Shades of the New World

Chapter 132: The doomed dream

Evin glanced at the title and it only said: [The Search for Artificial World Sprites] with an unknown author. From what Evin could tell from the few pages that he read when he first got it, the book was nothing like the previous book, which was very precise and had a no-nonsense type of writing style.

This one, on the other hand, seemed to be filled with ideas and thoughts more. Evin read through the pages with anticipation. The book first began by introducing the history of the concept:

[The World Sprites are undoubtedly the desires of many mages that reside in this our World. The ones blessed by the World Sprites are like gods amongst men, with their unreasonably dominating spells and miracles. 

Of course, the people understand that not everyone could receive the fortune of meeting a Beast Lord that is compatible with them. Even without mentioning compatibility, most mages never find the chance to meet a Beast Lord in their entire lives. But they still wished to receive the same power and control, similar to the possessors of World Sprites.

Thus, the great undertaking of the research of Artificial World Sprites began. 

Signs of such research appeared as early as the year 240. At this point, the World was seeing the first Beast Lords of the World. These creatures' powers were unfathomable and infinite in their dens. Countless mages died to slay these creatures, due to the fears of the rulers, which designated these powerful beings as enemies of civilized society. 

But civilization's efforts were doomed to fail, as the Beast Lords' strengths were below only the Authorities in their home ground. Realizing that, the countries began to search for ways to cooperate with the Beast Lords. After they learned that the Beast Lords couldn't relocate from their dens, their hearts settled.

The developments that happened afterwards weren't that hard to guess. Some mages were able to assimilate World Sprites and Beast Lords into their bodies and began to dominate the world of mages. Others were jealous of this fact and decided to create their own Artificial World Sprites. 

A number of mages were promised endless power and wealth to become experimental subjects for the countries. Most of them lost their World Sprites when the countries tried to extract them from their bodies. Some even lost their lives, as certain World Sprites would assimilate into the blood and flesh of the mage. 

The research into Artificial World Sprites were stuck at its beginning stages, since they couldn't quite obtain the crucial test subjects for the experiments: the World Sprites themselves.

Only three Worlds showed some promise. The Dark World, the World of Thoughts and the World of Space. The Dark World Sprites resided in the mage's shadows, the World of Thought Sprites created what was called an 'inner World' in their mages and stayed there, while The World of Space Sprites resided in the World of Space, alongside the silhouettes of the mages. Note: When a mage enters a World and looks at the surrounding people, they would see silhouettes in their stead]

Evin finished reading this page and was exhilarated. 

'This book also includes studies of World Sprites!' 

Aside from very surface level information that Evin understood from Unabach's book and the later Northern book, Evin was still very blind about the matters of World Sprites. The two books only included information about the World Sprites and the World Cores, to pull the interests of little mages, after all. 

Evin immediately entered the World of Thoughts and started reading through the book like he was possessed. 

After he was finally finished after almost two hours, Evin went out of the World of Thoughts and began to think deeply about the book's contents.

'This book is practically written for people who own World Sprites. If I didn't own a World Sprite and read this, I would just die from jealousy,' Evin thought with a smirk.

Long story short, the dream of Artificial World Sprites were deemed as a hopeless cause. The biggest reason were the failed experiments, but the mages could tell that progress was being made, albeit slowly. But when the researchers finally saw some hope in this great endeavor, the Beast Lords expressed their dissatisfaction at how mages were treating their children and started to hide from the World. They could also tell that excessive contact with mages were weakening the World Sprites greatly. The ones whose positions were discovered already began to ruthlessly slaughter any mage who came a step closer to their dens. 

Thus, was the end of this novel idea of Artificial World Sprites. 

But. 

There was one method that worked relatively well and surprisingly, and it was only possible for the three Worlds with physical World Sprites. By using a certain method of training, these World Sprites could develop the ability to strengthen the other Worlds! Although the effects were slightly lacking compared to their main World, it was still a great addition to one's willpower. And the best part was, the book wasn't stingy about these methods of cultivation. The methods on how to teach Dark World Sprites to strengthen the other Worlds were all written in the book!

The method took a bit of time, but it wasn't complicated or resource consuming. Evin just needed to teach them how to recognize energies of other Worlds and strengthen it and there were many ways to achieve that. 

But reading this book also created a new worry in Evin.

[Enri, do you think the Super Mother will kill me for letting a Somaturgy expert do experiments on you all?]

[Don't know Probably not]

[Don't worry big brother! I'm sure Super Mom won't kill you!] Runa added afterwards.

The fox head's answer was a bit concerning, but Evin decided to cross that bridge when it came to him. The World Sprites themselves seemed interested in the prospect, as far as Evin could tell.

'I have 97 World Sprites left and some of them will be needed for the Somaturgy experiment. I can't think of unreasonable thinks like strengthening every magical World with Dark World Sprites The World of Storms is a must, the Heavy World is good as well and the World or Thoughts is a good choice as well,' Evin decided. The current Evin was like an encyclopedia of illusions, who knew almost a thousand different illusions and their specialties. As long as he didn't meet someone with similar training, he would be able to take care of his enemies, without them even realizing it.

Evin first decided to teach the fifteen of them to support Storm, Heavy and Thought spells. According to the book, if the relation between the World Sprites and the mage is good, Evin should be finished with this task in a month. And if he was lucky, something special might happen as well.

Evin was happy with this new discovery, but he still had the Gestures to practice. If he could program his brain and mana-core to cast spells automatically, his combat prowess would be much higher and flexible compared to now.

But first and foremost, Evin had to decide on the gestures.