How does the genius mage character work?
Let's play deduction!!!
As it was established, she has an incredibly small mana pool inside her body but can regenerate that mana from outside her body.
Didn't she say she uses magic around her instead of storing it in her body like normal magic users do and that she essentially can't run out of magic power?
When we first met her she cast just one fireball and was like, "Yep, that's it for me."
This indicates that her mana regen isn't instantaneous but rather constant. If we look at it like some sort of RPG character it could be something like:
| Character has 50 mana. |
| Character has 5 mana regen per minute. |
| Fireball costs 40 mana to cast. |
|
So while she has enough mana to cast one singular fireball (50-40=10 mana left), she'd then have to wait for at least 6 minutes (10+(5*6=30)=40) before she can cast a second fireball.
That power meter should be always displaying zero (or near zero) for her, but it should also be irrelevant to her.
something that could explain it is that while her mana regen is high she has next to no mana pool to start up simultaneous spells and the armor fixes that by acting as an external storage
I agree with Dramen on this point that the armor acts as an external battery of sorts. When she tried to put it on it tried to leech all her mana dry but couldn't due to her constant regeneration. The leech also didn't happen instantaneously so that indicates that there's a maximum amount of mana the armor can leech at once.
Based on the stats above it could be something like this:
| Armor leeches 5 mana per minute from the user. |
| Armor can store a maximum of 10000 mana. |
Since the armor couldn't leech her empty of mana, that indicates that her regen is either higher or at least equal to what the armor can leech. The "battery icon" on the hat seen in this chapter also indicates that there's a maximum amount of mana the armor can store (as opposed to as much mana as it can leech).
but still ofc the issue then comes up of why not use the regen to feed the armor or just chain spells one after another which would make the armor arguably moot
Considering she used a variety of high level spells in this chapter I'd assume she knows her craft quite well and would probably have tried to chain spells or channel her regenerating mana into one powerful spell before. Based on this it would be safe to assume that this method is not possible.
Since both the armor and the mage have a limit on their leech/regeneration, as indicated above, as soon as her battery runs out of mana she is basically down to her own regeneration, albeit she can now safe up higher amounts of mana with it being leeched into the armor right away.
Which means she can safe up huge amounts of mana over time but her infight regeneration is still the same.
tl;dr
- Mage has small mana pool but constant regeneration.
- Armor constantly leeches mana from user at slower or equal rate than mage's regeneration.
- Armor has maximum capacity of stored mana.
- Once Armor runs out of mana, mage is back to normal regeneration.
Of course, all numbers in this essay have been pulled out of my ass for clarity.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
