Chapter 21: History of The Magical World

Alexander used his ability to peer into the past of the world. He didn't fully immerse himself in the history of the planet as it would put great strain on his mind and also cause depletion of King's might. Alexander only briefly skimmed through the history of this world as Alexander had already observed the countless versions of this world. Alexander did so to not to get some unexpected surprises later on.

There was no magic on this world early on. The meteor that caused the extinction of dinosaurs released so much energy on falling that it began threatening the newly formed world's laws. The laws pushed all the energy deep in the core of the earth. The energy over the course of thousands of years caused the core to mutate and produce a special kind of energy. This new energy was magic which moved through the cracks between the crust of the planet and seeped into the soil, air and water of the planet. Where the cracks were more, there was more presence of magic there. Over thousands of years, magic leaking merged together to form a network spanning the whole planet. This was how the magical leylines were born.

At first magic was violent and primal in nature. It was the plants that first adapted to magic. The plants who survived in the environments where the concentration of magic was high, evolved into new species. Then, came the herbivores. Since the magic was so violent, many of the herbivores died due to extreme damage done to their bodies but those who survived became a new species. Then, came the carnivores who followed the same process as the herbivores. These magical animals preferred to stay in the places where the concentration of magic was high. This lead to the formation of a new unique ecosystem in these areas. Mankind at that time was living in caves. It was thousands of years later that men started encountering the magical animals while hunting and that led to death of men only. Even an injured magical animal was capable of destroying small tribes.

It was a hunter who somehow on pure luck and chance managed to kill a magical beast and ate it that allowed one of humanity to gain the ability to wield magic. The magic gained was passive and only made him stronger physically. Then, this information was brought back to the tribe and many died for acquiring this increase in strength. A few generations down the line and the whole tribe now had magic running in it's veins. The tribe split up due to difference in opinion and the various factions took over different settlements. Similar things happened all over the world.

Over the years, some magical animals and plants evolved into higher beings capable of human intelligence and active usage of magic. By observing these magical animals and plants, humans managed to wield magic to manipulate elements in a small manner. This new found power gave those who can manipulate elements a sense of superiority and they started to exert dominance over their counterparts. The various nomadic tribes gradually evolved into small settlements. It was after this that humans started encountering each other on somewhat equal basis. During the nomadic period, the number of humans were less and they did not stopped at one place for a long time so chances of encountering other tribes was minimal. Even if there was any encounter, it generally led to annexation of the weaker ones.

Runic magic started taking rudimentary form during in this time. As the settlement grew, they started recording their histories as answering to the little brats of theirs was tedious so they drew pictures on the walls and left the children to explore them. These pictures lasted only for a few years only. One man who lost his family due to beast attack, wanted them to be remembered so he drew their pictures and subconsciously infused magic in it with the intention of making them last longer. Magic preserved those pictures and they lasted for several years. This drew the attention of the people who were given the unpleasant task of redrawing the pictures, Alexander had never in his life had seen such zeal in people to track down someone down. The man who drew the pictures was on his deathbed when he was throughly interrogated about how he drew the pictures. After they also did the same.

This magic was not developed by same learned men or women or some revolutionary idea but by little children. The little brats wanted their pictures to glow and once they achieved that they moved on to other things like making the pictures move, act, talk, etc. Whatever that they thought came into existence through their intention. It was possible because they had much more magic as compared to the children of present times. When written language was born, an idea came into minds of some people, they started to try to infuse magic into words. After sacrifices of few noble souls who lost their lives due to stupidity, people learned that the words must be written clearly, too much magic makes it unstable and it cannot be just written anywhere, a magical environment was necessary.

First, they started imbuing their weapons with magic, then armors and then their homes. People started to experiment with this new found knowledge. They wanted to know what will happen when two or more words of magic would be combined. Once again, few noble souls lost their limbs or lives and people learned that they cannot combine just anything. Slowly, over hundreds of years, a basic structure was formed. After the formation of this basic structure, a period of rapid development occurred, rudimentary wards started being made. These wards were not permanent but they were powerful. Others grew jealous about the knowledge owned by this single settlement and world's first major conflict happened leading to the destruction of the settlement and distribution of knowledge among the people attacking. Slowly, the whole humanity now had this knowledge.

