Shades of the New World

Chapter 182: Actually overpowered?

Evin could see how that would make sense. After all, the level of super-imposers spanned from 1000 kgs of mana to 10000s. So if Nasst was a newbie super-imposer at the range of 1000-2000 well, naturally, someone like Kal, who can probably use up to 10000 kgs of mana would almost look illegal.

Compared to them, Evin being proud of his measly 28 kgs was almost sad. But the more he thought about it, the more Evin was confused.

'First of all, how the fuck are they even able to contain that much energy inside a fucking 10 cm mana-core? Secondly, what would they even do with such huge amounts of mana?! Seriously, how the fuck is the World still alive and kicking?!' 

If one of those forty super-imposers decided to go psycho one day, the damage they could do was unimaginable. Just thinking about it, Evin's face gradually turned into a frown.

'Perhaps the Oaths forbid mages to wantonly use large area-of-effect spells, since it might indirectly harm common people Wait, now that I think about it, I guess the Oaths are there to keep them in check?' Evin thought and looked inside his body. 

He didn't notice it before, but he could see that his two Oaths had become stronger. This made him conclude that the Oaths grew more powerful alongside him. 

'If not, then how would these things would be able to threaten those super-imposers?' he thought with thankfulness.

Evin never thought that he would be grateful for the Oaths. They always felt like a restriction to him, but now he could see why these restrictions were necessary. Since every mage was forced to take the Oath when they were just beginner mages, then even if they become someone like Kal in the future, they would still have to respect its rules. 

'And after they become an Authority somehow, they would have to follow the Empress' rules,' he concluded.

This gave him the feeling that mages were always forced to restrict themselves, because of the non-mages. Well, Evin could see why this was so, since he could see how often Divine Essence users tended to just accidentally kill common people before the Empire was founded. Obviously various laws were put down to get rid of these accidents, but they were mostly useless. After all, no one would want to kill or punish a Hex or a Magi because of some random commoner. A Divine Essence user would always be more important than a normal person. 

But under the rule of the Empress and the four countries, a non-mage dying at the hand of a mage was an extremely rare event. After all, they knew that if they tried to attack one for whatever reason, they would be the one lying on the ground. 

Obviously, mages could still defend themselves when attacked, so non-mages couldn't just walk all over their faces 

Evin saw how this current system created a delicate balance between the two groups of people and he couldn't help but feel admiration. The weaker group would regard the stronger group politely, because of their inherent differences, while the stronger group was forced to act politely the weaker group, since that was the uncheatable law of the World. 

'This is kinda amazing' he thought absentmindedly, before pulling himself together. 

"You seem prone to space out easily lately Everything alright?" Nasst asked, a curious expression on his face.

"Sorry about that. It seems I've developed a bad habit," Evin apologized. Since he spent a lot of time alone in Four's World, he was a bit unused to normal social interactions.

"Well, regardless, you don't have to worry about super-imposers and whatnot for the time being. What I want to teach you now is something else," Nasst said and steered the conversation back to its original topic.

Evin regathered his attention.

"Tell me honestly, how strong do you think you are as a mage?" Nasst asked suddenly.

The sudden question surprised Evin a bit. 

'How strong would I call myself?' he thought suddenly and thought about his fights against other mages. 

The first time he used magic was against Norna's group of thugs. At that time, he could really feel how powerful mages were compared to non-mages. Then he saw Aran and Abvelgail kill the two mages with some unknown method. But at that time Evin was pretty out of it, since he had just destroyed his mana-core.

The next time he fought was in the forest against the mages from the East. But the fight could almost be called a joke, where Rith just played around with them a bit, before deciding to kill them. Sure, this was his first proper fight against mages, but due to how it played out, Evin couldn't help but feel underwhelmed about it. 

After that, was his fight against Parvan. Weirdly, this was one his more challenging fights, since at the time, he was just a beginner-mage, with no Channeling Artifact or any other artifact for that matter. So, he could've lost pretty easily if he made a blunder or something similar. 

'But in the end, I won because Parvan was too inexperienced at fighting.'

As for the fight against Galashin, even though he fought against three half-cores, the fight was relatively tame. He managed to kill the woman using Karan's special traits, and then killed one of the men using his Dark Room, suffocation combo. The mage he dueled had some flashy Flames that would have probably killed Evin if he didn't have access to his shadows, but in the end, the man could only wave his powers around before getting killed. 

'Obviously things went to shit after Galashin decided to act, but overall, I'd say I did alright in that fight, considering I was against half-cores' Evin thought a bit before realizing how powerful he became since then.

'Am I actually overpowered? I did kill that instructor, whoever his name was, almost accidentally, right? But why do I feel so weak all the time?' Evin couldn't help but think.

And in his last fight against Arza, he could clearly feel how strong he'd actually become. The Authority style, his battle-mode, his more powerful Heavy World, and his increased mana-core size. And he didn't even use any of the illusions he learned beforehand.

But Arza wasn't someone so weak either. The boy's biggest problem in Evin's opinion was that he just lacked proper training. If any of Arza's rough attacks managed to hit Evin, then Evin would be the one in trouble. If Deminte managed to help the boy with that, then Arza would become many times stronger than before. But even after all that, Evin was confident he wouldn't lose to Arza. 

All this lead to Evin concluding the following.

"I guess I'm pretty powerful?" he said unconfidently. 

Nasst laughed loudly, listening to Evin say it in such a questioning tone.

"Ha-ha-ha. I really don't know why you think you're weak. You're stronger than almost every half-core on Alvox! Obviously, you can never surpass the gap between you and a lesser-imposer, because of World domains, but anyone below that well, they're going to have a hard fight against you."

"But what about my lacking mana? Why wouldn't a peak half-core just overwhelm me with their superior firepower?" Evin asked.

"Okay, let me ask you this. Do you ever feel restricted by your mana?" Nasst asked suddenly.

"When I'm using the World of Life and the World of Earth And I suppose I felt similarly about the Heavy World when I didn't know about its World Switch," Evin replied after pondering a bit. 

Evin could also feel that his World of Fire spell was also lacking when he was trying to burn down the corrupted soul tree. But he managed to burn it down quickly after creating an excess of air with the World of Storms and let the fire grow by itself. He only needed to keep burning his soul, while also maintaining his original World of Fire spell.

But aside from these examples, he never really felt like he lacked mana. 

"I'm sorry for asking you this, but were you someone who studied natural sciences before you were reincarnated?" Nasst asked suddenly.

"Yes," Evin answered shortly. He wasn't going to deny it, but he wouldn't talk a lot about it as well.

"Then you should know how most things work in nature, right? For example, when you're trying to create a fire, you would spark one and then let air do the rest. You would just need to will it to not disappear. Same thing with Storms. There's tons of air around you, you just need to gather it up and throw it at someone. It's not like it doesn't do the same thing sometimes," Nasst articulated.

"I suppose."

"But when you're trying to lift rocks and turn them into an armor of some sorts that protect you, you feel like it's too unnatural, so you end up spending a lot of mana on it. Then it becomes almost impossible when you have to create the pieces of Earth yourself," Nasst said smilingly.

"Wait you can do that?" Evin was baffled by the idea that someone could create dirt and stones out of nothing.

"Of course you can. If you can create a dark room of shadows with a bunch of claws and a giant maw swimming inside it, why can't people create Earth out of nothing?" Nasst snorted.

"I suppose"

"At any rate, all these traits means you're a logical mage," Nasst finally explained.