In a forest near to the village of Mousa on the outskirts of the royal capital, a small, thin, malnourished-looking girl was hiding on a tree. With her blazing red eyes matching her shoulder-length hair, she stared down at the boar on the ground, that had chased her just moments ago. She took out a small knife that she had stol... *cough* borrowed from a tool merchant in her home village, jumped down from her tree onto the boar, and stabbed it in the neck, killing it instantly. Opening her palm she gathered a small amount of Mana which formed into a small black-coloured seal and slapped it on the boar. She then lifted the animal, which by the way looked like it would weigh about 100 kilograms, with both slender arms and headed for her home.
Usually her actions were an impossible feat for a seven-year-old child like her. It was only possible because she possessed the memories of her past life in which she, funnily enough, was also called Rina. But it was not that she was particularly knowledgeable, skilled, strong, or overpowered in any other way in her previous life. Quite the opposite. She was a fat-ass shut-in who knew nothing about the world. It was her mature mind that allowed her to perceive the world around her much earlier than normal children, giving her a head start in practically everything.
For example, from the sisters in the orphanage talking, she learned that magic existed! So from very early on she regularly sneaked into the local temple's library to learn as much as she could about this world called 'Yggildos', such as the language, the history, and most importantly, the magic system.
While she mastered the language very quickly - there was only one language in Yggildos - it was the latter two that intrigued her more.
Beginning with the magic system, it was divided into six different main elements: Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, Light, and Dark. Each of these could be further broken down into sub-elements such as Thunder in Wind or Ice in Water. Generally speaking, specialised magic was harder to cast than its basic counterpart, so ice-based spells were harder to use than water-based spells
Activating a spell usually involved three steps:
In Yggildos, every living being has a certain amount of Mana, which always restores itself after usage over time. The first step, also called Loading Phase, was to gather the Mana inside the body and pour it out through a body part. While most could only use their hands, there were some special cases where they could use other parts of their body for that, such as their mouths. There was a famous noble family of knights, all of whom could breathe fire with their mouths instead of shooting fireballs with their hands in the Valkyria Kingdom.
The second step was to imagine the spell and form its magic circle with the Mana. Usually one would have to chant the spell because it helped tremendously in creating the seal, but thanks to the memories of her past life, Rina could easily skip this part. In fights, it would prove beneficial for her, because chanting the spell would give the opponent information about the next attack. The fact that the scholars called this the Chanting Phase indicated that it was not yet known that the chanting itself was not essential at all.
The third and last step was the Activation Phase. As the name suggests, this is where the magic is activated, and was generally considered the easiest of the three, as it required no further 'work' from the user. However, while most spells don't require any Mana input at this stage, some continuous spells do in order to remain active.
As stated earlier, every creature had a Mana source inside them. However, this did not automatically mean that everybody could cast all spells. The ability to activate a specific spell was tied to two conditions.
Firstly, you had to have the right affinity to cast a particular spell. For example, a knight who only possessed the Wind element would never be able to use Fireball. Secondly, you had to be able to successfully process all three phases of the spell. If you did not possess the required amount of Mana or did not know the exact formula of its magic circle, the cast would ultimately fail.
So in the end, it all depended on whether one was born with the innate abilities needed and was willing enough to learn the magic formulas or not.
What Rina also managed to learn during her early childhood, was that the element of a spell and the colour of its magic seal seemed to correspond to each other. From what she had seen, she concluded that red circles belonged to Fire, blue to Water, green to Wind, brown to earth, yellow to Light, and black to Dark.
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As for their use, while the first four elements were obvious to her, and while she suspected that Light probably had something to do with healing, she could not completely grasp the Dark element, even though she was able to use it herself. The only thing she knew, for now, was that her magic had probably something to do with gravity manipulation since she had used it to reduce the boar's weight. After all, none of the records she had read, had mentioned anything about Dark magic, except that it was an element exclusive to demon races and Light element only to human races.
But that did not mean that she was a demon. Immediately after learning about that, she had looked up her family tree in her parents' house and confirmed that she was, biologically speaking, a pure-blooded human. And from what she had read in her mother's diary, it seemed unlikely that her mother had cheated on her father, as they were both deeply in love with each other.
