Chapter 8
“Thanks!” Sagil flexed his right arm and pinched at the skin in admiration. “Healing magic is pretty cool, huh?”
Sagil was thankful for his healthy arm but his smile was forced. Moments ago, it was as wide as a ravine but it quickly changed when he tried a few incantations he had learnt from his mother. He had gotten the same result as before. He gritted his teeth under his smile as he felt strength flow through him. It was similar to the blood rush casting magic gave him; except he couldn’t cast anything. He didn’t know whether it was his mana still couldn’t react with this world, or whether it was because his basic magic fundamentals weren’t for this world.
“Heheh, I guess.” The girl lifted her lips up and giggled, her eyes lifeless. “S-Sorry, it just took a lot out of me but…” her raspy voice trailed off as she fumbled around for her notebook. She eventually found it and started scribbling impatiently, as if her knowledge would be lost if she hesitated for even a second longer.
“I…” Sagil gulped. He wasn’t sure if he should risk his possible ‘otherworlder’ identity, but he needed to grasp what was happening with his body. “I… can’t get any incan-ahem-magic to work but…
“Huh?” She shot him a glance without stopping her notes, despite her hands trembling with excitement, surprise, disbelief and confusion. “Wh-what are you talking about? It was just for a split second but when I healed you were bursting with mana. I have never, well I guess I have… I have rarely seen that much mana flow through someone’s body. It isn’t as potent now but the residue is still strong, just not as overwhelming.”
“Uh, oh?” Sagil sat back in his chair. I wasn’t known for that at home… Misaka had a lot more mana potency than me… she took a lot more after mother… he curled his lip as unwanted memories flooded his mind. I guess.
A few minutes passed as the two were stuck in deep thought. Nothing but the etching of ink onto paper and light snoring from the ranger filled that silence; the rangers in the hall spoke with hushed voices as they left the barracks.
Thud
The girl slammed her pen into the table and stretched her hands as she yawned.
“Mmmph. Sorry for being a bit rude, I just needed to get my thoughts and stuff onto paper.”
“It’s okay. I’ve been pondering myself as well. I just can’t wrap my head around this magic though. My I-”
“Um, this might be even ruder but, may I say it?” she asked with a tilt of her head.
“Uh, sure,” he shrugged. Couldn’t be worse than anything he heard back in Airswell.
“Uhhh, how do I put this…” she paused in thought, desperately searching for a light way to word her observations before she sighed. “Um, you look a bit clueless when it comes to magic.”
“Eh?”
“I-I-I mean you look like you would have good sword skills and all but it doesn’t seem like you have a grasp on what mana is never mind a grasp on your own mana. B-but that d-doesn’t mean your dumb or anything, you probably just grew up with a simple life and didn’t need to manifest your mana whether to strengthen your sword skills or even light a dark room. I-If anything that probably means you are really s-strong and well versed with the sword and maybe you j-just never needed a helping hand where you lived. Or m-maybe you don’t come from any of the six continents. We don’t know of any others but apparently, the oceans are v-vast according to the great traveller…” She belatedly gasped for breath as she spewed words out of her quivering mouth. She took one look at her victim’s red eyes, averted her gaze with the turn of her head and bowed low to the ground. “S-Sorry!”
“R-Right…” Sagil grimaced and scratched his head. Her words didn’t hurt him but he was… taken aback, to say the least. She technically wasn’t fully wrong, after all, and he couldn’t tell her why she wasn’t fully right, so he sighed. “I guess… you’re not wrong. But all I can say is that I would like to learn.
“O-oh!? Uh, you-uh, um.” She took a deep breath to compose herself and sat straight in her chair. She smiled brightly and said with great enthusiasm, “would you like me to teach you?”
“Uh.” Sagil contemplated. He still wasn’t fully sure if he was in a new world or not but he knew the magic and way things worked just had to be different. They were definitely different. Whether it was just that everything was or it was an additional system, an additional way of life, he didn’t know. However, the little magic he knew – his mother’s incantations – fell upon death ears in this environment. And, his mana had also failed to interact with it, until after he had cut himself. All he knew was wherever he was, was interlinked with where had come from. The sword might have been his saving grace but his mana was now ‘activated’. It made him feel alive, stronger, and excited. More than magic or swordplay had ever done for him in the last couple of years. He let a smile slip and stared into her grey eyes. “Please do.”
