The devices Evan encountered inside were fascinating – he now knew that mana and Substance, while capable of similar things, were very different at a fundamental level, and had not up to this point encountered any imbued device that interacted with mana in any way.

He was allowed to inspect the devices, the staff appearing resigned to crafting apprentices making such a request. They were easily the most sophisticated devices he had ever encountered, easily taking the top spot previously held by the lights of the workshop with their on/off switch. The jeep didn’t count, being mostly mechanical and Evan being unable to properly examine it in any way.

Simply put, it was more than a simple set of instructions to run an imbuement unfailingly and constantly. Instead, the devices had spaces where mana was stored and contained, a feat that couldn’t be easy. Those spaces, in addition to containing the mana, had various sensors that recorded aspects of the mana as an input, recording the information before outputting it as a light of varying intensity.

The devices were so complex that they required Master Isaac to help them understand what was what, and it was the first time Evan began to understand why there was such a disparity between crafters of similar imbuement ability.

It took more than simple experience, power, and talent to be a truly gifted crafter – especially for formation masters. Their title seemed more earned than ever – truly, to be able to conceive of such a device and build it from scratch required ingenuity and cleverness, a different kind of talent altogether.

Evan knew that these devices were built from a blueprint of course, but someone had to have originally created it and improved upon it in order to reach where it was today.

He was excited for the day when he would be the one creating such novel designs, even if it wouldn’t be for something like this. The very idea of ‘sensors’ caused an explosion of possibility within his mind, as did the concept of inputs, outputs, and the storing of information for various purposes.

It was something he realized must have been a part of the jeep they arrived in – things such as the AC or even the ignition must have depended on similar designs, he just hadn’t been able to appreciate it at the time.

Awed by what he had seen within the devices, he finally allowed himself to be tested, and was too busy learning the basics of releasing his mana and imbuing it to be enthralled any longer.

Releasing mana was quite simple once he got the hang of it. Every soul had a reservoir where mana was stored, and by calling his soul into focus he could eventually access it after a few minutes of effort. After that, pulling the mystical energy out of his soul, through the Void, and into the room felt as natural as breathing, if a little strange. That was his first success – some people had such a small natural reservoir that next to no mana could be withdrawn, and judging the reservoir without emptying it was difficult.

Once released, the mana seemed to instinctively start to spread out, and did so quickly enough that that it had already traveled too far from his soul and decayed into nothingness by the time he tried to do something about it. He was taught that he needed to keep a firm grip on it with his will so that didn’t happen, and soon enough, the mistake was rectified – but not without penalty. Even after withdrawing such a small amount, his soul already felt uncomfortably empty. It was disheartening, and he was careful not to let the mana stray far from him. After only a decimeter, a tenth of a meter, it would start to decay. The testing staff gave him pitiful looks.

Hmph!

Next came imbuing the mana with intent, an act known as bestowal, which worked very similar to the now familiar process of imbuing Substance, only there was no need for forging any kind of connection – mana was innately and deeply connected to its owner at all times. He only needed to put his will to work in order to imbue intent into it, and the process felt nearly the same even if it was dictated by a different part of his soul.

Once he had the basics down, they proceeded with the tests. First, he was to completely empty his reservoir and stuff the mana into the first device in order to determine the size of his mana pool. He had already dissipated some of his mana from before but knowing how much he had withdrawn then made it simple to get a rough estimate.

Next would be the size of his magical domain, the distance from which his soul could maintain his mana. They already knew that to be a decimeter or so and moved on. The density of his mana was recorded during the first test, and so they quickly moved to the intent tests.

Surprisingly, this required intense instruction and demonstration. It was exceedingly difficult to learn spells from a textbook, and so demonstrations were critical along with an instructor to point out mistakes. Several hours passed as they guided him into forming a very simple but useful spell – light.

This took so long due to the inherent nature of mana – that is, having no inherent nature. Substance would naturally conform into the effects related to its nature, meaning that even with only a vague idea of ‘light’, it was possible to create a working imbuement, such as Evan himself did during his test.

