Magik Online
by Void Herald, is an ongoing Web Serial Novel following Mathias "Matt" Martel, a creative teenager discovering a website allowing him to purchase spells online.
On an alternate version of Earth, a Magitek, transdimensional dragon-led empire called Concordia has risen to prominence. One of the many young people resenting the dictatorial status quo, Mathias receives a mysterious invitation to a website, Magik, allowing users to buy magical powers with a currency earned by fulfilling strange requests. Eager to strike back after Concordia arrested his mother, Mathias decides to use Magik to rebel. However, juggling between his new sorcerer identity, the Shroud, and his private life turns out a bit more difficult than expected.
Magik Online began in January 2019 and while it had been updating every Wednesday, on January 1st of 2020 the author announced that the story would be updating sporadically from then on.
This series provides examples of:
- Ability Mixing: Magik Online users have the ability to combine two spells of different colors together to make a stronger, but more specialized spell at the cost of its two component spell. Examples include Glass Field, Lightbringer, Mad World, Killer Sense, and Bullseye.
- Abusive Parents:
- Henry Powells was a horrible father and it's not hard to see how Maggie and Jack ended up the way they did under his care.
- Blackcinders is a perfectionist stage mom who openly looks down on her son, Smokefang, for never meeting her absurd standards and refuses to let him heal his blinded eye as a form of discipline.
- Blackcinders POV reveals that her parents weren't much better, indoctrinating her with their toxic ideals of strength and ruthlessness starting the cycle.
- Alien Invasion: Earth was conquered by an interstellar empire of fantasy creatures ten years before the start of Magik Online consisting of a dragon led army of hobs, bullmen, werewolves, and many more species.
- Anti-Villain: The werewolf Captain John Kresnik is quickly revealed to be one upon his arrival at the end of the first arc. Despite serving the Concordian Empire he is a Great Detective who fights For Great Justice, truly wants to protect the people, shows legitimate sorrow at the deaths a cult caused and is generally all around more likable than his boss, Smokefang.
- Berserk Button: Mur hates it when he is called by his full name, Murmur.
- Big Bad Ensemble: While the story starts off with the main antagonist being the Concordian Empire led by Grandmaster Wyrde, it quickly becomes clear that the Maleking is an equal threat to both Concordia, Mathias, and everything else.
- Birds of a Feather: Maggie and Mur quickly bond given how similar they are, being rough, hedonistic, greedy, and amoral fighters driven on by a hatred of their own weakness.
- Color-Coded Wizardry: There are seven different colors of Flux, each can be used to manipulate a different aspect of reality: Red (energy), Blue (information), Green (life), Yellow (soul), Orange (matter), Violet (space-time) and White (magic). There is also an eighth color: Black, the color of decay and entropy.
- Conspicuous Consumption: King of the Midnight Market Mammon uses his wealth to buy some weird things, like his collection of thirty-seven suns and tries to buy a planet he doesn't like so he can blow it up.
- The Conspiracy: The first enemies Mathias fights is a human-sacrificing cult consisting of Evermarsh's impotent human authority figures run by Mayor John Brown, who have turned to occult means to regain their former status.
- Deconstructed Character Archetype:
- Mathias is one of the double-life teen superhero archetype. He tries to live a double-life as both Mathias Martel and the resistance leader Shroud, but during his first excursion saving his classmate, Maggie, from a cult, she easily figures out his identity and not one and a half story arcs latter his identity is outed by Candlemaker Jack.
- Fitting the video game motifs Jack is one of the people who only care about EXP. What happens if you could get EXP by killing in real life which Jack can basically do with his Crimson Echoes Lock? The obvious happens and you get a mass-murdering psychopath.
- Dishing Out Dirt: Mathias' main spell, "Glass Field" grants him perfect control over every piece of glass within a ten-meter radius.
- Emotion Suppression: Kari dampens her own emotions by using her past lives memories to overwrite her own to help her deal with her own baggage.
- The Empire: Concordia, a transdimensional empire led by dragons and fielding steel golems called Gearsmen as shock troops. They conquered Earth a decade before the story's start, renaming it "Terra Firma."
- Evil Is Bigger: Blackcinders is a General Ripper, as well as the biggest dragon Concordia has ever had.
- Excuse Me While I Multitask: The Premium Thoughts spell's main advantage in combat. It gives Mathias to brainpower to multitask overseeing his entire team with his Network Lock and keep track of and control his hundreds of glass shards, as well as fly. When Kresnik negates his spells, the loss of Premium Thoughts causes Mathias' entire fighting style to collapse upon itself.
- Force and Finesse: Smokefang and Kresnik form this dynamic as the main antagonists of the Heist arc.
- General Ripper: Blackcinders, Concordia's Red Minister, is the supreme commander of Concordia's armed forces, is a brutal dragon supremacist military leader with a love of power, destruction, and doomsday devices who is in charge of conquering new galaxies for Concordia.
