Well shit. That was not how I expected it to go. After I had finally figured out mana control, I remembered how Sophia had mentioned that the next step was using your imagination to give shape to the mana by delving into the “conceptual understanding of flame”. So I sent my mind into all my old chemistry classes and considered the autocatalytic reaction, the light and heat brought about by its exothermic nature, and its propensity to spread violently when not managed. I then pushed my mind, trying to brute force will it into reality, and to my surprise, it succeeded!! A little too well in fact. I got a little paranoid that my head was on fire and the shock was just preventing me from feeling it yet, so I spent a few seconds slapping my hair and face.
The laughter I heard in my head only grew more cacophonous as I began slapping myself around. I decided to take that to mean I was not in fact on fire and instead just looked like a massive idiot. I took a look at the sky as I responded to Sophia’s laughter. Shit, it’s not like she’s actually physically here to look at, so may as well just look anywhere.
“So I take it that wasn’t how it was supposed to go? Any clue how I somehow fucked up the ‘easiest spell to cast’? Oh also, on a side note, where are you? And why can I hear your voice in my head?”
The laughter took a few more seconds to die down before you responded. “You just now are asking? I’m fairly certain that most people would’ve had that question be the first thing out of their mouths if they found themselves in your situation.”
I shrugged, “I mean both the demon stuff and the new world stuff are both top priority questions to ask, I just chose to focus on the new world stuff first.”
“I suppose that’s fair. And to answer your questions, my true form is in the Demon Realm currently, what you refer to as Hell. Hearing my voice is the effect of the soulbond between us. As you grow stronger, the bond shall as well, and can be used in many different ways. Transfer of information, temporary possession, summoning, these are just a few, however, as of right now it can only be used for the first. As for why you exploded your own face, I believe that has to do with your visualization of flame. From what I understand about your old world, your lack of magic caused you to have delved much deeper into the mechanisms behind how fire works than the locals here. You could say that the fireball that you summoned was made with ‘True Fire’, whereas most people add different contexts to it. After all, while you see a small campfire and a raging inferno as fundamentally the same kind of flame, the locals here would inherently separate the two based on context. I would recommend that you practice your visualizations more and rather than delving as deeply as you can into concepts, figure out what contexts you wish to summon.”
“Interesting. So when you say conceptual understanding, it’s not just the underlying mechanisms but also the interpretation? What you think and feel about a thing rather than the thing itself?”
“A mostly accurate summation.”
I think about it to myself for a while, before trying again. This time, I thought of a primeval society. A group of nomads, lighting a campfire to ward off the predators in the night. Gentle. Powerful. Flickering weakly, yet filled with hope for a peaceful night. And in my hand it gathered. Too small and weak to use offensively. Too frail to actually protect me if something were to decide to attack. And at the same time, simply looking at it filled me with a sense of security. As though as long as I could see this flame, nothing could possibly harm me. I let it burn gently above my hand, until I ran out of mana to sustain it.
“What a curious flame.” Sophia commented, intrigue filling her voice, as well as something else. Something almost… fragile. Longing. “Functionally it is rather useless, however, you don’t often see magic that can directly manipulate emotions amongst humans. That’s far more common with demons.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, “It’s nice to have around, but I should probably focus on a different spell right now. Every way I think about fire, it’s either uncontrollable destruction, or gentle and unassuming. Neither of which would really be useful in a combat situation. I think I’ll try some wind manipulation. That one I can definitely see some ways to use offensively. Though I’ll need to wait for my mana to regenerate. Do I just have a ridiculously small amount of mana, or what? My little fireball was only there for about 30 seconds before I ran out.”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“On the contrary, as my contractor you have a significantly larger mana pool than most others have when they begin. Your issue lies in your efficiency of mana manipulation. To put it simply, you’re allowing 90% of your mana to dissipate uselessly and only actually using the remaining 10%.”
Oh. I felt the temperature rising in my cheeks, surely blushing in embarrassment. “In that case, do you have any exercises to increase mana efficiency?”
