Today is my sixth birthday. Life hasn’t changed much; the only change is my mana. My growth started to slow down after reaching 300 mana points, and I now have a total of 540 mana. Enough to make 540 fist sized balls of water.
I have been thinking of ways of making the absorption a passive thing instead of me having to manually absorb the mana, and while I have come up with some theories on how to do it, I have yet to implement them.
The risk of testing something new has both scared me and intrigued me. I’m scared because there is always a chance of me accidently killing myself. But my curiosity and fascination with magic has only increased and the amount of mana I can control allows me to try new things.
I have been thinking, maybe I could make a breathing technique that would help me absorb the ambient mana particles. By infusing my lungs and throat with mana, and making it have the suction force that I make when I collect the ambient mana while I meditate.
I quickly laid down on my bed and closed my eyes. This would take a lot of mana and my full concentration, as such, it would be better to be in a position where I wouldn’t have to worry about falling down due to mana deprivation.
I slowly started to fill my throat and lungs with my mana, and when there was a sufficient amount, I changed the properties of the mana. What I had learned of recent is that controlling mana is similar to coding. You write commands and it follows, just like when you code on a computer.
It wasn’t totally the same though, when coding with mana, it used your intent and it worked around that, and if it made enough sense, it would work. If your intent wasn’t realistic, then your magic command simply wouldn’t work.
If I for example tried to make my mana open up a portal to earth, it wouldn’t work, reason is because I would need the exact coordinates, know how to bend space etc. The only times you didn’t need to really understand it was when casting simple spells such as water, fire, electricity, and other basic elemental spells.
Because all magic needs mana in order to work, I had to make it so that my breathing technique would use the mana I absorbed as a fuel rather than my own supply, because if I used my own supply, I would end up dying to due breathing, which sounded horrifying.
I took a deep breath and continued my intent, I gave commands to the mana, controlling it to stick to my throat and lungs, I then connected mana threads from my lungs towards my mana heart. These threads would both transfer the mana that I absorbed towards my heart and send the mana from my heart towards the spell, making a cycle that would give and take.
In order for this to work though, I needed to absorb more than I spent on maintaining it, so I increased the vacuum my breathing would make, in order to do this, I had to make a vacuum spell using a wind spell, but because that would probably kill me, I had to make it so that it only effected mana rather than normal air. It was a pain, but it had to be done.
After hours of work, I was finally done. After connecting the last couple threads and issuing a command for the spell to activate, it worked. As I inhaled, I could feel the ambient mana draw towards my mouth, go down my throat, into my lungs where only the pure mana particles went through the mana threads connected to my mana heart. Those particles then turned into my own, one third of those particles went back towards the threads connected to my lungs, fueling the spell.
The mana particles that were elemental in nature went back out through my mouth when I exhaled.
It had worked. I had made my own breathing technique, my own spell! Excitement filled me. While I only got two thirds of the mana I absorbed as one third of it had to fuel my spell, I didn’t mind. It was a passive technique that would increase my mana capacity.
After sitting up from my bed I looked out the window, the sun was now coming up, I had stayed up the whole night working on this. After stretching a little and grabbing something to eat, I went back to bed.
Time for sleep.
“Ynval its time for breakfast!” I hear my mother yell from downstairs. I slowly get out of bed and stretch. After putting on some clothes I examine my mana heart. My mana capacity during my sleep has increased by 2.5 points. The breathing technique was truly great. Just in one night I had earned a whole two and a half fist sized balls of water spells!!
“Good morning mother.” I arrive downstairs and sit down at the table, father had already left for work, so it was only me and my mother left at home.
After all these years I have finally gotten over the fact that I’m mentally older than my mother. As it was nothing I could change, I just decided to embrace it. My mother hasn’t really changed much since my birth. She still looked as youthful and beautiful as always.
I have always been curious about healing magic, the only reason I have yet to learn it is because I have never really been hurt, nor seen anyone who is hurt, so today I’ve finally decided to ask my mother if she could teach me.
“Hey mother, I have a question.” My mother turns around and looks at me, my eyes meet hers “Yes dear?” She answers with a smile. I look down towards my food, was it worth asking? What if she gets angry? I quickly throw these thoughts away, there’s no way she’d be angry.
“C-could you teach me healing magic?” I whisper. There is no response, so I glance up towards my mother and I see her looking at me while smiling. “Dear, I would love to, but you will have to wait until you’re ten.”
Confused, I ask, “Why not now? Why do I need to wait until I’m ten?” She hesitates for a moment before answering with a sigh. “Because magic is dangerous to use before you turn ten.”
Ah, turns out that I have been doing something dangerous… Whoopsies?
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…
Tenth birthday!
It’s only now that it has hit me… I miss my grandchildren. I might have died happy, but I do have regrets and grudges I never got to fix.
I think, at first, I started training magic and such in order to stop thinking about the past. But its about time I embrace the fact that I will never see my descendants again, I will never be able to visit my wife’s grave again and I will never see my grandchildren grow up.
As my tears fell, and I wallowed in despair, I failed to notice my mother hugging me and my father looking worried. I failed to notice my mother starting to cry out of worry. But I just wept and wept until I fell asleep in my mother’s embrace.
…
And that’s how my tenth birthday came and went. My parents didn’t question me when I woke up, but I knew they were worried and were holding themselves back from asking what happened.
While magic was indeed something I had started training as a way to cope, I have now started to love it, the way magic feels, what magic can do, and just seeing my strength increase gives me joy. In my past life I had never been a strong person. But in this life, I will strive to become the strongest.