- Good Shepherd: The Christian priest Solomon (Sol for short) who is a close family friend of the Martels. He protected people from drug gangs before Concordia invaded, fights against racism and oppression, is looked up to by Mathias, lets him use his church as a base for his resistance activities, later fights in a suit of Powered Armor, and becomes a sorcerer.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: The Evermarsh conspiracy sought to summon a demon by sacrificing other humans to strike back against Concordia. The demon summoned, the Candlemaker, kills them all after they defaulted on the last sacrifice.
- How Do I Shot Web?: Mathias spends most of the first arc learning how to use the various spells he purchased and how the Magik website works.
- Laughably Evil: Mammon is a far sillier foe than Shroud's previous villains with his Large Ham nature, Shameless Self-Promoter antics, along with his dynamic with his Girl Friday, Ace.
- Love Cannot Overcome: Mathias starts a relationship with his friend, Perse, who's had a crush on him for years, but Mathias ruins the relationship because of his duplicitous behavior, which causes her to break up with him, appalled by his lack of trust in her.
- Mage Killer: Captain John Kresnik is an experienced White Sorcerer who specializes in taking down rogue sorcerers due to both his martial skills and Anti-Magic spells.
- Magitek: the setting's dominant feature, with magic and science having become one.
- Mecha-Mooks: A majority of Concordia's normal forces consist of Gearsmen; flying multi-purpose, mechanical attack bots.
- Mirror Character: Mathias and Kari. Both lost someone dear to them because of Concordia, both internalize their problems, and both use a persona of some kind (Mathias' Shroud identity, and Kari's past lives with Oversoul) as a crutch to deal with their emotional baggage.
- Moral Sociopathy: Aster shows all the signs of being The Sociopath but he has a very twisted moral compass, refusing to believe in evil because he believes he can reeducate anyone into a model citizen, ironically showing a belief in good and bad.
- Muggle Born of Mages: While most races are lucky if twenty percent of their population has magic, dragons are the only race known that has a majority of sorcerers in its population making it a particular sticking point for Smokefang that he doesn't have magic.
- Mysterious Backer: The Administrator to a tee. He gives Mathias access to Magik Online, which gives non-magical beings the ability to become sorcerers by having an account. But their identity is a complete mystery, they only communicate through chat messages, and Mathias needs to fulfill 'Quests' for his benefactor in order to gain Spellcoins needed to buy new spells,
- Not in This for Your Revolution: Lacking brute strength during the Heist arc, Mathias and Kari end up having to hire the gargoyle mercenary Mur to make up for their magics lack of firepower.
- Not So Above It All: Kari puts great effort into her stoic ninja image but it can break at times showing surprising mundanity such as when she reveals her skill at drumming or when her ringtone reveals that she's a massive fan of the Beatles.
- Nothing Is the Same Anymore: The end of the first book utterly destroys the status quo: Mathias' father is killed by Candlemaker Jack, outing his identity leading to his capture by Concordia. Maggie, Mur, and Sol are empowered by Magik Online, Perse breaks up with Mathias, and Mathias kills Smokefang giving up on living a double life and becoming Shroud full time. He and the newly formed Dragonslayers then have to flee Evermarsh, relocating to the alien Midnight Market.
- One-Steve Limit: The mayor of Evermarsh is named John Brown. He's quickly killed off and not a chapter later is Captain John Kresnik introduced.
- Post-Modern Magik: the website Magik, which allows users to purchase magical powers through a currency called Spellcoins.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Grimsour, the Orange Minister of Concordia, shows disgust at Blackcinders love of superweapons because he considers them Awesome, but Impractical wastes of money and resources that could be spent on more practical things.
- Reincarnation: Kari's Lock, Oversoul, is based around letting her draw the memories, skills, and powers of her past lives which include many skilled warriors and the Nine-Tailed Fox.
- The Right of a Superior Species: Concordia is founded on the belief that dragons are inherently the strongest and wisest race and it's their job to enlighten and uplift lesser species. Basically, they conquer everyone and forcibly integrate them into their culture and sadly have more than enough power to back it up.
- The Spymaster: Aster is the head of Concordian Intelligence and a powerful Blue Mage. It comes as no surprise that he has a galaxy-spanning network of informants, spies, and schemes.
- She Is the King: Concordia's leader is called 'Grandmaster'. A position held by a female dragon named Wyrde since its founding.
- Signature Move: Anyone who gains the ability to harness Flux to use sorcery immediately gains a Lock. A special spell that is completely unique to the user; such as Network, Oversoul, Crimson Echoes, White Geist, Adamant, and so on.
- Third-Person Person: Mur the imp always refers to himself as 'Mur'.
- Token Good Teammate: Among Concordia's High Command and dragons in general, the Golden Prince stands out with his strong morals is the only Minister interested in diplomatically assimilating over races into Concordia and building a working culture beyond conquest. He's also the only dragon shown to not have a superiority complex.
- Wake-Up Call Boss: Smokefang and Kresnik are far more competent than Mayor John Brown's cult ever was.
- Wizards from Outer Space: Earth gets invaded by an army of fantasy creatures armed with powerful magic and Magitek.
- You Are a Credit to Your Race: Despite being openly speciest and oppressive Concordia openly practices exceptionalism; three of its Ministers (the highest ranks below the Grandmaster) are non-dragons (A bullman, a hob, with Brina's species a mystery).
