Download Magic System 1er
Lauretta Jaffray
I would argue that there exists a third type. The middle of the road. Take Harry Potter. We know most of what magic can do in Harry Potter. What spells do what and what conditions have to be met to use one. However, Rowling introduces a lot of MacGuffins even in the later portions of the story. Felix Felicis, Sirius' Mirror are two examples. They serve as shortcuts to get the characters out of a situation and are mostly used only a single time. So Harry Potter Magic can be argued as both Hard and Soft.
Which one do you prefer? Personally, I like Soft Magic Systems a lot more. Hard Magic Systems have too many rules and eventually end up feeling like the science of the fantasy world. And once it becomes too science-ey, the feeling of awe doesn't remain as powerful as it once was. The worst offender, for me, was Sanderson's Rhythm of War and what it did with the fabrials and stuff. Melisandre making shadow assassins to kill Stannis' rivals, Galadriel using her mirror to show magical glimpses to Frodo and Sam. That's what I prefer in fantasy. The Martin-Tolkien-Abercrombie magic rather than the Sanderson magic that is more popular in modern fantasy. I still like Sanderson's magic systems, I just prefer the Softer magic.
So, the next entry in my Useful Notes series is about one of my favourite aspects of this world, its magic system. If you find any mistakes or inaccuracies, please tell me where the information is in the books and I'll check it and change accordingly.
This post concerns itself with the the mechanics of magic in the context of the worldbuilding of Mushoku Tensei, so I tried keeping it as general as possible, trying to understand the laws of nature the compose this world. Maybe seeing more concrete examples of how magic and techniques are used in this world can aind in understanding the whole (especially with techniques). For that, you can check my post about The Adventurers Guild, swordsmanship styles, magicians, the life of adventurers, and the ranking systems
In the Six-Faced-World, magic is the manipulation of mana. Mana seems to be the essencial substance of this world, which can be anything, everything, and even nothing. Mana in its raw state seems to be very unstable at times and extremely unpredictable. It is my pet theory that this is the instability referred to in the creation story of the Six-Face-World and what caused the Creator (or Creation God) to weave the six worlds together, so that magic could travel from one world to another and the whole could be stabler. If that's the case, with the collapse of the other five worlds, most of the mana now concentrates in the human world, which might have made it less stable.
It seems that magic somehow both affects and is affected by this world and the creatures living in it. It's probably not a coincidence that the Demon Continent resembles the Demon World, that the Great Forest resembles the Beast World. What isn't clear is if these areas were a piece of their world subconsciously brought by the refugees from the collapse or if their concentration in those areas changed those parts of the Human World to be more similar to their world. However, we see no confirmation of floating stones in the Sky continent, and there doesn't seem to be any explanation for Bergaritt.
Magic also seems to infuse entire group of people, giving them new characteristics that become intrinsic to them and can be passed on to their descendants, such as the migurd telepathy, the demon eye of the superds and other Magic Tribes, the regeneration of the Immortal Tribe, and the extremely long lifespan of several tribes. Certain groups of people also seem to have more affinity with certain types of magic than others.
a) When magic affects animals or dead creatures, it turns them into monsters, making them stronger and wilder. Monsters are a big problem in the Six-Face-World and have to be constantly culled and suppressed.
b) When magic affects a place, it's called a labyrinth. The mana concentration increases, as well as the concentration of monsters in it. The labyrinth will have a core, where its magic will be concentrated. Labyrinths also tend to continuously grow and expand, similar to a cancer or the protomolecule from The Expanse, until its core is destroyed. Anything that remains in a labyrinth for too long will be affected by its magic. This seems to be how most magic stones and items are created.
c) Magical Crystal are basically crystallisations of mana and are at the core of a labyrinth. They can be used as magic batteries, which makes them extremely valuable for magicians and to power certain magic circles. Most of them don't seem to recharge naturally, though it might be possible that some do. It is possible for them to be recharged by magic circles though.
d) Magical items are the equipment left by monsters or adventures inside a labyrinth. Over time, they accumulate magical energy and gain certain magical properties (abilities). These properties happen all at random, which means that most of them are considered trash, no more than funny curiosities. However, the useful ones (such as boots that increase your speed) are extremely valuable, since their abilities can be activated without consuming the user's own mana.
