A few days had passed since the dinner where we talked about magic, and I was going over the beginner books for magic. This had suddenly made me hit a wall with my questions, because none of these books had any information on just how the mana in our bodies came to be. Of course, there were those with stronger affinities to magic, the different spells that could be cast from each type of magic, even stating your mana pool and spell strength can increase through training, but not how the mana within the body functions. In a way, it’s like putting the cart before the horse if you were learning how to make a car. You make everything about it, but you don’t know how the car internally works, so you have no way to prove if it actually works in theory. However, we it is known that it does, in fact, work. So, it should imply there’s a special organ or means that mana flows in people.
Organs are off the table, as it would have been found in some way since magic has been around for so long. It leaves me running around it circles as I try to find some random scrap of information that could lead to a breakthrough, because if anyone can figure out what the process is for this, it could give mages everywhere an incredible boost to their power. If one nation figures it out, it could throw the entire power balance of a region into complete disarray… in theory at least. Once more, it’s all theoretical to what could happen if this process exists or doesn’t, but it was all I could do to even consider this as a possibility. I put the book down, rubbing my head as I tried to figure out my next steps, “There has to be something that gives people their mana, something in the body at the bare minimum. It’s like studying for a theoretical exam, except you don’t know when it’ll come, the contents of the exam, or able to study any useful material from before as you know it won’t apply to this exam.”
As I thought, footsteps came from the entrance to the study, Grandpa had come, “Hey Ledo, I came to check on you.” He took a seat in the seat across from me, looking at all the fundamentals of mana, “This is a lot of books, is there something you’re looking for?” I scratched my head, deciding to tell Grandpa, “You know how some people have mana within them yes? Well… I can’t find any books that say how or why this is. It says one’s mana pool can grow along with one’s magic through continuous use, but it’s not what I’m looking for.” Grandpa looked to me with his own thoughtful expression, “You found the question I had when I began learning magic, but to this day, I can’t tell if I’m close to the answer or the furthest thing from it. But we can discuss that later, I want to tell you something that’s been decided by the kingdom.” I leaned back into my chair, needing a break from the constant reading, “I need a break anyway, this is too much to go through.”
Grandpa said, “The kingdom has decided to bring in children from other kingdoms to foster their potential for magic and combat. It’s a mixture of fostering the relationship between our local kingdoms, allowing children to make friends, and the small potential for the children to discover something through their own efforts. You’ll be partaking in it as well, since my old group and I have decided to become teachers for this.” I felt my hearing die out, it was too soon, I wasn’t ready to be around other people. I didn’t manage to get sidetracked too much though, because grandpa managed to shake me back to my senses, “Ledo, are you alright? You spaced out for a second.” I collected myself and nodded, “Yeah… I’m just not sure about being near other people…” Grandpa’s face gained a hint of sadness as he rubbed his head, “I know Ledo, you haven’t been around others, and that’s my fault. But please, trust me on this.”
I looked away, but after a moment, I asked, “When?” Grandpa asked, “Can you say that again? You were too quiet.” It seemed I was more scared than I thought I was, “When will this happen?" Grandpa said, “Well, renovations for training areas have to be done, then we have to let the those interested know…” After a moment of thought, he said, “Maybe three years. By then though, you’ll have received some training from us firsthand, at least in the basics.” Three years, that’s how long I have until I’ll have to speak to people… maybe I can handle it then. It’ll have been long enough by then… I hope. I said, meekly, “I can try I guess… not sure how well it’ll go though.” Grandpa smiled, rubbing my head gently, “That’s all I ask my boy.” With that, he picked up one of the books, “So, how about we get started on these books? Since you’re young, we’re going to give you bookwork and exercise. Believe me, exercise is vital for mages as well.” I let out a small smile, “Sure, that’s fine by me.” For the rest of the day, we spoke about magic, something that eased my nerves rather well.