Because mana lacked this, it required a far more solid intent and disciplined mind in order to get the same effect. This was eased by the supposedly infinite capacity of mana to hold intent, but still took quite a long time to get a handle on it.

After he finally managed to form the working spell, he did as instructed previously. He ‘slackened’ his will over the mana as the staff prepared timers.

Evan watched as his mana transformed into a very small sphere of dim, white light, just above his open palm. He watched as he saw yet another unique trait of mana – the ability for the intent within to spread, maintaining itself or even growing as desired or instructed.

Before his eyes the dim ball of light no smaller than the tip of his finger drew in more mana from around itself and started to grow, becoming larger but never getting any brighter – just as intended.

He only allowed a second to pass before he lightly exerted control and interrupted the spell, directly stopping it from absorbing any more mana to grow or maintain itself.

Not much mana remained as they waited for the spell to fall apart, the final metric of his talent determined; the rate at which his intent could spread through his mana. Finally finished with the tests and thoroughly exhausted, he waited for the final results. He wasn’t hopeful.

A short amount of time passed and, unfortunately, his talent was comprehensively lacking in all areas. Comprehensively, he could be said to just barely meet the requirements to do magic at all, and in one specific capacity he was hopeless.

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Overall there were seven pieces to magic talent, listed in no particular order: the size of ones mana pool, the regeneration rate of mana, the size of ones magical domain, mana density, mana decay rate, intent bestowal rate, and intent spread rate.

His regeneration had been tested while he was taught the basic ‘light’ spell and was also quite poor.

Together, these characteristics determined the comprehensive magical talent of a person, and Evan’s was quite low, with some exception to his mana decay rate, which was exceptionally poor.

Nobody was that surprised – magical talent wasn’t nearly as rare as crafting talent, but it was still rare. To even have a smidgen of magical talent on top of his crafting talent was incredibly rare, even if said magical talent was terrible.

The others were even worse off than himself, with perhaps a small exception to Iliana, though she had her own problems.

Arnav’s mana pool, like many others, was too small to test anything else, and had his hopes end there and then. Iliana fared slightly better, but was found to suffer from an incredibly low regeneration of mana, to the point where her mana pool was fully regenerated in a manner of months instead of the days that Evan would need. It was truly unfortunate, as otherwise, her talent was significantly higher than Evan’s, enough to pursue a future in magic if she desired.

Most people suffered from similar issues, having their hope bashed by one or more aspects of their magic that were horrendously poor, cutting off their future as a mage. Evan was an outlier in that while his talents were poor, his only great issue in magic was that outside his tiny magic domain his mana decayed exceptionally quickly, an easy issue to work around.

He would make a rather poor mage, but it would not be a problem for him to learn a few spells for utility, and in the future, so long as he dedicated a small amount of cultivation to magic it wouldn’t be a problem to cast the crafting spells. Iliana, too, could look forward to this for more important projects, but would always need to ration her mana.

Arnav had drawn the short stick, and without sacrificing a significant portion of his ability as a crafter, he would never have the mana to cast even utility spells, forget using the more powerful, complex spells of a crafter.

It made for a somber moment that they all shared, even Evan, who in these two months had begun to look at them as good friends.

As they left the office and made their way back, Master Isaac comforted them, saying that magic wasn’t needed to be an excellent crafter, that it was only a supplement that could be easily mitigated with the assistance of others.

Their master seemed to hesitate before revealing a potential path forward. “In fact, there are ways to augment yourselves without Substance.” All of them were instantly interested. Insofar as they knew, cultivation was the only way to increase one’s limits, and even that had to be carefully minded – a soul could only accept so much Substance each Collapse.

“How would I do that, Master Isaac?” Arnav asked, the most desperate of any of them. He could have incredible talents in magic, for all he knew, but for his mana pool!

“There are expensive elixirs that can do this through alchemy, and if you become strong enough that the lack of magic becomes a hinderance, you would be able to look into buying some.” That was all Master Isaac would say on the subject, saying that he himself knew little – he specialized in formations, specifically large-scale formations, and had little knowledge of alchemy.

