It was a new day with the sun joyously peaking above the horizon, and Alice was excited. It had only been a few days but she had already gotten used to the new routine as if it had been her whole life. She would wake up, clean her room, go down for breakfast then either practice magic with her mom or train her hunting with her dad. She went down to the small clearing they used as a training spot, looking forward to the prospect of success after multiple days of failure. Her mom was already standing ahead of her with a warm smile on her face and her glasses already hooked behind her ears.

“Today we’ll be going over some more basics. Hopefully you’re successful today so that we can progress further.”

“So to begin with there are two main ways to cast magic: conjuring, giving shape and form to mana. This results in purely magical spells that scale proportionally to the amount of mana used, while the other is to simply manipulate the physical world around you to fuel your spells, this is normally less mana intensive, but unskilled mages normally have to use more mana to compensate for the more delicate control needed to achieve it.

”Of course knowing the fundamentals of how reality works is a necessity when doing this, and because of the nature of these spells, their strength is mainly physical and depends on a variety of factors such as application and situation. A good way to picture it is to imagine a fire, by manipulating the things around you, you can change the temperature, color, size, shape and many other physical properties of the fire, but it will always be a fire. Now if you made that same fire out of mana, it is no longer a simple flame, but the very concept of fire imposed onto the mana. It is also important to remember that mana isn’t one individual thing, but is instead the foundation upon which everything is built. Mana is the rigid rules of physics, the infinite possibilities of the world around us, and the improbable impossibilities of life all at once.”

Alice recorded the lesson in her head briefly before immediately attempting to grasp her magic. She was filled with drive and determination as she played an odd game of tag with her soul. Like before, it always seemed to slip out of her grasp at the last moment, like an itch she could never quite scratch. This continued for an unknown amount of time when a question stopped Alice in her tracks.

What am I trying to grasp it with in the first place?

Alice also wondered how she was even controlling these illusory ‘arms’? They seemed to just appear around her soul wherever she wanted them. Was she her soul? If she remembered correctly, everyone was made of a body, mind and soul. It seemed obvious enough that her body couldn’t interact with her soul, but just to be sure she checked anyway, and if her soul was the her very essence, then the arms were probably part of the soul. Alice felt like slapping herself for such an idiotic oversight! It was glaringly obvious in hindsight why she couldn’t catch her soul. It was like trying to fly by lifting yourself. Instead of catching her soul, Alice figured she should instead be catching her mind. But now she was back at square one: where was her mind?

After thinking long enough to cook her brains out, Alice figured that if her soul was always at the edge of her awareness, her mind was probably the source of her awareness. To test this she sent over a dozen phantasmal grabbers ‘closer’ to herself. It was a strange sensation, approaching yourself, but in the end, her mind and soul became one.

"Congratulations Alice! You’ve taken your first step to becoming a mage." Alice wore a radiant smile as her mom congratulated her on her achievement, "There'll be something new if you check your status."

Excited to see this surprise, I did as she asked.

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Name: Alice

Level: 1

Race: Human(Age:10)

Titles:

Mana:100%

Vitality: 2

Endurance: 1

Speed: 3

Strength: 2

Wisdom: 7

Passive skills: [Navigation: Lv2], [Survival skills(Forest): Lvl 1], [Bow proficiency: lvl 1]

Active Skills:[Basic Identification: Lvl 2]

Divine skills:[Protection Of Fate], [Fate Vision(minor)], [Deus ex Machina]

Alice was somewhat confused, her status looked different. Her mana was now shown and it seemed like she’d gained a bit of wisdom and a few passive skills from her training. Those were fairly normal and expected though, what confused her were the divine skills. Alice focused on using [Basic Identification] on the skills but only one of them showed a result.

[Protection Of Fate]

You have caught the attention of Fate and are now play a role in its ever expanding story. You will be marginally more likely to succeed and have gained the Divine skills [Fate Vision(minor)] and [Deus ex Machina]

"How long have these been here for?" Alice wondered aloud.

"What's the problem?" Her mom asked.

"I don't think there's a problem, but I've got these divine skills now."

"Odd. There's no actual way to know how long they've been around. Divine skills are laid on your soul directly, while the system only interacts with your mind, so you could've been born with it but it would only show on your status when you connected your soul to it.”

"Is there a way to find out what they do?"

"Depends on how you got it, and the exact effects can change depending on who uses them. Because of that the best way for you to learn about them is to use them."she explained, “Almost the same as magic, aside from a few pointers and nudges, any guidance has the potential to limit your growth; so unfortunately, our training also finishes right after I teach you how to cast spells.But don’t worry too much though, you have plenty of time to learn and you can always come to me for help.”

“So back to learning: The second step to casting a spell is to send your mana out of your body.” Alyssa stopped and looked at Alice expectantly. Taking the cue Alice tried it and found it was way easier than she thought. It felt like a cool, refreshing stream flowing through her arm before diffusing into the air around her palms. She then tried to stop the diffusion and keep the mana loosely contained in a ball in front of her palm. She couldn’t quite see the mana, but she could feel it. It was similar to holding something in the dark, she couldn’t see it, but she wasn’t going to lose track of it either.

“Great work Alice! Next you want to assign an identity to this blank mana, let’s say water for now.” Just like before she immediately got started. She pictured the mana becoming clay in her hands while she imprinted the identity of water onto it, she watched as the translucent, barely visible ball slowly shifted into a ball of cool blue water. Alice stuck her hand in and it felt like passing her hand through normal air, other than her hand cooling down. It was like she could feel the refreshing cold of the water but not the water itself.

“As I stated, this is not water. It is simply mana that embodies the concept of water. This can be seen in its color and temperature. Now I want you to try and ‘create’ water, try imagining yourself squeezing it out of the air, almost like a sponge .”

This instruction was a bit harder as ‘squeezing air’ is a strange thing to consider, but eventually Alice found a way to do it. First she coated her hands in the cool blue mana and used it to grab only the water from the air until she had a ball similar to the first in her hands, while it was more difficult as she constantly found herself forming a ball of mana instead of water and the first sphere had vanished, Alice was proud of herself for what she had accomplished. This ball was clear, as expected of water, but with a slight blue tinge to it, it also felt a bit ‘fuller’ or more water like than normal water.

“Great work Alice! As you can see what you’ve made is water, and while it does have a bit of mana in it, it is mostly water. And you can do the same with any other attribute of mana, of course not counting the non-physical ones. So if they’re no questions, we should be making our way back home, it’s getting quite late isn’t it.”

Late? How? Alice doubted the time but had it quickly confirmed when she saw the sun setting behind the trees. How long had she taken to learn magic. But more importantly, non-physical attributes?

“What do you mean by non physical mana?” Alice asked curiously.

“Ohhhh, that must be a bit confusing for you, but yes, the attribute of mana is just the concept it personifies most, therefore mana can have abstract attributes such as happiness, time and bravery. I hope that answers your question.”

“Thanks!” Alice said, content with the answer.