What it did mean, however, was that she had to refrain from using her Dark magic in public at all costs. Only witch-hunts and death would await her if anyone found out her affinity, as they would undoubtedly accuse her of being a demon in disguise.
For now, she concluded, she needed other ways to defend herself in public. At first, she thought that magic might still be possible if she had an affinity for a second element, but later she learned that this was impossible because every living being can only use one element which was determined from birth. So at that time, she had left the decision-making of how to defend herself in the presence of others to her future self.
Apart from her self-taught magic lessons, she had also looked up the history of Yggildos, or rather of the country she was currently in, the Valkyria Kingdom... and could only groan at it.
Seven years ago, around the same time of her birth, the policies of the Valkyria Kingdom suddenly changed in every conceivable way, when King Loki Miriculan XXXVIII ascended the throne. He reversed every law that his father, King Thor, the Wiseman, had created to strengthen the commoners, and made the country once again centred on the nobility. Since then, the situation of the commoners gradually grew worse. Now it had reached the stage where young girls and women had to sell themselves for food, while boys and men had to work themselves to the bone for nothing worthwhile. Not to mention the newborns and orphans who were killed as soon as food became scarce. Rina only survived because she was born a few years earlier and because she escaped from the orphanage some time ago when she saw her fellow orphans being murdered one by one.
On the other hand most, of the aristocrats, about 90% of them, had grown tremendously widthwise, especially the men. Rina had seen one once when he had visited the village of Mousa to collect taxes. It somehow reminded her of her old self, when she was still on Earth... it was a horrible sight. While there might still be some decent nobles, it was apparent to her that most of them were corrupt and only thought of their own gain. She could only shake her head inwardly when she thought of the downfall of some of the western countries on Earth during the Middle Ages.
Back to the main topic.
The root cause of King Loki's law reversal was probably the failed hero summoning ritual seven years ago. He and the nobles used the fact, that the two main responsible for the failure, Milia and Fran, were commoners to propagate against the former king's laws.
In the end, he succeeded. Even the common folk turned away from Thor at that time. It only showed how much the success of the ritual weighed on their mind and how much hope that potential solution gave them. Despair always comes after expectations.
“Well, it was not like this was a surefire way to avert the incoming doom.” Rina could only roll her eyes at that development when she had read about it in the past.
Continuing with the impending crisis.
Ancient records that she had looked through, mentioned a Demon Lord, who would appear a thousand years after his death and gather all demon races and monsters under his banner to terrorise the human races like the High Elves, Dark Elves, and Humans once again.
The last time such a being emerged was nearly a millennium ago. At that time a man named Gaius Miriculan killed the Demon Lord and founded the Valkyria Kingdom next to the Demon Lord's domain as the first line of defence for the future. Thanks to this, he is now known as Hero King Gaius Miriculan I.
As the threat approaches once again, King Thor developed several countermeasures to prepare for the incoming invasion.
The most prominent and controversial of these was without any doubt the opening up of education and military training, which had previously been exclusive for the nobility, to all. Former King Thor's aim was to have as many competent people as possible available to stand against the demonic forces. And indeed it worked.
Countless capable people among the commoners graduated from the academies, among them, a High Elf named Fran. With her extensive knowledge of magic and her enormous capabilities for it, she rose to the top of the temple in record time and devised a solution to the impending crisis, by bringing in a potential hero with the skills to kill the demon lord from another world. As already mentioned, unfortunately, that plan had failed miserably.
Now under the new leadership, all nobles in the country were looking for those with magic affinities to take, or rather force, them under their tutelage as their own private force. The stronger they were, the greater the chances of their aristocratic family surviving after all. So over the last few years, nobles have raided orphanages to look for talented children. This left orphans with only two fates: to be used as sacrificial pawns for their noble caretaker or to starve on the streets.
Luckily, Rina had been quick enough to learn about the circumstances of this country and had avoided the aristocrats before they discovered her and her abilities. Well, with her affinity for the Dark element, they would kill her on the spot as soon as they found out about it, but still, she was happy that she had researched about the Valkyria Kingdom and Yggildos as soon as she could.
'After all, knowledge of the world is essential for survival.'