Chapter 5: Training
“I am arch-magi Jamison. I specialise in earth, fire and lava magic, and I will be teaching you magical theory.”
We had been led to another room filled with chairs and desks – a classroom.
The man who was speaking did not appear like one might imagine a wizard, wizened and perhaps sporting a lengthy white beard. Well, he wasn’t young by any stretch of the imagination, but his skin was dark as obsidian and nearly as shiny underneath his gold-trimmed orange robe. His eyes and teeth are starkly prominent due to the contrast.
I vaguely wondered if the presence of other species lessened the intra-human racism, as it would be more focused on the starkly different species such as beastmen and demons rather than people who simply had a different skin colour. But would that be better or worse?
After all, inter-species racism would be much easier to cause and much harder to rectify due to there being such a big difference between the two groups…
“I will not be teaching you how to cast magic. I will be teaching you the strengths and weaknesses of different types of magic, as well as how to create magic formations.” Jamison continued, breaking me out of my thoughts.
Seeing our understanding, and disappointment in some cases, he continued, “Mana originates deep within the earth. As a result, the materials with the most mana infused within them, such as mithril, adamantine or mana crystals, are found more frequently the deeper one mines. Unfortunately, so too does the quantity and strength of the monsters produced increase, which causes mining below certain depths to be wholly impractical.”
“But surely monsters can’t just form from nothing, can they? And even if they could form from mana alone, there would be no difference between monsters produced from the same quantity of mana, right?” Someone asked.
“The common consensus is that differences in the types of monsters produced are due to differences in the proportions and concentrations of elemental mana. Some few believe that monsters are the product of mana and nightmares, or the magical mutation of normal animals, but no evidence thus far has given any credence to those claims.” Jamison explained.
Interesting, but why didn’t they know rather than just believe? Earth – Earth 1… Terra’s scientists would’ve figured something like that out long ago, or at least made a proper effort to. And mana comes from deep within the earth? How deep, exactly? The center?
This Earth was round… Wasn’t it?
Jamison resumed his original line of speech. “Due to this effect, abandoned mines, cave systems and crevasses are, more often than not, full of powerful monsters. These places have come to be known as dungeons - because those who venture into them rarely return.”
How dark.
“Now, as you doubt remember from your aptitude test, mana has the six basic elemental forms of water, wind, fire, earth, light and darkness, as well as the fusion elements of illusion, holy, decay, lava, lightning and ice. Then, of course, there is pure mana.” Jamison recounted, before warning us, “Do not attempt to absorb anything apart from pure mana, or perhaps holy mana. Holy mana can heal you, but any other element, fusion or not, will run rampant inside your body and you will die horribly.”
“What do you mean by ‘die horribly’, exactly?” Somebody asked.
Jamison grew quiet for a moment. “I had an apprentice, once. Talented young lad had an affinity for illusion magic. I had warned him, but he thought he knew better, thought he could control it. I found him outside my room in the morning, where he had been all night, trying to open the door. He was crying, but when he opened his mouth there was no sound, and when I reached out to him my hand passed through his shoulder. He slowly faded into nothingness over the next few days. Nothing I could do.”
Everyone immediately vowed to themselves in their minds, then and there, never to absorb elemental mana.
Jamison gathered himself. “The main part of casting magic is converting the pure mana inside yourself into elemental mana outside of you. Make sure you do the conversion externally, otherwise the same thing happens as if you absorb external elemental mana.” He warned again. “To do this, one simply manipulates the mana outside of their body and imagines it taking the form they wish it to be.”
He holds out his palm, and a sphere of white is immediately ejected from it, hovering slightly over his palm.
“This is pure mana.” Jamison explained. “Not useful for much other than powering artifacts or storing in crystals – elemental mana is too volatile to store, and artifacts can generally convert it to elemental mana themselves. But once you have it outside your body, you can then imagine it becoming, say, fire.”
The sphere was suddenly engulfed in flames, and I could feel a tinge of heat radiating off of it from where I sat in the front row. He then sticks his other hand inside the raging flame, causing some people to gasp in shock.
…That’s not why his skin’s dark, right?
But no, his hand emerged unscathed, like that trick you see kids do, except they usually pass their hand through very quickly and use a much smaller flame instead of shoving their hand into the center of a flaming sphere and leaving it there for a few seconds.
