Jon walked back to the library, unperturbed. Everything just seemed to glide around him. The sun was nearly finished setting, so he got to watch the dark crimson turn to purple as he walked through the emptying streets. He felt tired, but also full of an incredible amount of zeal which kept him upright.

I’m gonna go home and see my friends, he thought with all sorts of giddiness.

Jon entered the library doors and took a deep breath.

Where are they? Jon assumed they would be eating dinner, so he stepped forward gallantly though the library.

Mallory was reading a book at one of the shelves when he saw Jon passerby.

“Jon!” Mallory said, snapping his book closed and putting it on the shelf. “You’re alive!”

Jon waved with a smile.

“You look… happy.” Mallory cocked his head. “What did you exactly do with that girl?”

“We talked.” Jon said. “It was a good talk.”

“Uh-huh. Talked. Okay.” Mallory shrugged. “How are you feeling? You tired yet?”

Jon felt a little tired, but he wanted to hang out with Mallory more, so he nodded. “Yes.”

“Alright, then!” Mallory’s spike in energy startled Jon. “I want to try something!”

He clapped and took a glance at Jon’s feet. “I want to try a couple of spells with you.”

Spells? Jon was bewildered, but he was ready to try anything at this point.

“Up for some spellcasting?”

Jon nodded furiously.

“Okay. I want you to try a wind spell.” Mallory looked up at Jon. “Can you do that?”

“Yeah.” Jon pulled out his gun from its holster. Holding it made him feel prepared.

“Pretend that you’re going to cast a spell.” Mallory said. “How would you do it?”

“Clap?” Jon asked. That was what he did when he used a fire spell.

“Sure.” Mallory answered.

Jon wanted to clap, but he realized that he was holding his gun.

Should I put it back?

Something inside of him told him that he should use the gun, so he held on to it. It was magic after all.

He thought of Thalia’s spell, so he took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and tried to mimic what she did.

His insides warmed up, and a small gust breezed past his face.

He opened his eyes in excitement.

Mallory was looking down at Jon’s feet, his robes flapping from the wind. The small green circle was already retreating from itself.

“Great!” Mallory said. “Holy crap! Like, I figured it would work, but holy crap!”

He knelt down, studying the symbols as they faded away. Jon could barely notice them.

“Alright.” Mallory stood up. “Now try it without the gun.”

Jon replaced the gun into its sheath and closed his eyes, focusing again.

He could barely muster up anything, no matter how much he strained.

“Yep.”

Jon opened his eyes to Mallory’s quick affirmation.

“Can’t do it,” Jon said.

“Yeah. I know.”

“Is it the gun?” Jon asked.

“Yeah. Probably I mean, but umm… not only the gun.” Mallory made eye contact with him. “Try not to think of it as the gun's fault. The gun mimics wind mana, but not in the way that it’s exactly wind mana.”

“Sure,” Jon said. He smiled, trying to show that he was listening.

“Uhh, yeah.” Mallory’s eyebrows raised in skepticism, as if he thought Jon was lying about something. “Let me explain: Your gun, it mimics wind spell but not totally. It’s like, half-assing it.

“Hmmm.” Jon nodded.

“What we think of as fire mana, Lighting mana, etcetera, etcetera… it’s all synthesized forms of mana.” Mallory used his fingers to demonstrate the concept as he continued.

“Think of fire mana as taking two stones and striking them against each other. But you’re doing it with both your mana. It creates a burning “effect.” Lighting mana is almost like you’re vibrating the mana molecules in the air until it gets charged with energy. And wind mana is like a funnel. It winds up mana until it’s ready to be casted. That’s why you often see wind mana get wounded up before casting.”

Jon thought back to the many times he had seen wind attacks. He remembered Tallow always winding up parts of her body and directing her attacks. Mercy was able to use a wind spell without winding, but perhaps hand signs she made in the beginning helped her with that, so he didn’t bring it up.

