Unable to find sleep, Glenn jumped out of bed before summoning his suit of clothes. He lightly stepped out of the tent, bathing in the moonlight the two celestial orbs provided. It was a cloudless night. Glenn had never truly taken the time to think about how Mana worked. Now was as good of a time as any.
The young man slipped his hands in his pocket, walking around the almost finished village. Due to the lack of builders and motivation, most of the facilities weren't done being built, but the most important was. Glenn looked at the building in front of him with a lost look. Made of smoothed-out stone bricks, the brewery stood as Palancar's primary landmark, rivaling with the church of Onnea. It was quite a huge facility while keeping a robust look to itself. The symbol of a coin with the letter "M" in it had been engraved on every wall as if it wasn't evident enough already that the building was Maron's.
Nonetheless, Glenn couldn't care less about the brewery's impressive architecture, his thoughts entirely concentrated on this new theory of his.
"Gather, process, amplify...Shit, how am I supposed to interpret that...?" The young man muttered through his teeth as he scratched the back of his head. He looked at his left hand hopefully, a grinning mouth appearing in his palm. Glenn forced a smile, before sighing loudly. If Diamanes wanted to help him, he would have done so long ago.
"So... I need to figure that thing on my own. Yeah, it wouldn't be any fun at all if there was just a guide on how to do this crap..." Glenn shook his head dejectedly. Lamenting on himself wouldn't help whatsoever, but he still couldn't help but complain.
Thoughtlessly, he boosted his legs with Mana and jumped on the roof of a nearby unfinished house, sitting on the ledge of a thick wooden beam. He rested his chin on his fist, before blinking.
"Wait, I just used Mana thoughtlessly? And this wasn't exactly a prepared spell like my specialized stuff that I can do with the Dragon School, that's...that's like when I was a Third Circle!" He almost exclaimed, before muffling himself to not wake everyone. Diamanes sneered.
"There's a saying in your world...a thing about bicycles, I think," The entity began, his tone slightly ironical. Glenn raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah, once you know how to ride a bike, you never forget...but that's no bike I'm riding, it's mystical, magical stuff. That's not something logical or something that your body learns..." The young man protested, trailing off at the end.
"...You're saying this with so much confidence, I can't help but believe you!" Diamanes mocked, sinking into his host's palm, disappearing entirely. Glenn rubbed the back of his head, not so sure anymore.
'It's...hard to admit, but yeah, I don't know that much about Mana. When I cast a spell, it's fueled by the Mana from within my Mana Heart, but what is the conductor, the "pipe" that takes from the source, the Mana Heart, and brings it all the way to fuel the spell? Would it be my body? Maybe Mana does need support to flow from one point to another.'
Glenn's features creased as he fell deeper into his thoughts.
'Maybe I wasn't too wrong with my car metaphor. Maybe the Mana Heart is indeed the tank containing the fuel, only the shape of the tank and the type of fuel changes everything for the final products. My Mana is entirely different from Redan, Giselle, or anyone else. That means, even if it's working similarly, it's still very different.'
The young man swung his legs, summoning the identification knife from the Cleaner's Workshop and fiddling with it. The dark blade gleamed in the night, the rays of moonlight shining a strange hue over Glenn's face.
'Then, would my body be the actual "pipes", while my mind is the one piloting the spells? Then, what use are the Circles? They can't only give you access to higher-ranked spells and a bigger Mana pool, which wouldn't make sense when linked with their meanings. Gather, process, amplify...' The young man abruptly stopped the blade that had been spinning on his fingers since earlier, the gears of his mind spinning increasingly faster as he felt getting closer to the truth.
'...Why do we even need Circles to use Mana? Aura practitioners don't need that kind of shit, do they? It's just body-reinforcing, using every fiber of one's being as a container for Aura. But then, Aura remains quite straightforward: it makes you physically stronger and gives you access to a specific kind of destructive energy. You can't create with Aura. Maybe that's why, for Mana, you need Circles to...' Glenn's eyes lit up.
'...to fucking gather, process, and amplify! Shit, this is all making sense now!'
Glenn suddenly stood on the wooden beam, walking on it like a true acrobat, only he was so lost in thoughts he didn't realize it consciously.
"So, that would mean that originally, the human body has a hard time comprehending Mana, since it's a creative energy that needs to be processed at some point. The gathering part is pretty obvious, while the processing part allows the transformation from Mana to Fire. Then, would the amplifying option be the one that allows one to make Fire into Firebolt? Then, the more Circles you have, the better the processing power of one's Mana Heart, the better the process, the better the spells, etc, etc..."
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
The young man lightly tapped his fist in his opened palm, grinning widely.
"The higher Circles are more difficult to obtain, but that also means they're much better than the previous ones. It would be a kind of smooth evolution, with the Circles of the Initiate stage all coming together to create the Fourth Circle of the Magi stage, and so on to the Ruler stage, except that the process requires far more complex operations, making things extremely difficult for those who bang their heads against the walls in the hope of a breakthrough! Hah!"
Glenn laughed loudly, feeling a weight coming off his chest. It always felt so good to just understand things. Understanding was the first step toward mastery, after all. The young man suddenly froze and rubbed his chin.
