Yeah, fuck this. I had been sitting here for over an hour trying to get my mana to go where I wanted it and getting nowhere. Could I move my mana around, sure. The problem was it wasn’t holding the shape. On top of that, it was taking way too much effort to even do so much as bend the mana in one direction, let alone twist it into a U shape.
Finally, I had to give up. With a bit of grumbling and a soft growl, I spoke up. “How in the hell do I get the mana to go where I want it?”
Mindi opened her eyes. Looking at me as the rune disappeared from between us. Likely being pulled back into herself as she prepared to lecture me on what I was doing wrong. “And here I was hoping that you were some sort of genius with magic. Ah well.”
Her response caught me off guard. “What?”
“Well, you seemed moderately proficient at everything else that I figured you might be a natural magic user.” She held her hands up defensively, “Now, don’t get me wrong, you are learning pretty fast but nowhere near what a normal traveler would have. You are nearly as slow as a typical person born to this world.”
Was she calling me dumb? I mean it was round about but it sounded like that to me. “I’m sorry?” I said, though it came out more like a question because I had no clue why I would be apologizing.
She waved a hand, “Not your fault. Just means this will take longer than I wanted. How were you trying to craft the spell?”
“I never even got that far.” I started. Her brows furrowed in confusion. “My issue was with how to manipulate the mana to even form the rune.”
Her head dropped into one of her hands. Hitting it hard enough that I heard her palm smack against her forehead. “Tell me what you were doing.”
“I reached for the mana floating through my body and tried to twist it into the shape. It fell apart every time I tried to even get to the second bend.”
She nodded. “You were trying to manipulate the mana inside of your body. While this is your mana, it is not your mana. As I told you earlier, mana is everywhere. It is a part of everything. That includes your body. Hence why there is mana floating around your body. While you can control that mana, you don’t have the skill or knowledge to do so yet. For now, you need to focus on the mana that you have full control of.”
“Where would I find such mana?” I asked, annoyed that I had missed something that sounded so simple.
“Your center. The well that holds all of your mana.” Her finger pointed directly at my heart. At first, I thought she meant just that, my heart. Given that there was nothing there, I mentally glanced around. Mentally smacking my head as I found the sphere of mana behind the damn organ. “Pull a thin strand of mana out. This strand is what you will manipulate to form the spell form needed to cast your spells.”
Great, I was going to be doing knotwork with my mana, or would this be considered embroidery? Not honestly caring which it was, I focused my mind on my current task. Mentally looking over the golden orb containing all my mana. The energy inside pulsed in time with my heart. Each pulse sent out a tiny wave of something through the mana floating around.
Mentally, I reached forward and touched the orb. As if in response to my touch, the energy reached back. It felt almost alive. If I didn’t know better, I would think that it was asking me what I wanted, no, needed it to do.
Dismissing the weird feeling, I started to push forward as I tried to get through the shell and to the mana below. I felt resistance and pressure. Resistance on my mental image as it pushed into the sphere and pressure inside my chest. Taking that as a sign that I was on the right track, I pushed harder until both abruptly vanished as my hand reached the other side.
Liquid heat licked at my hand. The feeling was so vivid that I felt that I could drink whatever this mana really was. Not that I thought that was truly possible nor was it a good idea.
Concentrating on the task at hand, I visualized the material forming into a rope. This worked quite well. The rope didn’t fall apart as I pulled it out of the sphere. Though, given that it was as thick as my wrist, I doubted this was what Mindi had in mind. Mentally, I pushed the rope back into the sphere. It melted away. It was as if it had never formed in the first place.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Trying again, I focused on making a thinner rope. While I pulled out one that was indeed thinner, it was still the size of a pen. I could do better and kept trying. Repeating the process again and again. Shrinking my image as I visualized yet smaller and smaller threads.
One such thread was as thin as my hair. It was thin enough that I could barely see it. The moment it left the sphere, it snapped. Every bit of the thread that was outside the sphere exploded into smoke. I mentally stood there, watching as the smoke dissipated. Not able to do anything to stop it. Curious, I looked at the corner of my vision and noticed that my mana pool was missing a few points.
