Chapter Sixty-Four: Origin

Most of these mages prepared a few fixed spells, making it easy to cast them at the stationary targets in the underground plaza. The spells they cast—rays of frost, magic missiles—were all ones Zhao Xu was familiar with. This puzzled him; he could almost recognize them without even using the spell identification skill.

“Mentor, I feel something’s off,” Zhao Xu finally couldn’t help but speak up.

“Oh?” came the reply.

“Let’s say I hear some incantation for a spell I know. Then I’d know exactly what spell the caster is using. To be more direct, if someone starts loudly chanting right in front of me—say, an Identify spell which takes an hour to cast—it’s impossible for me not to recognize it.”

He had studied magic and had received some training in spell identification, but it felt as though he could skirt the system and recognize spells without even investing points in the skill.

“How naive,” Antinoia said mockingly. “Don’t imagine your intelligence score—still under sixteen—can challenge the accumulated wisdom of countless people over the centuries.”

“What you call ‘recognition’ isn’t the same as ‘identification.’ Once your spell identification skill reaches level one, you’ll understand that identifying spells is an instinctive, passive action.”

Turning active into passive?

Zhao Xu felt something stir within him at those words.

“One mage casting is easy enough, but what about seven or eight casting at the same time? Perhaps your intellect can manage, but can you, with your current intelligence, truly process all that?”

“The reason you’re here to train spell identification is because you’ve already mastered most of the spells they’re casting. Your progress bar for spell identification at level one is already at ninety percent.”

“It’s just a matter of when you’ll break through that final ten percent. Unless you do, your nearly-maxed zero-level skill still can’t compare to someone who truly has it at level one.”

Hearing this, Zhao Xu felt as though something inside him had snapped.

Suddenly, everyone in the arena became, in his eyes, a set of coordinates, and the spells they cast, curves plotted within each system.

He lost himself in this state of abstraction.

Antinoia noticed something was off with Zhao Xu. With a gentle wave of her hand, she quietly cast Prism Sphere, isolating them from any external interference.

Unlike the dazzling, seven-colored Prism Sphere Lei An had once cast, Antinoia’s magic left no trace—utterly invisible.

No one present noticed that, in one corner of the plaza, an invisible Prism Sphere enveloped the two of them.

Even the staff in charge of watching over the novice mages for safety nearby failed to notice anything amiss.

Fortunately, Antinoia had chosen a platform position with Zhao Xu from the start; otherwise, if a novice mage had accidentally touched the Prism Sphere’s boundary, they would have been struck dead instantly by its sevenfold retaliatory force.

Inside the sphere, Zhao Xu felt the three points of light representing the three great domains of the priesthood in his mind begin to shine ever brighter.

The power of the magic domain slowly emerged, flooding his body, while the other two domains’ strength seeped in as well, pouring into him.

Watching this, Antinoia immediately activated her own skills in arcane lore and religious knowledge, initiating an associative check.

Her knowledge, far surpassing the norm and bolstered further by enchanted items, connected directly to the deepest source of all knowledge.

No matter how high the difficulty, under Antinoia’s immense pool of luck points and insight bonuses, it was as fleeting as raindrops under the summer sun—gone in an instant.

At last, Zhao Xu slowly returned to himself.

He looked at his information panel: every spell he saw or heard being cast automatically converted into a spell identification check.

[Spell identification on mage 10 meters ahead: check result 7+D20=7+10=17, surpasses DC16, spell identified as “Magic Missile.”]

[Spell identification on mage 7 meters to the left front: check result 7+D20=7+2=9, below the difficulty check, identification failed.]

Zhao Xu had no time to look further.

He noticed that on his character sheet, his spell identification skill was now level four—the maximum for a level one character.

He looked at Antinoia in utter bewilderment. “Mentor, my spell identification just became level four.”

Even knowing almost the entire process, Antinoia was still moved by Zhao Xu’s confirmation.

She nodded. “So you see the checks on your information panel?”

“Yes. My spell identification bonus is seven—four from the skill, three from my intelligence modifier. But why is it like this?” Zhao Xu asked, incredulous.

Why had his spell identification skill maxed out at four immediately? Normally, shouldn’t it start at one and then slowly improve?

Why did his information panel now automatically identify other people’s spells?

“Knowledge and spell identification are among the few abilities that connect directly to the source,” Antinoia said softly. “Once you have a skill rank in spell identification, your character system is linked to the magic source of this world.”

“You can, through your own experience, deduce what spell someone is casting; that’s your recognition. But your understanding of each spell varies—it's abstract.”

“But once you have a rank in ‘spell identification,’ you can draw on the source’s power to automatically recognize the spells around you, even ones you’ve never learned or heard before.”

Hearing this, Zhao Xu finally understood that the mysterious spell identification ability was exactly this—and that most people simply accepted the system, without truly understanding its nature as Antinoia did.

“Then what determines a failed identification?” Zhao Xu asked.

“Spell level plus fifteen is the difficulty. If your check exceeds it, you identify the spell.”

Zhao Xu then looked out at the mages casting spells in the arena.

With a spell identification bonus of seven, and with these mages casting first-level spells at DC16, as long as his check—seven plus D20—was greater than sixteen, he could automatically see through the nature of any first-level spell.

For him, the magic source meant a fifty-five percent chance to automatically recognize a first-level spell.

The higher his skill and intelligence, the greater the chance of automatic identification.

No wonder professionals had such an overwhelming advantage over commoners—from attribute points, to character systems, to this connection with the source itself.

Thinking of this, Zhao Xu looked at Antinoia and said, “Mentor, so when I succeed on a knowledge check and gain extra background information, is that also thanks to this connection?”

“Of course. The result of your check is the feedback from the ‘source of knowledge.’ Each check is an attempt to connect. Just now, I used a knowledge check to figure out your situation.”

Only now did Zhao Xu realize he had another question he hadn’t yet asked Antinoia: why did his identification skill jump straight to level four?

But before he could speak, Antinoia grabbed him by the collar and teleported him into the middle of the arena.

They appeared right beside the administrator, surrounded by several novice mages who were also training in spell identification.

“You, cast ‘Magic Missile’ at him,” Antinoia instructed a female novice mage.

“At me?” Zhao Xu looked at Antinoia and the mage she’d chosen, stunned and unable to immediately react.