The Truth of Magic


Chapter 25: Actual Intelligence

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
As time went by, Zhao Xu finally realized the thing he had been worrying about all this while.

Perhaps he really didn’t have the talent for this.

When he wanted to play Arthur in his previous life, his dormmates had analyzed the character classes for him. Even though Wizards were starting to become more powerful at that point, it was still too difficult for a noob like him, so his friends recommended he become a Fighter instead.

And so Zhao Xu never realized that he didn’t have the talent for learning spells.

Besides needing basic intelligence, he also needed a certain knack.

Otherwise, any living creature with at least 11 points of Intelligence in Arthur could become a wizard.

After a month, nearly 100 players with 18 points of Intelligence would get angry about not being able to complete the training course and band together to protest by deleting their accounts, thereby pushing the number of new players who chose to become a wizard to its lowest point.

This period of learning in the floating city of Mystra was the first time Zhao Xu had any exposure to the wizard training course.

After everyone transmigrated in his previous life, everyone also lost their special privilege of restarting a new account. You had to just go along with whatever account you had on hand at the time.

So now, the feeling that he wasn’t cut out to be a wizard made Zhao Xu feel conflicted inside.

It was like the time for an exam was almost up, but he still hadn’t filled up all the answers and he even had a high-value question left undone.

It wouldn’t be so bad if he was just going through this bitter feeling all by himself. Antonya was just sitting quietly in his room and waited for him to ask her questions every day as if she had nothing better to do.

She didn’t go anywhere, just stuck around to guide him. The feeling of having someone watch over him while he didn’t make any progress at all made him feel even worse.

If he fully understood the structure of the spells but couldn’t copy them successfully, he could blame his own Enlightened Spellcaster ability.

But the problem was that, out of the 19 cantrips, he didn’t understand a single one.

At first, Zhao Xu thought that the problem was the type of spell. But even after he switched to reading another five more, he realized he still couldn’t understand any of them.

Antonya gave him a hint to feel the way the spell flowed as if it was calligraphy. Each stroke had its own movement and depth.

He could feel this but just couldn’t put everything together. It was like trying to play a song based only on hearing it from the radio.

“Mentor, how long were you stuck here for?” Zhao Xu finally sighed and turned to ask Antonya about her experience. He had been reading posts by other players for the past few days and he had gone through a lot of them already.

He had logged in an hour late because he was trying to read more posts on how to tackle this area, but none of them was any help.

This problem of understanding was like a bridge he had to build to cross the river.

“Me? I copied them as I read them.”

“Mentor, didn’t you need to understand them?” asked Zhao Xu.

“Understand them? They’re as clear as normal text to me. What’s there to understand? It’s not like Level 1 Arcane magic where there are risks involved, so for those, we have to study them for 24 hours to cancel out these risks.”

“So cantrips don’t have any risks?” Zhao Xu continued to ask.

“If they did, then they wouldn’t be called cantrips. These 19 spells have been carefully selected and studied, and they are the simplest and safest 19 spells. There’s no way anything would go wrong with these.”

Zhao Xu felt as though he was the worst student in class talking to the best.

He couldn’t help but try to ask another question politely, “Then Mentor, how long did you take to study magic before officially starting on learning these cantrips?”

“About three years,” replied Antonya.

Zhao Xu gasped a little.

Antonya had grasped these so easily because of three years of accumulated knowledge, so he maybe shouldn’t ask for too much, seeing as he only had one week of knowledge.

This was also why the folks in Arthur could research and develop magic, while the players just used it.

The entire process of developing Arcane magic and some Divine magic in Arthur was all recorded clearly.

“But why can’t I understand it at all?” Zhao Xu finally brought up the problem he had.

Antonya laughed quietly when she heard his question. “So you finally can’t stand it anymore and you want to know?”

“In Arthur, you’ll be able to view your character stats after you reach Level 1 of your character class. You know that, right?”

Zhao Xu nodded. As players, they could see their stats even before they reached Level 1.

The characters native to Arthur could only see theirs after they reached Level 1, and they could attain more modules as they levelled up.

That was to say that every adventurer in the world of Arthur had their own character stats.

And that was why every single person in this world had things like levels, feats, and class features.

None of this was classified information.

“As for the six Ability Scores that you players have, Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Charisma, and Wisdom, the system has already made up for any scores you lack in. Even if your Wisdom is actually low, whatever you feel right now is given to you by the system, so you will take on the same Wisdom score as per your character stats.”

“The only score that the system didn’t help any of you in is the Intelligence score.”

“The real you doesn’t have 16 points of Intelligence, so of course you can’t comprehend all this so quickly.”

Zhao Xu finally understood what was happening.

In other words, Intelligence was something that both players on earth and in Arthur shared, but things like Charisma and Wisdom weren’t and so it was easy to understand if you held different scores in both worlds.

But if you felt that you were more intelligent in Arthur or you could become more intelligent by playing this game, then the system would be exposed.

And that was why Arthur helped them with everything except Intelligence.

So that was why wizard players were all stuck here for so long.

Most humans averaged 10 points of Intelligence, and were usually anything between 8 to 12 points. Zhao Xu figured that the maximum he might be was 13 points.

As for those with 16, 17, or 18 points, those were considered geniuses or people with photographic memories, so they were much rarer.

There were people who just couldn’t become wizards even if they set their Intelligence score at 18 points. Because if your actual intelligence was less than 11 points, there was no way you could understand anything if the system didn’t help to raise it to your game score.

Most people in Arthur probably couldn’t understand this issue. Only a Legendary level fighter like Antonya would be able to see it.

“Mentor, I can accept that I’m not actually this smart. But is there a way to salvage this situation?” Zhao Xu had no choice but to acknowledge that he wasn’t really at 16 points of Intelligence.

“Of course there’s a way,” said Antonya, and she laughed, as if she was happy to hear Zhao Xu admit that he was dumb.

“Then let me ask you. Why do you need to understand it?”

“If I don’t understand it, how am I supposed to copy it onto my memory?” Zhao Xu was even more confused.

“If you know that a sword is coming your way, you just need to avoid it. Why bother about where it’s coming from?”

Zhao Xu was suddenly shocked and could feel that he was approaching an answer, but he was like someone who was just learning how to swim and never stuck a leg out to actually start swimming.

When she saw how Zhao Xu was frowning, Antonya knew exactly what problem he was facing.

“If you’re in a river, you don’t have to know how to swim to cross it. You could take a boat too.”

When she saw that Zhao Xu still didn’t get it, she had to just tell him more directly, “Just write them out and go along with the waves.”

Go with the flow!

Zhao Xu immediately understood and hurriedly turned the Encyclopedia of Cantrips back to the first page.

He forgot all the additional text inside.

He focused his heart on only the structure of the spell.

The entire structure immediately started taking shape like it was a living creature.

Zhao Xu’s heart started dancing along with the various strokes.

Read Magic was successfully copied.

Detect Magic was successfully copied.

Dancing Lights was also successfully copied

…

Prestidigitation was copied too.

Eventually, all 19 cantrips were successfully copied into the depths of his heart, and they were like mysterious paintings glowing inside of him.

If there was someone else around, he would be shocked that someone could actually copy 19 cantrips in one shot!

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