A group from the Adventurer’s Guild came to dispatch a bullcock that managed to injure the boy’s father, and a celebration was held in the village. One of the adventurers, a Paladin from our own church, was kind enough to provide healing to the farmer before leaving to join the now relieved wife in the festivities.

I understand that it is unbecoming of a priest to speculate on the virtue of one of their congregation, but I feel that it is prudent to include that the mother of the boy did not return to the church that night.

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I watch the monster slayers with rapt attention, trying to pick up every detail that I can so that I can go over it again with my perfect memory.

Brains and Orc are entertaining the children. Brains casting different spells by making different colored lights pulse in his head before a burst of identical lights gather and pulse in an identical pattern before being shaped and shot off. Some of the kids walk up to Orc and start touching his face and tusks, much to his amusement, especially when he notices the looks of horror on the parent’s faces.

Muscles walks into the church and takes a moment to pray in front of the altar before noticing Farmer’s Wife. They chat for a bit and then he follows her to Farmer. I focus on Muscles when he touches Farmer and watch as some of the lights in his muscles start pulsing faster and begins to make the lights around Farmer’s wounds do the same until they begin pulsing at the same rate.

Muscles steps back, and I watch as the red lights around Farmer are joined by other lights of different colors. Farmer begins to sleep heavily, now looking completely relaxed. I'm confused now, did he cast a healing spell? Muscles then starts speaking to Farmer’s Wife again and the two begin to walk out to join in the feast.

I see Eyes is chatting with the guards and takes his time to scan over the gathering crowd. He scares me for a bit when he stares directly at me for a long moment, making my non-existent heart skip a beat. I wonder… can he also see magic? Then again, maybe magic is too general of a term… I bet those motes of light that I’m seeing are actually mana, and the different colors represent different... types?

That… would explain the clusters of red lights above the logs. I can’t see the flames themselves, but I can tell that they are there due to the lights moving faster. I bet that also means that the long stream of mostly blue lights outside of the village is a river. The large number of golden motes in the ground must be earth mana, and the silver lights that float around everywhere must be air mana.

So, what kind of mana is in my tree? It looks green to me, maybe wood? Hmm… I try to focus on the smallest mote of mana that I can and finally notice that it’s not actually green. Just a mix of water and earth mana that are attached closely together. Wait, why would trees be full of water and earth mana? Don’t they grow by absorbing the carbon from the air? Most plants don’t even really need dirt to live as long as they can still absorb the minerals that they need, but I’m seeing barely any air mana in my tree.

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Scanning the area, the orange mana I see at the tips of farm tools and spears of the guards must be metal mana, which actually makes more sense, since it’s fire and earth combined together. I wonder… is there other mana types that I’m not seeing… I wish I didn’t have to strain my vision super hard just to make out these individual motes.

I spot Muscles and Farmer’s Wife approaching me. Well, probably not me actually, I’m pretty sure he’s focusing on the tree as he takes a moment to pray. I notice that the faster pulsing mana in his body begins to slow down, while the mana in the tree starts speeding up before also slowing down as it causes a chain reaction, spreading from the trunk and into all of the branches in a wave.

He gets up with a spring to his step and starts talking excitedly with the Farmer’s Wife. What exactly did he just do? I can see her smiling at him while he continues to babble on and eventually starts patting him on the shoulder.

Hey now, you two better not be getting any ideas! One of you is married and the other is clearly a chaste paladin of the church. Stop stroking his arm! Don’t step so close to her, you probably still smell like rotting monster blood.

I watch in horror as the two stare into each other’s eyes and I quickly scan the area only to find no one else nearby. Muscles whispers something into her ear, and she replies with her own. The two then proceeded to her empty home and… I’m going to stop watching now. It’s bad enough having to avoid watching couples do that every night like a creep.

I’ll distract myself by focusing on what I’ve learned today.

* Magic is possible, and practically everything has mana in it.

* Mana is made of really small particles that makes me think of them akin to atoms and molecules

* There’re four different atoms, which I’m going to call Air, Earth, Fire, and Water

* These can form molecules by bonding together, making Wood and Metal Mana… I wonder… I bet that Fire and Air make Lightning, maybe Water and Air make Ice?

* Living things have the most mana, and the older they are, the more they have.

* Some people have more mana despite their age, and are able to make it pulse inside their bodies

* When the mana in a person’s body pulses faster, ambient mana gets drawn in and begins to pulse at the same frequency

* The person can then either shape it into a formation allowing them to fire it off as a spell, or can make their mana pulse slower by using the stiller mana to… discharge the accumulated pulsing?

Lots of questions answered, but now I have multiple new ones. How do people gain mana? How do they learn how to use it? Can I learn to use it?

I continue distracting myself from the nearby farmhouse by focusing on the town’s central circle. Brains casts a spell that uses Air Mana, sending it near Eyes’ ear and vibrates it at the same frequency as the Air Mana in front of Brains' mouth. Eyes then turns his head towards me, then the farmhouse, and then cracks a giant shit-eating grin while nodding at Brains.

What a noble group of adventurers… wait, did Brains just use magic to speak from a distance?

I replay the scene over and over again, and can confirm with high confidence, that yes, he just did.

Well, looks like I got a new goal now! If I can figure out how to manipulate mana, I can use it to communicate! All I have to do is just make the Air Mana vibrate the same way that air does when a person speaks… which, crap… is going to be insanely hard to do without a sense of hearing. Hopefully I can use my non-organic brain to start cataloging Air Mana vibrations, body language, and lip movements.

I’m also going to have to learn a new language as well, since I doubt everyone is speaking English…

Thankfully…, I have nothing but time… hopefully, I can figure this out before the madness starts to creep into my mind.