I never thought that I would be so happy to hear Barti’s voice during training as much as I was at this moment. “Ok, I think that is enough hand-to-hand for now.” For the last god knows how long, Tindi had been beating me up, down, and around the room with nothing but her hands and feet. I would love to be able to say that I took her down a few times, but other than that first time, I failed to so much as knock her to the ground for more than a second.
“My turn.” Mindi’s cheerful voice has me cringing a bit. Not at her voice but at the fact that she sounded so excited. Given that I was learning how to attack and defend against various forms of attack, I was unsure just what she had planned.
I stayed in the center of the room, my breath coming in light gasps. My eyes follow her as she slowly makes her way over. Her eyes locked on the circle, giving it a once-over. Barti speaks up from where he is standing. “It will do what you asked. Maybe a bit more.”
“Good. Go ahead and power it up.” She says as she comes to stand in front of me.
“Um, what is going on?”
“While this room is decently protected against magic spells, I didn’t feel like paying for the guild for it. So, I asked Barti to place and power this circle.” Her hand gestured at the circle. “It should stop almost every spell you could cast while increasing the rate of mana regeneration of everyone inside of it.”
“Meaning I won’t need to worry about any spell that misses or how much mana I have.” I interrupt. Instantly understanding why she wanted the spell for this training session. “Aka, I won't have to worry about anything more than fighting you.”
Shaking her head, she continued. “Just remember that you might regenerate mana faster, but it does not mean you have unlimited mana. You will run out of mana, just not as fast. In fact, when he feels you are ready, Barti will randomly change how fast our mana regenerates. So keep an eye on your stores of mana.”
“Wait, what is the point of that?” I asked, confused about the point of training for such random changes.
“Ah, I sometimes forget that you don’t know much about this world.” Mindi’s head lifts to look at the ceiling, her eyes closed as she explains. “While mana is nearly everywhere, it is not spread out equally. There are some places where the mana is all but physical while there are also places without a mote for miles. Such environments will change how fast mana regenerates. From no regeneration to instant refilling of one's mana pool.”
As soon as her head drops, her eyes meet mine. Nodding at her explanation, she raises a hand. A finger pointing at me as she says, “Then let us see how you do.” With that as the only warning, a small ball of water flicks toward me. Not wanting to get wet, my body drops and rolls to the left. While I managed to get out of the way in time, she hit me with a second ball. One that I had not seen her summon. One that had been hidden behind the first.
She kept casting the balls of water and letting me simply dodge them for quite a while until finally, she groaned. “You are just dodging the spells as I fling them at you. This is great when you can see the spells and move fast enough, but will do you no good in a fight. You need to be dodging or countering the spells as they form.”
While my shirt was made of leather and didn’t hold water like cotton, it hadn’t blocked the water from getting under it. The feeling of leather sticking to my wet and cold skin had me grinding my teeth at her. “And how do you expect me to do that? It's not like I can see the spells as they form.”
“But you can.” She insisted, “You just don’t know how to do so, yet.” Taking a step back, she sat on the ground. Gesturing for me to join her. “When you cast a spell, do you see your mana?”
Shrugging, I sit down without moving from the spot near the wall that I had ended up at. It just so happened to be the furthest part of the circle I could reach from her. While it wasn’t all that far, I needed every moment I could get to dodge her projectiles. “I think I do. Or at least I see the threads of mana I use to form each spell.”
Shaking her head, she stated, “That is not mana sight.” Then she tilted her head a bit before correcting herself. “Well, it is but it isn’t. It isn’t true mana sight. It is like seeing an object but not seeing all the parts that make it up. Useful up to a point.”
From what I could tell, she was settling her body. Almost as if she expected to be in this position for a little while. I voiced my confusion about the sudden shift. “I thought we were training in magical combat?”
“We still are, mostly.” Her voice sounded a bit exasperated and annoyed at my question. “Look, you are less than useless against another magical user if you cannot so much as sense their spell, let alone the currents of mana flowing around you.”
Holding up a hand to placate her, I agreed with her. “Ok, I understand learning to sense when someone is casting a spell, but why would one want to sense such currents?”
“Well, for one thing, it is easier to detect wild mana, and two, the more mana in an area, the faster your mana pool recovers.” With that, I felt like an idiot. The answer to my question was obvious. She didn’t give me long to get mad at my own stupidity as she kept speaking. “The two skills you will need to get are not all that hard. Just tedious.”