~~~
About half a year has passed since the day I spoke with Grandpa; while building one’s body takes a while; I had gained more useful information in regard to magic. While there are affinities which people excel in, it seems that if there’s enough effort put into it, any type of magic can be learned. Grandpa showed his magic, and it did coincide with what he told me, so it was interesting to note that for further research. Of course, I learned a lot of spells, but I realized there wasn’t much on pure mana or magic pertaining to strengthening the body, like using it to go faster or lift more. But when I got into spells, it seemed like it wasn’t… strong? For the magic currently in use, it’s quite effective, they can be cast repetitively at varying strength, but it’s not like what you’d see in fantasy titles. Existing types barely even have twenty different spells, and most are the same as fireball, just with the name swapping fire for water or something similar. Once more, it was something I added to my list of magical research.
This was when I began to try something, not many Isekai stories did this, but I tried meditating. I wasn’t trying to take in and build up mana, rather I was trying to see if I could read the flow of mana within myself. It’s not impossible to see others, but no one really tried to read their own flow. There was a basic feeling, to confirm if their mana was still flowing within them, but not for the sake of researching how mana within the human body functions. Today was going to be the first test, especially since it was a free day, which they let me do as I saw fit. I crossed my legs, put my hands to my knees, and focused within myself to determine if I even had mana. I understood the principle, now all I could do was attempt to put it into practice. I focused on what I assumed was the mana that could be within me, breathing rhythmically as I began the… many attempts to try and see if I had mana. While this was the first time doing this, it also meant that I believe the attempt failed and tried a different method.
The whole time I worked on these attempts, I never opened my eyes, so I had no idea how long these attempts were. My only goal from now until dinner was to see if I could get even a little bit of something, anything to prove there was something within people that caused mana to work within us. I couldn’t tell how much time passed on this point, I was beginning to feel the pangs of hunger, letting me know I was nearing dinner time. I was about to give up for the day, until within the darkness I noticed two quite close ripples. This was something I hadn’t noticed all day, which hardened my resolve for a moment. As I focused, the ripples got clearer as I noticed two white ripples in close proximity, seemingly rhythmic.
As I observed these ripples, I had a thought to what this might be, as I slowly moved my fingers to my wrist to check my pulse. Once I managed to feel my pulse, I checked with the pulse within my body, observing both at the same time. When I felt my pulse, I noticed what seemed to be happening. As my heart beat, the two rhythmic pumps that pumped my blood throughout my body seemed to beat at the same time as the pulse within me. As my excitement caused my heart to beat faster, it only confirmed what I was witnessing within me. If this was mana, which I was certain it was, it seemed to coincide with my heartbeat. I shot up, adrenaline running through me as I screamed, “I did it! I found something!” I quickly took to paper which Grandpa let me keep incase I found something and began to write down what I discovered, knowing this could be the beginning of something incredible. Grandpa, having come to the study since I stayed here more than my own room these days, asked, “You seem excited, did you discover something?”
I passed him the paper I had finished, one with the connection to someone’s pulse and a pulsing of what I assumed was mana within them, or at least myself. With excitement in my voice, I said, “I noticed within me that there was a pulse of something, which I assume is mana, that seemed to perfectly sync with my heartbeat! I’m not sure what this means, but this could be the beginning of decerning how people have mana within them!” It wasn’t much, but with discovery in the magic field being few and far between, this could be considered a solid breakthrough if we were still on Earth. Grandpa sat down, asking, “Can you instruct me? I have mana within me for certain, but you might be slowly gaining the mana that allows us to cast magic, maybe it’s different for me.” When he said that, I realized having someone who specialized in magic all his life could be valuable, so I decided to tell him. I explained what I felt and did, telling him to remember everything he sees so I can try to influence my own mana at a later date.
Grandpa began to focus, trusting me with what any reasonable person would say is the ramblings of a child. I put my hand on his back, my own goal to see if there something more within him as he tries to see what I could. I said, quietly, “I’m going to start, but I may not see anything due to a lack of mana.” Grandpa replied, “Just focus my boy, I trust you know what you’re doing.” With that, I focused and began to try out my theory. I focused on the pulse of what I assumed was mana within me and tried to direct it to reach through my arm, to my hand, and into Grandpa’s back to try and look within him. At first, I couldn’t figure out how to make it bend, but I remembered one of Grandpa’s teachings. He told me during one of the many lectures on mana and magic that “Mana shouldn’t be forced, many do that, and their spells are weaker as a result. Work with mana, listen to it, and it will help you.”