"...But then, why would that stop at the Ruler stage? Technically, there are also the beginner, advanced, and true Circles even at this high of a level. That would mean, if they all came together, a stage above even that could be reached...?" The young man whispered, before staring at the sky in wonder. Would the gods be people that climbed the literal existence ladder created with the presence of Mana, becoming so powerful they became able to rule the world?
A sharp, impressed hiss suddenly startled Glenn. He looked down at his left hand in annoyance, finding a wide-open mouth gleaming with all its pearly white teeth smiling into it.
"...And that's only now that you've finally linked. This is surprising how fast you can come to conclusions when you're using your brain for something else than fighting and being an idiot," The entity half-praised and mocked. The young man smacked his lips, unable to retort to it. It was true that it wasn't that hard of a conjecture to make, but it was also true that he had never cared much for it before.
'I really should work on trying to use my brain cells a little more. It's even more unnerving to just hear "Hey, you're pretty smart! Too bad you're too lazy to even use that intelligence." Glenn passed his tongue over his teeth, trying his best to ignore the mocking grin sitting in his left palm.
"...I never said you were smart, though,"
"So, now that I have my neat theory about how the hell Mana works, how should I proceed to make my Circles create a new one?" Glenn asked aloud, ignoring Diamanes' last comment. He spun on himself, his dark hair fluttering slightly.
'Let's go back to the basics. I received my First Circle by the bias of the Magic Bureau, with the help of that machine, the...uh, whatever-its-name-was. Then, I opened my Second Circle by training relentlessly under Redan, throwing spells one after the other, again and again and again. Would the key then be to just...throw spells all the time? That sounds relentless, and a little too simple to not get abused by people,' The young man whispered a word and a soft ball of light appeared in his hand, spinning slowly. Diamanes coughed to attract Glenn's attention.
"I'll help on that side since you pretty much figured all of the rest. Throwing your spells blindly until you're entirely out of energy is indeed...one way to increase your rank," The entity admitted. Glenn grinned, clapping his hands together and making the light ball disappear.
"So I guess that means I've got my path all set, don't I? He exclaimed excitedly, before looking back at the mouth in his palm. If Diamanes could have frowned, he certainly would have.
"Sit back down and shut up, you impatient fool. I'm not finished," The entity ordered. The young man calmly obeyed, listening intently.
"This is the fastest method to reach higher Circles. That, and receive someone else's Mana to boost yours. Both of these examples are the worst possible way you could go about it," Diamanes explained. Glenn rubbed his chin, trying to understand why.
"...Why?"
"Imagine being a balloon. If you blow into it little by little, you can make it extremely big, the rubber stretching almost impossibly. But what happens if you just put a leaf blower in the balloon at full force?"
Glenn gasped in acknowledgment.
"The balloon is blown away," The young man nodded to himself, before smiling, "...Pun intended."
Diamanes grumbled.
"...I'll just ignore that. Mana is the same, and you can't force it too quickly or it's going to cause you harm. You'll gather power very quickly, but eventually, your Mana Heart won't be able to bear the pressure. In the best case scenario, your growth will be locked forever, in the worst..." The entity sneered, "...You'll just, well, die."
"I'm not too keen to end up in such a way..."
"Yeah, no shit. The other situation, where someone puts Mana in you—no, don't think of something weird—damn it... Whatever, another person's Mana is poison to you. It'll allow you to push for the next Circle, but you'll just die a slow, excruciatingly painful death. Not great, I can assure you," The entity sneered. Glenn gulped and nodded quickly.
"Alright, no shortcut then. Then, what should I do?" The young man asked. Diamanes suddenly grew a wide smile and laughed mockingly.
"That's for you to find out, hehe," The mouth disappeared again, leaving Glenn with some answers to his questions, but less than what he truly needed. A whistle suddenly echoed in the night as something flew at Glenn's head, narrowly missing him after he hurriedly ducked.
"HEY!! GO WORK IF YOU CAN'T SLEEP, MORON, BUT DON'T FUCKING SPEAK IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT!!" A nightgown-dressed Maron suddenly exclaimed, his face red with anger and his eyes bloodshot, as they have ever since he lost his investment. Glenn had thought the merchant would eventually feel better, but it seemed like he couldn't be more wrong.
"Is it me or did he lose even more hair...?"
"WHAT! HOW DARE YOU—T...THAT'S BECAUSE I LOSE A STRAND FOR EVERY COPPER I SPENT ON THIS DAMNED TOWN!!" Maron yelled in such a manner for another minute, before getting tired of Glenn's lack of reaction and going back to bed. Of course, everyone had heard the banter, but of course, everyone was already used to it by now and fell back asleep promptly.
The young man suddenly realized that he had somehow arrived at the top of the brewery at some point, the house he was previously perched on the other side of the street. He tried to rack his brain a little more, but his body signaled him with a powerful yawn that it was indeed time to go to bed. Glenn promptly obliged and jumped down from the brewery, going back into his tent.
"I'm going to sleep so damn well..." He muttered, getting rid of his clothes and jumping into bed. Diamanes suddenly gasped inside the young man's mind. The latter groaned.
'The hell is wrong with you?'
'You idiot! I'm sure you jinxed it!' Diamanes spat, absolutely horrified. Glenn blinked, before pulling the sheet over his head. Whatever nonsense Diamanes had for him, it wasn't worth the effort.
Hopefully, he'll be able to receive another enlightenment tomorrow.
Because being a Second Circle was seriously getting on his nerves.