“Your own mana will not harm you, unless you will it to do so… Which in most cases is a bad idea.” Jamison noted. “Elemental mana can be used as is, by shaping it with your imagination.”
The sphere stretched into a sword, which Jamison grasped and flourished. “But a weapon like this has no real form – it cannot parry or block an enemy weapon. This is because it is simply fire in the shape of a weapon. There are elements through which one can conjure a physical weapon: Earth, Ice and Lava. But that is not how most magi fight. It is too limited by your imagination, and weak to distractions.”
I don’t know… I have a pretty big imagination.
He pulled a large, leather-bound book from under his cloak and holds it up for us to see. “Most magi use these: Grimoires. Its pages are made from monster hide and are extremely durable. They are used to record magical formations which can then be used to instantaneously cast spells, like so:”
He opened the book to the first page, and a red glow travelled from his hand to the page, at a speed almost too fast to see. Then, in an instant, ten burning arrows appear hovering in the air before him.
“As you can see, you can cast a spell as quick as you can find the right page. I advise clear labels and rational organisation, so you never accidentally cast the wrong spell. Apart from that, formation spells are the same as manual ones, and can be controlled and cancelled just as easily, if not easier.”
The blazing arrows dissipated into nothingness, leaving a few spots on my vision. I wondered if I could make magic sunglasses. From how often I was getting bright lights in my face, it would probably have been useful.
“The only notable deficit is that if you use the same formation too many times in succession, the mana can cause the page to deteriorate and fall apart.” Jamison said, before stepping aside to reveal a pile of books. “Now, I have here a stack of basic grimoires – empty, of course. Come up here grab one each.”
We did so rather quickly. Sitting down, I looked at the book. It looked normal, although the pages were thicker than I was used to. But that was to be expected, I suppose – they were most likely parchment, not paper as I was used to. The cover itself was made out of a similar material, if slightly thicker, with a small crystal embedded in the center of the front.
“In time, I will teach you how to develop your own magic formations, and you can start filling up the pages yourselves.” He said, before replacing his grimoire within his robes and instead producing a chunk of light bluish crystal. “But before that, it’s best if you can use the mana inside of you. This crystal has a formation that will slowly draw out the mana of anyone who touches it. The stimulation will allow you to better sense the presence and source of your mana.”
He smiled, placing the chunk of crystal on the desk in front of him. “Who’s first?”
My hand shot up.
“You up the front, you look eager.” Jamison said.
I got out of my chair and took the few steps towards his desk.
“Put your hand on it, close your eyes, and pay attention to any feelings you get that you don’t usually have.” Jamison instructed.
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Feeling a mite nervous, I placed my hand on the crystal. Almost immediately, I noticed something flowing through my arm towards my hand. Was that mana? Or just my blood flow?
Either way, I tracked the sensation to its source, finding… The crystal. Mentally facepalming, I followed the flow opposite to the direction of its movement and found this ball of something, presumably mana, just sitting there. To be exact, it was slowly being drawn towards my arm, just a bit at a time, as if someone was slowly sucking it through a straw. The amount escaping was negligible in comparison with the whole.
The physical location of the ball was… Next to my heart.
“I think I can feel it… It’s like a ball near my heart.” I said.
Jamison nodded. “That’s it precisely. We call it the mana heart. Imaginative, I know.” He looked down at the crystal. “Oh, you can let go of it now.”
I remembered that I was still holding onto the crystal and let go of it. My mana stilled, but now that I knew where it was, I could still sense it.
“Good. Now, try and pull a small amount from your mana heart. Just imagine pulling a bit along your arm and pushing it softly from your hand.” Jamison said.
I nodded, and tried it, imagining a small amount separating from the main ball. Straight away, a small ball popped off, much easier than I thought it would be. I pushed it along my chest to my shoulder and down my right arm.
I wonder if you could see my arm glowing if you looked closely enough?
The small distracting thought caused the mana to start dispersing, which I hurriedly stopped, and continued its journey to my hand. Once it reached there, I pushed it out very softly.
Glowing white stuff spills from the top of my hand. I wished it looked more like magic and less like I’d spilt the contents of a glowstick over my hand.