I began to quietly speak to the mana within me, quietly because I didn’t want to sound crazy to Grandpa or disturb him, “Mana, if you can hear me, please help me figure out how you function within us. I want to find my own path, and I believe by discerning how you work, I can figure out who I want to be. I truly want to be myself for once in my life… please.” The pulse didn’t shift, and I had assumed it might not have been mana, or at least possible since the mana wasn’t properly settled within me yet. I was close to giving up, but the pulse suddenly shifted. Instead of being something like a circle as it was before, it seemed to move in one direction. I felt hope begin to return as I began to try and amplify the pulse to reach Grandpa so I could look within him.
With each beat of my heart, the pulse seemed to get farther into my arm as I focused on working with the mana, not against it. Once it got to my fingers, it seemed to leave some remains of each pulse within my fingers, lines seemed to be established as it built up. I furrowed my brows as I tried to examine this, “Are those… my veins?” I kept working on layering the pulse, needing less and less reach to get it each time, as the veins slowly formed up my arm. I was about to reach the origin of the pulse when I was suddenly shaken out of my focus, “Ledo, Alden! Dinner time! Stop pretending like you couldn’t hear me!” Great Aunt Elethea was the one to find us this time, both Grandpa and I shouted, “Elethea! You broke our focus!” It was clear that Grandpa had saw something, considering he was just as annoyed as I was when he lost focus as well. For once, Great Aunt Elethea seemed surprised by our sudden outburst, “What… were you two doing then?
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Grandpa said, “Well… Ledo seemed to figure out something in regard to mana within people. I think I almost saw it as well, until you shook me that is.” Great Aunt Elethea opened and closed her mouth a few times, before she sighed and said, “I’m sorry boys, I should’ve waited… I guess?” I looked to my hand, it felt… sensitive. I couldn’t see it, but it felt like it was covered in something that amplified everything I was feeling. I touched Grandpa’s robe again, and I pulled back as I felt how it felt compared to before. Grandpa put his hand on my shoulder, just above where the feeling was, and it didn’t feel sensitive, “Are you alright Ledo?” I held my hand out, “My hand… I did something while I was trying to sense inside of you. It looked like… veins forming from my hand and up my arm. Everything feels sensitive along my arm, like a heightened sense.”
Grandpa put his hand on mine, which I quickly pulled back, since the heightened feeling was still off because the rest of my body didn’t feel like that. Grandpa eased his hand onto mine, it just felt uncomfortable as a sensation spread through my hand, “My hand feels off.” Grandpa looked at me with confusion, then asked, “You feel what I’m doing?” I paused for a moment, then asked, “You’re doing something?” Grandpa seemed surprised, then said, “You felt my mana entering you, someone without magic skills would find this hard to do, yet you’re doing it without effort…” He stood up, the feeling faded away once his arm was gone, “Let’s go eat dinner first, we can figure out what this means afterwards.” I grabbed my papers and wrote what I noticed, both Grandpa and Great Aunt Elethea let me since this was something even they found odd. Once I did, I quickly went with them to eat, as discoveries like this required fuel to be properly understood.
~~~
Once dinner was over, Granpa, Great Aunt Elethea, and I were quick to discuss what I found. Once I relayed what I felt and saw, Grandpa leaned back, “Interesting, and it suddenly gave you sensitive mana sense in only the spot with those veins. It took me decades to reach your level of sensitivity in your arm alone.” With what he said, the cogs in my head began to turn. A pulse that was synchronized with my heartbeat, veins that resembled the veins of blood humans have, Grandpa having took decades to reach my current level of sensitivity, it all began to establish a theory in my head. I said, “If I can suddenly sense mana, but only in my arm, would it be reasonable to say that my hand has what you have in terms of mana sense correct?” Great Aunt Elethea said, “I’d assume so, even I have something of that since healing magic is still magic.” Grandpa thought for a moment, then nodded, “It may not be fully controlled, but I’d assume so.”
