“...In conclusion, the main function of the so called yuweir symbol, when used in conjunction with hanuil, is most commonly associated with stability in flame type spells of the second level and below.”
Suddenly stopping, the Mana 101 lecturer dug out and looked down at his pocket watch, before returning his attention back to us.
That was odd. In the three or so weeks we had been in his class, he only ever checked the time when class was a minute away from ending. We still had approximately ten minutes left.
“The tests from last week have been graded,” he promptly informed all of us, “Your rankings are displayed in the hallway outside. If you rank among the top five, please come to me for your reward.”
At his words, approximately four hundred separate bodies shot up at once and began to rush outside, Lunia and I included among them, but because of the fact we sat at the very back of the lecture hall, we were only able to reach the board after eight minutes.
Starting from the lowest numbers, I slowly scanned the rankings. Reaching the two hundreds and still not yet seeing my name, I smiled, happy knowing that my efforts weren’t in vain. Reaching the one hundreds, I was even more so, a feeling similar to when I cultivated coming over me. As I went past that however, that joy morphed into confusion, the idea that I was able to rank so highly a completely foreign concept to me.
My eyes finally stopped near the top.
By some miracle of the goddess, I was rank three among those who had taken the test, scoring a 97%, and I probably could’ve done even better had I more thoroughly reviewed the content instead of spending all my time in the library or cultivating.
With a wide smile on my face, I turned to Lunia, about to ask her how she did, only to see that just like me, a wide grin was plastered on her face.
“How’d you do?”
“157th,” she smiled, “Better than I thought.”
The thought to flaunt my high ranking over her briefly came over me.
“Good job,” I smiled, intentionally bumping my shoulder against hers, “And you were worrying so much.”
“Shut up,” she retorted, cheeks faintly burning red, before pushing her way back into the lecture hall, to which I immediately followed behind.
As we made our way back inside, we quickly gathered our belongings up, but as Lunia began to make her way out, I stayed behind, telling her that I had a question I needed to ask the lecturer.
The room completely emptying of people besides the professor and the top five highest scorers,
“Good job,” he began, towering over each and one of us to the point we had to look up to meet his gaze, “Each of you.”
Pulling out the same gray point stick as Professor Dieskau had six days ago, he tapped on it a number of times, before having each of us activate our point bands.
“But don’t get complacent,” he continued to speak as he gave each of us points, “Neither the first set of dreams nor the first month have even ended yet.”
I looked down at the white 2030 displayed, my previously already wide smile stretching even further across my face and reaching my ears.
“You all are dismissed,” the lecturer finished speaking, before turning away from us.
As I walked out of the Mana 101 building, I thought of what I should spend the points on. Other than buying information on the dream from Rat and using a private low tier cultivation room for an hour, I hadn’t spent any of my points. Lunia had told me about there apparently being a building devoted entirely to recreation in Celestia, but let alone even spending points there, I hadn’t even gone yet.
The thought of going to the school shop to buy something suddenly came over me, and I had to consciously push back on such an idea. For the current me, who hadn’t even formed their first magic circle yet, doing such a thing would invariably result in my impulsively purchasing something completely useless to me.
But such an idea wasn’t bad, as not only was another thing added onto the list of things I needed to do, it also reminded me that in the past week, I spent more of the free time I was allotted to cultivate and absorb mana into my mana stone, and I was now more confident in being able to form my first magic circle.
Admittedly, it was with such thoughts in my mind that I halfheartedly made my way through Alchemy 101, with nearly all of my attention directed towards my forming my first magic circle.
I had asked Lunia on a prior occasion of what it felt like when she formed her magic circle. Her face becoming pensive at my question, she sat in silence, not even touching the food on her plate, before finally answering me.
Lunia said it was like being transported to another plane of existence, akin to entering the soul plane. But unlike when you enter the soul and are surrounded by your channels, forming another magic circle was akin to having all of your senses elevated, such that you feel an all new level of freedom. She even said that whenever she remembered how she was not even a month ago, when she was still a normal person, it made her feel like she was trapped within her own skin.
Like even the thought of not having mana in her body was this grotesque, madness inducing concept.
Having gone back to the U dormitory for my copy of Imario’s 361st guide to mana, I languidly made my way to the training buildings. The old wounds across my body began to ache and burn, until I almost felt as if I was set on fire.
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Raising my forearm, I inspected my skin. Pale to the point of having an unpleasant pallor quality, I probably looked half dead to any external party. My appearance was made even worse by the myriad of scars that ran across the entirety of my body but that were mostly concentrated around my arms. They were like raindrops with how plentiful they were.
In the first year I had been a soldier for Baron Elef’s army, I was self-conscious about my scars to the point of absurdity, but at a certain point, I just stopped caring. What did it matter if my skin was marred? If my body was able to heal enough to form scars, that meant I still had the flame of life, that I was able to live for just a bit longer. And as long as that still held true, nothing else mattered.
Going down the underground pristine white hallways, I stood in front of one of the many high tier cultivation rooms, before promptly paying five hundred points for two hours time.
I didn’t know when or even why I developed such an obsession, but if that small desire to see tomorrow burning inside of me were to ever go out, I felt as if I would go mad.
