Felix sat at the table and focused on the world around him with his eyes closed. He reached out and tried to feel the ambient mana in the world, if there was any. Felix couldn’t feel anything except cold heat all around him. It was comforting, like a hug. He opened his eyes and saw… nothing. Well, nothing special that is, “Wait, what is that?” Felix reached out and touched something in front of his body. Or he tried to. His hand went right through it. Then Felix willed it to come to him.

It came to him and he felt… better. Felix didn’t know how to describe it. He just felt more whole. Felix tried a one symbol Finger Light and his finger shone vibrant white. As his mana started to drain he could feel energy leaving his body. Not by much, he must have a large mana storage.

“Hmmm… the stuff that is floating in the air. That’s ambient mana then? I wonder what this world’s magic system was…”, Felix pondered. “Well, let’s see how much I can get then.”

Felix willed the other coagulations of mana he could see to come to him; And come they did. So much so that he felt like a dam had been opened. His body just kept absorbing more and more mana. When was his storage going to be full? Was he going to drain it dry? There was so much ambient mana in this world, and Felix’s mana storage much be huge.

Suddenly, Felix felt the mana coalescing behind his eyes. Then the burning started. His eyes felt like they were going to go up in flames any second. Felix suppressed a scream as the pain racked his eye sockets.

Felix fell to the floor and curled up, thankfully the carpet here was thick. Even through all the pain, he didn’t want his mother coming up here and checking on him.

Time passed and the pain receded. When Felix could finally open his eyes again, everything was brighter, clearer, just overall crisper. Felix went over to one of the silver goblets that were decorations throughout the room and looked at his eyes. He couldn’t remember what color his eyes were before, but now they were amethyst colored. And another strange thing happened, his hair had turned a deep crimson red. Felix swore that it was a brown before this. Felix hadn’t seen a mirror, but a year without a haircut made one have long hair.

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The other, and most important, thing that Felix noticed was that he understood mana now. He could feel the ebb and flow of it throughout things and what it could do; what its potential could be. It wasn’t as though every particle of mana had an affinity it wanted to be, it was more that they all could become anything given enough convincing, almost like it was alive and waiting to be convinced.

Felix found the most stubborn of particles floating in the air and convinced them to become a fingertip flame. Almost instantly it heeded his call and became flame. The feeling Felix was getting from that particle was that he was the master and what he said goes, no matter what.

Hours went by and Felix tried one symbol, two symbol, all the way up to twelve symbol spells. Everything was easy. Felix found the reason why symbol magic was so hard in his old world. You needed a connecting line for the mana to flow through. Once all twelve symbols were connected the spell became more powerful and the mana cost substantially reduced.

Felix tried to create spells and found that easy as well. Everything was easy. He just willed it and it happened. Felix was overjoyed, nothing had ever been this easy for him, especially when it concerned mana.

Felix’s mana storage, his mana pool, was shrinking. It wasn’t that it was draining from usage, it was refilling fine in this world filled with mana, it was shrinking. It shrank until it became that of what he would suspect a “normal” human child would possess.

Maybe this was a side effect of his ability to understand the mana; Felix truly didn’t know. Felix cast one last spell as his mana pool stabilized and told the mana to hide all books on magic from those who couldn’t understand. His mana pool drained dry in an instant and his body got very weak, but a ripple was sent out as far as his eyes could see.

The initial weakness didn’t last long too long, but Felix wasn’t sure what exactly he had done. He really needed to research more what he could do with mana in this world.

Felix walked to the door and opened it just in time to hear his mother calling that dinner was prepared.

“What fortuitous timing.”, Felix mused to himself.

A final thought came to Felix’s mind as he walked to the dining hall, he wondered what it would be like if magic was released to the world, or even if it was. The mana around him responded excitedly and, without consent from him, the world changed in that moment.

“Alright something to remember, intent may, or does, cause initiation of magic. I’ll have to figure that out.”, Felix said to himself.