Alice in the Land of Steam

Is there an alternative way to understand Chapter 248?
"Magicians are inferior to extraordinary people in four main aspects."

"Four? That's a bit too many. You might as well just say he's good for nothing!" Alice said angrily. She was in a cynical state because her previous conclusion was slapped in the face. Even the lamb's bleating would be severely criticized by her for "disturbing the order of the class". Therefore, it was not such an outrageous statement to slander the magician as "good for nothing".

At least Saint Xia Liya and Ling Ge ignored her. Only the lamb who refused to admit defeat was arguing with her. The two of them were bleating and cursing at each other, which soon attracted a large number of Mr. Rabbits to come and watch. Even the plant orchestra on the temporary stage stopped playing and came closer with great interest to watch the man and the sheep perform some more advanced performance art.

"In essence, the magic system and the potion system are closely related. The former inherits many elements of the latter and has modified them to a considerable extent. That is why Archmage Merlin called the two types of magic modern magic and ancient magic respectively. From ancient times to the present, it is a kind of inheritance."

"The most intuitive point is that the magic system has not completely abandoned potions. As the key to inspire human spirituality and open the mysterious door, its existence is indispensable. At the same time, the original fourteen paths and nine sequences are retained, and you can clearly see the traces of the potion system in the magic system."

Alice, who was arguing with the lamb, interrupted and said, "Doesn't that sound completely the same?"

"differ greatly."

Saint Xia Liya replied: "The biggest difference is that in the past, the power of the potion would be completely released and integrated into the body and mind of the user, transforming their soul into another state beyond mortals and giving them corresponding abilities. In other words, extraordinary people do not need to learn, they only need to take the potion to complete the transformation, and they can naturally master extraordinary abilities; but at the same time, the magic energy contained in the potion is too huge, and the transformation process is very difficult. Only those with the strongest will can support it. At the same time, the transformation of the soul by the potion also leads to the erosion of the law, which in turn makes people's personalities gradually become extreme and eventually out of control. The acting method proposed by Saint Tumi can slow down this process, but it cannot go against the final outcome. Therefore, for extraordinary people, no matter how powerful they are, even if they are revered as gods by the world, they cannot escape the fate of being out of control and crazy."

"And the great wizard Merlin innovatively improved the scope of the potion, so that its effect no longer affects the human soul, body and spirit, but merges with the stimulated spirituality. After a special reaction, a new area is opened up at the junction of the soul and the body. The great wizard Merlin called it the 'Sea of ​​Spirituality', also known as the Ether Sea."

The spiritual sea, the ether sea... It is indeed a name full of mystical elements. Those fifteen or sixteen-year-old girls who are keen on this should be more likely to accept this statement, but the first thing that Lingge thought of was a hypothesis that has been scientifically falsified: ether is the medium for light propagation.

"It has only one function, which is to store your extraordinary abilities, which are the magic learned by magicians. They will appear in the aether sea in the form of stars." Saint Shallia explained softly: "These stars are usually dim. When magicians need to use magic, they will light up the corresponding stars with their spirituality. When they don't need to use magic, they will remain silent and isolated by the aether sea to ensure that they will not affect the magician's mind and body."

Isolate the influence between magicians and magic?
Ling'er's expression slightly changed, and he had figured out the key point: "Does this mean that magicians will not face the threat of erosion like extraordinary people?"

Compared to the predictable madness at the end of the road and the ever-present erosion, magic that apparently has no side effects is more attractive.

He shook his head, throwing away these ridiculous thoughts, and then asked, "What is the use of this ether sea?"

"Yes." Saint Xia Liya was not surprised that Lingge saw the characteristics of the magic system so quickly, because he was originally a very smart person, or in other words, very perceptive: "The greatest innovation of Master Merlin in building the magic system is to solve the madness and loss of control that humans will inevitably encounter in the process of contacting mysterious powers. He has done something that even Saint Tumi has never done. This alone is enough to attract many extraordinary people, and they are even willing to abandon their current achievements and turn to magic."

"But the war still broke out later." Ling Ge said: "The peaceful transition from extraordinary people to magicians was not smoothly achieved."