The lights on the inside lit up, bathing the room in a dark blue, calming hue.
To be honest, even after being saved by and living for a year with Aurelia, even after meeting and getting to know Lunia, even after getting the opportunity to go to Celestia, I still felt like nothing was truly keeping me. Like one day, if the urge suddenly came over me, the flame were to ever go out, I could just leave the world without a second thought, without ever looking back.
I sat down at the center of the room, burning the image of the first circle within Imario's guide into my mind’s eye for one last time, before entering the soul plane.
But somehow, I enjoyed having that knowledge, the intense sense of freedom that came with being truly untethered intoxicating to the point I felt as if I could get drunk off the smell alone.
Closing my eyes, I felt the sheer difference in the high tier cultivation room’s atmosphere, with the room’s mana density being so artificially enhanced it was leagues above in quality compared to the lower tier facilities, let alone my dorm room.
Even just using a tenth the effort required of me normally netted me the exact same amount of mana, and within just a minute, my stings were filled to the point of discomfort.
Not even bothering to circulate the mana after filling my strings, I just directly sent it into my mana stone. Repeating the process five more times, when I absorbed and began to send in mana for the sixth time however, I could no longer do so.
But I felt no satisfaction at that, instead growing even more stressed, my heart beginning to beat quicker and quicker such that I could hear it in my ears.
Sending the mana into my soul but not into my mana stone, I slowly controlled it, first forming a hollow circle around the central nub, before, akin to a spiral, slowly moving to the right and inwards, forming more and more intricate designs as I continued.
From the outside looking in, it probably appeared as if I were just absentmindedly filling in the hollow circle to make one solid shape, but in reality, each and every line I made, I made with careful intent and the utmost precision.
My channels already running out of mana, I cursed inside my mind. I wasn’t even 10% of the way done, having already made a number of mistakes in recreating the small, intricate symbols of the first circle, and as a result, I needed to expend mana to correct those errors.
Left with no other choice, I began to dip into the mana contained within my central mana stone earlier than I had intended. My original plan was to only use the mana I had previously gathered after forming 15% of the magic circle, but I wasn’t too upset over this. The mana in my channels was incredibly limited in how much it could accomplish, in that 79% of it would be lost, dispersed back into the atmosphere owing to my poor mana conductivity, so that 15% of the circle I had hoped to complete was most probably just my naivete at play.
With my mana stone, mana conductivity didn’t need to be taken into consideration, as in my soul, there was no intermediary string through which the mana needed to go through to be used.
Despite the minor setback I had just come across, I persisted, remaining hopeful that I would be able to accomplish what I set out to do. Controlling the mana within my nub, I sent it out into my soul, before immediately incorporating it into my magic circle.
Gritting my teeth, a drop of sweat formed on my brow and rolled down the side of my face, but I ignored it, with an hour and a half passing, and my magic circle getting to about 70% completion while only using up about half of the mana within my nub.
I breathed out a sigh of relief, before continuing on, not wanting to become complacent at the slightest bit of success.
But as I reached 85% completion, the number of errors I began to make increased in number. About twenty times as much mana was needed of me for the same amount of progress, and I was quickly running out.
Feeling the mana in my central mana stone bottoming out, I willed myself away from my magic circle, praying in my heart that I had finished.
But from the fact that the magic circle hadn’t activated, not moving the slightest bit, I instinctively knew that I had failed.
Hovering directly above, I looked down in disbelief. Except directly around the mana stone, the magic circle was almost perfect, about 97% complete.
Choking up, I exited the soul plane, rubbing the strip of skin above my upper lip and below my nose, a profound feeling of emptiness and despair welling up inside of me.
It all just felt so useless. Surviving the Old North, going through hell to revitalize my mana strings, struggling through a month of sleepless nights to up my mana conductivity by even 0.1%, studying to the point that my eyes had gone blood red and I could barely even walk straight afterwards, it all felt like it was for nothing.
I wanted to run away from it all, to escape.
But as that thought struck me, a delirious, impotent rage abruptly over took my mind, akin to pouring oil on a previously dying fire.
Clenching my fists, I forced myself back into my soul, beginning to absorb mana from the environment once again, but different from previously, I directly transported it into my soul, incorporating it into my magic circle.
I could feel blood welling up inside my throat, running down every orifice on my face, crying tears of crimson, my shirt getting soaked with red.
I remembered a year ago, when Aurelia and I had just set out for Frosthelm. Under the light of the twin moons’, we sat by the side of the road, gnawing on tasteless shoe leather jerky and absentmindedly making conversation. She said that nobody could judge my actions, the goddess included, save for me.
The only one who could deem my actions as useless was me.
Everything I had done, I had done to live one more day. Regardless of how immoral, evil, desperate they were, I was still alive, still drawing breath.
And wasn’t that all that mattered?
Grinding my teeth together, I completed the final design, pain wracking my body. I felt as if each and every one of my muscle fibers were being peeled from the tips of my toes up to my face before being completely ripped off.
But despite the pain, I smiled, hovering above my first nub to the sight of a constantly spinning and rotating magic circle and a mana stone being refilled even without my needing to consciously send mana into it.
I had successfully formed my first magic circle.