“And those would be?” I asked when she didn’t immediately continue.
“Mana Sense and Mana Sight.” She closed her eyes, as if deep in thought and trying to recall a piece of information. “Mana Sight is a passive skill meaning you will not need to put some mana into it to use. With it, you will be able to see mana, or at least clumps of mana, at the first level. Though, you will want to work on leveling it up as the range and amount you are able to see is tied to it.”
“How do I go about gaining the skill?”
She took a minute to answer. “Sorry, I had to remember how I gained it. To unlock the first level, focus inside of yourself like you would for casting a spell inside of yourself. However, instead of focusing on your core, focus on a random spot. Just watch that spot until you start to notice a slight current.”
Physically, I closed my eyes as I mentally started to move into my body to do as she ordered, but she stopped me. “The other skill is Mana Sense. It is active and easier to learn after learning Mana Sight. Once you are able to see the flow of mana inside your body, you will need to disperse some mana from your core. While I imagine my mana as a mist, you might find some other image to help you hold the mana in place.
“The only thing that really matters is that you keep said mana under your control.” She emphasized that part. “With mana dispersed, feel how your mana interacts with the wild mana. Watch it as they push and pull at each other. Those interactions are what you will need to feel for when you are using the skill.”
“I get that these skills are useful and all,” In fact, I had a feeling that this skill was this game's version of an enemy detection tool. A mana radar as it were. “but how do I go about leveling them up?”
“By pushing them in any way you can. If you want more range, practice controlling your mana at greater and greater distances. Also, always learn how each type of mana feels. Wild mana is different than mana inside a monster, which is again different than any other creature. If one trains hard and becomes decently good at telling mana signatures apart, one can even tell who it is they are feeling.”
While I was interested in the information she was giving me, none of it made sense. I doubted it would until I had these two skills and could see or feel what she was walking about. So, taking her silence as a queue, I began meditating. It wasn’t all that hard. Which made sense considering I wasn’t being told to run and focus on casting a spell. An act that still had me delving inside to pull out a thread of mana to form whatever I was trying to cast. Of course, that memory brought with it thoughts of trying to cast spells without delving inside myself.
Forcing these distractions from my mind, I focused on my goal; seeing mana. Now, since it didn’t matter where I was looking for mana, as long as it wasn’t my mana pool, I didn’t bother moving from wherever my meditating mind put me. From the looks of it, it was a section of my lungs.
I sat there, watching as it flowed in and out of my body. Not seeing much more than the movement of air as they expanded and contracted. Which made sense. If I were something like mana, I would probably be smaller than a cell, let alone the alveoli that I was watching.
Mentally, I forced myself to focus closer and closer until I was able to see individual cells. Able to see and watch as my blood and air practically touched in an effort to exchange carbon dioxide for the oxygen my body needed to survive. The more I watched this, the more I realized that something about the exchange was weird.
An odd haze flowed with the air. Melting through the walls of my lungs and into my circulatory system before vanishing with the flow. While I didn’t know what the haze was, I could immediately eliminate a few obvious options. For example, it couldn’t be any form of dust as dust would have been stopped by the barrier keeping my blood from drowning me. And, unless I was in the middle of a sewer, I doubted there were enough viruses and bacteria in the air to get close to haze level.
No, this was something else. Something new. The more I focused on it, the more it seemed to thin out. Almost as if it was reacting to being watched. For all I knew, it was. Even light reacts differently when someone is watching it versus when it is not being watched.
Now that I thought about it, what if this haze was just another particle? A particle that I couldn’t see directly but had an effect on the area around it. An effect that looked like a haze. Similar to how heat affected the air above it, making it look like there was water where none existed. With that in mind, I focused on the effect itself and not the area it obscured.
Everything else seemed to fade as I looked closer and closer. Something about it made me think that, if only I got just a little bit closer I would be able to see whatever made it up. Of course, that wasn’t the case. The closer I got, the more hazy the view became. Almost as if I was looking through a camera and zooming without the ability to focus any more than I already had.
Resigning myself to the fact that I would never see whatever was making the mist up, I gave up. Whatever it was, I had to assume that it was what people were calling mana. Maybe some scientist somewhere would create tools to see and study it. It would be interesting to see what they came up with. As for myself, as long as it worked, I would live with what I had.
