LEARNING ABOUT MAGIC

A couple of months have past since the incident with the ghost in Sindry and the village is peaceful as ever. With Tristan teaching Diane about gathering and combining ingredients, she could handle most problems on her own. Diane was already at the level of an ordinary herbalist! 

Tristan's growth knew no bounds. He kept at mastering the theory of arrays and came up with several clever ideas to improve efficiency and speed of the array by making them specific to a particular use rather than one for broad general use. Instead of using usual deformation transmutation arrays which would deform any inorganic material  but required a large size, he would make one just to deform wood or just to deform iron or brass which he could make much smaller with excellent efficiency. However his biggest exceptional talent remained his manna control, which was at the level of an expert because of his enlightenment during meditation as well as his habit of continuing to test his skills to the limit.

The merchant had reappeared with letters from Melany but had failed to find the buyer who promised to exchange the sculpture for books yet. Despite probably fetching a high price for "Sindry in the Mountains", he was expressly told by Tristan to only sell it to the man who promised to exchange books.

The reason for Tristan's stubborn behavior was a letter he had found in the second book he received from the buyer of his sculpture. The buyer was a master sculptor whose works were described in great detail in the books and he gave Tristan excellent advice on how to improve his skills as well as a contact if he ever decided to come to Constine city as an apprentice sculptor. Money was not really a priority for Tristan who was happy as long as he could learn something new.

****

Melany is currently teaching a class in herbology at the Magic University of Constine, her alma mater. She had been regularly receiving letters from Tristan as well as his parents who were concerned about him. Tristan had always been a little distant from his parents, even if he loved them to death, and it appeared that with the job of herbalist, he had been spending an increasing amount of time studying and working on his other projects. Mister Merchant had shown her the sculpture "Sindry in the Mountains" that Tristan had made and realised that he had already surpassed her in ingenuity and perhaps even magical capability. 

She was shocked that he had entered a meditative state for three weeks and woke up like nothing happened. It was exceptionally rare for someone to enter such a meditative state. Tristan was now able to use manna transfer and manipulation to an astounding degree. 

Even the latest letter he sent her was transformed with manna and only when she fed some of her own manna into it, the words rearranged themselves to tell her about the ghost at Elder Jenkin's place and the learning of reinforcement magic and his fine tuning of the control. His descriptions seemed unbelievable! Melany had never heard of anyone capable of fine tuning their control of manna to such an extent and he yet had to study basic magic! Tristan's growth really made her feel insecure about her own abilities as a magician, but at the same time she was immensely proud if her student in being able to achieve so much in so little an amount of time.

However she was worried. If people find out about his abilities, he would just become another pawn for the royalties and the armies into their games of warfare and politics. She was even more afraid of the foreigners. They had grown in large numbers on the continent and were openly accepted in the countries of the Kingdom Conclave. But what scared her was their immortality! 

When they had arrived, the foreigners were about the same in strength compared to the Altans. However they had a decisive advantage! The foreigners would be revived in the cities when they died fighting monsters or completing quests for the citizens! This led a few of them to grow very powerful and their numbers only kept increasing. They were also very territorial and treated the Altans like they weren't even alive unless they needed something. If they learn about an Altan who had potential like them, they wouldn't let him live in peace. Melany wrote back asking him to never reveal his abilities openly and always lay low to protect himself and those around him.

****

Tristan now felt confident about what he had learnt till now. He now decided to begin his study of magic. He was tasked with studying and learning the elementary magic spells of water, fire, wind and earth. He had also received the twig from the elk tree from his teacher Melany which he assumed was supposed to be the wand. 

The wand is a channel to guide ones manna through the transformation process that is a magic spell. A magic spell is the vocalization of the process of converting one's manna into an instance that changes reality. Every spell cast changes reality by invocation of energy. 

The quality of a magic spell can be distinguished based on power, scale, origin, complexity and ingenuity. 

Ingenious magic are generally processes which use known circumstances to create a completely new effect. These kinds of magic are rare and only the most talented users can create such magic.

Magic also have different kinds of origin. The procedures to transform manna are varied similar to how different kinds of arrays can perform the same job. However, few origins are actually efficient to use in battle or life. Using magic is often a battle of wits between conserving manna and dealing the most damage. Thus successful origin practitioners rarely reveal the secrets of their magic. Elves, Dwarves, Orcs and Fairies are known to have magic that rivals or even surpass the origin magic that humans use. However linguistic, cultural and racial enmities have led to a fragmentation of the knowledge. Dragons too are rumored to have their own origin magic but few survivors of a dragon's purge have lasted to confirm that hypothesis with certainty. 

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The magic classifications elementary, intermediate, advanced, expert, sage, and magister are based on scale and power. The higher the classification, the more powerful the spell of the magician. Elementary magic constitutes control over the elements and as one rises in proficiency their manna increases in quantity. All high level spells require exceptional manna capacity and the bottleneck of manna storage is one of the greatest reasons for the lack of many expert magicians and above.

Complexity of a spell is a controversial topic in the study of magic. Due to the ambiguous nature of what determines complexity, not much is known regarding a spell being complex. Some site the length of the spell while others site the number of intermediate steps. However, even elementary spells can be employed in complex ways to create powerful magic, however most magic of such kind fall under Ingenious spells and produced by Grand Magisters of Altan.

