'Quiche. Ah quiche, what a wonderful thing. The deliciousness of quiche can't be explained in words. It has the most unique taste and texture, with unmatched fluffiness that is still firm enough to bite into. The creamy filling only adds to the fluff, making it feel as if I'm eating a cloud of flavor. And holy shit, this juice. This is heaven.. '

Lucas was prepared to write a full poem on the delectability of the quiche tarts Didier had gotten them for lunch. He didn't even remember that as far as he knew, there was no heaven, solely another life.

Usually, he rushed eating. It was a habit of his. It usually meant he gained weight a lot more but it also allowed him to get going a lot faster. But when eating those savory tarts, he slowed down, just enough to appreciate the masterful craft. These were some good quiches.

Still, he ate faster than his tutor who ate with the most calculated of bites, making sure she was a pure example of etiquette. Given that she was supposed to be teaching him, he just had to wait until she finished.

Luckily, it didn't take too long. Lucas distracted himself in the meantime by getting himself ready to train his magic.

Once Didier finished, she gave the bowls back off to a servant before setting her eyes on Lucas. Running some ideas throughout her head, she settled on one of them, before starting.

"I know you have some basic information on magic so I won't bore you going through the basics of mana. Instead, we'll start off with a question you got incorrectly on the test I gave you. The question was fairly simple. Name several ways that one can increase the amount of mana in their body, or in other words, their mana cap. You answered that it only increased naturally with time. That was incorrect."

Lucas frowned. "That's what it said in one of the books I read."

Didier nodded in understanding. "Books are sources of information, not sources of true information. There are quite a lot of inaccuracies or falsities in the books in the library. This idea of your mana cap increasing naturally is true, but it isn't the only way. Some fools tried to call this idea a theory when really, it's just a way to hide their own incompetence.

"There are a variety of ways that one can increase their mana cap but we'll start with the most basic one that you can actively do, which is absorb the world's mana."

Lucas frowned once more. 'What the hell is that?' He thought, but didn't say out loud. He didn't understand a lot of what Didier would say and she, expecting that, often explained it further.

Noting Lucas' confusion, she nodded once more. "I'm sure the books also told you that mana is something only living beings have."

Lucas nodded, in response.

"Is Empre not alive?"

It was one of those rhetorical questions that just sounded idiotic until explained so Lucas waited for an explanation.

"I really am quite lucky you understand the human body so well. It makes it much easier to explain this. Anyways, look at your body. What makes you alive?"

"My heartbeat."

"Do trees and grass have heartbeats? Are they not still alive though? This flower I have near my window, you can see mana from it. It doesn't have a heartbeat. What makes them alive?"

Lucas thought back to his early teenage years when he was learning about this stuff in biology class. Supposedly, there were determiners for life. He didn't remember all of them, but he had a feeling anyways that what he did remember, wasn't the correct answer.

Was it a philosophical question, then? But that didn't make sense. Who would ask philosophical questions to a 4 year old?

Didier saw that Lucas still didn't understand, and got up, walking over to her plant. "If I were to pour good water onto this plant, and give it a good place in the light, what would happen?"

"It would grow", Lucas replied, simply. He almost felt the urge to raise his hand before he answered the question.

"After the plant gets big enough, won't it want to have its own plant children? Then what?"

Lucas felt the answer to her question coming onto him, seeding itself into his thoughts. He nearly had it. "It'll make seeds."

"That is life. That cycle of absorption and creation. That is what Empre does. Do you think your mana really just dissipates into nothingness when it leaves your body after a failed spell?"

It wasn't the quick flash of a lightbulb turning on in his head, but rather the slow movement of the sun closing in on Lucas as he grasped these concepts of the world.

Didier didn't wait for an answer from him. "It is absorbed by Empre itself and broken down into its most basic parts. This also relates to your issue with mana sensitivity. While most people do not start off sensing the world's mana which is fine, you will probably never sense it for a long time if you progress as you are, right now. Just like how you can only feel the tiny winds of a paper fluttering nearby and not the great force at which Empre moves, you can only feel the tiny fluctuations that you and I make, and not the more basic yet much greater movements of Empre's mana."

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Lucas took a while to absorb all the information. Didier had patiently waited for about a minute and a half before Lucas nodded. While she expected this from the mind of a four year old, it wasn't Lucas being stupid or simpleminded that caused him to take so much time to process it.

Rather, he'd tried to reconcile this knowledge with what he already knew. It was difficult to separate sentience and consciousness from life. In addition, he'd tried looking deep into his own mana, trying to find any inkling of what Didier was talking about, yet he found none. Well actually, he did find something, a hole in his knowledge.

"So how do you raise your mana cap with Empre's mana?"

"When you expend mana, it goes to Empre, and is broken down. You have to take Empre's mana and reconstruct it into your own."

"But how does that raise your mana cap?" If Lucas was being honest, his understanding of it all could only be considered shallow. He was still in the dark on how mechanics like a mana cap even worked.

