Q:
Was the corruption of wild magic due to soul magic existing in Yggdrasil?
The game had known soul lore magic like Soul-Bought Miracle.
What are your thoughts on there being other things involving souls(xp) like soul bind, soul gems for crafting or mitigating xp cost?
The closest equivalent to soul magic in YGGDRASIL is Level and EXP draining abilities, magic or otherwise. Examples include Ainz's Undead Lieutenant, Wish Upon a Star, and Raise Dead, all magic consuming EXP. The reason is New Worlder's call Raise DEad 'consuming lifeforce' even though it's not draining HP like Negative Energy when it drains lifeforce. Regular New Worlder's are not the best authorities on this however, as Fluder a famed magic researcher still admits wild magic is beyond the understanding of those who dabble in tier magic.
So if we turn to the Dragon Lords we're left with some answers but also some mysteries. Namely, the Elder Coffin Dragon Lord did not appear to cast wild magic from his own HP bar or MP bar, while Riku Agneia(the Platinum armor) is troublesome as it's not a bona fide dragon lord but a puppet of sorts. Satoru in the sidestory never mentioned BDL using wild magic by HP either as he wasn't looking for HP drain from Cure Elim. What we can conclude is that HP drain may not necessarily be life force or souls either. There is already precedence however that what animates a body can count as HP even if it is not the same power. Namely positive and negative energy both count as HP fo rliving and undea drespectively so we can't say what Riku Agneia was draining was actually lifeforce as in positive energy or negative energy, espeicaly as Pandora's Actor's tests did not seem to drain it's HP from negative energy or heal it.
In that regard, EXP drain still seems the most likely candidate for overwriting native wild magic, but it doesn't explain how True Dragon Lords are never described getting weaker while casting in those cases. For example, why do undead Dragon Lords retain the classes but lose the ability to cast? This would suggest its got to be related to HP as in positive only. But we find a contradictiion with Tsa's puppet being powered by something other than positive energy.
Using yoru example, if we suppose SBM is running on wild magic rules, then it didnt' cost hp or MP to use as far as we understand it. Also XP doesn't seem to fit either. Because Wild Magic cost isn't reflected universally and we hav eyet to see a living dragon lord use it in the flesh, we might not be able to reach a conclusion on what soul cost should normally be right now.
Now what the corruption of wild magic really is will depend on which school of thought if we ignore Souls being some new bar or Soul Points etc, you come from as we are basically just conjecturing or using hypotheses based on limited data (still no on screen living ie normal dragon lord casting it yet).
1.) Dragon Lords Breaking the Law
2.)Mana Pollution Corruption (literal filth theory; Old Mana vs Mana)
3.) Martial Arts stole Focus from wild magic; Lifeforce used to be Focus but now must be HP
4.) Auto Translate Corrupted Wild Magic as it is cast differnetly
1.) Based on Inter Textuality (going to the sources that inspired Overlord's mechanics) some say Wild Magic's corruption is the result of them using a system that should no longer exist. Just as Brain began to die and bleed from breaking the rules of this world, dragon lords, this theory holds, now suffer HP damage for using Wild magic as they are ignoring the 8 Greed King patch, where magic should be powered by MP and tier magic classes now. The support for this is if we look at native only 'magic' such as Talents and Martial Arts, they do not draw from HP or MP at all, yet can achieve power just as well and mimic aspects of tier magic for instance. Drawing from Intertexuality, there is evidence of a series where the arts of the dragons were damned by "Gods" after a war with the dragons led by a Platinum Dragon leading to any usage of dragon abiltieis causing damage.
Not a concerete argument, but I hope you get the relative idea of "it's weird wild magic only sometimes drains HP even if it's uncommon for NW abilities". So we can explain why Cure Elim didn't seem to lose HP but Riku did as he was no longer a dragon lord and had a tier magic lcass so was allowed to 'wield magic' as he was now following the new rules.
- The Wild Magic corruption is connected to a rule change as you suggest. Basically whatever souls used to be now cannot be used so HP or something else is used instead. The idea is something like 'mana' used to be souls or life force but now it has to be tie rmagic mana. Think of it as Lifeforce or Souls are "Old Mana" and this new substance "Mana" is the actual pollution or filth of this world. Just as things naturally absorb mana now, this Mana is Pollution hypothesis claims the reason dragon lords no longe rare very active is because they are literally poisoned by the new mana of the world and thus why living dragon lords cannot use tier magic and also why Cure Eim would bother becoming undead: he can actually leave mountains or underground refuges now unlike the others. Basically mana is toxic radiation to them now. The exact reasoning is vague, as we are drawing on some circumstance evidence, but it's clear that since healing spells can harm the undead, and vice versa, it's not impossible for a substance that animates one creature to harm another even if its not damaging to other races.
Some supporting ideas for this is how Arcane casters are actually spewing out auras of mana somehow as seen by Arche and Fluder's talent. Also, undead casters form from the bodies of regular casters, supposedly.
3.) Another school of thought is Wild Magic used to draw on what Martial Arts draw on - Focus. But for whatever reason, Warriors now learn and use it. Effectively, this school assumes the Greed Kings actually made a request of some sort to spread YGGDRASIL abilities in general and not just tier magic. As people of this world don't learn active skills like YGGDRASIL warriors, this school claims that Wild Magic was retroactively stolen by the Warrior job classes. Evidence includes how many 'low level' martial arts resemble low level wild magic in scope and power, like physical augmentation, or very broad coatings on weapons or the body.
Ultimately this theory becomes 1 but it justifies the rule violation as a mechanics switch, and thus Dragon lords are only able to use wild magic now using wild magic classes by rule breaking like Brain did.
4.) A less common theory is because Cure Elim's dragon lord title was bugging out, and Tsa for some reason couldn't use his own title as Riku Agneia (why is up for debate), a few people believe that auto translate or something else fucked up wild magic accidentally. That is, wild magic was not damaged by a rules change to the mechanics but actually whatever caused auto translate. Evidence includes the fact wild magic actually does not [Cast] or <Cast> but it's invoked just by normal speech (wild magic spells don't use grammar marks at all to be cast unlike martial arts or tier magic or skills).
It sounds like bullshit I know, but because Wild Magic is purposely denoted different from all other abilities, it's not implausible auto translate would affect it if was not operating on the rules of YGGDRASIl abilities. Detractors say Wild Magic is denoted differently because it is proof it is no longer magic or operating as it used too. As you can tell, there are many counter arguments to this as there are many explanations for auto translate, some citing it was always normal in this world base don XXXXXXX etc. There is more to this theory but it's the least popular one so I'll leave it at that.
Those are some of the ideas that get thrown around from the various places I frequent.