Having discovered what I assumed was mana, I pulled back. Seeing the entirety of my lungs. Watching the misty air flowing through it and dispersing into my blood. Following the blood toward my heart, I found that the mist didn’t stay dispersed. As soon as the blood reached my heart, it flowed out and toward my mana pool. Creating a thick haze in the area as something about the orb pulled all the mist toward it.
Some of the outer layers of the mist seemed to wisp away. As if pulled by a strong wind in another direction. The parts that broke off vanished from sight. Likely too thin for me to see. Not that I would have followed it. My senses were glued to the veritable fog of mana in front of me. A fog that I could see but couldn’t feel. One that suddenly reminded me of the other skill I needed to work on.
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Mentally smacking my head for wasting time, I reached for my mana. Pulling out a thin cord of the stuff. As I did so, the mist shrank away from it. Almost as if the mist was afraid to get close to the thing. A bit curious to find out what would happen, I let the thread vanish. Dispersing the mana that made it up into the environment. An explosion of mist filled the clearing. Ripples of which pushed the mist further away as my thread worked hard to disperse and equalize with the environment.
As this was happening, the mist on the other side of the sphere surged forward. Pouring into my pool as if falling into a sinkhole. This sight confirmed to me that the mist I was seeing was mana. It also showed me just how mana pools refilled on their own. Something that most games skipped over with a handwave and abusing the excuse of ‘because magic.’
Focusing on the mist created from my mana, I found that it was no different than the rest. As in, I couldn’t feel it any more than one could feel the air on the other side of a window. It seems that, as soon as one released their mana, it became free and left their control. Meaning that, while the effect is what I wanted, the end result was a complete bust.
Pulling another thread out, I tried to control the dispersal. This time trying to keep control over the mist as it formed. Too bad the mana ignored me. The thread in my grip exploded outward as fast, if not faster, than the last one. Trying again yielded the same results. Given that I was not stupid and could learn, albeit slowly some days, I gave up on creating a thread first.
From what I could tell, using it was like telling something to be two things at one time. To be both a solid thread and a fine mist. Since those two things were opposites, the mana quickly left my control. Joining with its friends in taunting me by being visible but useless.
Mentally reaching in, I grabbed a fistful of mana and pulled it out. Keeping it in a clump but not imposing any shape to it. Focusing on keeping control over everything else. I felt it as wisps of mana floated off. Most of which left my control, yet not all.
I could feel the bit that didn’t. Which was weird. It was like having another sense, one that had always been there but somehow muted or even silenced. Now that I could feel it, the information it gave me was a bit overwhelming and started to give me a bit of a headache.
Instinctively, I worked to tune it all out. Using the same techniques I had learned working in an industrial setting for years. While it might not help with everything, especially if it was too loud, it did help with the majority of the background noise. In this case, it helped with everything.
As the noise diminished to a dull roar, I found myself able to process the top layer of information. While it was soft, I could feel my blood as it rushed from one chamber to the next. But there was something else there. Something that wasn’t blood yet mostly going with the flow.
I didn’t even realize I had closed my eyes until I went to look at the spot with the weirdness going on. Though, when I did, I came face to face with one of the spots that wild mana condensed out of my blood and started to mist around my mana pool. The weirdness I was feeling was that of mana. If I had to equate it to another feeling, I would have to say it felt like it was a mist that was thick enough for water to start to condense on my skin.
While it mixed with my misted mana, it did so with reluctance. Clumping up on one side before finally forceing its way through to the other side in an effort to reach some sort of equilibrium. Not that the space filled with my mana was all that large. It barely encircled my pool. Curious what would happen, I reached into my pool and pulled out more mana before feeding it to the mist.
The mix thickened. Going from what one would find floating on the breeze from the ocean to something thick enough to cut with a knife. The sight of it reminded me of images of San Francisco early in the morning.
Adding yet more mana to the mist a second time yeilded a different result. This time, the mist expanded. More information flowing in as it did so. Again and again, I took mana from my pool and dumped it into the mist. It expanded and thickened each time until it abruptly stopped.
