A few years later, and John is now a ten year old boy with a head of light brown hair, his half-Japanese half-American features were no longer there, instead being replaced by a more European face and fair skin. His eyes were like his mother’s but with a bright orange hue around the edges of his irises.
The country John was born in has had a technological boom with carriages being able to be driven without the use of animals to pull it, electricity is much cleaner, computers were now being mass-produced in the capitol city of Oreana and other areas of Oriana, and the medieval-like weaponry they used were now replaced by more modern weaponry like guns, tanks, and missiles. However, the town where John and his family lived near wasn’t touched by Oreana’s technological achievements due to being in a largely remote area of the country.
One bright, sunny day, John wandered around the house. He went up to the second floor of the house and walked down the hallway, he then stumbled across a large wooden door at the end of the hall. He then opened it, revealing a small, empty room with only a grey colored chest up against the wall on the right side of the room, being illuminated by sunlight coming in through a small window in one of the wall. He then walked towards the chest, seeing that there was no lock on it, he opened it, revealing nothing but a small book with a thin layer of dust on it. The book looked like just any ordinary book, it didn’t have a title, the cover was a hard leather material that was dark green in color and slightly worn from use.
John blew the dust off of the book and opened it to the first page. As he read what was written on the book, he noticed that this book was an instruction book on magic spell casting, “Wow!” he exclaimed to himself. “I didn’t know there was magic in this world.” He continued to read, flipping page after page as he carefully studied the instructions on the first half of the book. The first chapter of the book told that every human has a type of “living space” or pool that flows through every living thing. The thing that thrives in this pool is called Mana or “Chiroka” (in the Zarosian tongue). A person can focus his mind, clearing it of thought and emotion which can cause their Mana to freely flow through his body. Once the mind has been cleared, the person can visualize what they want the Mana to create and the Mana will channel that visualization to wherever the user wants (mainly just the hands and feet), creating magic.
The only types of magic was of the elements of the earth. There were other types of magic which John found interesting like teleportation and healing, but teleportation was an old and forbidden magic that fell under the category of black magic known as “Xainith Arcanas”, and healing was a rare magic taught only by the healing priestesses in a temple located in the Basho Mountains in northern Xain, and was only briefly written about in one page in the book.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
A few days later, john was learning how to perform the spell casting techniques from the book. He set up a small table and put a candle on the center of it and then took a few steps away from it. “Alright,” he said as he took a firm standing position. “Let’s try out the first one: Force” He outstretched his right arm and lifted his hand. He then closed his eyes and envisioned the candle being pushed by force in his mind. He continued to focus as white colored lines (in the shape of veins) appeared on his hand, wrist and on his arm just below the elbow. He felt a numb feeling in his right arm as a small blast of air shot from his palm and pushed the candle into the wall that John was facing. “Yes! I did it, it actually worked!” John said, jumping in excitement. “This was easier than I thought, I can move on to the higher level spells in no time.”
Day after day, John kept practicing the spell casting techniques until he could do every single one without needing to close his eyes. He casted water spells, he went outside to practice earth spells, he practiced small fire spells in safe areas where he didn’t light anything on fire by accident, and even learned how to heal injuries with healing magic, although the healing was vary vaguely instructed by the book due to the type of magic’s rarity and complexity.
“Now that I have all the basics down, I can move on to the bigger ones.” he said to himself. He went back into the room and opened the small window. “Alright, since I’m inside, I think I should use the force spell just to be safe.” He took a firm stance and faced the widow, with his right arm outstretched; he focused his mind until feeling a tingling sensation in his arm, he then opened his eyes and from the palm of his hand, a huge blast of air shot from his hand with the force of a bullet train, the shock wave caused by the spell made the house shake like it was an earthquake, the sounds of dishes and furniture rattling could be heard from outside.
John was shocked and frozen in amazement. His parents quickly ran upstairs to see what had just happened, “What happened, I could feel the house shaking.” his father said.
“What happened here?” his mother asked.
Knowing that he could no longer keep practicing magic as a secret from his parents, he told them about the book and that he was practicing the techniques from it. His mother was thrilled that her son was able to use magic at such a young age, “I didn’t think you could be capable of being a magic user, but here you are, shaking the house.” she said excitedly.
John’s father however was not too pleased with this, “I don’t think he should learn this magic stuff. It’s too dangerous and besides, magic isn’t used as widely as it was when we were young. John should learn something more practical like how to swing a sword or cut down a tree. He’s a boy, and he needs to do some boy things.”
“Since when did magic become only a girl thing? I remember when we were young, we had a friend who was a magic user and who just so happened to be male. Let John practice his magic, you can teach him swords and ‘boy stuff’ if you want but don’t tell him not to practice something that he has potential for.”
The two argued a bit about whether John should learn magic or be a swordsman, but after a while, they reached a conclusion that John can learn both.