“No, it’s something that can only come naturally with practice. As you deplete your mana stores, not only will you gradually become more efficient, but your maximum mana pool will increase, almost like building muscle or scar tissue. Your body realizes that you have a need for more mana than you currently have, and so regenerates a little more than what you had previously so that you don’t run into a situation where you use all of your mana again.”
That makes sense. I thought about it and felt for how much mana I had regenerated so far. If I had to guess, in the 10 minutes since I had run out, I had recovered about 10% of my maximum. This meant that either my mana regeneration was ridiculously fast, or my maximum mana pool is in fact very small. Given what Sophia had told me about my pool being larger than average, I figured it was somewhere in between. I started releasing little bits of mana at a time and moving them around until they dissipated.
The first time the ball of mana I had only lasted a couple of seconds. Then when 10 minutes passed I did it again, and managed to last a second longer. A few tries later and I managed 5 whole seconds. I kept repeating this exercise as I walked downhill. The topography had become significantly less steep, so I figured there would be some kind of water source somewhere nearby. I also had managed to find a perfect stick to serve as a spear shaft, but with no knife, I couldn’t sharpen it to a point, so I would have to spend some time chipping rocks like a caveman. That or figure out a way to use magic to shape my tools how I want.
Sophia’s POV
I watched incredulously as Leo performed his self made exercise. The reason behind my incredulity was that most people cannot simply empty their mana stores on a whim as he is regularly doing. The analogy I had provided with muscle mass was more accurate than he knows. When most people ran out of mana, there was an intense feeling of mental exhaustion. It was far from uncommon for many casters to simply fall asleep when they ran out of mana. For Leo to continuously drive himself to that point without a care in the world? That is unheard of, though not entirely unfathomable, I thought to myself, remembering that feeling of existential exhaustion that had emanated from his soul whilst spewing his desires. I theorized that he was so used to mental exhaustion from his previous life that he most likely didn’t even feel that anything was wrong. On one hand, this was a definite boon, as he would be able to train in this ridiculous manner, growing powerful far more quickly than he otherwise should be able to, but on the other… When he reached a breaking point, he would most likely just collapse without any warning.
He was also improving his efficiency remarkably quickly. While two extra seconds didn’t sound that impressive, he was also only using a small portion of his mana. If he were to use the entirety of it, that would be almost an extra half a minute of continuous spell usage. I found myself wondering how his wind spell would turn out, because if it was anything like that fireball…
I couldn’t help but feel amazed when I remembered it. Sure, it wasn’t powerful, or even inherently impressive. However, he had touched upon a concept very few have ever directly interacted with. He had touched upon the concept of hope. Like many emotions, hope is not something that can be directly translated from one person to another. When people are in constant conflict, one person’s hope is often another’s despair. However he had touched upon the most universal aspect of the emotion. The rawest, most primal version. Hope for survival. Hope that you can make it to the next day. A foolish self assurance that as long as you stand near him, everything would turn out fine. The consequence of touching upon such a fundamental aspect of that emotion has one huge advantage. It could affect everyone equally, no matter what species, no matter what loyalties they possessed, no matter how powerful. So long as you possessed emotion, you would find yourself entranced by that flame. Even I had been.
The combination between that and his very first fireball had created a mildly alarming pattern. Somehow, Leo had shown a tendency to reach for the most fundamental basics of concepts. Of course, two instances cannot truly be called a pattern, but it’s certainly enough to cause suspicion, generating an intense curiosity to see how his other magics would turn out.
“Oh hey, I think I hear a river!”
Again, I was pulled from my thoughts as I watched him rush off towards a nearby river. I had already known it was there through detection magic, and chose not to tell him since the plan he had shared indicated that he would find it soon enough without my help. I watched as he examined the water, taking into account how quickly it flowed as well as its clarity.
“Seems like it’s moving fast enough to prevent bacteria and whatnot from building up, so it most likely won’t make me sick, and it’s clear enough that there probably aren’t any poisonous contaminants in it, but these are just assumptions, and I should probably play it safe.”
I then watched as he took off his shirt for some unknown reason. He paused with it halfway off then stared down at his body. Seconds passed before he exclaimed,
“How the fuck did I get abs!?”