I held my arm out, pointing to the blood vessels that through my wrists, “When I noticed that they looked like veins, I looked at my wrist during dinner, and the veins I saw looked like my blood vessels.” Now, in this world, someone internal functions seemed to be well known. I’m not sure why, but I wasn’t into how they knew that, I just knew it was enough for people like Grandpa to know. Grandpa let a curious hum loose, then said, “If that’s the case… I believe you managed to manipulate mana.” I was confused, but put my hand to my chin, “If that’s so, then let me try something then.” I quickly got back into a meditative pose, focusing within me, and I soon noticed the veins and pulse within me again. I focused on letting the pulse direct itself back to the veins I formed in my arm, my goal was to connect the veins in my arm to the spot where the pulse was.
With each pulse, the veins grew ever closer to where the pulse’s origin was. In a moment, the veins connected, and I felt my sensitivity ease, as if this connection made the sensitivity I could feel controllable. Before I went to open my eyes, I realized there were veins forming on the edges of my chest area, but at a very slow pace, I spoke to myself, “How interesting.” As I opened my eyes, Grandpa asked, “What’s interesting Ledo?” When I looked into his eyes, I realized he was absolutely enthralled with our current work. I said, “It seems I can control the sensitivity in my arm now… and the veins are starting to form around my chest area now. I think it’s in response to less need for what I’m assuming is mana going to one of my hands and arm.” I was quick to write down my findings again, stating as I did, “I’m going to leave my body as is for the night. No attempts to use magic, no more meditation, I just want to see if the veins are truly expanding. If these are what we’re assuming they are, we may have just discovered how mana begins to expand in the human body.”
Grandpa and Elethea both nodded, Grandpa saying, “If that’s the case…” He paused for a moment, then said, “I want you to chose what comes of this. It’s your discovery, so you should investigate this as you please.” I looked to Grandpa, then hugged him, “Thanks Grandpa.” He knelt down and wrapped his arms around me, I never felt an embrace like this before in my first life, “You’re welcome Ledo.” Great Aunt Elethea joined in the hug, she said with happiness in her voice, “You’re amazing Ledo, you’re going to do amazing things in the future, I know it.” I felt like this was something I wanted to do, my wish on Earth was coming true, and I wanted to keep receiving the praise for my good work. When I went to sleep, I felt warmer than I ever have, tomorrow was going to be more investigating what these discoveries had in connection with mana.
~~~
When I woke up, I was quickly put under the physical training Conrad was putting me through. I didn’t argue though, because skipping a day could throw me off. The only reason yesterday wasn’t one of the days of exercise was because he stated the body needed rest, so he told me to designate one day to take a break on, so I chose the same day he did for simplicities sake. The six other days of the week were split into two types of days, alternating between. One was muscle building, the other was endurance, essentially arm day and leg day. Once that was done, and I got a bath and some lunch, I was back with Grandpa in the study as I got into my meditative position. I examined the veins in my chest, and there was some additional growth to it since yesterday. While it wasn’t an explosive growth, it was growth nonetheless, “It seems it did grow, it makes me wonder what this really is.” I quickly wrote down my findings, knowing any and all information could make this all the better when examined later.
I asked, curious to what Grandpa would suggest, “Should I try to connect another limb to the center of the pulse? Or should I try to see if there are veins within you?” Grandpa thought, then said, “I wish to see if I have these “veins” within me as well, but instead of a limb, try your head. Maybe we can see if your eyes will gain this sensitivity.” I felt intrigue and excitement spread through my body, “Interesting, I’ll do it.” I put some paper and a pen before Grandpa, “If you finish before I do, I need you to write it down, so we don’t forget.” Grandpa nodded, “Of course, if this ends up helping you, I’ll do it the best I can.” With that, we both took a meditative pose, nodded to each other, and began focusing on our respective plans. Now I looked towards the pulse, curious as to what it meant to mana and the body in general. Once I focused enough, I redirected the pulse towards my head, but being careful just in case it was dangerous. With each pulse, I felt no change, and veins slowly began to form on my shoulders, since the pulse was partially hitting the area around my neck.
