Chapter 1464: Birds Returning (Part 25)

Constantine widened his eyes. He first looked at Schiller, then at Bruce, and then at Schiller again, saying, "This is your teaching method? No wonder you tortured each other for four years. If my teacher let me memorize these things in three hours, then I would definitely..."

Before he finished speaking, Bruce had already walked forward, his face calm as he flipped through the three books, nodded, and said, "My memory system has some problems now. The upload and download speeds have been affected, so I might need to read them twice to record them. Usually, reading them once is enough."

"Go." Schiller pointed to the table and chairs by the bookstore window with his cane, then looked at Constantine and said, "Take me to your warehouse to see. I've been very interested in the ritual part of the mysterious world recently."

Constantine stretched his neck to look at Bruce, found that he was really sitting at the table and starting to read seriously, shook his head, sighed, and led Schiller into the warehouse.

Two hours later, the sky had completely darkened. Schiller walked out of the study upstairs, Constantine followed him dejectedly. Schiller walked down the stairs, he chased after him, spread his hands and said, "... Why so many whys? The magical world is full of rituals passed down by word of mouth. Others do it, so I do it. How would I know why?"

"Besides, I am already a quite knowledgeable magician in the magical world. I know the habits of almost every demon and angel. Even archmages like Andrew have called me to consult about the weaknesses of some obscure gods."

"And then you don't even know the source of the same symbol that appears in four rituals." Schiller pointed out.

Constantine sighed deeply, held the handrail and walked down the stairs, saying, "You can understand it as a proper noun in mysterious symbology, just like a noun in English. We just use it, and don't have to understand it."

"Isn't it that you can only use it better if you understand it?"

"No." Constantine denied. He walked in front of Schiller, looked into his eyes, and said, "The power of magic is borrowed. As long as someone is willing to lend you power, a three-year-old child can also perform magic."

"Have you ever thought that this might be a trap of the gods?" Schiller placed one hand on the table in front of the bookshelf and said, "The forms of existence of gods and demons are completely different from humans. The power they lend to humans can perfectly fit the human body. What is certain is that this cannot be their original power. It must have been processed in some way."

"Logically speaking, they could let their hosts adapt to them without this processing. Do you think demons and gods are so kind to do the work for magicians?"

Constantine looked at him in a daze. After a while, he frowned and said, "You mean, this might be a conspiracy?"

"All gods and demons, without exception, have evolved the power they lend to humans to be completely suitable for the human body. Why do you think this is?"

Constantine's frown deepened. As a former magician, his experience with magic was much more than Schiller's. And he had to admit that the vast majority of power lent by gods and demons to humans could be easily controlled by humans.

Constantine, who had read quite a few magic classics, knew that there were quite a few examples of magicians in ancient times who couldn't control the power and exploded and died, but there were almost very few such accidents in modern times. Magicians were in poor health mostly because they had to pay a price, not because they couldn't control the power.

What's more, many milder powers wouldn't even cause subtle damage when flowing through the human body. This was actually very strange, because the human body was not born to accommodate energy at all.

Constantine thought for a moment and said seriously, "I can only tell you that the situation you mentioned does exist, and the adaptability of the power of demons and gods to the human body is indeed purified. In ancient times, only the most talented magicians could control the violent power, but in recent years, magicians are getting younger and younger, and quite a few people are even touting 'children are natural spiritual perceivers'."

"The two books on magic rituals I just read mentioned it." Schiller tapped the table with his fingertips and said, "Magic rituals in ancient times were very complex, mostly composed of patterns, materials, energy, chanting, and sacrificial dances. Modern magic rituals can be performed perfectly as long as they have one of them."

Constantine nodded. He shifted his gaze, looked up at the ceiling, as if recalling, and said, "That's right. I tend to use magic arrays, which is the way of patterns to perform magic, while some female mages tend to chant, such as Zatanna. The reverse magic she uses is a kind of chanting."

"Do you think this is really a good thing?" Schiller also frowned at Constantine and asked, "The threshold is getting lower and lower, the power is getting stronger and stronger, the number of magicians is getting larger and larger, and the total amount of debt is getting larger and larger. Is this really a gift from the gods?"

Constantine was silent. Schiller continued, "They evolved energy to be more and more suitable for humans and made the means of casting spells simpler and simpler. It is definitely not for the convenience of humans."

"Just like a credit card, banks lower the approval threshold and increase the loan limit. Is it for the benefit of the people? No, they just hope that people can develop the habit of advance consumption and then borrow more debt, because they have the ability to force people to pay back the money."