I’m sure most men, whether it be on earth or this planet, has at least once in their life dreamed of becoming the strongest man in the world. While most give it up as a childish dream, something I did in my past life, I will never give up.
Magic has infinite potential; I am sure that I can reach new heights of which have never been seen before. It will be a long journey, but I am sure I will succeed.
Today will be the day I tell my parents that I have been practicing magic for years. While I am worried that they will tell me to stop, I am not one for secrets between family. After asking my parents to gather at the table I started to explain my discovery of the arcane arts.
I explained how I learned about magic through the books, about when I cast my first spell, I told them everything except my past life. While I don’t intend on holding any secrets, I decided it would be for the best not to explain that I remember my past life.
…
“So, you’re telling me that you have been practicing magic since you were four years old? That’s absurd! Magic is not something someone so young can handle!” My father’s tone was filled with both anger and worry. But I could not blame him, someone so young would 9/10 times die due to mana deprivation.
I looked towards my mother. Her face indicated that she felt complicated about the situation. In the end she sighed and smiled. “I’m glad you’re okay son.” Her voice was uneasy, but it was also filled with love. I really was blessed.
After contemplating for a bit, I decided to show them my capabilities, after grabbing their hands and asking them to follow me outside, I showed them the spells I could use, and they both looked flabbergasted. I am not quite sure if its because of my incantation less magic or that I could use as much magic as I was using.
By this point my mana capacity has hit a point where my growth stopped, well, its more accurate to say that it no longer increased, I now had about 4582 mana points and no matter what I do, I cannot increase it.
But I have yet to give up. I am sure there are probably thousands upon thousands of different ways to increase it. My knowledge is minimal when it comes to mana, I have only read one book about it after all.
After displaying my capabilities my parents, after a long silence, both exclaimed their happiness. They told me that they will be sending me off to the Rodina Tower. Apparently its one of the best academies for mages, and it’s located in Rodina, the capital of Roxia.
A couple days later, they told me that I would start in four months.
…
After a tearful goodbye, I sat inside a carriage that, instead of using horses, used lizards that looked like huge geckos, after asking the rider what their species was called, she told me that they were called Gels. How peculiar.
The ride would apparently take twelve days. But I didn’t mind, I would get to see new sceneries, and this would also be the first time in my life that I left this small village of mine. Turns out that I lived in the middle of nowhere. The village I lived in was called Novack, and it was located about 350km away from the capital. So, I truly lived in the middle of nowhere.
I was truly looking forward to this journey of mine.
…
Five days into my journey to the capital, we were attacked by bandits, but as quickly as it happened, the driver of the carriage quickly and brutally killed all of them using a peculiar spell. The spell she cast took less than a second to cast and the result was a lightning spell that penetrated the heads of all the bandits in an instant.
The bandit’s faces didn’t even have time to change, they all still wore ferocious expressions, even as they collapsed to the ground and their heads started leaking blood and pieces of their brains, their expressions never changed.
While I was both stunned and amazed because of the spell, I also felt sick to my stomach. Their lives had been snuffed out in an instant. This wasn’t a fight; this was a massacre.
It took me four days to stop puking every time I thought back to the massacre, but I eventually got over it, I had asked the rider what the spell was called but all I got in response was: “Family secret.”
…
The last couple of days had been fun, I have seen so many new things. I have also been practicing my magic. While I could indeed not increase the amount of mana I had, I could still practice my control. During these last couple days while sitting in the carriage, I would make orbs on the outside and make them follow us.
I made them spin circles around us, it was fun, and it took me until now to master it, but I’m sure I could do better. As the sun rose, I was met with a beautiful sight. In front of us was a golden city, and even though we were on a big mountain, I couldn’t see the end of the city.
There were gigantic walls surrounding the golden city, and somewhere in the center of the city I could see a gigantic tower reaching for the skies. Surrounding the tower were 15 similar towers, yet none of them came close to its sheer size.
As one might have guessed, I was shocked. How could a tower of that size even support itself? None of the buildings back on earth could compare to it!
…
As we arrived at one of the gates into the city, the driver told me to cancel my magic, and to let her handle the talking, I quickly stopped the orbs of water floating around us and observed our surroundings.
All around us were merchants, travelers, adventurers, mages, etc. There were also many races other than humans, there were the ones that I recognized such as elves, dwarves, draconians, demi-humans, and there were also those that I didn’t recognize.
My heart started to pound, according to the history of Roxia, this kingdom used to only consist of humans, but after a horrible war hundreds of years ago between tens of kingdoms including the Roxian kingdom, a peace treaty was made, and thanks to that treaty, humans and other humanoid races started to coexist.
Wars were common in this world; some kingdoms fell while others rose. It could be said that war and death was more common than peace. Many species went extinct every day. Peace was not to be taken for granted, and according to my driver, it’s a miracle that the Roxian kingdom hasn’t been at war for twenty years.
…
We soon got through the queue and entered through the gate. There were hundreds of people everywhere. Everywhere I looked I could see stands selling different kinds of things. Some sold food, some sold materials, some sold weapons, some sold armor and others sold books. There was a great diversity of things.
According to my parents, I would be staying in the capital for a minimum of five years, and depending on my path, I might be staying here for even longer. While I would indeed miss my family, I was still determined to learn more while expanding my knowledge when it came to magic.
I also wanted to learn about the history of this world. The world is big, and I plan on traveling the whole world, but for now, I will stay here and become stronger.