I took some time to focus on my shoulders, if I formed those veins, I could aim the pulse up my neck with ease without losing some of the power of the pulse to my shoulders each time. This was far easier than my arm, since they were far closer to the center of the pulse, they formed far faster than my arm did. If I had to assume, maybe it was because the pulse was meant to distribute the mana equally throughout the body. I decided to take a break, grabbing some water since this took some time, and realized Grandpa was still focusing. I assumed everything we were doing took hours, for Grandpa it made sense, this was the first time he was doing this. For me though, it was likely because I was creating something within my body, which meant the mana had to likely form a pathway to move through. Once I was hydrated, I got back to work, forming the rest of the shoulder veins as I felt them connect to my arm. This likely took, along with the previous work, around an hour or two, but my work with my head wasn’t finished yet.
It felt like a long study session, the type I forgotten since my younger years, but it didn’t feel like a burden as I watched the pulse bounce from the top of my head before bouncing around. If anything, it was like a switch flipped in my head when I began to focus on something like this, it was like I couldn’t get enough. So, this kind of repetitive, heavily focused work didn’t bug me at all, but it was rather exciting instead. For hours, I kept the focus up, but the veins weren’t forming as fast as my arm did. As long as my arm took in total, my head wasn’t even five percent of the way done. Looking in, there seemed to be a lot of veins running around from part of the way into my head, which made me question why this was the case. But my stomach began to let itself be heard; my focus was waning since I needed food to continue such focus. I opened my eyes, and Grandpa seemed to be writing on his paper intently.
After he finished, he looked up to me and said, “Did it work?” I shook my head, “No, after all that time, I doubt I made good progress. It had a lot of veins running through my head, I barely got to around… five percent before I stopped.” Grandpa put a hand to his chin, then passed me his paper, “Maybe this will help you understand what you saw, it took me this long because I had to do a proper drawing.” When I took the page, I said, “You could’ve been an artist Grandpa, this is… good.” I went silent, each detail began to line up with certain parts of the body. I maneuvered my hand to the major areas, “Heart, lungs, liver, kidneys…” I paused for a moment as I pointed to my head, “Brain.” The veins I saw in Grandpa were thicker, not like the thin ones within me, which meant that throughout the years, his expanded. However, this diagram made me understand why it took so long, the veins of mana were more intricate within and around my brain.
I said, pointing to the brain on his diagram, “This must be why it’s taking so long to form the veins there, the brain has more intricate functions for the body to follow.” Grandpa, curious, asked, “Then what about the other organs you mentioned?” I looked, then pointed to the heart, “The heart is likely where the pulse is originating, but for the lungs, liver, and kidneys I can’t really say. For them to be the only areas with more intricate veins, it means they hold additional importance to mages. It’ll require more insight to the matter as I work with my veins.” I noticed that Grandpa drew the eyes of a person, then asked, “Why did you draw eyes?” Grandpa said, “Mana is put into the eyes, a decently advanced magic mages use to determine mana types and the strength of mages. There were also veins in the eyes, they were just extremely small.” I nodded, understanding since veins in the eyes were also small, “Understandable… this will require I work on this for a few months at the bare minimum.”
Grandpa said, with concern, “For now, don’t try to cast any magic, it may disrupt the creation of these veins.” I nodded, not wishing to take any unneeded risk, “Of course, I’d rather not blow my arm off with magic until we’re certain I won’t lose control.” Grandpa laughed as he stood up, I quickly wrote what we learned and went with him to get dinner, theories coming from each of us about what this could mean, but none of them were truly concrete at the moment. It did leave me with a lot of work to do for the foreseeable future, as I knew this would likely take longer than a month. I decided to focus on my research into this matter, and I know that with the help of Grandpa, I could find a bounty of information that could be used to my advantage. My only wish in the moment though is other individuals I could use to observe, as only Elethea uses magic aside Grandpa. More individuals I could work with would vastly improve the pool of information I could grasp, but I knew that wouldn’t happen until the training in two and a half years from now. I shook my head, I couldn’t trust strangers with this, so I’ll have to work with just those I know for now. I had no rush though, as I still have plenty of things to learn from my family.