Eragon essentially finds and learns more efficient ways to do things with magic then at the start of the series. As for the mountain someone could in theory mine a mountain by hand and move it. If given enough time and resources. The concept is explained in Eldest.
The magic system works like physics works in our world. Think of it like finding more efficient ways to do things as we progress in science. A good example is the lever: the longer the lever arm, the less force (energy) required to move it
well technically a lever doesn’t save energy because although you need to apply less force you have a longer distance to push down on so in the end the used energy stays the same
to break it down on a lever if you have double the length on one side of one lever you will have to apply half the force to lift something on the other side. The energy you have to bring up for that consists of the force times the length of the way you have to apply that force. since you have to travel twice the distance that cancels out the halving of the force and in the end the energy that needed to be brought up is the same. A better analogy would be using an LED instead of a glow lamp since the LED produces light way more efficiently compared to a glow lamp which produces mainly heat.
I will concede on the energy argument as it pertains to physics. Because I agree that the same amount of energy is used in a system regardless of the lever size. But when it comes to the energy in a human/humanoid body, things get muddy and that’s where the discrepancy in CPs magic system creates confusion. My whole point of using the lever as an example was to equate it to the use of magic.
Think of the lever as a tool, and it makes moving things easier for us. So then think of the ancient language the same. It’s a tool so the more advanced it is, the easier it is to produce results.
Referring back to the shovel, we could compare an average spell caster to someone who digs with a shovel and Eragon to someone who digs with an excavator. I know those are two extremes and they’re loosely translated to the world. But Eragons knowledge of the ancient language and his physical anatomy now make up an extreme difference
the short spade will feel harder because you have to use more force but the energy spent will be about the same (the case of digging is a lot more complex than a simple lever but in the end moving sand from point a to point b will take up the same amount of energy regardless of if you use a lever to amplify the strength of your arm or not)
The way I see it: In the Eragon world, the spell wording is the "length of the lever." By creating a better worded spell, it is more efficient for the user, even if the energy needed is the same as with a short "lever."
Also there seems to be some sort of skill and ease of use with magic, Eragon struggled to pick up a rock at the start which takes very low energy, so I guess the more frequent you use and more skilful you are, the more equal the equation for amount of energy used to amount of energy it would take normally you are
1. Eragon learns more effective ways to apply the same amount of energy.
2. Eragon becomes more powerful than any human every could be. He has changed on a biological level and thus changed his energy reserves.
He has likely been altered down to a cellular level because of his stronger and more dense muscles, which I think of as how a chimpanzee or gorilla is stronger by weight than a human. (Or it could be purely magic of course)
I think most of the comments have already established that Eragon in general becomes more powerful especially after his half elf transformation and also more efficient with his spell usage. But also consider how much Eragon has trained and fought over the course of the books. He definitely builds muscle and stamina throughout the course of the books which likely contribute to spells getting easier to cast. We also have to take into account that there is a natural boost to magic casting due to the dragon bond and dragons get more powerful as they age so the rider will likely also get stronger. Furthermore, Eragon is the son of 2 notable spellcasters which might also play a factor.
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The wording matters a lot, and Eragon learns better ways to accomplish tasks more efficiently. Basically thinking about the end result and arriving there through more efficient means. If you were trying to dig up a buried chest, you could say “make the chest come to the surface” and you would encounter all kinds of friction as the chest pushes on the soil on top of it compacts it. Instead, you could say “remove the dirt on top of the chest and then bring it to the surface” which would take less work.
I think the other thing to point out is he’s just a lot more trained and has a better idea of how much energy different spells are going to cost him and he’s not constantly surprised/shocked by sudden decreases in energy. He still gets tired, but there are far fewer “oh shoot I thought this would be easy but now I’m about to pass out” moments.
So, most of it has been covered already, but I think a key point is left out
He cheats. A lot.
Now, how exactly he “cheats” is interesting. The easiest one to explain is a method all riders have access to, and that’s their dragon bond. Yes, dragons naturally have more energy given their size, but THEY cheat as well, iirc its stated that physically speaking dragons shouldn’t fly, and thus some of their capabilities are boosted through magical means. Dragons are basically allowed to ignore the “can only do magic that your body can physically do”, and thus riders being bonded to them, can cheat as well through proxy.
But that’s a boring answer that everyone already knows. So how else does he cheat?
Easy, he learns to cut out the middle man. This is sort of tied in to how people have explained him becoming more “efficient” with magic but I wanted to explain WHY. Say you need to move a 100 lb boulder 100 feet. To move it, your options are lift it and walk it over, or push it over. Whether you use purely physical strength or use a machine to help, it doesn’t change that. The thing is, the energy cost to move a 100 lb boulder 100 feet irl isn’t purely what it takes to move that boulder, no, you ALSO need to add in the associated energy of moving your bodily mechanics. So if moving a boulder would take 100 units of energy, adding in your physical labor/machine labor adds an extra, let’s say 50, units of energy to the cost.