It wasn’t his field and was too expensive for him, apparently. Evan actually knew why as well – it was one of the basics of cultivation that everyone learned. The reason nobody would endeavor to become a jack of all trades – the more someone cultivated, the more Collapses they had, the harder it was to affect them, even beneficially, through anything but further cultivation.

He lacked information on alchemy and what it could do, being far too upper-class for him, but every child eventually asked why they couldn’t just cultivate everything, even mixed Substance they might miraculously find one day. After all, there was no real limit on Collapses.

The answer extended even further than alchemy – it was mostly taught that it would make even magic less effective, including healing magic, as well as any kind of drug, alchemy or not. Even the needs of the body would increase without supplementary cultivation, requiring more food, more sleep, etc. A strong cultivator required a strong foundation.

Arnav seemed a little more hopeful knowing there was a solution that didn’t involve hurting his cultivation plan, but was just as acutely aware of how far such a solution was from them as Evan was. However strong one got, they would need even stronger products to use – meaning more expensive, and a stronger alchemist to make it.

Once they were back home and had lunch, Master Isaac got them all together to begin their magic lessons – while Arnav couldn’t cast any magic, he could still learn for when he hopefully could, and Master Isaac said it wouldn’t be right to teach the others but not him something.

Nobody mentioned Master Isaac acquiring the elixirs for Arnav or Iliana, as it would be improper – while their relationship had flourished, it was still an official posting and hard to close that distance between them, always feeling that while their master was a good, proper one who took pride in his apprentices, they were still a job that had been handed to the man and had no deeper bond to speak of.

***

As the weeks began to pass, Evan threw himself into the provided magic lessons. Over time he had become more familiar to those stationed at the outpost and was once more able to collect information and rumors as he once did. From them, he knew how valuable magic training was, and that it wasn’t necessarily granted to all crafting apprentices – while magic might be necessary for more complex and powerful imbuements, it wasn’t something the instructors needed to teach – few of them even could.

It was only thanks to his luck at being apprenticed under Master Isaac that he could even enjoy the free testing of his talent – the others he had gotten to know at Fool’s Hope were endlessly envious of his master, lamenting their own masters. It felt good to be on the other side of the fence for once.

Soon enough he became practiced at casting a variety of small spells, with most of them requiring large portions of his mana to cast. Iliana was still struggling, unable to cast nearly as freely as he did, a small grudge growing between them for it. This was in spite of his attempts to smooth it over, but he could understand the slight resentment – it couldn’t be fun to watch him succeed where she failed solely thanks to the fact that he practice far more often.

Arnav was jealous of the utility the spells granted him, but it didn’t get in the way of their friendship. Every now and then Evan would even cast a spell for him, like cleaning his clothes. The relationship between Arnav and Iliana seemed to flourish.

This also gave him a chance to get used to the flow of spellcasting, and it was strange. Spells were very structured affairs – they did what they were going to do and left him little room for change or control once he cast. He always retained full control of his mana, and so could restrain spells from maintaining themselves or propagating, but that was all. It was much less freeing than he had expected.

Spells also took enormous amounts of concentration and focus. Not only did he need an incredibly solid idea of what he wanted his mana to do, he also had to account for all sorts of variables pertaining to each individual cast. For example, several of the cleaning spells he learned required him to shape the spell to the object in question, making every cast unique. It made magic a lot less magical when so much hard work went into every spell.

Master Isaac told him that this was simply a consequence of the spells he learned and his own magical limitations. Far more advanced spells, much like imbued objects, could give more control back to the caster and even take care of the variables themselves – such was a necessity for any aspiring mage, as while Evan was only casting a single spell at a time at his leisure, proper mages needed to form several spells at once, all of them doing countless different things, while at the same time maintaining some awareness of their surroundings and casting the spells as quickly as possible.

They would of course have all sorts of cultivation to help them cope with these demands – not just for their magic, but also for their minds in order to have the solidarity necessary for forming effects and accomplishing multiple things at once.

It all sounded very difficult, dangerous, and intensive. While he still felt awe at the fact that mages could do that, he much preferred the style of a crafter. More specifically, a formations master. Why do all the magic yourself when you could just build something that did it for you?

That sounded much easier as well as safer – and that was his style.