Ch. 116 - The Limits of the Spell Book
Is It Weird for a Guy to Apply to a Witch School?This chapter is broken. Please report this on discord.
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My hour was up before I knew it. I didn’t bother paying for an extension, because that would’ve been a waste of money. I figured the cash would be better spent as a fat tip for Yiren instead.
As I headed for the exit, I made sure to leave Yiren a glowing five-star review. With her signed, "private edition" maid photos tucked safely away, I finally walked out, feeling pretty satisfied with myself.
I glanced back at the line of maids waving me goodbye. Yeah, definitely money well spent. It was a hell of an experience—and a hell of a discovery.
You never really know what kind of wild secret lives your roommates are having behind your back.
Speaking of which, I wondered what Guan QiuLing was up to.
She’d said she was meeting up with a senior. Knowing her, she was probably in the middle of some high-intensity training session, or something equally exhausting. I just hoped I wouldn’t accidentally stumble into whatever "extracurriculars" she was doing.
While I was at the cafe, I hadn't just been managing the group chat. I’d grilled Yiren about her own situation.
She’d been assigned to Class 105. That was a massive jump in numbers from my class; we probably weren't even in the same building. Then again, since classes didn't have fixed rooms yet, it was anyone’s guess.
The weird part? She hadn't even received an invite to a class chat. She didn’t know who her advisor was, let alone if they’d picked a Class President yet.
It looked like my situation was a total outlier. Being Class President clearly wasn't a standard appointment, so maybe there was no rush to get the group chat organized. After all, half the students hadn’t even arrived on campus yet.
I spent the rest of my time at the cafe diving back into Anatomy of the Spell Book.
Even though it was technically a "For Dummies" style intro book, it was packed with the kind of common sense I desperately needed to catch up on.
For starters, the barrier to entry for actually creating a Spell Book was the "Transcendence" level. So, my dreams of DIY-ing my own Grimoire were officially shelved for now.
The book broke it down simply: a Spell Book is basically a "plug-and-play" metaphysical construct—a high-tech fusion of Spells and Rituals.
It even defined the two:
It was a bit of a clinical way to put it, but it made sense. If a textbook isn't easy to understand, it’s failing at its job.
What really blew my mind, though, was that a Spell Book can be transferred. I’m nowhere near the level where I could pull that off, but the implications were huge.
Furthermore, the human body was just a convenient vessel for a Spell Book—not the only one.
When a Spell Book was hosted in something non-human, it was classified as a Magic Item. It overlapped a bit with "Enchanted Gear," but if you find a high-quality medium, it was a great way to store extra power.
Apparently, most Spell Books were hoarded in this form. I bet Xia Li’s "private vault" is overflowing with them.
The catch? Compatibility varied depending on the vessel. Just like how some people could run a marathon while others got winded walking to the fridge, a spell’s effectiveness depended entirely on the "specs" of the person—or object—using it.
This section was a deep dive into the protagonist's philosophy on magic. To make this feel like a modern Western fantasy, I’d use a "hardware/software" metaphor and sharpen the "water gun" analogy to make the internal logic pop.
The effectiveness of a spell was not only linked to a person’s physical "hardware," but also heavily dependent on the mental energy they could channel.
Back when I was first tested, my mental energy was classified as having a "Universal Affinity."
Essentially, I was a jack-of-all-trades. I didn’t get a power boost for any specific element, but on the bright side, I didn’t have any weaknesses either. I took "neutral" over "nerfed" any day.
If someone had a specialized affinity, say, Fire, and they used a Fireball Spell Book, the output would have been significantly more explosive. That was the basic relationship between the user and the Book.
The textbook spent most of its pages on the fine print: the rules and limitations of the Spell Book itself.
At the end of the day, a Spell Book could be classified as a "tool" designed to help humans channel power.
Because it was a tool, it came with a list of technical parameters: casting time, targeting lock-on, failure rate, burst potential, stability, durability, and cooldown periods.
Even two "identical" Spell Books might have had slight manufacturing variances.
As I skimmed through the technical jargon, one question kept nagging at me: Could a person cast magic without a Spell Book?
If someone were powerful enough, they wouldn't be restricted by these parameters. No more cooldowns, no more casting times—just pure, unrestricted power.
Was that kind of strength even possible for a human? Maybe not. But what about a Transcendent Witch? It had to be possible at that level.
Even then, my mental energy was strong enough to stir the energy in the air, yet I was unable to actually use magic.
It was like being in a pool. My mental energy was my hand, and the water was the Transcendent elements surrounding me.
My hand could splash the water around easily, but I couldn't make the water do what I wanted. I couldn't shape it or control it with just my hands.
The Spell Book was like a water gun. If I held it, I could spray the water in a specific, controlled way.
Sure, I dreamed of becoming a master—someone who could raise a wall of water with a wave of their hand or launch a high-pressure jet with a thought.
That kind of freedom sounded incredible, far better than relying on a plastic toy.
But that wasn't something that happened overnight.
If I wanted power right then, I needed to collect more "water guns." But if I wanted to move beyond those limitations, I needed to take the gun apart and figure out the engineering behind it. I had to see how it manipulated the "water."
As for how to deconstruct a Spell Book... Psi-vision was my best bet.
Psi-vision was my backstage pass to the Transcendent world. It laid everything bare right in front of my eyes.
The problem was that I was looking at high-level code, and I didn't know the language yet. What I needed was to learn how to actually use what I was seeing.
I decided it was time to hit the library and find a deep dive on Psi-vision.
Before I had entered the School of Transcendence, I used to read all those "expert" theories online.
Ordinary people loved to speculate about Psi-vision for clicks, spinning logical-sounding nonsense to get likes. If I had actually taken that "pop-science" seriously, I would have been a laughingstock at the academy.
Still, I couldn't deny that those fake-deep posts were what had built my fascination with Transcendence in the first place.
Sometimes, people just wanted an answer. They didn't care if it was right or wrong; they just wanted something to believe in.
As long as the explanation was polished enough to be convincing, it had meaning.
It was like how people chose to view the world through a lens of emotion vs. logic, or materialism vs. idealism. I needed to find my own way to understand this Transcendent world.