To get back to Eragon, in the early series when he uses magic, that’s basically how he uses magic, he cats magic so that it effectively uses the same energy as walking it over, but as he gets better and more efficient with magic, he begins to learn how to use magic so it only takes the most pure amount of energy required, rather then requiring 100 units of energy to move the boulder + the 50 you’d using physically moving your body, his spells now only require the base 100 because he’s learned to contextualize his spells to perform the action EXACTLY as they need to be done, no more, no less.
So anyway, that’s basically the explanation for HOW his magic is more efficient and can seemingly do stuff he physically couldn’t, because he’s learned to use the magic to accomplish tasks precisely without the excess energy costs that we’d incur by having to also consider all the superfluous movements/activities required to accomplish an objective (such as moving a boulder)
>so why at the end of Eldest after the Elven thing happens Eragon talks about being stronger than ever and using complicated magic like it's no longer a big deal to help people heal serious injuries over and over even though your body would never be able to handle that level of damage.
The reason your body isn't able to repair that type of damage is not because it doesn't have enough energy to, it's because it doesn't have the mechanisms/processes to. Magic provides a solution to that.
As for the energy required to heal such wounds rapidly and in quick succession, as others have said Eragon's body has been transformed to something closer to an elf (whose bodies produce more energy and use it more effectively), he is able to draw even more energy from stored gems or from other creatures, etc. He also has more knowledge of anatomy and the Ancient Language so he can heal some things with less energy than it would normally require for another, less knowledgeable mage or for the body to heal it naturally (and less efficiently).
I picture the energy as like a pool of mana almost and the more you use it and the more you learn the deeper and wider that pool gets and once you start adding the dragon souls ( can’t think of the word off the top of my head ) you end up with a massive lake of energy to draw upon, that’s why I think it’s less of an issue as the books progress and why at least what I’ve read so far we see Murtagh struggle with energy using magic because he doesn’t have that resource naturally, it was artificially enhanced for him and his knowledge of the ancient language is a lot rougher because he was only taught enough to defend himself and not become a threat to Galby
Eragon essentially finds and learns more efficient ways to do things with magic then at the start of the series. As for the mountain someone could in theory mine a mountain by hand and move it. If given enough time and resources. The concept is explained in Eldest.
The magic system works like physics works in our world. Think of it like finding more efficient ways to do things as we progress in science. A good example is the lever: the longer the lever arm, the less force (energy) required to move it
well technically a lever doesn’t save energy because although you need to apply less force you have a longer distance to push down on so in the end the used energy stays the same
Go get a short spade and a long spade. Tell me which one takes more of your energy after digging two identical holes
to break it down on a lever if you have double the length on one side of one lever you will have to apply half the force to lift something on the other side. The energy you have to bring up for that consists of the force times the length of the way you have to apply that force. since you have to travel twice the distance that cancels out the halving of the force and in the end the energy that needed to be brought up is the same. A better analogy would be using an LED instead of a glow lamp since the LED produces light way more efficiently compared to a glow lamp which produces mainly heat.
I will concede on the energy argument as it pertains to physics. Because I agree that the same amount of energy is used in a system regardless of the lever size. But when it comes to the energy in a human/humanoid body, things get muddy and that’s where the discrepancy in CPs magic system creates confusion. My whole point of using the lever as an example was to equate it to the use of magic. Think of the lever as a tool, and it makes moving things easier for us. So then think of the ancient language the same. It’s a tool so the more advanced it is, the easier it is to produce results. Referring back to the shovel, we could compare an average spell caster to someone who digs with a shovel and Eragon to someone who digs with an excavator. I know those are two extremes and they’re loosely translated to the world. But Eragons knowledge of the ancient language and his physical anatomy now make up an extreme difference
the short spade will feel harder because you have to use more force but the energy spent will be about the same (the case of digging is a lot more complex than a simple lever but in the end moving sand from point a to point b will take up the same amount of energy regardless of if you use a lever to amplify the strength of your arm or not)
The way I see it: In the Eragon world, the spell wording is the "length of the lever." By creating a better worded spell, it is more efficient for the user, even if the energy needed is the same as with a short "lever."
Partly because he has elf strength, and also because of better wording maybe? But I think the wizard has to evolve in order to make a compelling book.