The books were extremely informative for the curious Tristan who swallowed the knowledge whole. He decided to begin with the simplest spell - levitation of a leaf using wind.

"Spirits of the wind, transform the essence, guide the desire, heed my plea - levitation!"

The leaf did not move. The spell failed. Tristan was shocked and unable to understand why he did not succeed.

Rhythm of the spell is as important as the incantation. It is necessary to enchant one's manna out of the body and then imagine the manipulation of the energies to shape reality. The reason why rhythm is essential is unknown. There is a conflict in the knowledge about chanting because some advanced and all magicians above the sage level are able to chantlessly use elementary magic. The foreigners from another world are also an anomaly regarding chanting. They are unable to use magic for the first time until they chant, however once used they can subsequently deploy a spell chantlessly. This ability is referred to as .

However, no matter how hard Tristan tried to currently pronounce the rhythm as explained magic wouldn't activate. 

"May be I can't use magic?"

Tristan was deflated. He couldn't understand why magic couldn't be used by him. Since he had enough manna to do complicated transfer skills as well as healing with manna, according to the books he should've easily been able to succeed. 

He decided to meditate over his failure to understand why. However his agitation wouldn't let him enter a meditative state. However, at the moment of exasperation Tristan had a source of inspiration. What if he tried to use magic chantlessly. Since the rhythm's purpose was to channel manna was already redundant the only thing left was to transform. But how exactly the transformation process worked was a mystery to him.

Tristan kept reading through all books he could for days on end, but none of them had any answers to the idea of transformation. Tristan decided to meditate. This time he warned his family, his friends and Diane before hand about not worrying about him in the meditative state since he would be able to conserve energy. His parents were worried, but they put their trust in their genius child. 

Tristan too didn't want to worry them. He realised recently that he didn't act like a normal child and it worried his parents. He wasn't emotionally attached to them. They wanted to treat him like a child, but his mindset was already at the level of a teen. He had recently begun paying more attention to them, spent more time with mom in school and dad during his work. But his ceaseless desire to advance only made it more difficult.

Tristan decided to calm down completely and ignore all thoughts. He then focused on the word transformation. He perplexed over the word's true meaning. In it's essence it was a process of changing form and function. 

He thought about the lessons that Melany gave him about how the water from the seas would evaporate under the sun then condensed into clouds and then into rain and snow which fell over mountains where they cooled to form ice and hail and glaciers which melted to form the lake he sat in front of. The entire world ran on processes of transforming. He had understood the meaning of living, the cells and their emergent properties like emotions and manna. He realised how transformations too could create new emergent phenomena. He thought about  volcanoes he read about in books and how they cooled to form rocks. How wind would shape mountains over millions of years and how rivers cut through hard metals to form steep waterfalls. He thought and he assimilated. Fire he realised was the most transformative of all. 

The feeling of peeling onions. The feeling had returned. Each peel revealed a deeper fresher secret that exploded in his mind. He realised how ignorant he was about the world. How he saw the world through a keyhole and tried to expand that keyhole when he could open the door instead. The knowledge he gained from the books was a pittance in comparison to his current state of mind. 

He had read through all the spells in the elementary class and was currently simulating them in his mind without actually using manna. At the same time he was improving and modifying on them. This was his greatest strength, he realised what the books meant by magical complexity and magical ingenuity.

After what seemed like a long time, Tristan's eyes opened. He was still in the forest overlooking the lake. But things looked different. All around him animals were scurrying around. He wasnt under the open tree, a small shed was created to protect Tristan from the elements. The lake was frozen still. Charmy was lying down beside him, looking aged. He gently rubbed Charmy's fur which caused the dog to react ticklishly in its sleep. There were several cards made of thin bark inside a box near the exit from the shed. It had messages from a lot of people in the entire village. They seemed to be holding Tristan with reverence as if he were a saint. Wishes for good health, perennial harvest, lot of meat were common. 

"What the heck!? I'm not a god!"

Tristan was shocked at the ignorance and herd mentality of the village. He was about to dismiss them all when he saw a lot of other cards from his friends.

"Hey buddy? Wake up soon! When are we going to chase each other? Stop being a lazy ass! - Rudi"

"I hope you awaken soon. For Rudi's sake too, get up. - Miza"

"Tristan, I know you are working hard. I hope you wake up soon. I'm taking care of the herbalist center in an official capacity now. But I'm waiting for you to return. - Diane.

" Son, I hope you excel in what you do! We are cheering behind your back! But please wake up soon! We miss you, and we are waiting! - love, Cain and Lara."

And finally there was one which felt very new. It was from his father.

"My dear son Tristan, you were an adult since you were born. And it is because I trust your maturity I am leaving you to care for your mum. You will soon be having a baby brother or baby sister. You must take care of them in my steed. I have been conscripted into the military along with all other men for a big war to control the Urek mountains. You are now the man of the house. At age 7 and a half people might think you are still a kid! But I have seen you grow, you are the most talented and head strong person I've seen. All these years I've been feeling insignificant and afraid at my lack of being a capable father to guide you. However, I trust you will take care of our family. Please awaken soon! - Your loving father, Cain."