“Good job.” Jamison said, nodding. “That often happens the first time. Just imagine it forming a ball above your hand and it will look a bit better. Still mostly useless, but better. Pure mana doesn’t even give off enough light to be used as a torch.”
A simple mental image later, and there is a small ball of mana hovering over my palm much like Jamison’s, earlier.
“Now pull it back into your hand and into your mana heart to reclaim the mana. You can’t do this with elemental mana, in which case you would have to disperse the mana throughout the air around you.” Jamison said, and I did so. “Good. Now, everyone take turns with the crystal. Once you can sense your mana, practice moving it in and out of your body. Once you are comfortable doing that, try manipulating it into different shapes. We won’t be converting it into elemental mana today.”
I pulled the ball back into my hand, through my arm and back into my mana heart. A thrill of excitement coursed through me. After all those years, I finally experienced magic, true magic. I was eager to see more, so I started practicing right away.
As I moved a ball of mana from my mana heart to my hand, out and back, I watched the others as they try to sense their magic. It looked as lame as I had imagined.
Of course, as the person who went first, I had had a relatively long time to train in comparison to the others, who watched on in envy at I revolved multiple balls of mana around my head with barely a glance at them. I’ll admit, I might have been showing off a bit.
“If you happen to run out of mana, or feel you are close to running out,” Interrupted Jamison, speaking to all of us, “Don’t push it. You saw how bad it was when we summoned you. To restore mana, one simply has to be aware of the ambient mana surrounding themselves and breathe it in. Only do this if you need mana, however. Taking in mana over your capacity has disastrous consequences… With one notable exception that I will discuss tomorrow.”
Given that I had already been practicing for a while, I figured it should be plenty safe for me, so I immediately tried it out. To ‘be aware of the ambient mana’ was a rather nebulous concept, but when I closed my eyes and tried to feel mana outside my body, I was able to notice its presence, like waves of light surrounding me. I breathed in. Mana entered me alongside the air, replenishing some of what I’d lost.
Next to me, Greg was busy concentrating, trying to form the most awesome weapon he could think of. At that point, it didn’t look like much more than a softly glowing white mass in the rough shape of a sword.
Still, it was cool. At that point, everything we did with mana was cool. It was like we were children again, playing with a brand new toy. In a way, we were. Who hadn’t dreamt of magic as a child? And now here we were, with those fantasies realised.
Interested in perhaps doing the same, I combined my balls – which sounds quite strange, now that I say it aloud – and stretched the resulting mass into a pole. Then, adding a little more mana to one end, I moulded it into the shape of a diamond, hollowed it out and added some patterns to the surface. And then I had… A disappearing haft, as I hadn’t been concentrating enough on it.
After a bit of touching up, I turned around and showed it to Greg: A mana replicate of Gandalf the white’s staff. Admittedly, it was made purely from memory, so there were bound to be some discrepancies.
He smiled, showing me his own. He’d given up on the sword, but it appeared his mind had wandered in the same direction as mine, because he’d formed his mana into Gimli’s axe.
After we finished marvelling over each other’s creations, we moved to the back of the room and played catch with a magical ball.
At first, we were just throwing and catching the ball, but as time went on and we got more used to it, we changed it up: one ball each. Then we made it a competition. It was… Difficult to say the least. Each of us could control our ball at range to dodge the other’s hand, but that in turn would distract us from catching the other’s ball. It turned out to be surprisingly good training, in a number of ways.
Before I knew it, a few hours passed just with us getting used to controlling our mana. We were directed back to the mess, had a meal, and then captain Pierce brought us all to the yard to begin physical training. Now this… This I was not excited about.
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“Thirty-six! Thirty-seven! Thirty-eight! Thirty-nine! Forty! Why are you breathing so hard!? We aren’t even halfway, you pansies!” Captain Pierce shouted at us as we swung wooden swords up and down.
I never did any physical training or exercise back on Earth – old Earth, that is. Still, I ate healthily and in moderation, and my body was naturally strong by some freak accident of genetics, so although my fitness had deteriorated from neglect over the years, it still wasn’t as bad as a couple of the others there.
That said, I wasn’t even close to being among the fittest, and it didn’t take long for my breath to run short and my arms to grow leaden. The captain’s voice continued to count out the swings, and we kept swinging. It turned into a sort of droning in my head – just background noise.
