I, The Dragon Overlord

Chapter 417 - Mathematics is the Father of Magic

“In the current world, the place you call Earth, the power you know as ‘magic’ still exists. Mages use the construct spell formations in their sea of consciousness with their spiritual power. Then, with the help of this formation, we utilize outside magic power to form spells.”

“Now, how do you construct a spell formation with your own spiritual power? This is the basic skill of a mage, and it’s also a type of meditation. It’s not a profound method that has something like levels. Every mage has the same level of meditation. If a mage wants to become more powerful and release more powerful spells, what they need is to have a deeper understanding of magic. In other words, a mage is only as powerful as their knowledge and their ability to learn.”

“This is a basic spell formation that we mages call ‘apprentice tricks’, and I will show it to you.”

The old mage standing on the podium spoke incessantly. After his last words, the crowd began to feel excitement at what would be shown to them.

The old mage used his fingers to outline a simple geometric figure in mid-air. Under the crowd's puzzled looks, he moved his hand, causing a book on the podium to float up.

Several apprentices let out gasps in surprise.

Then, Archmage Marches guided the book back to its original position. He then outlined a new spell formation, one more complicated than the last one. After finishing, the sky vibrated and then a boulder dropped from thin air.

Under everyone’s shock, the boulder fell from outside the mage tower into the lake. A loud sound echoed as the boulder caused a wave more than 10 meters high to form and crash onto the shore.

“What I cast before was a small magic trick called [Mage’s Hand]. It’s generally used by mages to fetch things. After all, why not use magic to make things more convenient when we can?”

The room broke into a relaxed laugh. Hearing his words, many of the students realized that in many ways, mages were quite similar to ordinary folk. Compared to the mythical individuals and creatures that had arrived in the world recently, there were far more personable.

“The second spell I released is the one-ring spell [Falling Stone] - a low-level spell of the conjuration system. I talked earlier about how the power of spells varies from person to person. If you are the ones to use it, you would at most create a small stone from the sky that could kill a person, but used by me and even steel will rip apart under its weight.”

The old mage’s words made the apprentices look aghast. Some of the military representatives who were watching also had a huge change in expression.

“With the power this mage displayed, he seems easily capable of destroying a tank” a colonel stared with a stern face at the elderly mage’s demonstration.

If anyone said that they could easily wreck a tank before the emergence of supernatural powers, they would have been laughed out of the room, but now that the supernatural was common knowledge, they found that a random spell was enough to destroy a tank!

“And according to this mage, this is still in the lowest tier of spells. If a more powerful spell was used, I really can’t imagine the implications. These mages are very dangerous, much more so than we expected,” another soldier also exclaimed.

“There is no need to be so afraid, this archmage Marches said that magic is different from person to person. Other mages might not even have the power to destroy a tank with this small spell.”

Gui Bin reassured everyone. The military representatives thought about it and felt that this might indeed be the case.

“Magic formations are similar to the mathematics that you have learned. You would need a deeper understanding to cast advanced magic. To become a powerful mage, you must first learn mathematics as well.”

Marches’ sentence not only made the faces of many apprentices collapse, but even the faces of the people inside the conference room turned ugly.

“Damn, I just want to learn magic and not math. Why are the heavens doing this to me? Even learning magic can’t escape the clutches of math.”

“Slash, slash. I won’t learn magic anymore.”

“No wonder why there are so few magicians. Just the word math is enough to stop countless people.”

“Hahaha, I am part of XX University’s mathematics department. In the future, our department shall be renamed the magic department!”

“......”

Numerous pop-ups floated across the screen. The soldiers with steely eyes, athletes with healthy physiques, and business executives who took on the business world had gloomy faces at this time.

Even the team leader and Gui Bin were staring at the mage with dull eyes, feeling that magic was far away from them.

“Please spare me. Do you have to learn math to learn magic?! This is really making things difficult for others.”

Gui Bin clasped his hair and mumbled, while the team leader laughed bitterly on one side.

In the conference room, an old man with white hair looked excited while sketching on paper without using any tools. He drew the spell formation constructed by the mage on paper with only his hands and imitated it beautifully.

“Yup, the formation for this magic trick does not look complicated. It could even be called simple. It’s no wonder that it’s an apprentice-level spell…… The formation of the one-ring spell is more than twice as complicated as the apprentice-level spell. If we go by analogy, the formations of advanced-level spells should be really difficult. So these magicians are also mathematicians!”

“As expected, mathematics is the mother of science, and now it seems that mathematics is also the father of magic. I told you that we mathematicians are the talent that should be most valued by the country. We can analyze magic and unify science.”

Listening to the ramblings of the plainly dressed man in a pair of flip-flops, a famous athlete could not help but ask, “Uncle, who are you? Can you actually read these strange and bizarre diagrams?”

“Me? I am a mathematics professor at Qing Hua. Mathematics and magic are still different things, so I can’t understand the diagrams, but I can easily imitate the so-called magic formations with ease. However, even I might have trouble if it becomes a lot more complicated.”

This old man shook his head repeatedly as if he was grieving for his limited ability.

The others silently retracted their eyes, thinking that these scholars had no other topic to say. They always boasted about their greatness. For the others, just the formation for the one-ring spell looked like a random drawing to them.

Magic was indeed not something everyone could learn.

…..

In the astronomical research institute of a university in the United States of America, a scholar was staring dumbly at the data displayed on the screen. His face was filled with despair as if the apocalypse was coming.