Origin

I opened the leather-bound tome that I had snagged from the merchant's wooden cart.

Heretical Arts. I ran my fingers across the debossed lettering of the front cover.

Should I pawn it? I hesitated. Maybe I'll read it before then. It's not like that'd change the price it'd fetch, right?

I thought of the stories that I'd heard in passing: great sage Vaera, poor from birth, grown through sheer effort, single-handedly reducing the great invading army of Vorpulus to ashes; champion Kelstara, originally inspired by a magic missile felling a tree, who resolved an unstoppable flood with the wave of a hand. These stories seemed too glorious, too mythical, yet I found myself captivated by such legendary feats.

Upon opening the book, I found myself highly fascinated by its contents.

"Magic: there are only 2 categories of people who pursue it: the rich and the foolish. The foolish are inspired by heroic fairy tales where magic is capable of turning an entire nation to fire and brimstone or an icy niflheim. The rich hope to develop magic to such a point for further control.

But you, the reader, will quickly realize that magic is a hopeless endeavor.

Perhaps more concrete terms would be better.

Magic, as it is right now, is only capable of a ripoff magic missile. A spell whose most experienced users will miss 35 times out of 36 even when targeting something like a house. A spell which requires the sacrifice of a finger to open a light door—or the loss of your own sanity, if you're so inclined."

If you really want to know how to use it, then that's the purpose of this book.

A discouraging preface was left behind by a scholar quickly forgotten to the annals of history.

I flipped through a few more pages.

Table of contents… dedications… ah! Chapter 1.

"Spinors are the basis of all life.

That is a consensus that scholars have come to after centuries of research.

Of course, for the uninitiated, the first sentence of this chapter sounds meaningless—what are spinors in the first place?

That's the purpose of chapter 1. Of course, chapter 1 will not be a vigorous introduction to the theoretical aspects of spinors, but will provide enough context for using ripoff magic missile (formally known as vector magic) by the end of this book. Finding research that offers a more in-depth perspective will be left as an exercise for the reader."