e) When people are affected by magic in this way, it is called a curse or a blessing. Humans use the word curse for what is considered a negative effect and blessing for what is considered a positive effect. However, they are both the same thing in essence and this judgement of value is one used by people who misundestand the nature of magic. They also seem to use the word "curse" for things we'd recognise as mental illnesses and know not to be magical in nature. It makes sense since this is a world based on Medieval Europe. For the sake of simplicity, we'll simple call them curses. Curses can be anything, from being hated by all people to being trusted by all people, time manipulation, mind reading, and super strength that comes with a very specific type of touki. Humans affected by this are usually called miko.
There are two basic ways of performing magic in Mushoku Tensei: Spells (magic proper) and Techniques. Most people seem to believe that techniques are not magic, but some observations made by very powerful and/or ancient characters lead to the conclusion that they are just different ways of approaching magical energy and feats. To perform magic, one spends raw mana in order to change reality. Meanwhile, most techiniques we see in the story are related to combat skills and use Touki (Battle Aura/Fighting Spirit).
The interesting dynamic about magic in the world of Mushoku Tensei is that it is pretty much nigh omnipotent. You can do almost anything with it, if you know how to do it and have the mana available. This is the catch about magic in this world, it is not a sentient force. In the Harry Potter series Molly Weasley uses magic to wash the dishes and clean the room. To perform that in Mushoku Tensei you would need to make the objects float (Gravity magic is extremely rare) and then move them in the desired way while spending mana to maintain the effect, so it is not viable.
When a character says that they cannot heal something with healing or purifying/detoxification magic, what they are actually saying is that they don't know the magical way to do that. We see healing magic being used to heal wounds and diseases, cure nausea, clean poison from the body, mend broken bones, and even regrow limbs. However, blood clots, aneurysms, cancer, malformation of certain organs at birth are not things the people of this world understand, so they haven't created spells to cure those. With that in mind, we come to the three ways we know how to do magic: magic circles, spells, and voiceless magic.
Magic circles seem to be the original form of magic in the world of Mushoku Tensei. In the story they have been compared to circuit boards and that seems to be accurate. From what we see in the story, drawing a magic circle does seem similar to coding or speaking a new language. Sometimes, when you can talk about cars in another language, but not about films. A person knowledgeable on the subject matter may look at a circle and understand its purpose. I tried to keep this spoiler-free, but the best example is seen in Volume 17, when Rudeus accidentally summons Arumanfi to be his guardian beast. He comments on the complexity of the circle and brings it to Perugius, who changes the imagery on the patterns and sends a new one that allows Rudeus to summon Leo. This episode also tells us that even if instructions on the circle are specific, the person casting still has some autonomy and makes some decisions.
Magic circles are also the most common way for magic knowledge to develop and evolve. Magicians will test new patterns and power the circles to see what happens. Sometimes the result will be a dud, nothing happens, but the mana will still be spent. However, if mistakes are made there can also be a disaster.
One interesting aspect of this system is that a person doesn't even need to be able to perform magic to study and draw magic circles, which also means that a person doesn't have to be able to draw the magic circle to be able to use it, they just need the mana. Either from themselves or from magic crystals.
And this brings us to the actual drawing of the circles. Once used, circles disappear. Certain substances and processes need to be used for the circle to remain, and that's where we come to magic tools/implements. Magic circles can be inscribed anywhere. It is quite common to inscribe them into objects, so that anyone holding that object can perform that effect. Those objects are called magic tools/implements (depending on the translation, I like tools. Anything we can do with technology could be made inscribing magic circles into an object. The main limitation is the same as for us: energy, fuel. While we have invested a lot of time into researching new forms of procuring and storing energy, magic has made this world a little bit complacent. This deserves another text, but, suffice to say that magic tools use the mana pool of the caster, and most people don't have a very large mana pool, so one needs to get creative when building those. It is even possible to restrict the amount of mana to use a given tool to a minimum, to prevent other people from using it. Since he has such an absurd mana pool, Rudeus does that with some of his more powerful items. It is also possible to power them with magical crystals, but those are in short supply.
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