Mallory twirled his finger in the air. “You… or your gun, rather… it gathers mana and spins it and spins it and what not so it can be prepared, but not so much so that it becomes a wind spell. It’s more like you’re gathering a ball of pure mana and chucking it at people. I mean, there’s no such thing as pure mana after you use it…”

Mallory lowered his voice. “But that’s a different story.”

He returned to regular volume. “Wind mana is the closest of those three to “unrefined mana.” If mana is too unrefined, then it simply seeps in and out of your body. It does the normal mana stuff but faster, which doesn’t help anybody. But that’s what makes your gun pretty decent at displacing most mana attacks without you having to think so hard. It also means that you can’t displace mana spells that are too powerful, ‘casue it’s just a ball of mana. Think of it as a ‘jack of all trades, master of none’ situation.”

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Jon understood.

“The gun, Jon. You’re a master at shooting.”

Jon nodded again. He bobbed back and forth on his feet.

“Are you drunk?” Mallory suddenly asked.

“Huh?” Jon widened his eyes. “No.”

“Okay.” Mallory hadn’t looked convinced, but he continued. “Well, because your gun is closer to wind mana, it means that you only have to adjust your mana ever so slightly for it to become a wind spell.”

“Simple.” Jon said.

“Yeah. The gun naturally prepares that part of the spell for you. Without that, it’s harder to do. But it doesn’t mean it’s bad.” Mallory shrugged. “It more or less puts you with everyone else who doesn’t cast spells.”

“Okay,” Jon said, “anything else?”

Mallory looked taken aback by the question. Jon wondered if it came off wrong.

“What else… can I do to be useful?”

Mallory’s eyes flashed with recognition. “Ah. Okay. Um, you can do fire, right?”

Jon nodded. He clapped.

A flame ball the size of his head appeared between the men's faces before exploding immediately, making them jump in shock.

“Whoa!” Mallory yelped.

“It’s big,” Jon noted.

“Yeah. That means your body’s adapting!” Mallory put his hand on his chin in thought, much like he always did when wondering about mana. “I mean, you were able to do the wind spell with the gun. But the fire spell? Huh.”

Mallory left his brain palace and looked at Jon. “What else can we do?”

Jon pulled his gun back out and cracked it. He looked inside. “I don’t know.”

“Well, judging by your lack of spell circle and your dependence on reflex…” Mallory nodded slowly. “You’re probably using body mana. In that case, most people start using their mana to help them assist with what they already do.”

“Like Hector,” Jon said.

“Yeah, like Hector,” Mallory affirmed. “I suggest you’d shoot fire, but that didn’t work last time. Maybe if you cast a spell.”

Help with what I already do? Jon closed the gun and tried to imagine shooting fire, but none of it seemed to connect. It felt like it wouldn’t work.

Jon thought even harder about other ways he could use fire.

Gunpowder?

“Well, let’s see what we’ve umm… seen.” Mallory went into thought mode again. “I mean, now that we’ve gotten that business with wind mana over…”

Blunderbusses used gunpowder ignited by the flint in the gun to shoot projectiles. The flint sparked the gun, which created an explosion.

“I suppose that’s what Sabez did,” Mallory continued. “Maybe the gun was drawing energy for the wind spell, but if we assume Sabez can do as many wind spells as Tallow can…”

Explosions are fire, right? Jon turned the gun over to check out the bottom. When Jon clapped, the ball of fire exploded. What did the clap mean to him?

“So, that’s why it was so powerful!” Mallory snapped his fingers. “Sabez must have sensed the gun performing a wind spell, so he adjusted his own mana to it and boom!”

Jon replayed the clapping in his mind. At this point, he closed his eyes, drawing from everything he had learned about mana and even his knowledge from school about the blunderbuss.

Fire mana is rubbing two things together to strike a match. Inside the gun, in the chamber, the flint hits the metal. It causes a fire. It ignites the crop. The crop explodes. It causes an explosion. Shoots the load. Rubbing my hands together causes fire. Creates the explosion.

Jon didn’t think he understood what the connection was, yet. But he could take a guess.

