Chapter 57

Maston Academy

The Town of Maston in the Candis East District

Having been released from Primrose’s class earlier than expected, Myles was able to buy himself a full hour of free time with a quick lunch. Of course, even with being given free time, Myles had no interest in taking it. There was too much to look into. Myles quickly made his way to the library, finding a book on mana types.

Primrose had told them that they would each be able to make their own choice of mana for one of their new aether wells. Myles had every intention to make the most of it. Not only would access to a new type of mana give Myles more combat choices, but it would also give him more options for aether engineering. In fact, the group of six had already committed to each choosing a different type of mana for this very reason.

With Myles and Jane leading by creating designs, and the whole group ready to use their own mana to infuse constructs, the group had the ability to bolster their abilities by a significant margin. The biggest question that remained was what mana types everyone would choose.

Myles opened up his book. It was a basic encyclopedia of mana types with an in-depth guide to common techniques and such. Myles had felt that it would be a good place to start.

“Hey there.”

Myles looked up, surprised to hear someone speaking in the library. The librarian was known to be ill-tempered and watchful. Most of the students who had been bold enough to speak up around her had been quickly remedied of that fault.

Dresden was no student though. The librarian flew out of her seat fast enough to send her chair slamming into the ground, but Dresden just gave her a charming smile that seemed to deflate her anger. The librarian gave a little grumble, bent down to throw her chair back into place, and sat down with a huff.

Dresden pulled up a chair beside Myles, giving him a friendly pat on the back. “Lee Muneric’s Encyclopedia?”

Myles nodded, briefly glancing down at his book to confirm the author’s name. He hadn’t even considered who had written the book. After all, he wasn’t exactly likely to know who any of the writers were.

“Muneric’s one of the capital’s noble families.” Dresden explained. “You won’t have much luck looking through there. Most of what you’ll find is what’s supplied to your average soldier. None of the information is wrong per se, but there are certainly some things left out.”

Myles found himself listening intently. Dresden had a particular charisma about him that made him easy to listen to, easy to trust.

“Personally, I’d suggest looking into a book titled ‘The Alrence Society Research Collection’ its old and somewhat dense, being made up of mostly unedited research notes, but its much more expansive. You’ll find more than just everyday knowledge there.”

Myles nodded slowly. “I appreciate the suggestion, but who exactly were the Alrence Society?”

Dresden winced slightly. “To tell you the truth, it was actually a group of rogue arcaner’s who hid themselves away, most of them were pretty bad people. They spent half a century running tests, trying to find out every secret they could. Eventually, the Church of Deprios caught up with them, used their paladins to wipe the society off the map. You won’t find much left of them, but the church saved their notes at least, compiling their knowledge.”

Myles couldn’t help but feel nervous about that. The church had wiped this group off the map. That had to mean they had done something truly deplorable. The church almost always avoided conflict. Myles had only heard of a handful of instances where paladins had actually been involved in combat. It was the army that took care of bandits and the like. “Is it safe to rely on that stuff?”

Dresden laughed. “I should think so. I started off by looking at those notes. It helped push me further than any of my peers. Of course, most of them didn’t have access to materials like that, but that’s just how the world works.”

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Myles nodded uncertainly. “Ok. I guess I’ll give it a look.”

Dresden smiled. “Keep up the good work, kid. You’ll go far if you keep going at your current pace. If you ever need anything, I’ve got your back.”

It was odd. Myles had only met the man a few hours ago, but his couldn’t shake the feeling he had heard his voice somewhere before.”

Myles eventually set his encyclopedia aside and searched the shelf for what Dresden had recommended. It was quite the search. The academy had several copies of most of the encyclopedias on mana types and techniques. Myles only found one copy of the research note collection he was looking for though. It was an old book, spined with aged leather. The pages inside felt frail to the touch, but the ink was still clear enough to read.

Myles brought it to his table, slowly opening it up. He found the title to be more accurate than he had anticipated. There was no introduction or even an index to help him find things. The entire book was just a collection of research notes.

A general compilation of common findings among the energy mana class

The energy mana class, classified herein as being subtypes of the basic energy mana type or subtypes at least stemming from the energy mana type, have proven to have some common qualities or characteristics. The below is a short summary on some of the more compelling of the aforementioned.

It has long been postulated that the evocation of mana types in the energy class have a defining characteristic of initial velocity. While tests with some mana types such as fire mana and light mana have supported the theory that evoked mana from the energy class will naturally move in a fixed direction, other mana types within the energy class do not share this property. There has been some success in further dividing mana types of the energy class into categories of velocious and avelocious, terms that have seen greater use in the years leading up to this compilation.