"Existences outside of humans set the threshold for borrowing power very low, enticing more and more young, even teenage magicians to enter the industry, just to lend more debt and then collect more interest."

"And an even more fatal point is that if the whole process is very simple, then no one will get to the bottom of it. The magical world is like this now, isn't it?"

"Mages in ancient times were still studying what the structure of each rune that could accommodate energy was, and how to improve runes and secret languages to form patterns with higher efficiency to control power." Bruce's voice came from the left. He was still lowering his head to read, just joining Schiller and Constantine's topic without changing his expression.

Both looked at him, and Bruce continued, "I saw the historical traces of ancient wizards controlling violent power step by step from these books."

"At that time, many mages spent their whole lives just to optimize one rune, and a whole school only mastered one pattern, and then used the inheritance of several generations to study its mysteries."

"There were even quite a few mages who observed the origin of the universe's source power through the door of magic. Countless speculations about the origin of the world and magic energy were passed down by word of mouth in various schools. And today, these classics have become obscure knowledge that has been shelved."

Bruce looked up at Constantine and said, "Since humans learned to make fire, we have never stopped studying the origin of the world. The subject of 'how the universe exists' runs through the entire learning process of all disciplines in the scientific community. It is the starting point and end point of the human scientific path."

"But the magical world has completely given up research." Schiller added. He lowered his eyelids, sighed lightly, and said, "As you said, you can possess powerful power far beyond ordinary people by saying a few words to demons in your dreams, and from then on, you can leave the ordinary society of mediocre people and embark on a mysterious and magnificent journey of the magical world. Who wouldn't be moved?"

"And how many people, in the process of wantonly squandering power and imagining themselves as magic geniuses, have thought about whether there is a deliberate push by those gods behind everything being so easy?"

Constantine was silent for a long time. The room returned to silence. Bruce once again focused his attention on the books. After a while, his voice, which was young and unlike him, sounded.

"Do you know? Your kind of argument is dismissed as heresy among the younger generation of mages. The current trend of the entire mysterious world is that only humans who are talented enough and lucky enough have the possibility of controlling magic."

Schiller shook his head and said, "John, I think you know that any society that denies the significance of effort is unhealthy. The purpose of the theory of talent and the theory of bloodline must be more sinister than you think."

"Every young mage now is pretending to be a genius." Constantine pursed his lips and said, "I know, many of them can't even draw a complete magic array, just pay more price, master stronger power, and then go tell others that they are talented. I feel sad for them."

"I have always been very opposed to the trend of solving everything with magic, but you have also seen that mages with noble bloodlines and special talents like Zatanna are the objects of pursuit in the circle, while I am just a stray dog chased by various creditors."

"But you are actually much stronger than Zatanna." Schiller raised his eyes to meet Constantine's gaze and said, "This is also the reason why I hope you don't use magic. For people like us, magic is a complete drag."

After speaking, he turned his head to look at Bruce who was still immersed in the world of books, and Constantine also followed his gaze. After a while, he showed a bitter smile and said, "Are you planning to establish a new school and then reform the magical world? I can only tell you, it's not that no one has tried to do this, but it's very difficult."

Constantine swallowed and began to explain to Schiller, "You might think that magicians are stronger the older they are, but on the contrary, the younger and stronger a magician is, the more capital they possess, and the more price they can pay, naturally they can exchange for more power. The more powerful a magician is, the more say they have, so the magical world has always been dominated by young and middle-aged people."

"Most magicians don't live to old age, and those who survive are not stronger than others. They just find ways to default on part of the price or use their power very cautiously, so they can live longer than others."

"This will create a problem. Young mages have power but no brains, older mages have brains but no power, and there is a pile of idiots who have neither. And those few geniuses who have both are also difficult to shake the entire magical world with their extremely small numbers."

"Then do they have Batman?" Schiller looked at Constantine and asked.

Constantine opened his mouth. He just cast his gaze on Bruce, and Bruce looked up at him and said, "I've finished memorizing."

Constantine was dumbfounded, and then he heard Bruce say.

"And according to the article 'A Century of Investigation on the Generation and Evolution of 623 Phase Symbols in Ritual Patterns by Prisita Flaobang and His Disciples', the two magic arrays you drew on the afternoon of June 16, 1992, at 3 PM, were completely wrong—it can be called a mess." ===== CHAPTER 1465 =====

"And according to the article 'A Century-Long Investigation into the Generation and Evolution of 623 Affinity Runes in Ritual Patterns by Prisita Flaobang and His Disciples,' the two magic circles you drew on June 16, 1992, at 3:00 PM were completely wrong—they were a total mess."