Darius Supreme

Darius had expected many things before he took on this risk, ranging from his body's explosion, part of him ending up crippled, all to way to a lucky success. However, he did not foresee the possibility of the spell simply fizzling out in failure without suffering any repercussions.

Well, perhaps it could be considered a success in its own way, since he hadn't suffered backlash?

Nevertheless, this brought up the question of why did the spell not activate?

The provided mana had been of perfect quantity and the routes it had passed had been calculated to be perfect.

Darius could only stand there and parse what happened over and over again in his mind as he tried to make sense of this outcome. When he reached a preliminary conclusion, he had a strange expression on his face.

As far as Darius could tell, he should've exploded. He possessed the entire knowledgebase of the Great Library of Krona, including its restricted section, and he had ratified that memory. Now that he dug through for similar occurrences, he found that Krona had detailed something similar.

Apparently, pure-blooded Dragons, Phoenixes, Fae, and some others were immune to all forms of magical and elemental backlash when using Magic/Elements/Spirit Qi, etc.

This meant that while he had failed there, what saved him had been his bloodline. Darius was amused, because when he had first come to Faust, he believed that he - unlike those protagonists in the shows he had watched - would not have lucky survival encounters where some cosmic force would save his life directly or indirectly.

Since this was random and unplanned, it was definitely luck that had allowed him to survive. One could argue that he had gone through a lot of difficulties to acquire the Dragon Bloodline, yet not knowing of such an effect it should be called ignorance, rather than luck.

After all, no matter what grade of spell he cast, this feature would be there as an eternal failsafe. Not to mention had Darius not done the Test of Mettle, he would never have gotten this chance in the first place as the Supreme System's rules would prevent him from ever even trying to cast above his stage.

Darius was ambivalent about whether to accept it is a form of the so-called 'plot armor' or whether it was a natural and sensible development.

Then again, did it matter?

Rather, Darius now knew he could experiment as he liked until he achieved success, and promptly did just that.

He recast the Flesh to Stone and felt it fizzle out once more, but there was a slight response in the end. Whatever mechanic was preventing him, an Adept Mage from easily casting this Master-grade spell despite going through the process smoothly was weakening.

He did this more than 20 times, until he felt that the fizzling was so small that it was becoming like background noise while the success of the spell was on the cusp of his fingertips.

His 25th cast finally saw him succeed, a string of mana leaving his body and connecting to the slab of stone on the table. Darius was prompted to choose any type of flesh he knew to transform this into, and he would pay the requisite mana cost.

However, he wasn't paying attention to that right now. The moment Flesh to Stone had succeeded, Darius had felt like a seal or barrier within his body had been shattered open, allowing him to freely move within his magical circuit even more.

The lab became quiet as Darius leaned over the work table with his eyes closed, his mind parsing through what he had just experienced, trying to understand the cause and effect.

It was imperative that he did, for once he could, he could replicate this in others without a risk of failure. Darius ran through many theories and cross-checked each one with his Database to see if he was right.

When he did find out what it was, there was a look of shock and respect in his eyes as he opened them.

"Terrifying, truly terrifying." Darius remarked with a soft smile.

Once again, this sort of event had to be attributed to his draconic bloodline. In actuality, casting above your stage was doable, though limited to the early stages for humans if they had the right talent, and for non-human species with higher average stats.

However, there was a great strain not on your body or mind, but your magical circuit. It made sense to Darius now that he understood the rules behind it.

Why was it important to climb the stages in Faust? After all, if a person could have, say 100 Intellect while being an Amateur, why bother to become a Journeyman? With that level of Int, it should be even possible to cast Master-grade spells!

However, the Faustians did not know this, but the laws of Faust were designed by Vena from the bottom to the top. She was the one who had input the Amateur, Journeyman, etc stages, what abilities they had, what the requirements were to get there for each race, and the range of power they would have.

So the rules were grafted onto the world itself. The reason a Master stage mage could cast Master grade spells was not only because he had the requisite amount of Intellect and the knowledge of the spell, but because he had been baptized by Faust after breaking through from the Adept stage.

This baptism wasn't overt, but very inconspicuous. For mages, their magical circuit got expanded and fortified, strengthened enough so that they would be able to handle the spells of their stage.

It was like taking a car and filling its engine with rocket fuel. Forget about getting it to spark, it was likely you would ruin it thoroughly or blow it up. This was the equivalent of trying a spell above your stage.

BUT!!!!

There was an exception.

There were certain races within Faust that had the ability to perform this in time because their magical circuits were refined by their blood.

Dragons, Phoenixes, High Elves, Demons, Devils, and certain other elite races had superior magical circuits, with Dragons having the strongest.

This was why Darius had survived with a simple fizzle out. The reason a normal Faustian would suffer was because their magical circuit would be too fragile to handle the backlash of a high-grade spell.