of water vapor quickly forming rivers through the library.

The entire academy had already been evacuated, only to find the symbol of future generations becoming an odd land of floating rivers. They flowed in and out of windows, through doors—so powerful it seemed that some might even lift the entire academy into the air.

It was in this mess Dean Pennel grit her teeth, wading through with all the might and courage she had left as blood leaked from her lips.