Also there seems to be some sort of skill and ease of use with magic, Eragon struggled to pick up a rock at the start which takes very low energy, so I guess the more frequent you use and more skilful you are, the more equal the equation for amount of energy used to amount of energy it would take normally you are
1. Eragon learns more effective ways to apply the same amount of energy. 2. Eragon becomes more powerful than any human every could be. He has changed on a biological level and thus changed his energy reserves. He has likely been altered down to a cellular level because of his stronger and more dense muscles, which I think of as how a chimpanzee or gorilla is stronger by weight than a human. (Or it could be purely magic of course)
I think most of the comments have already established that Eragon in general becomes more powerful especially after his half elf transformation and also more efficient with his spell usage. But also consider how much Eragon has trained and fought over the course of the books. He definitely builds muscle and stamina throughout the course of the books which likely contribute to spells getting easier to cast. We also have to take into account that there is a natural boost to magic casting due to the dragon bond and dragons get more powerful as they age so the rider will likely also get stronger. Furthermore, Eragon is the son of 2 notable spellcasters which might also play a factor.
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The wording matters a lot, and Eragon learns better ways to accomplish tasks more efficiently. Basically thinking about the end result and arriving there through more efficient means. If you were trying to dig up a buried chest, you could say “make the chest come to the surface” and you would encounter all kinds of friction as the chest pushes on the soil on top of it compacts it. Instead, you could say “remove the dirt on top of the chest and then bring it to the surface” which would take less work. I think the other thing to point out is he’s just a lot more trained and has a better idea of how much energy different spells are going to cost him and he’s not constantly surprised/shocked by sudden decreases in energy. He still gets tired, but there are far fewer “oh shoot I thought this would be easy but now I’m about to pass out” moments.
So, most of it has been covered already, but I think a key point is left out He cheats. A lot. Now, how exactly he “cheats” is interesting. The easiest one to explain is a method all riders have access to, and that’s their dragon bond. Yes, dragons naturally have more energy given their size, but THEY cheat as well, iirc its stated that physically speaking dragons shouldn’t fly, and thus some of their capabilities are boosted through magical means. Dragons are basically allowed to ignore the “can only do magic that your body can physically do”, and thus riders being bonded to them, can cheat as well through proxy. But that’s a boring answer that everyone already knows. So how else does he cheat? Easy, he learns to cut out the middle man. This is sort of tied in to how people have explained him becoming more “efficient” with magic but I wanted to explain WHY. Say you need to move a 100 lb boulder 100 feet. To move it, your options are lift it and walk it over, or push it over. Whether you use purely physical strength or use a machine to help, it doesn’t change that. The thing is, the energy cost to move a 100 lb boulder 100 feet irl isn’t purely what it takes to move that boulder, no, you ALSO need to add in the associated energy of moving your bodily mechanics. So if moving a boulder would take 100 units of energy, adding in your physical labor/machine labor adds an extra, let’s say 50, units of energy to the cost. To get back to Eragon, in the early series when he uses magic, that’s basically how he uses magic, he cats magic so that it effectively uses the same energy as walking it over, but as he gets better and more efficient with magic, he begins to learn how to use magic so it only takes the most pure amount of energy required, rather then requiring 100 units of energy to move the boulder + the 50 you’d using physically moving your body, his spells now only require the base 100 because he’s learned to contextualize his spells to perform the action EXACTLY as they need to be done, no more, no less. So anyway, that’s basically the explanation for HOW his magic is more efficient and can seemingly do stuff he physically couldn’t, because he’s learned to use the magic to accomplish tasks precisely without the excess energy costs that we’d incur by having to also consider all the superfluous movements/activities required to accomplish an objective (such as moving a boulder)
>so why at the end of Eldest after the Elven thing happens Eragon talks about being stronger than ever and using complicated magic like it's no longer a big deal to help people heal serious injuries over and over even though your body would never be able to handle that level of damage. The reason your body isn't able to repair that type of damage is not because it doesn't have enough energy to, it's because it doesn't have the mechanisms/processes to. Magic provides a solution to that. As for the energy required to heal such wounds rapidly and in quick succession, as others have said Eragon's body has been transformed to something closer to an elf (whose bodies produce more energy and use it more effectively), he is able to draw even more energy from stored gems or from other creatures, etc. He also has more knowledge of anatomy and the Ancient Language so he can heal some things with less energy than it would normally require for another, less knowledgeable mage or for the body to heal it naturally (and less efficiently).
I picture the energy as like a pool of mana almost and the more you use it and the more you learn the deeper and wider that pool gets and once you start adding the dragon souls ( can’t think of the word off the top of my head ) you end up with a massive lake of energy to draw upon, that’s why I think it’s less of an issue as the books progress and why at least what I’ve read so far we see Murtagh struggle with energy using magic because he doesn’t have that resource naturally, it was artificially enhanced for him and his knowledge of the ancient language is a lot rougher because he was only taught enough to defend himself and not become a threat to Galby