158/160 MP. That little thread had cost me two points of mana to form. “That was a bit thin. Try a little thicker this time.” Mindi’s voice nearly broke me out of my mental state. Gritting my mental teeth, I focused on my task and ignored the world outside. As I moved to form the next thread, an idea hit me. Whoever said that the threads had to be one solid piece. Why not wrap multiple threads together like they do for clothing and even bridges?
How did they do that again? Wasn’t there a core with various threads wrapped around it? Did the outer threads rotate in the same direction or the opposite? It had to be in the opposite direction otherwise the layers would more easily fall apart at the same time. So, mentally, I visualized three of the thin threads spinning around a slightly thicker thread.
The thread that formed worked, mostly. As I pulled more and more of the thread out of the sphere, a dull throb started at the back of my head. Holding such a complex visual was taxing. It felt like I was trying to draw while holding a conversation with someone. While I could do it, and had, I would lose all the work if I fucked up even for a fraction of a second.
With a mental death grip on the thread, I started to open my eyes. I didn’t even get them halfway open before I lose the damn thing. Not only did I feel the thread as it vanished, I saw it as a tiny wave of mana burst out of me. “Damn it. I thought I had it that time.” I cursed.
As I took a deep breath to force myself to calm down before trying again, Mindi spoke up. “Good. This time, take that thread and loop it around to your back before returning it to your pool.”
Wait, what happened to trying to form a spell first? She was changing the lesson plan yet again for no reason. “Are you sure you don’t want me to form the rune for fire first? Hell, I still need to work on stabilizing the thread before moving on to manipulating it into any shape.”
“Sure, but the thread is mana being held to the shape you want with your mind and nothing else.” She said as she tossed a small ball of water between her hands. “If you could hold it without a spell for any length of time you would be capable of things beyond me. Though maybe not Barti. That elf’s ability with magic scares me sometimes. Feel free to practice holding a thread without help later. For now, focus on looping the thread through your back and back into the sphere.”
Huffing at the oddity of the order, I fell back into my mental image of my body. Quickly locating the sphere and pulling out a thread of mana. Taking my time, I wrapped the thread around to my back before returning it to the starting point. The moment the thread touched the sphere, it merged with it. Stabilizing and thickening as mana started to pump down it.
“Good,” she said, slapping me on my back. The thread seemed to distort a little before stabilizing. “That is the most basic form of body strengthening spells. This one is specifically for your back muscles.”
Opening my eyes while keeping a mental eye on the thread, I looked at her. “But how is that different from something like cultivation?” Her face filled with confusion. It was as if she had never heard of the term. Then again, maybe she hadn’t. “It’s when someone uses inner power and intent to control their body and power various abilities. Practitioners typically sit around and gather as much of the energy of the world as they can. Typically with the goal of becoming effectively immortal.”
“First off, while there are spells to slow aging and help you live after death,” She visibly shivered at some image. “No amount of mana will make you immortal. Everything dies, even gods. Second, there are many ways to use mana. Some spells will use mana to gather yet more mana until it has enough to cast the main spell without the help of someone triggering it. Most enchantments are like this but as I told you earlier, there are spells you can cast that would do something similar to the mana around you. There are also those that can just use mana to force an element to bend to their will.”
“There are?” An image of someone performing some avatar-like moves to manipulate the area around them. “How does one go about getting such skills?”
“Before we get into that, how are you for mana?”
I had to do a double-take at my mana bar. It was dropping even though I wasn’t doing anything. It was dropping by a full point every minute. While that might not seem like much compared to the stove or such, it was still faster than my mana regeneration. Relaying this to Mindi, I watched as the grin on her face became a bit evil. “Now onto the fun part. Don’t worry, I will answer all your questions as we go.” I didn’t know whether to groan or cheer upon hearing that. Not with that smile. And here I was starting to think she was a nicer teacher than Barti.