It's been two weeks since I started training up my magic power. During that time I have also been receiving lessons from the goddess about this world and how to use magic. It's pretty basic stuff so far such as the layout of the world, lessons in how to understand what my parents are saying, and about magic of course She said there was no “right” way to use magic as everyone had his or her own way of manipulating the energy called mana. People like me who can manipulate mana through use of their minds are rare and usually turn out to be geniuses of a generation. Most magicians use other mediums of mana manipulation such as spell formations, enchantments, and sacrifices. Each has their own pros and cons, but the one thing that teacher kyanu states repeatedly is that there are precious few cases where there wasn't a cost to using magic.
So it turns out that the saying ‘there's no such thing as a free lunch’ carriers over into this world as well. She said that a team of talented alchemists once created what earth commonly referred to as the philosopher's stone, or a stone that could be used as a catalyst in alchemy and magic although it has been lost for ages. I also gained many skill points, not only in INT and WIS. It seems that depending on what the body of the person exercising counts as strenuous, then you are rewarded skill points corresponding to the group of muscles you exercised. For example, I tried using my hands and feet to grab onto the bars of my crib to pull myself into a standing position. Didn’t work but I did gain one AGI and one DEX by doing this for an hour. I decided though I would wait until after I could walk to train my physical stats because this is too tiring. Besides that I trained my magic talent everyday until I ran out of mana then meditated until I refilled my mana and resumed training. I had found that once I create something out of mana and materialize it, I can sustain it for a prolonged period of time by slowly feeding it mana.
I discovered this by feeding a light ball of mana more while trying to make it self-sustaining, needless to say, it blew up in my face literally. And thank you 0 LUK stat because my parents were just walking in the door as it blew up. They hurried over to my crib to find out what had happened when my father started saying something. After being in this world for a while now(AN note: about 9 months) and thanks to Kyanu’s teaching I found out that there were many different languages in this world, and that they were speaking a mix of beastman and common.
“%@ he %#”, said my mother somewhat panicked.
“%#!! no *($^# or cuts ()^@”, replied my father.
“What #$@ %^&@” ,asked my mother really starting to panic now.
My father looked me over, he looked like he knew that it was magic I just couldn't tell if he knew it was mine.
“@%^& @^ tomorrow *&%$ @($ Test @%& magic”, said my father eyeing me.
Oh shit, he does think it was me. It sounds like they're going to have me tested for magic aptitude, now if they find out I have potential to be a mage I don't know what will happen. What if they take away my ability to use magic, I mean who would let a baby have magic, they could potentially kill themselves or burn something down. I certainly am not waiting til I am ten or twelve to start practicing. Ok ok, we need to make them think it wasn't me, of course vocal cords still don't work so I'm am going to have to do something that doesn't involve talking. Oh I know, I need a fake scapegoat. This is a world of magic so maybe there are magical creatures. I start thinking back through the fairy tales that I can remember from earth, hey this world is full of stuff of myth and legend, so why not use stuff from myth and legend. I remember the story of sleeping beauty who was blessed as a baby by three fairies.
‘This will totally work’
The problem is I happen to be fresh out of fairies. Then I remembered, Oh wait I have fucking magic. I concentrate and go to that special place where I could sense my mana. I begin manipulating it into a tangible and recognizable shape. I made her 10 cm tall with pointed ears, long green hair and eyes, a pair of glimmering wings and a green dress that came down to her knees. Suddenly a screen popped up.
Through repeated training and use of mana, you have acquired the skill
Mana Manipulation LV1(Active)
I’ll have to check out this skill later, for now, I'm done with the construct. I look over my creation looking for anything that might give it away that it's not real.
‘Good enough’
I materialized it behind my pillow as to make sure that they didn't see a fairy suddenly appear. I slowly walked it out and had it wave its hand. Suddenly my mother grabs my out of my crib and screams for my father, he turned towards the crib and saw my little green creation. Suddenly he pulls out the dagger that was at his belt and tries to stab my fairy with it. I didn't want them to kill it or cut it open to see it was made of mana so I quickly flew it out the window and out of sight and dispersed it.
‘Well...that was interesting’
Why did mom scream when she saw it? And why did dad try to kill it? All these questions swirled in my head. I tried to make it as innocent and harmless looking as possible, what if fairies did not exist in this world? I dismissed the notion, if mother and father reacted that way they must have known something.
