Soul Merger

Monsterpedia Supplemental : Magic

Magic is a powerful force that seems to ignore several other physical laws. It fills the known world, though it's far more concentrated in labyrinths and certain unique places. Labyrinths on average have five times as much magic as the surface areas above them. When passive it is almost unnoticeable, but when active it has properties similar to electricity. In fact electricity, magnetism, and active magic all interact, which is why spellcasters avoid excess metal and strong magnets.

While there are rumors of magic, monsters, and hidden places of wonder pre Fall, the current theory is that the Fall corresponds to when magic became prevalent on Earth and labyrinths started to form all across the world. All modern magic research that we use today starts at that time.

The difference in magic levels has huge effects on the way humans and monsters interact. While most monsters seek to kill humans, they are dependent on magic to live. This means most can't survive outside of labyrinths for more than a week. This limitation is one of the reasons humanity hasn't been completely overwhelmed by monster hordes. It's also why the oceans are much more dangerous. Without control over labyrinth entrances intelligent monsters can recharge their magical energy much easier.

If monsters can't survive outside of labyrinths how do monster tamers keep their minions alive? There's no way you can channel enough magic into them to keep them healthy.

We give them our life essence directly. That's why tamers need to eat much more than the average person, and why we favor merges that need less food. It's also why we usually only keep one monster around outside of labyrinths.

If it's just energy that they need, couldn't you just feed them yourself?

Unfortunately no. They can't get the same energy from food we do, so we have to eat the food, convert it to energy, and then transfer it. It's like being a second stomach. It's easier to keep them in stasis until we need them. But that leads to monsters that are weaker and poorly trained.

While anyone can use magic, it's not easy. You have to have a lot of willpower and training to pull magic from your surroundings, and then you need to spend even more concentration and focus to get the magic to do what you want instead of just fizzling out. Mages and priests use complicated tools that channel the energy in the right directions making it easier to guide the magic into spells. These are called spell systems, and they're each unique for every spell.

The most common way of making a spell system is to build a spell core with the 'common' pathways most spells will need, and then use a specific spell chip that uses the core and its own design to finish the spell. Mythril, gold, and platinum are the most common materials for cores and chips, as they can hold and control magic better than anything else. Metals like copper and silver can be used, but the power that flows through the system tends to damage the metals leaving them useless after a few casts.

Contrary to popular belief priest and mage chip designs are based in the same pre Fall language, but due to having such different needs, they've diverged enough to become unintelligible to each other.

If mage and priest spells work the same, why have they become so specialized over time? Wouldn't it be awesome to have the ability to heal people and use attack magic?

It would be great but we have two completely different goals when it comes to spellcasting. Mages want speed and flexibility, so we can fight whatever appears on the battlefield. Priests have to sacrifice all that to control the really complex spells that deal with all the little biological differences between people.

But mages target humans too. Why don't they care about biological differences as much?

Well all the little details about blood type matter a lot less when you're just trying to boil it. If you want the target alive at the end you need to pay a lot more attention to the small things.

If magic needs such tight control, how do monsters and merges use it so easily? Simply put, those control pathways are already inside their bodies and souls. That's why the abilities are fixed. A magma drake will never be able to throw around ice. But they don't need any help to use heat spells.

What's still unknown is how spellcasting variants of monsters gain the ability to use 'normal' magic without special equipment. Is it a variant of the merge? Something to do with the extra magic in the labyrinth? Or something else entirely? Monster researchers are studying that right now.

(Demonic magic is still not understood under any magical theory. But as you can imagine, that's much harder to study.

How do techniques fall into this? I'm pretty sure dragons don't have axe skills.

Simple! Humans actually have natural magical pathways focused on tool use! That's why any unmerged humans can use basic techniques. True techniques are just mixing the skills from our merge with natural human abilities. Impressive right!

It is, but that makes me wonder. Could a complete souled creature kill a human and merge with them to gain that skill?

I sure hope not. Dragons and demons are dangerous enough.