Alice collected herself and slowly breathed. If she really thought about it, wind magic could be kind of cool too. If her magic was in fact the control of oxygen around her, she might be able to take control of flames and their intensity as long as a combustion already started, almost making her look like a dual-element mage. Maybe this magic could even make her fly?

“We will do the same thing again. But this time, hold out your arm in front of you before you start moving your mana."

"Like this?"

"Yes, precisely. Now slowly gather your mana in your arm and try to let it out without moving.”

As he said this, Viktor was putting very fancy-looking goggles over his eyes.

Alice thus began gathering her mana in her hands and then expelled it.

“As your mana leaves your hands it loses its form, but there’s no wind. Mmh..."

"What does that mean? Am I not a wind mage then?"

"That probably means that the slight flow of air was not really your magic, but more of a side effect… Now, please try to gather your mana into your muscles. I’ll look at the flow of your mana."

"... Like this?"

"Mmh… Similar, but not quite..."

"Do these glasses let you see my mana?"

"Precisely. This pair is a royal-class artifact that I borrowed from the castle. I use it for most of the magic examinations of newly-awakened children.”

Viktor was the official instructor for most children who had their coming-of-age ceremony at the temple in the capital. Each newly-awakened child had the right to have one or two free lessons like the one Alice was having. Since she awakened way earlier than usual and outside the capital’s temple, Viktor was the one who had to come here. Given that the trip was about two and a half days, the fact that Edgar de Ravendall personally knew the King had probably helped.

“Considering what I saw, the safest bet would be strengthening magic. The flow of your mana doesn’t match exactly, but this would certainly explain the air current we felt. Your arm might have been much more powerful than normal at this moment, and created this slight air current."

"Strengthening magic… Like reinforcing my limbs?"

"Yes. This kind of magic type is quite rare since it requires a very good knowledge of the human body, its bones, and muscles. Did you even have the time to learn all this?"

"M-more or less…”

(Not in this life, at least. But strengthening magic? This does sound cooler than wind magic, especially if it’s rare.)

“We will try it out. Take this ball in your dominant hand, gather mana, and try launching the ball at this fencing dummy. If it really is strengthening magic, I’ll probably see it.”

Viktor was expecting the ball to be faster than normal, and he would decide depending on the flow of mana if it was launched by mana-powered muscles or if it was propelled by wind magic. With the artifact he had, he would make sure to see it.

Just after she steeled her resolve, Alice launched the ball. However, it was strange. Instead of gathering in her muscles, the mana left her hand and enveloped the ball, so it did not look much like strengthening magic. The wind magic should have thus become the more likely of the two, but the ball was… awfully slow. There was no gain in speed and no air flow could be seen. It was like the mana on the ball was refusing to turn into magic.

“Weird… Let’s do this aga-”

Just as Viktor told Alice to throw the ball another time, a deafening noise could be heard as the ball collided with the dummy she had targeted: it was utterly destroyed by this seemingly weak ball. Viktor could not even find the remnants of the projectile. It was hard to believe considering this was a throw from an under-developed twelve-year-old girl, but this probably would have been lethal to any human who tried catching the ball.

“... Just what is your magic?”

Viktor sighed.

At first, Alice didn’t understand either. She was looking with dead eyes at the broken swordsmanship dummy.

(Um, isn’t it a bit too much?)

“What… what was the dummy made of?"

"... Wood, it would seem. This one may have been old, but I don’t see how this weak ball could have broken it like this…"

"Um… is it not rude to call this 'weak'...? I put all I had in this throw..."

"Whatever. How did you do that?"

"What do you mean ‘whatever’?!”

Viktor ignored the girl and just scratched his head, trying to think of something in order to explain this unexpected result. The few guards and attendants watching the magic lesson as they trained didn’t know what to think of the situation either.

“Anyway, I did not do much. I just threw a fastball."

"Listen, kid. That was not fast at all. A ball this light should have done nothing to this dummy, even to an already damaged one. How do you explain that?"

"Are you not the specialist here? How would I know?"

"A throw can become more powerful with more speed or with a heavier ball. Yet, your ball was so slow… Did someone rig the ball or something?”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The few people that were there denied it, but Viktor already knew that couldn’t be it. He was the one who gave the ball to Alice in the first place, and it was not heavier than it should have been.

“So... I assume it carried more kinetic energy than it should have?"

"Kine-what?"

"N-nevermind. I meant power. Maybe my mana strengthened the ball’s power?"

"This is not how strengthening magic works… Then again, with your studies being discontinued so soon, it makes sense that your magic type doesn’t follow the rules… Aaargh… You know what, this explanation will do for today. I’m exhausted.”

(Even though I was the one doing physical tasks and exhausting my mana while you didn’t move an inch?!)