“@#% #$ one this #%^ south”, my mother said with eyes wide in surprise.
$ don't know, but &* the @#$%%! knew %#@# it *%#!
Well at least I'm off the hook, I thought.
It looks like mom and dad were drawing the conclusion that is was the fairy who cause the mini nuclear cloud above my crib as they were walking in the door, after all which are they going to believe, that their child is a mage after being born for a few months or that a magical creature was causing mischief with their poor defenseless child. Ok maybe I'm stretching that part a little but I don't care, they stopped investigating me and I hope they call off this magic test thingy or whatever it is and I can get back to training.
That night, I opened my menu to check out that skill that I acquired today.
Name: Fraxia of the Forest shadow village Age: <1 Class: N/A Level: 1 Race: Beastmen(Subrace:Vulpes) HP: 100/100 MP: 100/100 STR: 1 VIT: 1 AGI: 3 DEX: 4 INT: 24 WIS: 17 LUK: 0 Skill Points: 0
Skills:
Death Resistance LV1(Passive)
Grave Talker LV1(Active)
??? LV??(???)
Soul Gauntlet[incomplete] LV1(Active/Passive)
Mana Manipulation LV1(Active)
Titles:
Envoy of Death
Lady luck's fool
Apprentice of a goddess
Status: Normal(infant)
Ah, the fruits of my training. I concentrate on the mana manipulation skill and open up another blue box.
Mana Manipulation LV1(Active)
It's still magic even if you don't know how it’s done
Effect:
Shape your internal mana supply and materialize your creations
Cost:
Varies on mass of creation. At higher levels can make more complex structures.
YAY, my very first true skill. I earned it all by myself and no god or goddess helped me acquire it. As a bonus, it seems like I can make anything and manipulate it with this. Hmmm, but there must be limitations. I wanted to test this so I start out by making a simple ball construct out of mana and moving it around. Next, I move on to three balls and then a cube and three balls, but then I felt dizzy and had to stop.
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
‘Ok so I am limited on how much I can use this by how many I can summon’
I start making other things out of mana, rope, swords and shields. So anything I can envision I can make, well that's good to know. I soon felt the urge to sleep and was in the dark space that I knew Kyanu inhabited. This time she was on her bed again watching a big plasma screen TV that was floating in front of the bed. On it was a picture of me right now looking at Kyanu.
“You know I wasn't expecting you to be able to manipulate mana even with my teachings for at least another few months or so, my little champion is a genius”, she smiled while looking at me.
“Well what can I say, I was impatient and in a tight spot.”
“By the way, what was with my mother's reaction to that fairy I made?”
“Well now you see, the Fae race is one of the ancient races like elves and dragons, and well let’s just say the Fae race or specifically what you made, a pixie, is infamous for its jokes that end in the death, tragedy or just a general mess. Your parents probably thought that you were about to be harmed by your construct and you know the rest.”
“So Pixies are bad, ok got it, no more pixies.”
"Not just pixies, the Fae are a long lived race so they get bored very easily. So they started playing jokes on the other races. Unfortunately, not everyone has the Fae same sense of fun or ability to revive after dying, as such, they are guarded against heavily because of their problem causing nature when a Fae is seen in the area it sets the whole area on alert.”
“They can't be that bad can they”, I asked picturing evil Tinkerbell in my head.
“Oh let me put it this way, about 100 years ago in mortal time, a huge amount of gold from the treasury of the human kingdom of Arcadia valued at approximately 13.6 million was found magically glued to the streets of the capital. The humans spent the next few days cleaning up the mess that one Fae had caused losing much of the gold to opportunist criminals and labor costs for the removal. Needless to say, the reigning monarch did not find it funny, and after that and several other incidents the humans and many of the other races were wary of the Fae because of their mischief while some outright banned the faekin from entering their kingdom."
“Oh.”
Well, that's great, what I did was the equivalent of a Jackal standing over a baby's crib.
“Well at least it gave me a skill”, I said positively opening my status screen to show her.
“Yeah about that, I forgot to tell you. Only certain families like nobles, royalty, and great leaders have a status screen like you. Everyone else usually has to go use a magic tool to check their statuses and the fact that you have one is going to cause problems with you in your tribe.”
…
…
…
“What kind of problems and what do you mean tribe?”