Even the process of two secular countries attacking, annexing, and merging with each other requires at least hundreds of years to complete, let alone the two power systems in the mysterious world? In a sense, the struggle between the potion and magic systems is even more intense than the struggle between orthodoxy and heresy in the religious world.

"Not everyone can accept the choice of giving up power and starting over, especially for Transcendents above Sequence 4. In the mysterious world, they are qualified to call themselves demigods. They will not allow themselves to fall to the level of mortals, nor do they want to see this emerging system grow up and impact their status. At the same time, although the magic system can avoid erosion and prevent loss of control, it also has disadvantages that make people hesitate and entangled. These are the four aspects that I mentioned before, that magicians are inferior to Transcendents." "The first is that the power of the potion no longer acts on the soul and the flesh, but merges with the spirit to open up the ether sea. The ether sea is located at the junction of the soul and the flesh. Although it is part of the human body, it is also isolated from them and does not affect each other. This means that without using magic, the magician's body and soul are very weak, and can even be killed by mortal weapons. There have indeed been cases in history where magicians disguised as mortals were poisoned and assassinated by the enemy. For Transcendents with extremely powerful bodies and souls, this is unimaginable."

"That's really frustrating." Alice popped up again at some point and shared her feelings in a serious manner: "It's like a max-level character being killed by a rookie in the Novice Village with a basic attack. But it's normal for mages to be fragile. They can't be tougher than us melee professions, right?"

The lamb that had just exchanged words with her had already run back to Saint Shalia in shame, bleating and seeking comfort from its master. Judging from its performance, it was ultimately unable to defeat this cheeky golden-haired maid, and was humiliated and defeated in the verbal battle, which was a pity.

Is she no different from an ordinary person when she doesn't use magic? Lingge recalled Miss Fiyali from Linwell City. When they first met, he really couldn't tell that she was an evil magician.

Saint Shallia picked up the crying lamb with some difficulty, gently stroked its soft fur, and continued: "The second reason is that in order to avoid the influence of erosion on magicians, basically every magic has a limited usage time. When the time is up, it will return to the etheric sea, absorb spiritual energy and wait for the moment to light up again. However, extraordinary people do not have this restriction, because their extraordinary abilities are obtained along with the strengthening of the body and soul. As long as the limit of the spirit and body is not reached and there is no fear of the deterioration of erosion, they can use it indefinitely."

"Oh, active skills have a cooldown time, but passive skills don't. This makes sense." Alice commented, shaking her head.

"Third, after a supernatural being takes a potion and survives the backlash, he will automatically master all the supernatural abilities that come with the potion. Archmage Merlin has modified each supernatural ability in the nine sequence levels of the fourteen paths into a magic model and researched the corresponding potion formula. After a magician takes a potion corresponding to a magic, he only gets the model of this magic and must analyze it himself to fully master it. And every time a magic is learned, a potion must be prepared, which requires a lot of resources. Few magicians can afford this consumption."

"Oh, so it's not only very expensive to learn skills, but it's also very difficult to master them. It's a noble profession."

"Fourthly, it is a complex and rigorous process for a magician to analyze a magic model. Therefore, a magician must have rigorous thinking, careful logic, and extensive knowledge to go further on this path. The more knowledgeable, clearer thinking, and more active thinking a person has, the stronger his spirituality is. In a magic system dominated by spirituality rather than based on spirit and flesh, he has better adaptability. In other words, magic has very strict requirements on individual qualities. Most magicians with outstanding achievements are also outstanding scientists, engineers, artists, etc. It is said that the great wizard Merlin himself is a great scholar comparable to Saint Tomi."

"Oh, it means that the intelligence requirements for the mage are very high, and leveling up does not rely on killing monsters, but purely on accumulating experience through the secondary profession."

"…Based on these four reasons, the magic system is not as attractive to extraordinary people as imagined."

After Saint Shalia finished speaking, she and Lingge fell silent.

After a while, they both turned their heads at the same time and looked at Alice who had been talking nonsense beside them.

A certain golden-haired maid scratched her cheek, not knowing what was going on: "What?"

“Did I say anything wrong?
　Give me some meow
　　
　
(End of this chapter)