Theory of mana. Brought up in an unorthodox home, didn’t mean that Jessica was unable to receive a proper education. Not an aristocrat up bringing. Listening to Leo’s thoughts on education only brought out a cold chill from an unfelt wind. Blindly shoving a bunch of children into a poorly funded education system that systematically taught the standards of education. Regardless of their desires, it taught a poor standard of works that benefited more from memorizing, while less effective, it did however help a majority into actually learning.
From his words, she described aristocratic education to what was known as private school. Though it had to be brought up, both had only heard about it themselves. As for common people that weren’t from a well-to-do family. With the help of magic, learning language was a two-step process. The first step was feeding a different category of words through simple magic arrays. Secondly, using words allowed them understanding of how to use what they had learned.
Thus, following all this was parents teaching kids what they knew. More revolved around practical knowledge. From there it became important for a child to learn what they wanted, Leo found this incomprehensible, and yet the world he lived in was drastically different. Children weren’t as free, while being massively more mature here than in his old world. Learning wasn’t just about an education, rather this belonged to surviving. With a clear hierarchy, kids were near the bottom.
An inmate desire for learning was bred into children simply by existing every day. With desire was an active imagination that sucked in everything, becoming an active process. Unlike Leo’s thoughts on the matter, active desire for knowledge allowed the retention of information well above anything taught randomly by subject difficulty. One such subject was meditation. From there came the ability to harness mana that allowed advancement of the body to increase simple bodily function. Not having a large impact on comprehension, memorization was increased, giving kids a longer time to try and comprehend things they saw or heard. Massively increasing the ability to learn.
So the theory of mana became an essential process that nearly every child learned. This process continued until adolescence. Theory of mana was a higher level subject than what was generally understood. Reasons for this being that it wasn’t something someone below Grade D could understand completely. Of the grades in the world, there was not just a mass majority, it was believed over eighty percent of all graded beings were Grade F. A lessor extension of the theory of mana was the most often iterated to a mass selection of the populace.
The world was like a large bowl. Inside this bowl was a massive amount of water, otherwise known as mana. Comparable to this bowl, near the bottom, one would see a tiny bamboo like straw object. Depending on one's talent, the size of the straw would change. In terms of length, everything stayed similar between everyone. Inside was the most important aspect. Jessica’s straw in this fashion was not the smallest, only there wasn’t much interior.
For this reason, she had trouble absorbing larger densities of mana. While it was briefly talked about, very few actually understood what was under the straw. One of the reasons for this was of the complexity. From below, was a strange object. In terms of shape, easily recognizable simply looking similar to a cup. While the similarity of the cup was in shape alone. Taken from a whole, there was very little to be seen. A vast majority of this, happened to be that there were holes in said cup. Not large in size, only many holes riddled the entirety.
One can imagine what transpired. In meditation, mana appeared in all shapes and sizes. Color could be imagined from shades of light. Brighter and dimmer contributed shades of different darkness surrounding, giving off a splendor of nearly inscrutable spectrum of colors. Knowing while understood, far from complexity, seeing alone took one’s breath away. Beauty could easily hide the simplistic nature. Easily allowing the viewer into believing themselves to have seen something akin to a rainbow-like spectrum of colors.
Gently guiding mana into the straw, from there one didn’t see as much as feel. Gentle sprinkle of rain on one’s hand. Gentle to even ticklish. Slowly running down, from start to finish, a thickness of less than a nail. Slowly sliding down from a palm, wrist down to arm. Gentle and memorizing. From elbow a collection, a concentration builds up, finally reaches a ripe oval. Similar to a sensation one feels when swallowing. Inside, yet unseen and barely felt.
Slowly over time build up occurs allowing one to start to barely feel slight traces of mana in the heart. Time stretches on, allowing one to feel the process from straw to cup. This process is believed to be breathing mana in, traveling through the veins and reaching the heart. Since the heart is the cup. In reality, unrefined mana doesn’t do very much, unlike with much of her training, very little is explained as the importance is minimal. Experience is vastly superior.
At this very moment, Jessica could feel that what she believed to be true might have been false. Feeling rushed, she had dark circles under her eyes as a sizeable amount of blue powder lay scattered around her. In her hand was a blue, pulsating crystal that gently laid on her palm. In the beginning, sitting on its side, as mana filled its center. Changing colors as it lifted itself from the hand. Now it slowly increased the pulse as what started slow became an obvious blinking light. Still not done.
Standing upright, bicone in shape, slowly started spinning. Slowly opening her eyes, Leo was stunned by what he saw. Luckily for Jessica, she was too preoccupied. While the eyes were the windows to the soul, when mana was circulating through it became known there was some intricate part of the soul that was monumental in utilizing mana. While being unable to explain why, many believed it was simply a reflection of residual mana forced out of the brain. In turn, causing bits and pieces to enter the eyes and causing one’s iris to light up.