The mist filled my body. Information on every part of it flowing into my head where it was ignored. Yet, when I went to pour more mana into it to expand past my skin, the mana vanished. Okay, that wasn’t quite right. The mana I poured into the effect was still there. The issue was with the mana that expanded past my skin. All of that mana dispersed back into the environment as I lost control of it.
Before I could try again, Mindi’s voice cut through the silence that had filled the room. “Good. You have managed to get both skills in a reasonable amount of time.”
“Not that it will do me much good,” I grumbled as my eyes opened to look at her. My sight was tinged with a light mist. Not enough to block my sight, but enough that I could clearly see it. Given that one of the skills had the word sight in it, I had to assume that I was actually seeing mana with my eyes. Something that, while not useful at the moment, would help me in the future. While I was trying to get used to this new sight, a small part of my mind kept the mist in place so I didn’t lose what progress I had managed to make. “I can only sense the mana inside my body.”
“First off, that will do you a lot of good. You can sense more than just mana can’t you?” As I nodded, she continued. “Being able to see and judge wounds will help you during and after a battle. Allowing you to properly determine what is and what isn't a fatal wound.”
I hadn’t thought of using it like that. Such a skill would allow me to triage myself. It was nice to have but not all that great for when one is in the middle of a fight. Probably seeing my annoyance, she rolled her eyes and continued. “Take a look at your Mana Manipulation skill. If I had to guess it is level two.” She stopped talking to let me look and sure as shit, she was right. “At that level, you are able to control your mana to just past your skin. That is what is limiting your range.”
“So, if I want to sense other people and the spells they are about to cast, I need to increase this skill?”
“Yep,” she popped the p at the end as she started to get up. “Best way to do that is to practice and what better practice than to fight? This time I want you to focus on the fight and not just dodging the spells.”
As I stood up, a ball of water flew at me. I didn’t have time to dodge it, though this time I did feel the mana coursing through it as it hit my skin. This gave me a bit of hope. If I could expand my Mana Sense, I could potentially track spells already on their way to me and not just as they were cast. Something that she had failed to mention.
Part of my mind was locked up trying to keep the skill going and processing the information while the other part focused on keeping me moving and dodging. This was great except for the fact that I was the only one of us moving. In a race between my stamina and her mana use, I doubted I had a chance. I needed to go on the offensive or I would lose.
Now, I could get closer but doing so came with risks. Namely in the fact that I would have less time to react and dodge any spell. Which meant that the closer I got, the more my brain would have to focus on dodging. Eventually to the point that I wouldn’t be able to cast a second spell. To be honest, what I needed was another brain.
Ok, maybe not another brain, but maybe the ability to hold three or more thoughts at one time. It couldn’t be too hard. Just as I thought that a bunch of memories of my time learning to hold a spell and run at full speed reminded me just how hard learning to hold two things in the forefront of my mind could be.
A sudden, sharp pain stabbed into my skin everywhere there was water against my skin. “I think it is about time I start to introduce the rules when it comes to magical combat,” Mindi said. Her hand stretched in my direction. Given the foreign mana I could feel on my skin, she had to be casting a spell onto the water she had splashed against my skin. “Rule one. Never let someone's spells coat you. Even if it looks harmless, the castor can still manipulate said spells.”
“How?” I gritted out through the pain as I stopped moving. Instead working on casting a fireball. Not something to blow her up but something I could use to boil away the water. Anything to stop the pain.
“While it is cheaper and easier to pull water from the environment, I created it with mana. As such, I have more control over it than I would with water. On top of that, everyone else will have less control over it.” She shrugged. “Pretty common tactic mages employ to prevent another mage from taking control of the elements inside a spell.”
Without waiting any longer, I cast the fireball spell. Not caring if I didn’t have complete control. Instead of flicking away from me, the ball hovered in place. Flames licking up the surface as the heat warmed the space immediately around it. The closest spot of water to the heat stopped hurting. Either she was unable to control it with my spell so close, or the heat was countering whatever she had been doing. Given that I had let my mana sense drop to cast the spell and deal with the pain, I had no clue.
Having my mind so caught up in those items also meant I didn’t see the ball of water until it hit me. Well, not me but my fireball. The two instantly canceled each other out. Water turning into steam as fast as the fireball was snuffed out.
