Xvim is also capable of non-structured mental defense, which in his case is just an unstructured replacement of mind shield spell with all its other drawbacks (non-adaptive, and only allowing to detect failure of the defense but not weak attacks). It's stronger, lets the user notice weak attacks, and repairable, although it's still vulnerable to dispels.
Later Zorian learned a much better psychic equivalent of the spell from Mind Like Fire, which she called a "mental shell" or "mind shell". However, it prevents the user from using telepathy, and "A simple dispel is enough to strip the protection".
There's the mind shield spell protecting one from mental intrusion. Zorian frequently used mind magic against his enemies, mostly to make them kill each other. Tinami was also seen using pain spells on monsters during the invasion of Cyoria in one restart. Kyron also used some "nasty pain spells" as part of the training. Zorian nevertheless approached him again in the following restarts. Zorian agreed, and Kyron cast the "Nightmare Vision" spell on him. Kyron claimed "It was quite effective at making students innately resistant to common mind-affecting spells like sleep, paralyze, and dominate" and "I promise I'll go easy on you". Īfter Zorian was briefly attacked by aranea with sleep magic, he approached Kyron for help with "countering mind magic" and Kyron offered him "resistance training" (using mind magic spells on the trainee so that he can learn to resist them reflexively). You had to decide what you wanted to look for, and if you were asking the wrong question, your answer would be worthless or misleading". "Memory reading, more than any other branch of mind magic, deeply resembled divination in the way it functioned. Zorian eventually, after ruining some cultists' minds with his attempts, learned to perform memory reading (also referred to as deep memory scan it's possible that "deep memory scan" is the aranean term, as it's used only three times in the text, once by an aranea and twice by Zorian ). There's a spell to do so (used, for example, by Tinami Aope when she practices it on Zorian), but Zorian does it with unstructured magic. One of the most used types of mind magic in the story is mind reading. It takes a great deal of time and you basically have to knock the victim unconscious or they will be fully aware of what you're trying to do to them and fight it with everything they got – physically and mentally". Regarding the limitations of mind magic, both the classical spellcasting type and the telepathic abilities of magical creatures known to use them, Zorian initially concluded "everyone seems to agree that even expert mind mages can't just rewrite someone's brain on a whim, or in a stealthy manner. This "unhealthy attitude" extends even to mind magic affecting self, as Zorian had to steal a "better" library pass to get the memorization spells in the academy. Instead, Zorian's telepathic abilities let his simulacrums vent their anger at him by telepathically sharing their thoughts and experiences with him, first conventionally (needing physical proximity) and later through their shared soul and still later even becoming one mind with them temporarily. Another example of that is given by Alanic warning Zorian about danger of his simulacrums rebelling against him, especially due to Zorian's (and thus his simulacrums') mastery of mind magic. When Zorian tried to find out what a psychic is, he discovered that "finding information about mind magic from his fellow mages was like pulling teeth, since the mage guild took a very dim view on mind magic of any sort, no matter how benign". The Cyorian aranea matriarch claimed that humans have "unhealthy attitude towards mind magic", presumably meaning that humans consider all mind magic hostile.
Thus, mind magic specialists are very rare. However, except for the spells that target the minds of animals, mind magic is heavily restricted and has a very poor reputation among mages and civilians alike. Mind magic is not terribly difficult to cast and, like divinations, it puts far greater emphasis on shaping skills than mana reserves. Mental illusions, compulsions, memory alteration, mental communication, emotion spells, mental enhancements and various other mind-affecting spells fall under this discipline. Focuses around manipulating people’s thoughts, emotions, memories, senses and perceptions.