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Contrary to anything anyone had known before, since nobody could be inside the room, it was not known. The torches on the walls started to dim, causing most of the light in the room to come from Jessica’s eyes, and the pulsating crystal in her palm. Soon there was a resonate of the mana inside her and from the crystal. Very quickly, the two started to pulsate at the same frequency. From beginning to end, her eyes were slowly opening until they were half opened before starting to close.
As the two reached a complete connection, the two didn’t keep pulsating as some mysterious connect was established. When her eyes closed, so too did all the light in the room. Snuffed out as if planned from the start. Leo hadn’t experienced this type of darkness for a while, still not confused or alert in any manner. Currently, he was too focused on what was happening to Jessica. He could feel something changing, but without the ability to explain or understand what.
From nothing to Grade F, this process happened when she absorbed mana without any ability to concentrate in. The process of breaking through into Grade F was simple and easy. Filling the heart with mana allowed her to feel as if all her mana was contained on a tiny, flat surface. Once she couldn’t absorb any more mana, when she did, pain raced through the entirety of her body. The scary part was being forced to keep absorbing mana, slowly like a tap with loose pipes, the water refined into a drop of liquid that fell and broke the flat surface her mana was situated on.
Once broken, her mana fell from this roof like existence. As from nothing to Grade F was the breakthrough that opened the top of the cup. Now this cup was full as the holes had long since stopped allowing mana to escape. The crystal slowly melted in her palm. She could feel something entering her body and racing through her veins into her heart. Unlike originally, it now acted like mana, however, this thing was already completely refined. The second it raced through her chambers, it disappeared before entering what she called her core at a bottleneck speed.
Racing to the bottom of the core, it slammed into the base of the cup before a large jerk occurred throughout the entirety of her body. Once it failed to do anything but cause small cracks to appear, she felt the crystal’s energy being forced out. From there it reappeared in the last chamber of her heart as it quickly swam through her veins one more time. Once again reaching an alarming speed as it once again entered the core. This time there was a large crack on the bottom and just when it appeared to break, everything stabilized.
The energy of the crystal was nearly completely gone. Jessica knew this had to do with her talent. It was a very good thing that the core, which the old man told her to figure out herself, was extremely sturdy. If this existence was to break from all sides instead of just the bottom. Even if from a breakthrough, the only result was death. Not the death of her mana, instead the core was inexplicably connected to the soul. She didn’t know how or why, it was a feeling she had after continuously studying it. In contradictory to this, her low level talent meant the thickness of the core was simply on another level.
Which, only caused a breakthrough to be far more difficult. The process of breaking through was very painful, as one could imagine, pain and possibly, no matter how low these odds were, of death. The dangers of being a graded being along with these were the contributing factor as to why even through anyone could reach Grade F. There were a sizable part of the population that refused to do so. She gritted her teeth. She didn’t have a very large amount of control over the crystal’s energy. The best she could do was stop it from entering her core for one rotation.
Thus, when the crystal’s energy left her heart the second time, it once again returned. Only this time instead of slipping into her core it paused slightly as a bit of speed was lost as it further increased in speed. Any loss was replaced in a far larger abundance. With the time spent, she had some of her injuries healed. Possibly because she didn’t actively waste mana healing, it was very easy for her current injuries to resurface. As she gritted her teeth as it felt like there was a large lump forcing its way through her narrow veins, it felt like her insides were on fire.
Without time to explain what was happening, Leo had to watch in dismay as she started to leak blood from her mouth. There was a large amount of desperation coming from her soul. By this point, if he attempted to stop her, the damage would be worse. He couldn’t tell why, only that since she began this process it put her into a very delicate position. Under no circumstance, even these, would he attempt to interrupt her.
Inside Jessica, the crystal energy entered her heart once more. The blinding speed made it so that even she wasn’t able to follow it. There was no delay, it entered her heart. Then entered her core. And then there was a very large amount of pain as she felt an impact run through her spine. She nearly toppled over as she watched with bated breath. Without delay, a large opening was created as mana started to drip down like a liquid. As she watched with elation, the mana floated in midair.
Soon, an unseen and unfeeling pressure forced the mana, back up. There it floated without portions of anything to sit on. Floating without moving. She had failed. The breakthrough wasn’t going to happen. Before she could feel any depressing feelings. A voice appeared in her head, “But I digress, I brought you here to give you a gift.” The voice was one she had heard very recently. There was confusion as this thought appeared in her head like something long-lost and forgotten.
Something inside her head broke off and, dissimilar to the crystal energy its speed, was on a level that couldn’t be measured. If the final rotation of the crystal’s energy reached a speed that the second it entered her heart, it was inside the core. From the core, there was no delay to the bottom. This object broke off from her brain and there was a cracking inside her core. From start to finish, she only felt horrified as a strange voice entered her head and then there was a crazy loud rumbling as if the entirety of her core was going to shatter.
Her eyes shot open with a look of absolute horror as the lights on the wall had lit back up. Only at this moment they were nearly snuffed out again. With a loud hacking sound, Jessica spat out a huge chunk of blood.