I was born and raised until the day I turned fifteen in a small village at the foot of a mountain, several hundred kilometers from the city of Jasper. It was in that village in the shadow of a mountain that I was taught the arcane cantrips I knew. I would only learn a few simple spells later on in my life when I first began my travels and became an adventurer, just about half a year ago.
Cantrips were the simplest spells and could be mastered to such an extent that magic-users such as myself could use them without depleting our pool of magical energy, the type of energy commonly referred to as "mana". I was fond of cantrips and while many people underestimated them I knew that a single well-timed and well-aimed fiery orb or the right usage of the "sliding stone" cantrip that I had used to make a safe place to sleep in the cave last night, could save a life. While I made my way to Jasper's public library, I reflected on cantrips and magic itself.
Magic was generally understood as someone using their will and their innate pool of magical energy, which all living creatures I knew of possessed, to alter reality. It was a supernatural ability possessed, to some extent, by all living creatures. That said, some people and some kinds of creatures were better at it than others were.
Humans tended to have the ability to spell-cast, which was the simpler way of the two ways I knew of to use magic, but as a species, it wasn't a defining trait that we... Well, that they, excelled at. There were other species that were well known for being innate and highly skilled magic users, such as elves.
As I began to make my way into the part of Jasper where middle-class families lived and middle-class people worked, I thought about elves and the strange rumors that surrounded them. Elves were a humanoid species that were well-known for being incredibly powerful magic-users and for possessing keen magical abilities from birth. There were elves in Jasper, though they were without exception part of the National Arcane Academy.
"I wonder if I could enter the National Arcane Academy..." I muttered aloud, while also sending the question to the system to see if it'd provide me with a definitive answer. I didn't actually want to enter the NAA, but knowing that I could would be a nice, easily understandable sign of how different I was now compared to just twenty-four hours ago. I was unsurprised when the text boxes in my mind's eye changed, bringing a smile to my face.
[You could now easily join the National Arcane Academy. Your innate mastery of magic, coupled with your variant of omnilingualism, and your status as a super-genius would make you an immensely skilled member of the academy if you opted to join it. Now that you can use a fraction of the true power you possess two immensely powerful magical abilities that would make you stand out compared to any archmage your world has ever produced.]
[The first is that even seeing just the end results of a spell will allow you to cast it. This is an incredibly powerful ability, especially if you were to travel to your world's elf lands where even high magic is common and normal. The second magical ability you possess is the one that will be the most helpful to you as you begin your travels: you can use magic through sheer force of will and creativity. You do not need to use spells or rituals to use magic. You can guide your magic without the mediums of spellcasting or ritual work. This means that your magic is limited only by your imagination and your willpower.]
I read through the text boxes and my eyes widened when I reached the end of the second message. So far nothing the system had told me, especially about myself, had been wrong but the knowledge that according to this thing I could use magic without using spells was one of several attitude-changing revelations it had dropped on me over the course of the last day.
I was in the middle of a street where many other people were going about their business but I wanted to test out the claim that the system had made. I wanted to use my will and imagination to cause magic, to see if I really was capable of such a thing. I had never heard of someone who could use magic without spells or rituals to guide and shape the magical energy they were expending towards the desired end so if I could use my own raw willpower and imagination to fuel magic that would further utterly upend my understanding of myself and my own abilities.
I slowly made my way towards the center of the road I was on. That was where it was the least crowded, as many other people going about their business in this part of the city were also the sort of people who could have afforded to shop in this somewhat wealthy area and they busied themselves by window-shopping. When I was in the middle of the road I began to fully study my surroundings. I wanted to test my ability to use... will-magic, in a way that was undeniable to myself but not disruptive to others.
It didn't take me long to realize that though I knew flame-based and earth-based cantrips I didn't know water-based or wind-based ones. And if I spontaneously caused a great deal of water to wash through the street using my arcane abilities that'd be a bit disruptive, but if I made a strong breeze blow through the street, one which invigorated the people going about their business beside me, that wouldn't be very disruptive at all. That would be a nice way to at least begin to see if I really could use magic through sheer force of will.
Once I had a clear mental image of what I wanted to do I began to focus on it. I didn't close my eyes or anything, but I mentally withdrew until all I was thinking about was making this odd, restorative magical wish a reality.
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As the young man strode down the street, there was a calm and patient look on his face. Many of the people who saw him gazed at him, awed by his height and his striking good looks. He struck them as a warrior of some sort, due to the easily recognizable adventurer's clothing he wore. He wasn't wearing the robes of the National Arcane Academy, and his build definitely suggested he was a warrior.
His muscles were visible through his shirt and he carried himself with the natural confidence of someone who had seen and survived battle. He radiated a certain amount of physical power and sheer force of will that suggested that to mess with him was foolish and an act of self-endangerment.
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He also had a strange sort of inner peace that made people not be afraid of him as they might have been of someone else who shared some of his physical traits. He was at peace and was not disturbing anyone. Instead of being a bother or harassing anyone, he was simply pursuing some goal that was only his own.