Alexander saw how the ancient wizards used runic circles to perform magic. The art of potions was invented when humans grew powerful enough to hunt magical animals and plants. Even magical plants at that time were dangerous. Some people did not wanted to eat tasteless food so they started combining different plants and animals. This made some mixtures quiet miraculous like one that increased a person's strength ten times if he could survive the after effects or one that increased a person's eyesight. While some gave boons, some gave gory and painful deaths. Once again the sacrifice of few noble souls helped in the development of this branch of magic. Alexander was not going to overly dwell on the development of early stages of magic but he decided to pay attention to any interesting that crops up during the time period. Alexander found a couple of interesting rituals but he found better alternatives of them developed in future.

Alexander then saw the beginning of the most glorious and the most tragic era of magic. One wizard who was a charismatic little shit managed to come gather all the wizards of the world under his banner. The allure of discovering new things and greater power managed to hold these people together. They all decided to call themselves 'magi' , earlier they were referred to as blessed. They started to call their power 'magick'. It was Alexander who is in mind was giving modern terms to all the past events he saw. Now, these magi were a selfish bunch and didn't want to share their knowledge easily. So, they decided to duel each other, the one who won would be able to study the knowledge of others. Now, they also didn't trust each other so they started making vows without any intention of fulfilling them. The irony was that the world's laws had achieved rudimentary conciousness till then and decided to enforce their vows. Why it decided to do so, Alexander did not know. Alexander had laughed up a storm when he saw the expressions on the faces of ancient wizards when they came to know that their vows were enforced by their magic. The ancient wizards let out their anger on their weaker counterparts who in turn let out their anger on those weaker then them. Ultimately, it was the non-magicals who suffered. Then, a evil plan birthed in mind of one of the magi, earlier the magi had to test their inventions on themselves or had to wait for someone to fall in their clutches. Now, he decided to abduct normal people to conduct his experiments on them. The other magi came to know of this and they started to do the same. New discoveries were made rapidly but the price was the lives, tears and agony of the non-magicals. One of the magi fell in love with the girl he had abducted. The girl had become disfigured due to the experiments done on her. The magi designed a ritual for her, the ritual made her extremely beautiful and gave her some magical abilities. The magi joyful on his success forgot to properly secure the girl and he lost his life due to this. The girl also committed suicide due to fear of what would happen to her when the other magi came to know about this. When the research was found by other magi, they became mad with the thought of possibilities, they now had a way to improve their bodies.

Alexander saw the mad and gory experiments that the magi did on the non-magicals. Alexander saw the birth of different races. The magi after conducting their experiments set them free in order to observe how they would survive on their own. Another period of rapid development occurred when the magical core was first discovered. The amount of magic was at that time many times more potent than present so people generally had solid magical cores. Now, discrimination was done on the state of core of a magi. One fellow lost his lover due to this. Girl's father wanted a groom with solid magic core while he had liquid magic core. The state of core can be changed by practising magic but it would take years. Depressed by his rejection, the magi decided to suicide but when he was going to go through it, he remembered his father's words who had told him that anything was possible with rituals. The magi decided to create a ritual to increase his magic but instead of increasing his magic, it increased his magic capacity i.e, instead of changing his core to solid, it increased the amount of magic that could be held by his liquid core. It did not help him in short run but the implications of his research was immense.

During his time period, rewards were given for new discovery and that fellow was quite poor. He submitted his research and got paid for it. Further study showed that a strong body was needed to house so much magic. Magi like present day wizards were not lazy, they had powerful bodies but despite this they invented strengthening rituals. Now, the pain of such rituals was immense and many died before it was perfected. Alexander quickly memorised all the details of the ritual along with the magic capacity increasing one. Later on, the magi discovered that the capacity ritual must be used when a magi has reached the peak of his current core. The peak is the amount of magic the core can hold in it's current state, after that it would transform. Alexander stopped further investigation on the past as he did not require further investigation until he reaches the crystal core stage.

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