From the Abyss of Stars Part 2

013. Magic Aptitude Test

Learning magic is not an easy task.

Even though Li Aozi had raised his 【Intelligence】 to 84 points, he still couldn't fully digest all this knowledge at once.

Magic is a practical discipline. At its core, constructing a spell isn't the 'chanting and casting' that outsiders imagine. Instead, it's more like programming: building models, inputting commands, and producing results.

Chanting spells is really just for the caster themselves to hear.

The outsider's image of spellcasting: "Oh, fervent fire element, gather into a fireball and burn my enemies!" — casting failed, magic backlash, coughing up blood.

In reality, a mage's spellcasting goes more like this: [Add: Fire Element — Condense/Place — Hover at palm = 5cm] Event-Driven — Fill Coefficient [while range > 500 yards = explode] — Self-correct errors = 0] — Release failed — Restart — hello world!

Take, for example, the much-discussed high-level spell 【Fireball】. As a spell requiring knowledge from 《Shaping Magic》 and 《Advanced Elemental Theory》, not only do you have to construct the spell, but you also need to consider how to launch it, how to aim, and how to adjust its trajectory.

Therefore, if you want to release a precisely lethal and stable fireball, you also need to study subjects like 《Ballistics》, 《Calculus》, 《Experimental Aerodynamics》, and 《Nuclear Physics》 as auxiliary disciplines.

This makes sense because a mage's battlefield is in space, amidst high-energy radiation bombardments, or within desolate planetary belts. Every combat spell is born to adapt to the vast environments of the universe.

However, there's one advantage to spells. Combat spells can easily be converted to civilian use by just removing a few formulas. This is the greatest strength of magical civilizations; by focusing heavily on military magic, they can gain highly efficient civilian magic in return.

Because of this, magical civilizations have little room for corporate businesses. Instead, they are dominated by military-government-controlled magic workshops, as well as academic factions led by individual scholars and bureaucrats, filling in employment roles.

Li Aozi's main focus was on 《General Magic》. This is the foundation of everything, and it explores and summarizes the objective laws of the magical world.

The practical use of 《General Magic》 is quite poor, and there are barely any spells to learn early on. However, Li Aozi chose to specialize in it without hesitation because this theory is so classic that he could use it as the basis to dig out a worldview of 《Objective Materialism》—which was also his ultimate goal.

Learning magic and learning science are both about studying materialism; otherwise, what's the point?

《Objective Materialism》 and 《Objective Idealism》 are the two most mainstream worldviews in the universe. Choosing 《Objective Materialism》 comes with the trait 【Thought Deconstruction】, which gives a 50% learning correction for any extraordinary knowledge, making it easy to switch between different worldviews later.

Moreover, 《Objective Materialism》 itself offers an advantage that neither Li Aozi nor any spellcaster could refuse:

Trait • 《Heaven of Purification》 — Units with 'divinity' cannot be immune to any of your spell effects.

This trait is called 'God-Slayer,' and because of this, materialist mages and warriors are the group with the highest god-slaying numbers.

Incidentally, the Lord of Entropy is a unit with 'divinity.'