“OK, so it's like this. Beastmen are a race that pride themselves on their strength, so each year those who have a status screen compete in a series of games to gain keys to a dungeon where they fight their way through a series of floors in order to claim the title of strongest in their tribe. You have status screen even though you were born of common descent, your tribe, the Forest Shadow tribe is the same. Only prominent people have status screens and they usually inherited them from their parents so it's not surprising, however, you who didn't have any parents with a status screen have acquired one. So, in short, you are going to be thrown into a political race for control of the tribe that includes painful contests, assassination attempts from rivals and life threatening dungeon diving.
…
…
…
“WHO THE FUCK IN THEIR RIGHT MIND DOES THIS!?”.
“You didn’t read a lot of fantasy novels did you?”
“And anyway it’s inevitable, mages are rare in this world so when you get tested in 12 years then your secret will be revealed and you will be shipped off to the capital where you can claim to be my priestess and do my works. Maybe you can even beat those old codgers who call themselves my worshipers into doing some actual worship.”
‘There she goes again, I half think she planned it’
“So besides worrying about my impending doom hows things going with the other gods”, I asked.
"Well, first a question, what do you define as good?”
“….what happened?”
“Well you see after you left Abihail decided to tell the gods that I had stolen their weapon and bound it to a mortal who no one but me had decided on, you see being a divine being, our perception of time is a lot slower than you mortals, so the Abihail knowing this told everyone that they should probably send some minions to keep an eye on you, which will take a long time to decide on. Of course like an idiot he also told everyone that since the weapon could not be unbound they should send people that could investigate whether or not this is a permanent effect, try to sway you over to their side with sweet words and gifts or just plain old see if they can take it by force. Which will take an even longer time, you would be surprised by the number of muscle brained gods there are.”
“Aw fuck, does this mean I should be expecting hostiles while I still am a baby?”
“Nope, those old fools will be arguing for awhile on who to send, even if they are using Aeonia’s time chamber.”
“At minimum, you could expect them in about 10 years of your mortal time.”
“…At least we have 10 years to prepare, even if I will be a ten year old.”
“Well I guess since you are almost guaranteed to fight I might as well explain the different fighting methods used in Ryalia, what you thought there was only magic and swords, oh no my friend. There are four different specific fighting methods used. The mind or as you refer to it magic, Chi or physical training to strengthen the body, Spirit circuits and Soul power. It can be explained in a simple way.”
She then traced her finger through the air and where her fingers traced a blue line followed. She drew a circle and wrote some words at the four cardinal points.
Magic
/ \
Soul Chi
\ /
Spirit
"Obviously a magician can beat a warrior, they just shoot a bolt of lightning or fire at them. A spirit user though is a person who is loved by spirits. Spirits you could say are the god's assistants in running the natural world, usually elves or other races that are close to nature have the innate ability to communicate their desires to the spirits. They can borrow the power of spirits and place that power into their equipment in effects like using wind spirits to fly, and fire to shoot flame waves at the enemy.
A martial artist utilizes Chi to power themselves up increasing their physical strength and battle prowess. They're very strict about form and are some of the best if not the best hand to hand combatants in the world. Almost all of the Chi users are located in the south west part of the continent where all the big sects and empires are so you won't find many in this part of the world. Spirit users are similar but instead of being the best at hand to hand combat they excel in creating the best weapons, tools, and armor in the world. Their works are highly coveted so most of the time you won't find any on the market and if you did it’s either a ripoff or priced in the tens of thousands for a low rank or priced at tens of millions of high rank pieces.
A Soul practitioner is someone who trains their souls and deals in demons and beasts. They can integrate with different beasts and train their souls to use as a source of power to fight with. A strong man with a sword will beat a man who has a spirit bow, likewise a spirit user who can control the environment they fight in will always win against a person who can turn into a beast, and a beast who can fly, hide or conceal their themselves with shadows will beat a magician who has to chant or construct spells to attack will be easily picked off with a sneak attack. Of course, there are exceptions such as quick chant or non-chant magic but those are rare, this is just general arrangements about how a fight between two fighters will usually turn out.
If a magician fights a magician they have a 50-50 chance of winning if they are both at the same level, the same with every other category. If a magician fights a soul practitioner they have less of a chance at winning usually, of course, if a master magician was to fight a beginner soul practitioner the outcome will be the magician because of the power difference"
"So the outcome of a fight between two soldiers using two different fighting methods can usually be predicted.", I asked.
"To some extent, however, that does not include you thanks to that armor I gave you.”
“What do you mean?”