Myles stopped reading to palm his temple. On a first read, he had been able to pick out very little of what was being discussed. Myles remembered that Dresden had warned him it was dense. It seemed he hadn’t been joking.

Myles finished reading the passage, rereading carefully until he was certain that he understood what he had read.

He could easily tell that the passage related to general characteristics of energy mana and its subtypes. That was why he had chosen to start here in the first place. He was most interested in the energy mana type. Fire mana in particular was a strong option. It had proven effective in combat, and Myles would also be able to use it for forging aether constructs without the use of an aether forge. It would be an invaluable resource for building new constructs while away from the academy.

There were a few things from the passage that stood out to Myles. The first of these points was that several subtypes of energy mana behaved in a wildly different fashion from how he was used to his pure mana behaving. Frustratingly, he learned that fire mana would naturally move in a straight line away from the person who had evoked it. That destroyed his idea of using it as a mobile aether forge. It was mentioned that alteration, seemingly one of the other lower connections, could be used to keep the mana in place. That sounded like it would take up quite a bit of Myles’ focus to do, and he hadn’t even delved deep enough to allow for alteration of pure mana. It would take quite some time before he was able to use alteration with fire mana, leading him to scrap his plans of choosing that type.

Myles learned a handful of other interesting tidbits too. Energy mana and its subtypes had a tendency to be very mana dense, meaning that they were sort of the opposite of wind mana which took very little mana to evoke over a large area. The upside of that was that most energy subtypes were very destructive. Fire was the example that had been given there. Apparently, it was one of the most efficient mana types for destroying pure mana.

Myles found that he was learning quite a lot despite how obtuse the notes felt. Myles wasn’t left with much time after reading the overview of energy mana. He had read through the entire thing despite not understanding all of it.

The information they had given on commutation of energy mana was especially confusing to Myles. He simply had a hard time understanding what practical use it would have. Myles wasn’t especially keen on commuting fire mana through his body for example. That sounded like a fairly terrible, likely painful idea. There was some discussion of layering pure and energy mana through commutation, but it just sounded like nonsense to Myles.

Myles found himself alternating between the encyclopedia he had initially grabbed and the collection of notes. This allowed him to quickly skim through and understand some of the basics for quite a few subtypes of energy mana. The notes took longer to get through, but there were some important details in them that the encyclopedia left out. There was also some information in the notes on mana types the encyclopedia completely lacked.

In the time he had, Myles made note of a handful of mana types that he found especially interesting for further consideration. Light mana topped the list. Dresden’s performance from that morning was still seared into Myles’ mind. Apparently, invisibility was a more advanced technique, so, Myles wouldn’t be able to use it right away, but it seemed to be very useful when paired with wind mana which he would be learning anyway.

Some of the other types he took an interest in were sound mana and lightning mana. Sound mana sounded pretty terrifying in a way. Since most people didn’t cover their ears with their commuted armor so they didn’t lose their sense of hearing, sound mana was often unguarded against. An arcaner who made use of it could potentially send a whole group of enemy arcaner’s to the ground, eardrums bleeding.

Lightning mana was one of the types that wasn’t mentioned in the encyclopedia at all. Myles had been hopeful that the omission had been intentional, a case of nobles trying to keep one of the better mana types for themselves. He had been disappointed to realize that they probably hadn’t included it because it was mostly just an inferior version of fire mana. Lightning mana was much more mana dense than fire mana, but its destructive ability wasn’t correspondingly higher. Still, Myles found himself attached to the idea of throwing around lightning bolts. He hadn’t made it through all the notes on that type yet either.

Myles had become so engrossed in the search for the perfect mana type that he probably would have missed his aether engineering class if Jane hadn’t also come to the library. As it was, Myles found himself yanked away from his table.

Myles put both of his books back onto the shelves. The books were far too valuable for the academy to let students take them out.

As they made their way to aether engineering, Myles found himself using Jane as a sounding board, theorizing how they could use different mana types in different constructs. Jane threw in at least as many good ideas as he did. The process got them more and more excited. By the time they reached their aether forge, they were discussing what different composite mana types would do and ways they could force them to combine within a construct.

Their ambitious conversation turned out to be a terrible mistake though. As it turned out, Professor Hazel was always keeping an ear out for ambition.