"You continue absorbing mana until you feel a barrier. When you reach it, you simply continue absorbing mana, trying to force more into your body until you surpass your cap. Of course, you shouldn't try this without supervision, or even at all, considering your age. You aren't even close to having fully developed your mana through simple growth. Doing it at this age will certainly give you life-lasting trauma."

Seeing that Lucas understood, Didier moved on. "The only other thing worthy of notice that you got incorrect was on mana quality. To be entirely honest, even with your other remarkable results, I didn't expect you to get the answer correct. However, given that it's a direct lead off the last topic, and a good lead into improving your issue with elemental magic, we'll touch on it."

"To put it simply, mana quality is the complexity of one's mana. This is different from mana concentration where that's simply the amount of mana in one place. Empre's mana is mana in its most basic discovered form. You absorb it and then reconstruct it into mana that you can use. However, if one's mana sensitivity is too high, then the quality of mana they can sense shifts. That is part of the issue in this case-"

"What about raising your mana quality?" Lucas was merely curious about it considering they'd just talked about raising your mana cap.

However, Didier responded with a shake of her head, and a tone of disapproval. Not only had he rudely interrupted her but it was to ask such a ridiculous question. "If raising your mana cap is already something you shouldn't be doing, talking about raising your mana quality is pointless. It's something that is irrelevant at this time."

Lucas nodded in understanding, tempering his curiosity.

Didier sat back down on her chair in front of him. "What you'll do for the remaining part of the day is try to use elemental magic. Whenever you fail, focus as hard as you can on the dregs of mana that escape from your body. Once you can visualize the mana breaking itself down, we'll keep going."

Just like that, Lucas toiled for two hours. However, with each passing minute, he grew more familiar with the feeling of it all. By the end, he'd fully visualized his dregs of mana being absorbed by Empre. This didn't mean he had fully comprehended what Didier wanted him to. He still hadn't fully visualized his mana being broken down.

When walking back to Lucas' parents' room, he noticed something. "I thought you taught Celine as well."

"I do. Some days, she doesn't come because I don't want her to. Some days, she doesn't come because she doesn't want to. This was one of the former days."

Lucas didn't say anything in response. He had a slight headache he feared would only get worse the more he did. That coupled with his fatigue from using his mana so often, meant he might just go to sleep as soon as he entered his room.

Also, he didn't really care about Celine. He was just curious about having seen her yesterday but not today.

Knocking on his parents' door yielded no response so he decided to just go directly to his own room. As he predicted, he fell asleep as soon as he laid down on the bed.

This was despite the fact that Miss Didier was still in his room. Seeing how tired her student was, to fall asleep so quickly, she felt a tiny sense of pride. It was something her father had drilled in her for years: fatigue is a sign of work. The more fatigued someone was, the more work they were putting in. Evidently, Lucas was putting in a lot of work, which meant he was engaged.

She evaluated the place with her mana sense just out of a curious habit, finding everything indicating this was just a normal four year old boy despite his genius.

When Emelie eventually arrived, the first thing she did was check her son's room. She knew there was a solid chance Didier would finish before she did, which was also why she'd decided to keep Lucas' cube for safekeeping, instead of letting it sit in a dresser or something like that.

Didier gave her a basic rundown of what the day had been like. Emelie smiled upon hearing about her son's excellent results across the board. 'Maybe reading all those books wasn't a waste of time', she thought.

Upon hearing the full problem with Lucas' magic, she nodded while inwardly shaking her head. She wasn't shaking her head at Lucas' situation or Didier's assessment but rather Clement's assessment that Lucas simply didn't focus enough. Clearly, it had been complete lies.

Shrugging that off though, she fully engaged with Didier, asking questions here and there, before eventually sending the woman off.

She'd planned to surprise Sebastian when he came home, but when she saw the fatigued face he had when he came home, she sat down, wanting to hear about his day. Ironically, Sebastian would've wanted nothing other than a surprise to take his mind off his work but he ended up sharing what had him so tired.

"It's another one of those charismatic types. This one seems to be a religious guy. They're insisting the count is signing deals with demons, and that he cannot be trusted. Of course, only they, as the one who 'figured this out', can be trusted."

Emelie rolled her eyes in disgust. How many times had she had to face similar cases in her family's viscounty? Garbage like that always rose up to disturb the natural order, and they were always secured a voice by the gullible peasants. Still, she listened on and just as expected

"Apparently, he has 'evidence.' But of course, you can't see it unless you receive his blessing. Too many idiots have decided to believe in him, and it's shaping up to be a rebellion as always."

Emelie moved her hand through Sebastian's hair, comforting him as he lay on her lap. She knew that this situation happened all too often, so there was no point staying on the infuriating topic. Instead, she told him about their son. Sebastian's eyes were closed but still, he smiled in pride hearing about his child's intelligence.

It was still early enough for them to go eat dinner(not that there was a time when the kitchen would dare refuse them)but Sebastian was clearly too tired to do that. Laying him down to bed, she turned off the lights and cuddled with him until he fell asleep, kissing him on the forehead like she'd done her son.