Alice tapped her foot against the wooden floor of the porch as she waited. Blanche should have come out of the cabin 30 minutes ago. Alice pondered whether it was worth the risk to venture into his room to see what was going on but struck the idea down almost instantly.
Alice instead decided to spend the time observing the forest, which seemed tamer today. Or perhaps it was this particular spot…then it made sense why Blanche chose to construct his cabin here.
The sound of shuffling alerted Alice to Blanche’s presence, and she turned to spot his silhouette emerging from the pitch black darkness on the other side of the doorway. He was wearing a roughly-woven shirt and leather pants, with a long dagger attached to a belt.
”Well? What are you still doing here?” Blanche asked the moment he saw her. Alice, who had been opening her mouth to greet him, closed it in confusion.
Is he being serious? “I was waiting for you. I cleaned the sheets yesterday, and I’m ready to get going. We’re heading to the capital, remember?” Alice asked.
Alice watched as his eyes widened and realization dawned on him. Her heart skipped a beat—finally, it was time to get going! It felt like slow motion as Blanche stepped forward, opened his mouth, raised his hand—
—then he collapsed onto a rocking seat on the porch. Alice blinked, her face muscles twitching as she tried to comprehend what was happening. Why was he sitting down now!?
”Honestly, you’re really selfish.” Blanche stopped any protests that had been forming in Alice. She paused, trying to think about how exactly she had been ‘selfish.’ Blanche glanced over to her and scoffed when he saw the confusion on her face. “And the fact that you don’t even know makes it worse. Look here—imagine you’re in my position. You’re minding your own business, you just want to live in your cabin free of the turmoils that plague the outside world. Then after you rescue someone from death and bring them graciously into your house, they demand you to help them get to the capital. Rude, but you agree. And yet, that same person wants you to help them right away. Not even 24 hours after you meet them! That’s very inconvenient for me. What if I have far more important business to take care of that you’re making me stop because of your own foolish needs?”
Alice couldn’t have been more stunned if somebody hit her over the head with a ladle. She was silent for a while as she scanned through what he said, all the while as Blanche lounged in the chair with a content grin plastered all over his smug face. Alice bared her teeth in response to Blanche’s little speech.
”So? Do you have ‘far more important business to take care of?’” Alice made sure to layer on a heavy heap of sarcasm.
Blanche shrugged, nestling deeper into the cushioning of the chair. “No, not particularly.”
Alice had to restrain herself from lunging at Blanche and knocking him out of the chair. She settled with envisioning the deed in her mind. “So, let me get this straight. You just don’t want to go right now because you’re lazy.”
“That’s pretty much it, yeah.” Blanche said. “Before you get all pissy and this relationship turns sour, how about a trade?”
Alice paused, definitely not in the middle of being ‘pissy,’ as he so elegantly described it. “Like what?” she asked, narrowing her eyes. If Blanche wasn’t willing to uphold his side of the trade they had already agreed upon, how could she trust him to do it for this one? The less Alice talked with Blanche about trades and the sort, the more the chances of getting swindled decreased.
He clicked his tongue. “No need to look so aggressive.” Blanche upheaved himself from the chair. He stared at her, his eyes swirling like vortexes, gateways into an empty void. “In exchange for securing your travels, I want to be the one to teach you magic.”
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After several hours of Blanche scouring his cabin dry for supplies and tools, stuffing them into two backpacks, and saddling Alice with one of them, they were well on their way. Blanche deigned to tell Alice about their current destination, merely that it was ‘on the way.’
All that was overshadowed by what Blanche was currently doing as they traversed the forest: teaching her about magic.
”Magic is—“ Blanche started to say.
”Hold on, hold on, hold on.” Alice interrupted, waving her hands around and almost toppling over when she misjudged how much the backpacks weighed. Catching her breath, she hurried to get back to Blanche’s side and asked the question that had been churning inside her ever since Blanche had mentioned it. “How did you know I have magic?”
Blanche stared on ahead, ducking underneath a hanging branch. Alice merely walked underneath it, expectantly looking at the older male. “I thought you would have brought it up a long time ago, why are you asking now when I’m trying to teach? Ungrateful brat.”
Alice narrowed her eyes. “Obviously, I was shocked! And then you moved into the cabin and whenever I tried to say something, you yelled for me to hold it in until we were on the road.”
”I’d tell you to hold it in again but then I suspect I’d never stop hearing it,” Blanche grumbled. “You wouldn’t know, being a commoner, but people who can use magic…they can sense others of similar nature. For example, looking at you. . .”
Blanche trailed off, taking the moment to tilt his head. Alice gulped when she realized he was trying to see her ‘magic aura’ or whatever it was called. Was he going to be able to tell the unorthodox method through which she’d gained it?
“It’s like a funnel of Manergy circulating around you. One of the most potent I’ve seen. I wouldn’t be surprised if you wiped most of the surrounding area with a simple energy blast.” Blanche said.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
It took Alice a moment to recall what he was talking about. Her lips turned down. “ barely killed a single boar and then I felt like I ran 3 miles nonstop,” she mumbled. A far cry from ‘wiping out the surrounding area.’
Blanche rolled his eyes. “Kids these days. So melodramatic. That’s more than most people can do on their first try. Anyway, if there are no more distractions, may I continue. . .?”
Alice nodded, stepping over a gnarled root sticking out from the ground. She had to nearly lunge to accommodate for the unwieldy backpack. “Sure.”
”I don’t know to what extent your knowledge composes. I doubt you know much though. Whatever the case, it seems I’ll have to start from the scratch. Manergy. That is where magic begins. If you must learn one thing from this lesson, learn about Manergy. They are particles of ‘data’ floating around the World, created by the World itself. They are in everything, both sentient and not.”