***

In the evening, when Alice was finally by herself in her room, she thought about what had happened that day. The increase in kinetic energy was the best explanation she could think of, considering what she had seen and what she had heard from her instructor. With a strengthened arm or with wind propelling the ball, the throw should indeed have been a lot faster, yet it had looked like a normal one. A certain instructor would say that it was weak, but this surely was just them being mean.

(So, does that mean I converted my mana into kinetic energy and gave it to the ball without changing its speed or mass? I guess the additional energy could have been stored in the ball as some sort of potential energy, like strain. If not, though, that would mean I kind of broke the formula…)

She was of course referring to the basic formula of kinetic energy, being E = ½ mv². Just like the instructor said, kinetic energy could be increased with more mass or with more speed. Although they didn’t call this kinetic energy. The science of this world didn’t even have a term equivalent to energy in the physical sense, hence why Alice used the vague term ‘power’. They did have a word for force, but ‘force’ and ‘energy’ were not really interchangeable.

The lack of words for this concept actually had one big consequence: nobody really thought of heat, light, or electricity as related to each other. Yet, they all were different forms of the same thing: energy.

If Alice’s magic was the manipulation of all types of energy, this would be a very nice power, she thought.

However, it was entirely possible that her magic type was restricted to the manipulation of only kinetic energy. After all, one did not choose their element. Even so, she thought it was still pretty cool, infinitely better than wind magic at least. Giving a projectile more power than it should have was the perfect wild card to use in a battle, too. Who would bother dodging a small pebble launched in a slow parabolic trajectory? Yet, with enough mana enveloping it, this same pebble could potentially carry the same energy as a rock the size of a hand thrown at full speed, or maybe even more than that.

Maybe the opposite thing could even be done: was she able to deprive projectiles or punches of their kinetic energy, making them harmless?

The only limitation to this power seemed to be her mana. Just using her mana a few times emptied most of her mana pool, so Alice was feeling a little anemic and sat on a chair in the mansion.

Speaking of her mana, she thought there was something strange. She felt as if she had been continuously releasing a small amount of mana since the instructor truly activated her mana veins.

If she had to make an estimation, she was recovering about twice as much mana as what she was losing. Therefore, she was not too worried about losing all her mana and straight up dying because of that. Still, her mana recovery speed was thus around 33% slower than it should be. Maybe this was normal and this would naturally stop as she gets used to using mana. For the time being, she just hoped that all the mana that was slowly aggregating in her room would not suffocate her during the night or something.

***

“So, it is as you said. You do lend power to objects.”

The day after, the instructor did many experiments on his pupil’s magic.

One time, he made Alice hit the ball with a stick which she enveloped with some of her mana. As she swung the improvised bat, Viktor thought it wasn’t that fast. However, on contact with the ball, the latter flew so fast and so far away that Viktor actually lost sight of it even while using his artifact-enhanced vision. This time, she seemed to have lent power to the bat, which explosively transferred it to the poor ball. Viktor actually saw the mana on the bat disappearing and thus turning into magic at the exact time it made contact with the ball. Alice, however, was just happy to perform a home run, something even her former self had never achieved.

One other time, Viktor was the one who gently threw the ball after Alice had put her mana around it with one finger. The ball did carry a lot more power than it should have if Viktor threw it normally. He made Alice do many other similar experiments but had to stop when her mana was low.

Incidentally, even though the instructor was starting to understand a little more of Alice's magic type, he still didn’t get what was up with the air produced by her weak hand in the first lesson. Frankly, he probably forgot.

Yet, the explanation for the air was actually pretty similar to the ball’s case, although at a much smaller scale. While extending her arms on the first day, Alice naturally pushed a few dozen sextillions of air molecules out of the way. Since she didn’t have a ball in her hand, her mana was instead distributed to the molecules she made contact with.

Just like with the ball, the air molecules she directly touched did not move any faster than without mana but, upon encountering their neighbors, they transmitted a much higher energy. Just like the ball when hit by the powered-up bat, these neighbors then got a speed way higher than usual and this little domino effect created a slight air current next to her hands. Mimicking this wind magic was of course totally useless and it was so inefficient that it had emptied the majority of her mana pool in one try.

***

After a few days of beginner-level lessons, Viktor had to say his farewell to the Ravendalls. He said that even though he could not really understand Alice’s magic type, it was still fascinating and that he would like to come back sometimes to experiment with it. Since he had already published some research on strengthening magic, he wanted to find all the differences with Alice’s magic. After all, the end results were essentially the same.

On the other hand, Alice was now certain that her element let her manipulate energy in some way so she was satisfied, even though this had depleted her mana.

Still, a part of her wondered what constellations had to do with her magic.