As he focused on his own strange goals, and on using magic through sheer force of will, his endless wellspring of arcane energy began to light up within him. The magical energy needed for the magic he sought to use was burned up and began to invisibly exit his body so that it could enter the world outside of him. The magical energy he lost was immediately replaced, and he himself hardly felt the arcane power inside of him be used up besides as a strange, single instant where he needed to take a quiet breath.
His incredibly potent magical energy seeped into the air around him, and an instant later he felt it when a strong breeze blew through the city, seemingly coming from the hill that overlooked the city, and filled him and the rest of the city's inhabitants with a burst of newfound energy and enthusiasm.
Raul felt the effects of the magic in an especially keen way since he could read the minds of the city's populace. He felt the power of the breeze he had created infuse the city's people with energy and positivity. As he scanned the minds of the people closest to him, he began to smile. Around him people began to smile as well, feeling joy as their bodies felt more vigorous than before, thanks to the power of the breeze.
Raul, who had been taking his time scanning minds and hadn't yet started to scan the minds of any of the staff of the National Arcane Academy, had no way of knowing that he had inadvertently alerted the highest-ranking magi of the academy to... something. They knew the instant that he manifested the magic that he had used to prove to himself his true capabilities that someone immensely, unbelievably magical had just performed a significant magical act, but not who that person was.
Their arcanotech was not precise enough to identify the caster of the magic, only the scale, and scope of the magical miracle that Raul had just pulled off. They could identify that it was magical in nature, what it did, and that it was not a spell or ritual, but they could not identify the origin of the magic. And that was enough for them to immediately spring into action.
They sent out a message to all forward-facing academy employees, such as those who worked in the library, to be on the lookout for new magic users they had never seen before and to test anyone they could. They had protocols for something like this, even as untested as those protocols were. After all, the world had never seen a magic-user who could use magic through sheer force of will, but magic itself was constantly changing and so as a professional institution they needed to be ready for unprecedented moments like this.
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I would only realize that I made a slight miscalculation, as far as the potency of my magic went, when I found myself in front of the city's library. I noticed the library's guards from far away but it was only when I began to scan minds close to them that I noticed that something was off about their presence in front of the library.
The guards were a man and a woman clad in light green robes. One of them, the man, was an elf. The woman was a human. They were letting people into the library but were mostly there to look for anyone new, and had I not been able to read minds I would have assumed was how the library normally operated. Upon reading the minds of people close to the library I quickly realized that that was not how the library was operated on a day-to-day basis.
People near the library were surprised and annoyed that the guards of the place were outside. The guards were dressed in the gaudy robes of the academy and while the people of Jasper accepted the peculiarities of the academy they often wished that the students, faculty, and staff of the institution were better at hiding their affiliation with the place when they weren't on academy grounds.
When I approached the guards and the library they were guarding, they turned and faced me. I subtly entered their minds and learned their orders.
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"Alert: be on the lookout for any new and unusual magic users. Moments ago something that can only be classified as some sort of mystical miracle occurred in the form of a restorative, magically caused, breeze that blew through the entire city all at once. It was clearly unnatural and our magic detectors went berserk for a moment went it happened. We wish, nay, we need, to understand it and we are making the discovery of the one or ones responsible for the breeze a high priority. We have never encountered anyone whose magical signature matches that of the breeze and so we are enacting protocol 777.
"Look for anyone who has never been into the library or other public portions of the academy before. If possible, test them and see if their signature is even vaguely similar to that of the signature inside of the mystical miracle that occurred moments ago. If you can find anyone who is even close to a match, alert a senior faculty member right away."
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I chuckled as I considered the orders the guards have been given. This was a genuine miscalculation on my part, as I had not intended for the breeze to cover the whole city and I certainly hadn't planned for the academy to learn, in any meaningful way, of my existence. That said, I wasn't afraid either, even my mistakes could become opportunities if I was smart and thoughtful in my responses to when I messed up.
Internally I asked the system what it thought I should do here. While I asked that, I also began to devote a portion of my mind to considering various outcomes of going ahead and getting "tested" by the magic-users in front of me, and ways for me to use this to advance work towards advancing my own goals and ambitions of becoming a grand healer.
[If you are serious about both understanding magic and becoming a better healer this is the place for you to be. The National Arcane Academy is the best institution for learning about magic in this kingdom, and there are resources here that are excellent for you. That said, if you just want to use the resources here there are other ways you can go about that. You could alter the memories of the guards and the people in the library to not feature you, you could feign being a familiar face through your power to alter memories, you could come in when the library is closed and use your super speed, combined with your perfect memory.]
[Your choice is yours to make. But remember, there is power in honesty, and you of all people do not need to feel fear or to run from what you are. You could embrace your power and in doing so be welcomed into the academy as a fascinating magic user. If you wanted this could become the moment in which you begin to gain followers, or you could choose to commit to learning more about yourself and your abilities before building a following. Listen to your heart and follow it in whatever direction it leads you. It will not lead you astray.]
I paused and considered the thoughtful words of the system. I gazed at the library and felt the eyes of the guards in the distance fall on me as they began to wonder who I was and what I would do. I chuckled, well aware that being stealthy was not ever going to be my style, at least not as long as I looked like this. The time was fast approaching for me to make a choice.