Now then.
How exactly does the blood magic Professor Bagrek uses differ from the secret sacrificial rites favored by magic criminals?
“Professor Bagrek using it is a legally sanctioned, legitimate form of magic under imperial law, but if a magic criminal uses it, it’s illegal, right?”
...
That’s true, but focus on the magical element.
Professor Boladi’s blood magic was, at heart, a secret art that used his own blood as the medium to amplify mana.
No matter how potent and ancient a reagent a magician’s blood might be, willingly offering one’s own blood can’t be healthy.
The higher the magic, the more complex the structure becomes and the greater the risk the mage must shoulder.
Add blood magic into that mix and how unstable would it be? You only had to look at the mages who died from accidents while developing blood magic to get a good sense of that.
So magic criminals approached the problem cleverly.
Why should I bear the risk? Let someone else bear it for me.
“That’s the sacrificial rite, then.”
Exactly.
It’s a technique that avoids danger by offering the flesh of others, not the magician themselves.
Headmaster Skull clicked his teeth in displeasure.
Ihan felt a little moved.
He’d just thought the headmaster was crazy, but he could get angry about the harm mages did to ordinary people too.