Kaden looked at the booklet. While there were words, usually villagers such as Kaden basically couldn’t read. Due to this the guidance was in form of pictures and did not require reading. It didn’t take Kaden too long to figure out the idea.
It depicted how to move and gather more mana. This was the first part. Second part was to move it inside your body and make it yours by infusing it into your body and improve it. Then it would eventually gather to a place chosen by the user.
After a bit of trying he managed to consciously find and move the small amount of mana he had. In fact it was actually rather familiar feeling. People did absorb and use mana passively. It would slowly absorb into body on its own and enhance whatever it came into contact with.
Without using any mana systems, humans would generally absorb some mana over their life time. They would never reach the first stage of Channel Opening, where one has gathered enough mana and then be able open a stable channel from inside their body to outside. Direct link from body to outside and vice versa, would allow much greater amounts of mana to be used and far greater control of it.
Until one reached Channel Opening, mana was generally used internally. Perhaps with some training, you could light a candle, but that was the extent of it and not worth the effort. Once in Channel Opening, mana would finally reach and be usable outside. As such, for example, a warrior could add a layer sharp mana on their weapons or create similar layer on themselves to protect against attacks.
There were also dangers involved with mana. It was all chaotic and mixed up in its natural form. It needed to be purified and ordered before it became good to use. For this, humans relied on the gods. Praying to a god, would slightly bring more of their influence to surrounding area. For example smith like Aden prayed to Fualu, the god of fire. Repeated prayers over long period of time, would bring in good quality mana related to fire making use and control of fire easier.
This itself was not enough for practitioner of magic to create usable mana. The mana systems were in fact prayers to gods together with mana absorption and manipulation methods. Gathering mana through gods influence would purify it and make it usable.
Technically you could ignore the prayer and use chaotic mana, but it was inefficient and mana would become hard to use and difficult to control. This would lead to fatal consequences such as exploding. Even, if you did manage to avoid all that, your progress would become harder and harder until it grinds to halt due the chaotic mixture. Hence, humans relied to their gods as medium.
Other creatures, such as beasts, had their own ways. Beasts for example did not rely on mana systems like humans. They would consume things with mana directly. For example kill other beasts or humans and then consume whatever mana they had gathered.
Beasts also had strong enough bodies to deal with chaotic mana and could directly absorb quite a bit of it since it was eventually compressed into a beast core. Mana had been condensed so far that it crystallizes! Anything higher than common beast would have one or more core inside them. This was their mana storage and were extremely valuable to collect. Within a core different types of mana were in ordered structure avoiding the problems humans would face.
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A core would release powerful mana in brutal manner for beast to use. Human mana use was like controlling streams of water to create desired effect with precision. A beast would be more like huge waves of water spreading everywhere. Any human attempting such method would have their body tear itself into shreds. Beast bodies were far tougher.
As far as other creatures go, its impossible to list out all their ways of gathering and using mana.
Most of this was of very little concern to Kaden. He had just been blessed and tested by the priest that day. His talent meant he was better at sensing and controlling mana than usual. In fact, such people absorbed mana passively a bit quicker. By the age of thirteen years, Kaden had passively gathered enough mana to almost be able to create first layer of mana inside his body.
Kaden was very happy about this, but it wasn’t by itself anything big. The first few layers were relatively easy to complete.
Mana could be stored in several ways, but usually people put it all in one place. Since mana didn’t really interfere with body, people could choose any location. Most would have it somewhere in their chest or lower abdomen while some would put it in their head or perhaps even in their heart.
As far as the layers go, each stage had ten layers. People who wanted to reach Channel Opening had to create the mana storage first. Then keep gathering mana and strengthen the storage by adding layers to it. Eventually you could no longer increase the size in such simple way, but needed to create the channel to have access to the free mana outside and expand your storage further.
Kaden tried the mana system. After a few attempts he managed to complete the first cycle. He felt something and decided to check out the second thing in the booklet. The self inspection skill. It too was basic of the basic. There existed many different inspection skills, not just for self. External inspection, item inspection and so on.
Using such basic skill was about as easy as cycling the mana system. Kaden could suddenly ‘see’ himself entirely. As, if he was able to see himself from outside perspective. This basic inspection skill he had lacked any further details, but he did see what he was supposed to see with it. There was something that resembled kind of like fog inside him.
The fog was actually the tiny amount of mana Kaden had absorbed just moments earlier. If Kaden had used some of his mana before, the mana system would allow him to regain his mana quicker. To actually increase his power permanently, he would need far more effort. Indeed, the small cloud of fog that had been pulled inside his body was slowly being absorbed into a slightly brigher and denser spot in Kaden’s chest. Moments after the fog was gone and the larger cloud of it didn’t really seem visibly any bigger.
There was much work to be done. Even without his father telling him, he knew it was important to train. Kaden set himself a long term goal. He decided that he would at least reach Channel Opening stage. Even, if he wasn’t a warrior, he would still be elite of the village!
It took Kaden a week to reach first layer. It would not be that quick in the future. First layer meant that the mana he had collected now went inside something that looked like a bubble in Kaden’s opinion. Before the mana fog had simply floated about freely, but now it gathered in denser form in one place.
Now that Kaden had his first layer, he felt stronger and it was not just a feeling. He was stronger! Everything felt a bit easier. From using hammer to thinking. He also felt he learned things quicker. Mana was truly miraculous.
With his newfound strength, Kaden was feeling very confident. He wanted to test his strength somehow and even to show off a bit.
He thought for a moment and decided he would go out of the village in the forest a bit. Kaden did know basics of hunting even, if he wasn’t very good at it. Yet, now that he had his first layer, perhaps things were different! Besides, no stronger beasts had been seen recently so there shouldn’t be anything he wouldn’t be able to kill or at least run away from.
Thats right. It sounded like a perfect idea! What could go wrong!?