Konbini Ossan Volume 1 Chapter 16 – Magic and Skills

After spending about five days immersed in study, I had managed to read through a significant number of books.

Thanks to that, I’ve gained a solid understanding of magic and skills.

First, let’s go over the difference between magic and skills.

Skills are defined as benefits granted upon meeting specific conditions.

There’s always a set condition, and once that condition is fulfilled, a corresponding benefit is triggered. That’s the basic structure of a skill.

For example, for the «Dark Magic» skill:

  - Condition: Spend sufficient magic power

  - Benefit: Activates dark-element magic

Another example: the «Life Drain» skill:

  - Condition: Physical contact with a target

  - Benefit: Absorb physical strength

What’s important is that there is no causal relationship between the condition and the benefit.

Skills operate on a system outside the world’s natural laws — akin to inserting a new higher-order rule that ignores existing physical principles.

On the other hand, magic is the manifestation of phenomena that occur by following proper procedures.

For example, to cast a dark magic spell, you must draw the appropriate magic circle and channel magic power into it.

Then, a magical effect takes place. This is fundamentally different from skills.

Magic follows the natural laws of this world — it abides by cause and effect, much like how physics works.

With this understanding, I learned something crucial.

Any human can use any magic, regardless of their attributes or skills — provided they follow the correct steps.

You simply draw the magic circle and pour magic power into it. That’s all it takes.

As long as the rules of this world remain in place, anyone can perform magic.

So what, then, is the ‘Attribute’ listed on the Status board?

Turns out, it behaves much like a skill. People with attributes can use magic without relying on magic circles.

For example, to cast a spell like Dark Ball, someone like me — with no attribute — would need to:

  - Draw the dark magic circle

  - Channel magic power into it

But someone with the ‘Dark’ attribute is basically a living magic circle.

All they have to do is channel magic through their own body, and the spell is activated.

Of course, since the body is being used in place of the magic circle, the body has to “get used to” the specific spell over time.

That’s a tricky part — spells won’t activate properly without practice.

Still, since I’m ‘Attribute: None’, this doesn’t really apply to me.

What matters most is this:

If I know the magic circle, I can cast any magic.

This led me to a decision: 

I must learn to use magic.

There are several reasons why, but the biggest is to make use of my unique skill.

According to the goddess, I possess a massive number of skills, many of which originated from monsters, plants, or minerals.

But these skills all come with specific activation conditions.

If I can’t fulfill those conditions as a human, then the skills are effectively dead weight — I may own many skills, but they do absolutely nothing.

So I started thinking:

Is there a way to repurpose all these “useless” skills?

I looked into whether skill conditions can be altered, but apparently they can’t.

I also considered reshaping my body to fit the skill’s requirements… but that’s wildly inefficient.

If I have to rewrite my body every time I want to use a different skill, it would never end. Not to mention, the side effects could be disastrous.

While I was stuck on this problem, I came across a kind of magic that changed everything:

Enchantment Magic

It’s a very simple type of magic:

You transfer an attribute or skill to an item or person.

Normally, it’s used to share your skills or attributes with allies.

However, since living creatures undergo metabolism, any skill or attribute you apply will fade over time and eventually vanish.

But if you enchant objects — like stone or iron — the effects remain until the material breaks or degrades. The skill or attribute is maintained.

Surprisingly, this method isn’t commonly used. Let me explain why.

For Attributes — Only a limited number of materials can hold them. 

The enchantment magic circles are complex, and you generally need high-quality materials like mythril to create things like magic swords.

Plus, objects don’t “get used to” magic like people do, so unless the attribute is enchanted by a very experienced user, the resulting object won’t work.

Also, skilled magic users rarely cooperate with others to make enchanted gear — they want to keep their power to themselves.

That’s why attribute enchanting never became mainstream.

For Skills — Technically, you can enchant most materials. But there’s a bigger issue: it’s pointless.

Why?

Because skills need conditions to activate.

If you apply a human skill to a rock, tree, or sword — those things can’t meet the activation requirements. So, the skill just sits there, unused.

So naturally, nobody bothers using skill enchanting on objects.

But there’s one exception to this.

Me.

I possess countless skills that can’t be activated by a human.

But what if I find a material that can meet the activation conditions? And then enchant it with that skill?

  - A simple pebble might become harder than steel.

  - A rusty sword might slice through monsters like butter.

Of course, I haven’t actually tested all of this yet. So there’s no guarantee it’ll work exactly as imagined.

But if there’s even a chance that I can put my deadweight skills to use, Enchant Magic is the key.

That’s why I decided to master enchantment magic.

And that’s why I cut my research short at five days — to begin practicing.

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E/N:

Makes a lotta sense. And Ossan is already over 30 and a virgin so he must learn magic! 

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