When Xiao opened his eyes, he saw a pitch-black sky with countless shining stars and a full moon above him. The refreshing breezes from earlier now felt like a cold wind, blowing through Xiao, which made him crossed his arm together and rubbed it to warm himself up.
"Oh, you are awake."
Immediately after hearing Lars's voice, Xiao became fully awake as he jumped out from the floor and tensed up, follow up with staring at Lars, who was sitting comfortably beside a bonfire.
"What did you do to me?! And where are we now?"
Xiao remembered he fell unconscious out of nowhere, he looked around his surroundings while questioning Lars. As Xiao's eyes got adjusted to the night, he found himself still at the grassland, but with some broken pillar around the area, like an abandoned ruin.
"So much energy, hehe, I see your body has started to adapt the mana in your body."
Lars chuckled on Xiao's response, while Xiao surveys the area with a worried face. At the same time, continue eyeing on Lars, worry that Lars might do something to his body.
"How....how the hell did we ended up here?"
Xiao was confused with the unfamiliar place he was currently at, while Lars just calmly sat at his spot and began to explain.
"I pulled your heavy arse to this place, we need a safe place to camp for the night, unless you want to risk travelling in the dark, with tons of monster lurking around, then go right ahead."
"I.....I see, thanks, I guess."
Xiao was taken back by Lars compose attitude. He was expecting Lars usual lunatic response.
"And you said something about mana, right? Do you mean magic? Does it have something to do with how I passed out? "
Xiao was surprised to hear the word "mana" from Lars, for mana is the term used in most fantasy fiction in Xiao's world, and it means magic.
"As I said, it was not me who made you passed out. It was the mana in the air; your body has changed the moment you entered this world. Since the air in this world is full of mana, it had flowed into your body, which is why you can felt that the air is fresher than the air in your old world. Since you were not born in this world, the sudden changes in your body must have stress out your body as your body never had mana flowing in before."
Lars calmly explained to Xiao, and his expression was unlike the disturbing grinning face that he used to display.
It was as if Lars had just changed to a different person.
"I see, still, what's up with you? Telling me the reason with such details, before that you would fool around without telling me anything worth mentioning."
Xiao waited for Lars answer for his sudden changes. Still, Lars just sat at his spot without giving any response. His eyes were staring at the bonfire.
(Silent, huh? For him to be acting normal, all the sudden is creeping me out, seriously, what's up with this guy? if he is like this every time, I wouldn't have the trouble to trust him.)
Expecting no answer from Lars, Xiao continued to ask him regarding mana, which was such a new concept to Xiao.
"So...this mana thingy, it has something to do with magic, right? If so, can I use magic too? Since you said, mana had entered my body already."
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"You can if you practice, for mana is the source of magic, and every living being in this world have mana flowing in their body."
Once Lars finished explaining, he falls into silence, leaving a confused Xiao as Xiao was expecting him to explain more.
Or offer to teach Xiao a few lessons of magic.
(Okay, guess I was expecting too much, this is getting awkward to ask him more question.)
The sudden changes in Lars's behaviour still trouble Xiao on how to approach him, and a silent moment has passed for a while.
(But I need to get as many information as I can about this world, seeing on how Lars is acting normal, I should take this chance to ask him more.)
Xiao cleared his throat before he started to ask Lars, with a calm tone.
Xiao starts his next question about magic too, as he thinks it is a must to know and learn if he were to adapt in this world.
The excitement of knowing magic exists in this world has caused Xiao to forget about his main objective, which is to learn the identity of his family's killer. For it was like a dream come true to a gamer such as Xiao.
"Judging by what you had said, I can assume that the portal you created at my world was also a magic's doing, right?"
Xiao hides his excitement behind a serious tone as he asked Lars.
"That's right, that was my unique magic, I keep the magic formula in a bottle, it will instantly deploy any incantation I planned in the magic formula whenever I pop out the bottle."
Lars took out a small bottle from his pocket while he was explaining and show it to Xiao, there was a shiny stone in the bottle.
"Okay, how about fireball and other spells? Can you do that too?"
Xiao press on with the question without realizing that he is letting his excitement shown.
"Fine, since you are too dumb enough to find it out yourself, good riddance," Lars lets out a big sigh, as he felt annoyed by Xiao constant question and clueless on magic.
"Let's start with the basic of magic, which is the element; there are four essential elements in total. Fire, Ice, Earth and Lightning, these are the common element while the rare one is Light, Darkness, Space and many more. Every living being has at least one magic element they can use, while people who are born with innate talent can wield up to two to three elements. And speaking of innate talent, the most important point of being a caster is the capacity of your mana.
"Capacity of my mana?" Xiao asked in curious as he tried to catch up with Lars explanation.
"That means how much mana can you store in your body, the more, the better, some spell can only be cast if you have enough of mana to supply, which mean people with small mana capacity will never dream of casting any grand spell," Lars finished the explanation while looking at Xiao, purposely showing that he was referring to Xiao who has poor mana capacity.
"I see, so how to do you determine which magic elements you can use? And how do I measure the capacity of my mana?"
Xiao ignores the looks given by Lars and continues to question Lars in more detail. Still, Lars ignored Xiao's question and continues what he was going to said.
"For my unique magic, you'll need to fully understand the theory behind the elements and the incantation of magic, once you can grasp how magic truly works, you can even minimize the whole magic incantation process into a magic formula, and keep it in a bottle, just like I did. It's pretty simple to do it, just those fools who kept nagging about their laughable theory about magic, they can't seem to think outside of their primitive brain, those fools, if only they listen....."
Lars begins to murmur to himself, making the explanation going nowhere.
"Well, thanks for all the explaining so far, I'm just gonna go do some nature calling business over that pillar there."
Sensing his nature calling, Xiao left the still murmuring Lars to himself and walks towards the pillar not far from where the camp is.
Xiao reached behind a pillar which has some distance to the camp spot, he unzipped his pants and began his nature calling business while admiring the starry sky.
"Never thought that I get to hear magic and mana, and I get to learn it as well. It looks like I really am in a fantasy world."
Upon finishing his business, Xiao stares at the sky for a few more moments before the cold wind blew through him and make him sneeze in reflex.
"But still, never thought it's so cold at night, let's finish my business here quickly and get back to the bonfire. Freaking cold~."
As Xiao zipped his pant and was ready to move back to the bonfire to get warm up his body, he felt something was gazing at him intensely, which gave him shivering chills of sense.
Xiao slowly traces the source of the gaze until he stopped at a shadow figure not far from his location. Since it was too dark, Xiao can't figure out what was it, except the feeling of an intense murderous intent from it.
As Xiao's eyes got adjusted to the dark, he got frightened all the sudden and back away slowly as soon as he found out the identity of the shadowy figure.
"Is that, a wolf?!"