”’Data,’” Alice repeated, trying to wrap her head around things. She thought she’d been prepared by listening to Charlotte’s rants about magic, but this was an entirely different beast. The only word she recognized was Manergy from her stat screen, and just like the Devil, Blanche was saying ‘world’ weirdly.
”If it helps you, think of Manergy as energy dust, scattered across the world after it exploded from a single source.” Blanche summarized.
Alice nodded. She could understand that. But the strange pronunciation of ‘world’ still bothered her. She risked a look at Blanche. He wasn’t talking, and was surveying a clump of bushes instead. It seemed safe enough. “When you’re saying ‘world’, you’re not talking about the physical world are you?”
Blanche groaned, dragging a hand through his hair. “You don’t even know that? The World is the conscience of every living being in existence, past, present, and future. Its primary purpose is to preserve the natural order of the world, and keep all of its children alive. Supposedly, if the natural order was ever thrown off balance and in danger, the World would interfere by sending a vessel with some of its powers to aid us. Though, I doubt that’s true, considering what’s happening now. . .” Blanche froze, his eyes wide and mouth clamped shut. For all purposes, he looked like the adult version of a child who had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He glanced at Alice who barely noticed, her own thoughts rampaging in her mind.
Now that she understood what the World was, the things the Devil had been saying became clearer. And it made things a lot scarier; Alice had expected the Devil’s mission to have been imparted to him by a god, not what seemed to be an omnipotent force of life! Was Beelzebub the ‘vessel’ Blanche talked about? What did that mean for her?
Anyway, with that out of the way, try seeing Manergy,” Blanche ordered.
”Huh?” Alice asked, her thoughts scrambled. She ran through the past couple of seconds to figure out what Blanche was saying.
Blanche growled. “I told you, Manergy is the basis of magic. If you’re not even able to see it, the most magic you’ll ever be able to do is. . .well, not a lot. You’ll be resorted to mindless blasts of energy for the rest of your life!”
Sweat ran down Alice’s neck in drivels as the sun beat down on her back. Manergy was this important? Alice studied the forest before zooming in on a leaf that appeared particularly bountiful and big. Blanche had said Manergy was in everything, right? Then it made sense there would be a stronger gathering of Manergy in bigger things with more life, no?
Widening her eyes, Alice locked her gaze with the leaf. Stopping in her tracks, she stared at the leaf for what must have been several minutes, until she could describe every minute detail of it, from its soft layer of hair coating the vibrant green to the thick, pulsating veins bulging out. Yet there was nothing she would register as something worth calling Manergy.
”What are you doing?” Blanche sounded more annoyed than ever, and when Alice tore her gaze away to look at him, he was meters away. She scrambled after him, halting to a stop once she was within contact range.
”Trying to see Manergy!” Alice exclaimed.
”You looked like you were suffering a headache,” he said. Alice furiously battled down the redness trickling up her face; this was the second time she’d been embarrassed while trying to pull off magic. She swore there wouldn’t be a third. “It shouldn’t be this hard. As long as you’re trying to envision it, it should come naturally. Maybe because you’re a commoner? No, that’s not it, it’s the same for commoners...”
As Blanche dissolved into murmurs of his own, Alice found herself looking away. If he connected the dots. . .no, how many people’s first thoughts were that a commoner girl ate the flesh of a Devil-like creature? Even so, she fancied she saw Blanche examine her closely a couple of times.
”Well, there’s nothing to it. Hold still,” Blanche said, reaching out a finger.
”W-wait, what are you doin—!?” The tip of his finger poked Alice’s forehead and it was like a gong went off inside her skull. One second, she was staring at Blanche and the nature next to and behind him; the next, she could see golden particles floating everywhere.
”Woah,” Alice barely heard her own voice as she cranked her head, turning a full 360-degree spin as she tried to take everything in. Golden particles encompassed her vision no matter where she looked, seemingly drifting out of the trees and berries and brushes and branches and everything else. Standing on her tiptoes, Alice found the leaf she had been surveying. Just as expected, there was definitely a more concentrated stream of particles floating out of it.
Turning to face Blanche again, she nearly suffered an aneurysm. The number of particles he exhibited completely dwarfed the particles from the forest. Blanche humbled even the biggest tree. Alice blinked harshly, but every time she opened her eyes, it was still the same. There were so many, their combined glow was searing into Alice’s eyes. She shut her eyes, wetness forming. Was this what all magic users experienced? Something lightly prodded her forehead again, and when she tentatively cracked open an eye, the world had reverted back to normal.
Alice let out a breath of pure relief, her heartbeat, which had drastically picked up during the event, coming down to a relaxed tempo. She rubbed her eyes; how did other people deal with that?
”It’s a bit overwhelming the first time. When people unlock their ability to see Manergy, the System usually filters it to fit their level. Unfortunately for you, since I had to open your ability, I automatically filtered your sight to my level.” Blanche said in a manner that made it clear he expected no blame. “Anyway, now that you’ve got it unlocked, you should be able to do so yourself. However, I advise you to wait for your brain to settle.”
Alice hadn’t been planning on doing it, anyway! She pitifully glowered at Blanche, who pointedly ignored it. Instead, he opted to begin traveling again and Alice had no choice but to follow. Once they were a ways off, he reignited his lesson.
”Magic is all about taking that Manergy, and turning it into a tangible effect on this world. Of course, there are a lot of details to that. How does somebody turn pure energy into, say, a bolt of lightning? Or a healing spell? How can they choose what kind of effect they wish for to happen, and achieve that every time?” An edge entered Blanche’s voice, and it was clear to Alice as she watched that this was something dear to the dwarf. His eyes sparkled and his cheek muscles twitched. “The answer...is math.”
Alice blanched. “Math!?”