“Rule two. Never take your eyes off your opponent. Even if you are trying to take care of, or focus on, one spell at a time.” Looking at her, I found that she was waiting for me. A small ball of water balanced in her hand as if it was a baseball and I was a batter.
As she threw it, I noticed that I was too close, her throw too fast, for me to move out of the way in time. So, I sort of panicked. Forming the fire rune over and over in a web in a vain attempt to stop the ball before it could reach me. To my shock, the spell worked. A wall of fire formed between us. Vanishing moments later as a cloud of steam wafted over the top. The mana I had poured into it exhausted.
Mindi was pursing her lips but gave me a sharp nod. “That spell does the job, though it is a bit expensive isn’t it?” Flicking my eyes to the bar at the corner of my vision, I was shocked to see that half of my mana bar was gone. Likely from that one spell considering how fast it was refilling. “Rule three. Don’t use more mana than you need to.” She didn’t give me time to argue that I had no choice. “Did you absolutely have to use that spell or could you have used another, much cheaper, spell?”
My mouth snapped shut at that. She was right. If I could pinpoint where her waterball would be, I could cancel it out with a simple fireball. Mentally I shifted gears from trying to figure a way to beat her to one of just getting a single hit in. Backing up as part of me worked to rebuild my mana sense. Constantly pushing more mana into it as I tried to force it further and further from me. Unbidden and unwanted, a stray scene wove its way through my mind. It forced me to watch it as the scene played out at a speed I could barely keep up with.
A person worked on a piece of metal as it spun in a lathe. Taking their time as they cut and shaped it. The next piece of metal went into a more sophisticated-looking lathe. The tools were controlled with wheels and rails rather than hand as they cut out the same shape. Another piece, another machine. This time one with tools that cut following a predetermined path. Only stopping long enough for a pair of hands to switch the tool out before moving on to the next cut. The last piece sat in a completely enclosed machine. One that changed its own tools as it followed whatever paths it had been programmed to follow.
While the scene faded, I felt as if I had been hit by a lightning bolt. I was a fucking idiot, always trying to control every bit of mana I could. Taxing both my mind and body when I shouldn’t have been. I needed to follow the example of machining and let my tools do their job. Let them bring me the finished part, or in this case, the information I needed to know.
Not knowing what I was doing, I pulled a thin thread of mana out. Forming it into a rune I had never seen yet somehow knew. The communication rune was a simple-looking rune but I knew it was something I would have had a hard time forming if not for whatever had put the knowledge into my head.
The thread of mana formed a circle before dropping into a loop that went just past the center of the circle. Passing the center and forming another loop even though the first loop was only half done. As it passed the center a second time, it formed a third loop before finally finishing the first loop. A rounded triangle shape sat in the intersection of the three loops.
As the rune finished, it felt as if the mana near it became more there. I could feel everything more clearly as if everything was boosted with an antenna or something. The best part of the rune was that, just like an antenna receiver, I could tell it to ignore certain signals.
This time, I held onto what I was fairly sure was a newly created spell as I pushed mana out around me. Unlike before, the mana stayed misted around me and under my control. As if waiting for this moment, Mindi reminded me of rule two with a ball of water. However, unlike before, I managed to feel the ball of water as it flew through the air toward me. Not that the extra few moments did me any good. I still wasn’t able to dodge the ball and it splashed against my face causing me to splutter.
“Good, but rule four,” Mindi called out as if sensing that I had somehow figured out how to push my senses out. “Everything costs mana.” Eyes wide, I glanced at my mana bar and found that it was dropping like a stone. In a rush, I canceled every rune I had up. The drop slowed before finally stopping. Unfortunately, it also did not go up. Given how clear the world looked around me, the circle was devoid of mana. Likely Barti’s doing.
“Rule five,” Mindi stated as she held a small rock at the ready. “Don’t rely on any one method to do anything. The longer you do the same thing, the more likely your opponent will figure out a way to get around it. I will admit, I didn’t think you would figure out a way to detect mana so fast. Pretty sure that, given another two throws you wouldn’t have needed to even dodge any more. Too bad I am not going to give you the chance.”
“What do you mean?” I asked a bit hesitantly.
“Now the kid gloves come off.” Her smile was malicious and sent a shiver down my spine. “Now I start to throw some spells that can do some serious damage if you don’t block or dodge them. All while Barti here does whatever he wants to the environment in here.” I was going to die here.