He wanted to learn. He didn’t force himself to just get by, earn money, and keep himself alive. He was truly excited to learn.
The girl’s smile widened and revealed her white teeth, her pale face tinged red. She opened her mouth when the wooden door was barged open.
“Oi, you lot done now?” Red marched into the room, glancing between the excited new pupil and master, and the unconscious ranger in the corner. “Bloody hell, Barry’s out cold, huh? What are you two doing then?”
“Ah, we were just discussing some things about magic, swords, and mana. He doesn’t actually know much about anything but swordplay, and even that is lacking because he can’t manifest aura. Well, he doesn’t actually know…what that is.”
The girl trailed off her excited words as she glanced between Red and the agape Sagil.
“S-s-sorry!” She blurted out, bowing again in her seat, her face red with embarrassment.
The ranger buckled over in laughter, his face creasing as his lips pushed back into his skin.
“Always so blunt, Silver.” Red shook his head as his chuckles faded. “Never change.”
Somehow her face grew to an even brighter Red as she threw it into her arms and squirmed in her seat.
“Well, if you want to learn about magic you’ll have to wait.”
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“Huh?” Sagil held a puzzled expression.
“Unless you want to help Silver here clean her mess up?” A cheeky grin grew on Red as he spatted the girl on the shoulder.
“Um-”
“Ahhh!” Sagil was cut off instantly as the girl jumped off her seat. “Great idea! Come on, we can clean up with magic and I can teach you some basics!”
The two men watched the girl run into the hall; Red looked at Sagil with a smirk. Sagil looked at Red with his mouth hung open.
“Gotta start somewhere, kid.” Red chuckled and walked over to the ranger barry, asleep in the corner.
Sagil stared blankly at the floorboards below and rubbed the sides of his face.
“Mmmmph.”
He was excited to learn magic but he really didn’t want to clean up to do that.
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“Now, before we begin, we’ll need to go over the basics. The girl stood atop water-logged planks and motioned with her hands. “And I mean the very basics. You got that uh…” She titled her head for a second, “Sagilia?”
“Um, Sagil.” The man said, eager to learn despite his stiff expression. “Your name’s Silver, right?”
The girl brushed her dangling hair behind her ear and looked up for a second. “I guess so. Well, it’s Silvia but everyone here calls me Silver.”
“I see.”
“Heh, anyways,” Silvia’s smile trembled as she tried moving past her student’s plain expression. “First of all magic can be broadly classified into three categories. “Attack Magic which attacks a target of sorts, like what I did to flood this hall,” she giggled as she began explaining, her face tinging red. “Healing Magic which heals a target, the Magic I used on you. And Summoning Magic which…calls out something.”
“Right,” Sagil nodded, not too fazed by the similar classifications of magic he had been taught by his mother.
“Now, I said all magic can be broadly classified into those categories. One example I can give of that has to do with summoning magic. I mentioned before that only the Knowledge God can perform communication enchantments, right? And that your sword was surprisingly similar to a communication enchantment, right?”
“I guess…” he mumbled, with no idea who this God was.
“Well, it’s a type of summoning magic. I think it’s because communication magic summons their target’s mind, or something like that, so the caster can speak directly to them. The enchantment is basically that magic coated over an object that allows certain people to use that spell without knowing how to.”
“Interesting. And only one person can enchant that?” Sagil asked as he stroked his chin.
“Uh, yeah…” Silvia’s mouth wobbled and she scratched her silver hair. “You really don’t know the knowledge God?”
“Um…” Sagil averted his gaze and scratched his cheek with a small laugh. “Haha, I guess not.”
“Well, you’ll learn about the seven powers as you travel and continue learning about everything mana-related. I guess. I bring them up because I think your sword was coated with some sort of summoning magic similar to communication magic.”
“Huh…” Sagil let out, glancing at his black sword sheathed at his waist. So, it called out to my mana possibly?
“Yeah…not typical summoning magic to say the least. The classifications are really broad so they are obviously divided. Like attack Magic is divided into the four simplest elements – Fire, water, wind and earth. There are a lot of those types of spells but communication magic only has one, that only a few Imperial-class mages know how to use.
