After answering Delsa Edward continued.

“There are 2 types of spells as far as engraved spells are concerned, Talent spells and otherwise. Talent spells, as I told you earlier were automatic spells, which means they continue to do what the spell is supposed to do without any need for intervention. Usually a very limited amount of talent spells can be engraved on the soul, one per rank, due to the fact that the soul cannot handle the complexity of these spells functions, Another reason is that talent spells are engraved inside the soul, not on the boundary of it…

…

“what he gave us is not that hard” Delsa said while looking at the singular question paper that had been assigned to the 3 of us.

It was calculas…

“It is hard but not too much” Adiel said while scratching his head while looking at an integration question.

It is gonna take a lot of practice isn’t it?

I lamented as I also did the questions that had been assigned to us. While I had learned some maths for a novel I didn’t have much experience in integration which became the reason for my suffering.

We were sitting in the library, a huge room with tens of thousands of books, most of these books were densely filled with either maths or physics, the rest being the accounts of different paths to power taken by the previous generation of mages.

“I think Edward just assumed that just because you two are good with maths I would be too” I said while looking at the incomprehensible set of numbers in front of me, I didn’t find it bad or boring but realizing that I couldn’t understand quite a lot of these math questions still felt bad.

But with the help of Delsa and Adiel I managed to do all the questions.

By the time I was finished Delsa had picked up a book titled ‘Paths to power, an introduction to the way mages advance’

“So what are the paths to power?” Adiel asked

“It seems that the way someone advances as a mage depends on how they became a tier 1 mage, suppose when becoming a tier 1 mage someone changed their soulspace into a river, then their future path to advance would be to condense more and more rivers which eventually becomes a ocean when you become a tier 10 mage, at which point the path can be said to be complete, of course such paths lead to a dead end as they are recreations of lesser truth.

But I wonder why the phenomenon on which the soul space is based on matter?”

“They matter because mana, the energy, is a reflection of the world, and the closer to the truth of the world someone’s soulspace is, the stronger the phenomenon that the tier 1 advancement was based on is, the more mana they can carry and store, and the farther they will walk as mages.”A voice sounded from my behind, I turned around and saw Elen standing with a monocle on his eyes.

“How are you old man” He said as soon as my eyes met his.

“And old women”

“And middle aged man”

“what the fuck” Delsa cursed.

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“He can see the soul of someone I think” I said.

What a weird way to greet someone.

“How are you doing youngster”

Adiel looked at me, his eyes filled with a lot of questions.

“You people know about each other’s past lives right?”

“We do yes, Adiel, Delsa, this is the person who helped me meet Mr.Edward.”

“You guys done with your homework?” Elen asked.

“Yeah?”

“Then get lost, the library is going to be used for administration purposes for now.”

“Eh?”

“Haaa, just… nevermind, I am going to do it myself” He pointed a finger at us and we, along with our books started floating and were thrown out of the library.

Delsa looked at the library with a weird expression as she got up and started cleaning her clothes.

“Is that guy sane?” Adiel asked the question that had been roaming around in my mind.

“Considering that he could make us float it would be a safe bet to say he can hear us and I am pretty sure you don’t want him hearing us question his sanity.” I said while we started walking towards our home.

Adiel and Delsa continued to talk about what just happened while I seperated from them in order to go to the garden.

I went to a beautiful clearing in the garden full of trees and sat down. Taking out the page that had been given to us by Edward I started reading it.

While I was pretty excited about learning magic I realized that I was calmly following the steps that had been given to us by Edward. I didn’t even read any of the books in the library.

Perhaps knowing that I had become a part of something much grander than my desire to learn and control magic had lead to this outcome.

I started reading the page.

Enter the soul space,

After doing so start gathering mana, continue to do so for 3 hours. After discontinuing this a sizable amount of mana would have gathered in the soul space.

Imagine the mana gathering into the shape of a pointed object, preferably a needle but a stick would work just fine.

Then engrave the following pattern on the wall of the soul space using the object.

…

After that stab the needle in the center of the pattern and will the mana to disperse.

Doing so will result in the enlarging of the pattern.

The usage of the pattern:

Gather mana 2 hours everyday for 328 days. In case of individual use without the help of at least a tier-3 mage mana should be gathered for 1 whole year.

The successful following of the steps would result in a bodily condition identical to Mana storage talents.

Feels so much better than the system magic. It was like watching a archer shoot and then getting the chance to shoot yourself. Its obvious that the second one would feel better.

I entered my soulspace. I had entered the soulspace after they performed the ritual and except the absence of the system crystal it was the same.

I looked at the mana I had collected all night just to see if something would happen, before the ritual the system crystal would just absorb everything but after the ritual the mana just remained floating in grassland that my soul was.

While I could not control the mana I absorbed that day with the hope that It would work today I tried to will to contract…

Nothing

*Sigh*

I was doing something wrong but I could not tell what it was. I guess Edward will help us with this shit tomorrow.

I stood up, stretched and started walking towards the area I had found Eleven in. Maybe he knows what to do.

‘’Looking for me?” Eleven flew down after I had spent about 10 minutes trying to find him.

I told him about what happened and asked if he knew what I could do in order to control the mana I had gathered.

It was weird to be honest. I could control the mana that was outside my body to collect it but couldn’t control it after it became mine.

“I don’t have any clue, spirits like either have to gather mana manually like you do, which I stored in the body instead of the soul like for mages, or eat mana that has been collected by a mage, which saves up a lot of time while we are trying to become stronger. But only with contracted spirits is such a task possible. Getting back into the topic I don’t know because I never had any reason to aqcuire such knowledge.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“Wait for Edward to tell you what you are supposed to do. In the meanwhile we can of course do this.”

The owls eyes glowed a little and a little wooden chess board flew our way from the tree Eleven had flew down from.

“I guess I have no reason to say no”

And thus another session of a man being beaten without remorse by a owl in chess began.