Day 21, 8:20 PM

Edna enters the hut. She was probably right outside the whole time, crying in the rain, but I left her alone, she certainly needed some time to reflect.

“How are you doing?”

“Better, thank you.”

I nod in understanding. She’s still feeling like crap, best not to smile then.

“I have a bit of news which should cheer you up.”

She gestures towards me with her chin.

“I’m now an apprentice mage, my level up condition is to attend ten lessons without missing a single one.”

It’s a simple condition to meet when you have a personal instructor, but if you’re at school or your mentor has multiple apprentices, with lessons once a week or once a month, I can see how it can trip people up.

Edna realizes it a moment later. “We always thought it had to do with how talented a student was. Journeyman mages instructing the youths used to gauge their talent, then pour in the appropriate amount of effort.”

I’m not one bit surprised. But the errors made by the mages of old have nothing to do with me. Instead, I need to look forward to the future.

“BSD is notorious for its level up conditions and for technicalities it uses to discard your work. So, we need to formalize our lessons. One lesson a day, minimal length of one hour, maybe make a ritual out of it, like kneeling before the teacher or something like that.” I point towards the chair and pour a mug of steaming heartbrew tea. “Please. I want to hear every idea you have.”

Offering the host a seat and tea in their own home is kind of insulting, but Edna doesn’t take offense and sips on her tea.

“So, I need to come up with ten lessons.”

“They can be about anything, since BSD didn’t stipulate lessons on magic. You can teach me how to fry honeygrubs for all it cares, as long as it follows the structure of a lesson. It’s too late for lessons today, but give it some thought.”

I pause, but I decide to speak my mind.

“If you don’t mind, I would prefer to learn how to sense, draw, and control mana on my own, without resorting to skills.”

Edna’s lip twists, but I explain my reasoning.

“As a weapon master, when gaining weapon proficiencies, I had a choice between Expert Staffmanship and Advanced Clubmanship, because I already knew how to use them. Then, on the next level up, I could choose between Advanced Swordsmanship and Initial Axmanship. I have reason to believe that the level up bonus improves your skill by a step, so having those skills will mean that leveling up will improve them.”

“You need Initial Mana Sense before you can do anything else. I don’t think you can learn it without gaining the skill, and you get it at level one.” Edna purses her lips. “But I can try, our lesson tomorrow can be on sensing mana.”

The chair squeaks against the floor as I stand up. I bow with all the formality and air of a king. “Thank you, Edna, that means a lot to me.”

Red marbles the woman’s face, and she stutters a polite response, clearly wanting to run away and hide.

We’re about to go to bed, when I remember something.

“Edna, why didn’t you tell me the floor lights dim as you kill monsters in the dungeon?”

“No, they don’t.”

“Yes, they do. Trust me. I went there a couple days ago and cleared some thirty levels. The dungeon also changes, becomes more dangerous, and I’m not just talking about the monsters.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I tell her everything I’ve noticed about how the dungeon difficulty increases, and Edna claims that wasn’t the case back when she was delving over a century ago.

“Maybe it’s the sign of wormlords finally growing weaker or something.” She ends the discussion with that dismissal, positive the spell is working as intended, but I go to sleep more worried than I was before I got yet another flippant answer and blind faith in the infallible archmages.

The next morning Edna wakes me up before the night’s rain eases.

“I have an idea how you might be able to sense mana and gain the skill on your own.” She practically kicks me out of the blanket I’m using both as a bed and as a cover. “Take your seat, the class is about to start.”

Thankfully, with my physique of twenty-five, I hardly need any sleep, and I wake up almost immediately. Like a good apprentice that I am, I kneel and wait for my teacher to start teaching.

“Mana is all around us. It’s in the air, it’s in the water, it’s in plants and rocks and animals. It’s like rain, always there…” Edna explains many things about mana, but misses the crucial part. What is mana? My tongue is burning to ask the question, Blunt choking me to do it, but I remain silent.

If her understanding of lessons implies quiet students absorbing whatever unstructured thoughts the lecturer voices, then I have to respect the form and wait with the discussion part until her soliloquy is over and class dismissed. My mind starts drifting, but I focus on listening to her, and the errant thoughts turn to mist in my mind and disperse.

“And that concludes our first lesson.” Edna is struggling not to beam. She’s overjoyed she got exactly what she remembered from her childhood, some bizarre wish fulfilled with her in the role of the person of authority instead of being the silent, timid student.

“I have some questions.” I say as soon as I finish my respectful bow.

“Yes?” Edna’s good mood remains unchanged, but that’s probably about to change.

“What is mana?”

“I told you, mana is all around us—”

“No, that’s the answer to a different question, ‘Where is mana?’ I’m asking what it is.”

She frowns. “Mana is mana.”

“But what is it made of?”

“Mana.”

Now I’m getting annoyed, and she can see it.

“You can’t ask what’s mana. That’s like asking what air is. Air is air.”

“Air is a mixture of gasses, mostly nitrogen and oxygen, with carbon dioxide and some others in trace amounts.”

She stares at me.

“That’s the chemical composition of air, more or less.”

She nods slowly. “I see. And can you tell me what nitrogen is?”

“It’s a chemical element.”

Again with the slow nod. “And what’s a chemical element?”

I open my mouth and close it. I have no idea what’s the definition of chemical elements.

“You don’t know,” she continues, still nodding. “But let’s say you do. I would keep asking questions until we reach a point where you say the thing is what it is. Mana is just like that. It is what it is.”

She pauses and gives me time to think. I wish to argue, but she makes a valid point. If you dive deep enough into any subject, you reach the point beyond which nothing exists, or at least we don’t know anything exists.

But you can’t have a depth of one!

I want to argue, but my argument is stupid. Who says you have to be able to divide or classify a thing at least once? Me?

“I see you understand.” Her voice remains calm, monotonous, superior, and most of all, irritating. “Now, do you have any other questions?”

How does mana fuel magic? Why does magic require mana? Is magic a natural or a man-made phenomenon?

I have a bunch more and most of her answers are I don’t know, sometimes offering tautologies as answers. Her approach to things is unnerving, superficial, almost flippant. No wonder she hasn’t advanced a level in all these years.

“Is that all?”

I nod, afraid I might start an argument if I open my mouth again.

“Great! Now, we’re going to take a field trip.”

“Where?” Why?

“We are going as deep as we can towards the forbidden area or the corrupted lands, however you wish to call them. We need to find some monsters whose bodies are overflowing with mana. I’ve been thinking about how you could develop mana sense on your own, and I came up with two options. One is for me to flare out my inner mana to agitate the outer mana around us in hopes you sense those ripples. But doing that would lead the inquisition straight to my home, and we don’t want that.”

I agree, we don’t want that. Even if you ignore the fact that I’m in the company of a witch, I’m now an apprentice mage and eligible for the stake treatment.

“The other, safer option is for you to slay mana rich monsters and abominations, then sit around their bodies until their mana disperses. That should give you a decent chance of sensing mana.”

It’s a great plan. I love it. But I think it could be even better.

“Will the inquisitors sense you if you flare mana all the way near the corrupted lands?”

Edna deadpans at me.

“Right, you’re an alien. If I flare my mana anywhere near the corrupted lands, inquisition will be a minor nuisance, assuming they bother to go there in search of mages. I explained to you that a whole army, led by a whole battalion of mages, fended off the last wormlord’s attack. If I flare my mana anywhere near that place, the horrors which had survived those battles will flock towards us and tear us to pieces long before any inquisitor catches a whiff of our presence.”