“I-Imperial cla-”
“So, the that’s the three types. Should be easy to understand.” She talked over him, eager to fasten the learning. “Secondly, to use magic, you must have mana. Or, as long as you have mana, you can use magic. There are two ways of using said mana. You can use the mana within your body, or draw out mana from something that contains mana. Although…” Silvia trailed off as she considered the other complications, belatedly deciding to keep it simple after already giving an example of rare magic.
I guess that’s like using my blood mana and then using magic crystals. Although, my own mana regenerates with the mana in the air whereas the crystals gave me a stable mana source that wouldn’t be regenerated unless purposefully charged.
“Ahem,” she coughed, as if she wasn’t about to complicate things, and continued with her explanation. “A long time ago, people only used their mana to use magic but as generations passed and magic was researched into, the difficulty of using it spiked along with the mana required to use it. This probably what led to the to the magicians of the past ending up drawing out mana from the environment, so they could catch up and perform more difficult magic.”
“Uh…” Sagil let out as pulled at his face. “Do you think I can borrow a notebook or something? He was excited at learning about this magic but it had quickly been drilled into him why he had hated school in the first place. This subject might have actually been interesting but it doesn’t change the fact there was a lot to process.
“Sure!” Silvia gave a bright smile as she pulled a notebook from her robe which looked a lot cleaner than the one she had previously been scribbling in.
“Thanks,” Sagil muttered as she handed him the notebook and a-
“Ah, s-sorry!” She clasped her hands together. “I used up my ink and don’t have anything you can write with.”
Sagil sighed and leaned against the bar counter behind him. “Go on then.”
“…” Silvia didn’t continue. She twiddled with her fingers and rubbed her boots on the floorboards. Her lips scrunched as she thought about something. “Mmmmph!”
“Huh?”
“I’m sorry. This is so boring. It’s just most people know how it all works and I’ve only been teaching Selena and Ban, both of which had already been reading some books on the topic…!” Her body jerked up in an instant as she realised, she was untalented her new student was. “Sorry!”
How many times is she going to insult me and claim she’s sorry, Sagil sighed and shook his head, He wasn’t hurt but it was really starting to annoy him that she said sorry every five minutes. He believed if you were going to say something then you had to stand by what you say. “It’s fine. I guess. Just get to the point.”
“Y-yes,” she shook off her tension. “I was thinking I’m not really teaching you anything really useful. You’ll pick up the history on it as you learn. I think it might be best if we just throw you in there.”
“O-okay?”
“W-Well, the two ways those magicians thought of drawing out the mana in the environment were Incantations and Magic Arrays. We don’t use Magic Arrays much now, mostly just some demon tribes, but apart from the odd circumstance incantations are the way to go. And well,” Silvia took a deep breath and turned away from Sagil. “You’ve already seen a bit of my magic but try to really watch what I’m doing and what happens to the environment. Try to focus on how my mana reacts to my words and how it reacts with the mana in the environment etcetera.
“Got it.” Sagil rushed to the side of the room, eager to see Silvia cast magic completely different to what he had been taught back home.
She took another deep breath and raised both of her arms in the air. Her hands swivelled around and her fingers gripped the air, pointing to the damp floor.
“Bestow the force of wind on the place thee demandest,” her right hand started pulsating with mana. Her skin tinted white as the mana coursed through. “And let thine flow here,” the almost see-through white mana flowed from her skin and gushed the air around her hands away. It didn’t flow further though as she clenched her fist shit. She took another deep breath and chanted another line. “Bestow the warmth of fire on the place thee desires,” her left hand pulsated with mana but her skin burned a slight orange as fire gushed through her hand. “And let thine dance here!” The fiery mana seeped from her pores and danced in her palm, failing to reach the damp wood.
“Woah,” Sagil could only exclaim, the sight much more impressive than the magic he had seen from people like Paul. Although it was nothing on the scale of his mother or Cerrin, he had never seen anything like how the mana poured from her body.
She wasn’t done yet. She brought her hands together and took one last deep breath.
“I pray thy elements work together, in return for divine sacrifice, and thine hot wind blows here, FLAME WIND!”