I used this trick I figured out at some time in the past: if I could manage to get into a state of contemplation, one where I was completely focused on thinking about something, everything else would fade away, and my body would go into autopilot; if I was sitting still I would remain sitting until I broke out of the state, if I was singing I would continue to sing – lyrics and all, somehow – or if I was performing some basic action, like swinging a sword, I would continue to do so.
It took me a little bit of time, but I managed to slip into that state, thinking about random, seemingly meaningless things. Everything in the world is more complex than it first appears, and simple contemplation is enough to draw one into the infinite intricacies the universe has to offer.
So engrossed was I that I didn’t notice it when someone complained about the difficulty, and the captain reset the count as a result. Would it have mattered, even if I had? Perhaps. But I didn’t. I just kept on thinking, and my arms kept on swinging. It was only when the captain called a halt that I was broken out of my reverie. There was a faint feeling of sadness as I lost a grip on that profound thought and returned to reality.
And with it, pain. My hands were clamped around the handle of my mock blade as if they were fused with its hilt, my arms were acting like strands of boiled spaghetti and my lungs felt like they were acting as bellows to the furnace that seemed to be heating my body to obscene temperatures.
“Alright, five minute break! There’s a water barrel over by the wall, try not to crowd it.” The captain’s shout barely registered in my ears.
I looked over at it absentmindedly, my mind hazy in stark contrast to its state just a few moments ago. People were already crowding around it, completely ignoring the captain’s instructions. A part of me wanted to join them, a large part, but that one small part of me that still held rationality knew that I wouldn’t even be able to get a drink until I got my hands off the sword.
Dumbly looking down at my hands, I wondered how I might go about doing that. My fatigue-numbed mind gave me no solution, but I finally decided to ask the captain. He should have experience with this sort of thing, right?
When my breathing managed to slow down enough to speak, I walked over and asked him how to unclamp my hands.
“Looks like you have some grit.” He laughed. “Sit down and rest your hands for a minute. You should be able to unclench them before long.”
In the end, there was no quick solution, so I walked over to the wall and sat against it. Greg sat down next to me a little bit later. He didn’t seem up to talking just yet, and that was just fine by me.
Eventually, my fingers relaxed enough that I was able to get them off the hilt. Flexing the feeling back into them, I stood up and walked over to the water barrel. Everyone else had already came, saw, and had a drink, so I was able to pick up the ladle with some difficulty and take a drink. At that moment, that water tasted better than the sweetest wine. It took another few ladles before I felt completely satisfied.
I sat back down, but before long, the captain had us back up again. We walked over, feeling somewhat better but still nowhere near one hundred percent. I knew that if we were asked to do the same thing again, I simply wouldn’t be able to do it, contemplative trance or no.
So, in a way, it was a relief when he just asked us to run around the courtyard. Five times, yes, but at least we weren’t using our arms. This time I wouldn’t be able to get into that contemplative state of mind. If I was on flat ground, going in a straight line, maybe, just maybe I could do it. But going around corners, with other people to stay mindful of? I’d bash into something quicker than you could say ‘watch out for that-’.
We started jogging. At first, Greg and I jogged together. But before long, he was outpacing me as the heat forced me to undo more and more buttons of my shirt.
That liar, he had totally exercised at some point in the last decade.
The first lap wasn’t too bad. By the end of the second, I had every second button undone to try and stay a bit cooler. By the end of the third, I was briefly contemplating whether captain Pierce would notice if I cheated.
Briefly.
By the fourth lap, I was stumbling along like a drunk. A drunk with asthma. Finally, I decided that I could go no further without a rest. I sat down against the wall and struggled to regain my breath, coughing heavily. In my defence, I wasn’t the first to do so. Boris was sitting ahead of me; chest heaving and face flushed an unusual shade of pink from exertion.
Boris had a habit of going through a small box of donuts every day at the office, although I had no clue what he ate at home. Basically, he’s considerably overweight. And while that may be quite the inconvenience in everyday life back on old Earth… Here it was much, much worse.
Why was he ahead of me, you may be wondering? He wasn’t. A dozen more meters and I would have lapped him. Still, the poor guy doesn’t look like he could take another two steps, let alone another two laps, and by the distressed look on his face, he knows it.
He’s looking blue. Maybe there’s something I could do?