Shades of the New World

Chapter 149: Battle-mode

Entering the test room, Nasst turned around abruptly.

"Hit me with one of your gesture spells... I understand that you managed to cast many of them in under two seconds"

Evin nodded and snapped his right-hand middle finger, while in actuality, his tongue scraped the bottom of his mouth thrice. A second later, his mana-core was filled with a variety of World energies and a collection of spells became available to cast in his mind at the beck of a thought.

Evin was very proud of the system he created. He practically programmed his mind in such a way that he had a battle mode and a non-battle mode. He could activate the battle mode by scraping the bottom of his mouth thrice with his tongue. The snap was basically just a ruse. Every other wide and noticeable gesture was a fake as well. In reality, Evin just willfully and clearly thought about a certain word in his mind. 

For example: a 'Straight air thrust' would cause his mind to cast a World of Storms spell that sent a concentrated pocket of air to the Evin's front. A 'Heavy Domain' would create the Wide-area Heavy World spell he used against Arza. A 'Dark room' would create a normal version, and with some effort, Evin could add in Enri and the others.

But, if Evin didn't enter his so-called 'Battle mode', none of these spells would activate. This was to ensure that Evin wouldn't cast a spell without intending to when thinking of some random word, which just happened to be a code word.

After some thinking, Evin decided that this system was the best. It would have been cool if Evin could really use the air jabs and the snaps but that was just too flashy and dangerous in an actual fight. But, if Evin could trick his opponents into thinking that they knew what certain gestures meant, that was also worth it.

If Evin snapped his left hand middle finger and the enemy expected a Heavy Domain, Evin could utilize that in a fight. So, Evin could still act cool, but still maintain the advantage of knowledge.

'Perfect...' 

There were many code words and correlating spells inside Evin's mind. But, sadly, Evin could only cast them in at minimum of 2 seconds. This was because Evin had too little time to practice it. It took him almost two weeks to set up his battle mode, and Evin spent the next two weeks relentlessly drilling in the code words into his brain. 

'If I could practice like this for another two months he-he-heh,' Evin smirked excitedly.

Remembering Nasst's request, Evin thought 'Straight jab', and then lightly punched forward. The air in front of Nasst gathered into a small block and then it dashed towards the elder man at great speed, accompanied by a no small amount of Storm energy and willpower. 

This was the trick that Evin learned when he was trying to make his Storm spells stronger. If the projectiles you threw out weren't strong enough, you just had to hold its proverbial hand throughout the entire journey, strengthening it with World Energies and willpower. Out of all the things that Evin tried, this method worked the best. 

But a very interesting thing happened before Evin's spell hit Nasst. Evin could very clearly tell it, since strands of his willpower were accompanying the spell. Evin could only describe the process, as his spell being disintegrated from the ground up.

If Evin could describe his own spellcasting method as building a model and then giving life to it with World energies, then what happened was similar to how his model just disappeared and all that's left was purposeless energies.

"It's called spell breaking. There are two ways to break spells: to deconstruct them, like l did, and to brute force it. I'm sure you will be able to use deconstruction well, since you cast your spells mostly leaning on your information and knowledge, rather than purely relying on your willpower," Nasst explained and then cast a spell himself. It was a spell similar to Evin's but Evin could actually see the details of it, since the spell had a silver hue for some reason now. A bunch of air particles gathered together and formed a small silver block.

"As you can see, your spell is very easy to recreate, since it's just a simple method of gathering air and throwing it at someone," Nasst said and threw the spell towards the wall as a little demonstration. Then he recreated the spell again and began talking.

"But since I can understand how you were able to create this spell, I can deconstruct it. The easiest way would be to will the gathered air to disperse again. I'm pretty sure you've done something similar without really thinking much about it, or someone must've used it on your spell. Oh, Zakhlo should've deconstructed your spell when you used the suffocation spell on that boar"

"Ox," Evin corrected. Arza using the Heavy World to negate the increased gravity on his body was also something similar.

"Yes, that. Anyway, if you know what the effects of the spell are, and how it was made possible, you can easily negate it. This is Deconstruction. Now, what is Brute forcing? Remember when I talked about how Chaos Creatures can instinctively use raw mana and that makes them very difficult to deal with?" Nasst asked.

Evin nodded, and remember about the Chaos creature and its 'Perfect Life Structure'.

"Throw a spell at me," Nasst ordered and Evin threw another Straight air thrust, a little stronger this time.

As Evin's spell flew through the air, it hit something akin to a wall of gears and shredders (proverbial). The concentration of air died out and the World energies turned into a messy current of mana. The process seemed to remind Evin of something. 

'Isn't this the same as the passive mana that leaks out of peak tier 3 mana-beasts?'

Every time Evin tried to cast a spell on those kinds of beasts, Evin would see a similar situation unfold. 

"Well, raw mana can be used to break spells, it just takes either a huge amount of it to work properly, which is unrealistic in most real life situations, or it needs very precise control over it. Unfortunately, after using the processed and ready version of mana that are the World energies for the vast majority of our lives, we are simply too inadept at using mana, so the number of mages who can actually use mana properly are very few. Sure, one can eventually get used to it, but that's only after practicing with it for centuries at least," Nasst smiled like he usually did.

'How does he change his attitude so fast?' Evin wondered how the man could be like he didn't act like a complete psycho ten minutes ago so effortlessly.

"Before one is able to use raw mana, though, most able ones opt to use Time energy. You should personally know how powerful it is, considering you've had the honor of using a Time bomb," Nasst laughed.

Evin's mind went to the ring on his hand. It was a great tool, for sure, but it was more like a help beacon and more like a reset button that canceled everyone's spells out. If the lesser-imposer attacked Evin's group when they were further away from the City of Smog, then perhaps Evin would be under chains, experiencing the same treatment that Karan received in his previous life.

"But, unfortunately, only a few people can extract Time energy from Authority Twelve Jokes' World. To know if you're one of those lucky few, well, you can only know if you enter the World and try," Nasst said and sat down on a chair. 

Evin understood that Nasst wanted him to do go and try right now. 

'Now that I think about it, I rarely enter the Worlds nowadays for long times, unless it's the World of Thoughts,' Evin realized. At one point after becoming a mage, the act of absorbing World energies becomes so routine that one wouldn't even feel like they've actually entered a different World and took one some energy from it. 

So, for Evin, entering the World of Time felt a bit nostalgic. He looked around a bit, and actually found that things looked a bit different, like they were lacking color. Even his hands looked a shade paler than normal. 

"What's happening here?" Evin murmured, but he realized that his voice was slightly distorted as well, like he was speaking underground. Then the voice began to echo in his mind endlessly, like the ringing of tinnitus. Thankfully it quieted down to become almost imperceptible, but Evin could still hear it if he tried hard enough. 

'I really don't have many good memories in this place Why the hell is it so scary every time,' Evin thought dreadfully. 

...

Author's excuses: Today, there will be only one chapter, since I'm a fucking idiot who wrote about something completely random. But rejoice. Tomorrow you will get three.