Chapter 153: Spell Logic & Codes
Ethan noticed the movement and let out a light chuckle. "Oh ho, I see what’s happening here. You have a thing for the girl."
Rayleigh turned away quickly, his jaw setting in that particular way people did when they had been caught.
"That makes more sense now," Ethan said, shaking his head with amusement in his voice.
There was a brief pause where nobody said anything.
Then Ethan sighed and finally said. "Alright, look. I’m going to ask one person about this. If she has no way to go about it, then I’m sorry but I won’t take her in."
Rayleigh’s shoulders visibly relaxed. "Thank you."
-
Eventually, they all returned to the manor. Valerie, had been summoned down from her room, and right now Rayleigh had just explained everything to her in detail.
Ethan watched silently from to the side.
When Rayleigh finished explaining, Ethan then said, "I was thinking maybe there’d be a way to bind this carrion thing with a spell from your grandma’s grimoire. It’s the only way the girl gets to stay here."
Valerie’s expression became thoughtful. "I understand."
She turned toward Ishtar and approached her carefully, as though dealing with someone who might startle easily. "Do you know anything about the seal itself? Or what form the carrion takes?"
Ishtar shook her head, but then she said quietly, "This is all I know about it."
She stretched her right hand out toward Valerie and turned it over to show the underside of her forearm, palm facing upward.
There was a shimmer that passed over her skin, and when it cleared, strange black inscriptions appeared across the surface of her arm.
Markings and symbols arranged in circular patterns, layered over each other in complex geometric formations.
What Ishtar had just done to reveal the hidden markings was a demon trait of hers called Glamor. It was the same glamor she had used on her skin and features earlier to hide her horns and gray skin tone.
Glamor could conceal anything on the user’s body; Complexion, scars, tattoos, even their clothes, so long as it was physically attached to or part of them.
The markings now visible on Ishtar’s forearm were the representation of the Carrion Seal itself.
Ethan scoffed and shook his head. The girl did have some clue after all. He thought about how silly it had been for her to say nothing earlier when he had asked directly.
Valerie took hold of Ishtar’s arm gently, bringing it closer to examine the inscriptions properly.
"Hmm," she muttered. And after a long moment of silence, she said, "Unfortunately, I don’t exactly understand this."
Ethan turned toward her with eyes that had gone almost wide. "You’ve never seen that type of inscription before? Or what?"
Valerie looked up at him and replied, "More than that. Aside from not recognizing the symbols, I can’t comprehend the spell’s logic either. Which means..."
"The spell’s tier is higher than Tier 6," Ethan finished her sentence.
Valerie nodded in confirmation.
Ethan sighed and walked closer to their position. Given his SS-talent level in the Caster class, he could comprehend spells up to Tier 7.
Without taking Ishtar’s arm from Valerie since she was already holding it steady for him, he leaned in to look at the markings.
His eyes took on a peculiar glow, and strange patterns materialized within his irises. This was the Eyes of the Sage activating, allowing him to pick out every detail pertaining to the spell all at once without having to stare at it repeatedly or trace individual components.
The spell’s logic began forming within his mind like pieces of a puzzle assembling themselves. He could see the structure taking shape in his thoughts, each inscription connecting to the next in a web of magical intent.
The patterns overlapped and intertwined, creating layers upon layers of meaning.
It was like watching a three-dimensional blueprint construct itself in real time inside his head, with each symbol adding another line of code to an impossibly complex program.
The geometric shapes rotated and locked into place one after another until the full architecture of the spell became visible in his mindscape.
But even as the structure formed clearly in his thoughts, the meaning behind it remained frustratingly out of reach.
Ethan straightened up and turned to Valerie. "It’s Tier 7 alright. But I don’t get the inscriptions, so it’s not written in our spell code."
He turned toward Ishtar and continued, "I guess the casters of the demon continent have a different way of inscribing their spells."
She said nothing in particular, but the look on her face suggested this wasn’t news to her.
This revelation presented a different dimension of difficulty entirely.
The inscriptions, markings, symbols, patterns, and runes within a magic circle all combined to form what was known as a Spell’s Logic. It was the fundamental architecture that made magic work.
To cast a spell, all a caster had to do was envision that logic in their mind and channel it outward through their mana.
Of course, your talent level still determined whether you could even process that logic in your thoughts in the first place.
But basically, what one needed to cast a spell was the ability to comprehend its logic.
However, for in-depth or close understanding of what spell you were actually casting, a caster had to be able to read the inscriptions themselves. This was the spell code, the written language of magic.
For instance, if a knowledgeable mage like Bettie saw the inscription: ᛏᚦᛉ on any part of a spell’s diagram or circle, she would be able to instantly identify that this was a lightning-natured spell.
Even if the spell itself was beyond her tier to cast
So the problem right now in Ethan’s living room was this:
On the plus side, the symbols and inscriptions on Ishtar’s forearm right now were the Carrion Seal itself. This meant her body was either the cage holding whatever this power was inside of her, or she was the thing itself.
Whichever way it actually worked, the inscriptions were both lock and key to the entire mechanism.
But on the other hand, since they didn’t understand the spell’s code enough to know exactly how to deal with it, anything could really happen.
In fact, there could be an inscription buried somewhere in those layered patterns that meant something as ridiculous as: if Ishtar sneezes, the seal unlocks incorrectly and triggers a catastrophic explosion.
They had no way of knowing.
Right then, Valerie, who had been lost in thought while staring at the inscriptions, sighed and said, "I’m sorry, Master Ethan. Perhaps if this seal was Tier 6, then I’d have a way to go about it."
Ethan picked up on those words immediately and asked, "What would you have done?"