He imagined an explosion in the inside of the chamber. as he pulled the trigger.

There was pop accompanied by a small growl from the blunderbuss as it kicked up slightly in Jon’s hand. Mallory stopped talking and looked at the gun in awe.

“Holy…” Mallory looked at Jon. “What did that do?”

Jon didn’t know, but it felt like he did something.

He repeated the gesture.

With the pull of the trigger, the gun erupted louder as fire flushed from its chamber, lifting itself up from the barrel and nearly pushing Jon back. He steadied himself, wanting to keep the gun in control.

“Whoa…” Mallory looked at the gun in awe. “Do it again.”

This time, Jon held the gun ready. He was gonna try to finish the entire spell. He was gonna shoot something.

“Wait!” Mallory waved before Jon could finish aiming. “I can make a target!”

Whoops. Books. Jon nodded.

Mallory raised his hands. A small square appeared several feet in front of Jon.

Jon aimed at it. He imagined explosion, and he imagined the shot.

Fire sparked from the chamber. A ball of mana the size of the flared end of the barrel shot quickly across the room, faster than anything Jon had ever shot before, hitting the square and immediately extinguishing on impact.

“Holy crap. That was… small, but also-” Mallory looked down at the glass and gasped. “Holy crap!”

The square had a small hole the size of the projectile burned into it.

He looked at Jon with his mouth wide.

Jon wanted to be impressed, but his initial disappointment at the size was interrupted by the tightness he felt in his chest. He tried to take as big of a breath as he could, but his body had stopped him.

“Oh, oh!” Mallory ran to Jon’s side, but the symptom had already begun to pass. Jon sat up and looked at Mallory in shame.

“Don’t worry,” Mallory said. “You’re trying to do two different levels of mana at once. That’s incredibly hard and taxing on your body, especially if you’re not used to it.

“Mercy can do it,” Jon said with a frown even as his breathing returned thinking of her enveloping her energy weapon with her spellcasting.

“That’s ‘cause Mercy’s blade is formed completely from her body energy,” Mallory explained. “It’s like purely charged, energized mana, but created inside of her body instead of outside. She can manipulate that using body mana and…”

Mallory sighed. “Look, Jon, whatever Mercy did, she learned through years and years of training and punishment from her famil- well, clan. That’s really particular. You perform spells like other spellcasters. Your body mana is manipulating the world mana, so to put that on you with the body mana is a lot. Even Hector only switches between the two when he’s fighting. Do all of that at the same time, it’s hard."

There were a bunch of footsteps before Hector appeared on the scene.

“What was that?” he asked, out of breath. His sword was drawn.

“Oh, me and Jon were just practicing some mana,” Mallory explained. “Sorry.”

“Sorry,” Jon added.

“That’s why we have the training room,” Hector said, his shoulders relaxing. “So, everything’s fine?”

“Jon has a fight tomorrow,” Mallory said. “So, we’re training him.”

“A fight?” Hector raised his eyebrow. “With that woman? In that hellhole?”

Jon nodded.

“Ah, Jon.” Hector scratched the back of his head. “You should really let me know before you do those things. Especially since we’re technically working right now.”

“Sorry,” Jon said, even more ashamed.

“I mean, it’s not that much of a problem.” Hector crossed his arms. “I think it’s okay. It’s just, if my sister found out, she might be really disappointed.”

“Like you haven’t ducked out and did tournaments while you were on the job,” Mallory replied.

Hector’s face turned red. “Yeah, but that was wrong. I shouldn’t have done it.”

“You started a whole tournament because you didn’t want to finish your mission!” Mallory tossed his arms up into the air. “I mean, really! And don’t even act like you haven’t snuck off into a fight when you’re not supposed to!”

“I… but… doesn’t make it right!” Hector scuffed the back of his head again. “And besides, I don’t want Jon to get hurt! I don’t trust that woman. Who knows how she’ll pull strings.”

“You trust Jon, now, right?” Mallory asked.

Hector matched eyes with Jon. Jon understood. Just because Hector trusted him as a friend and a companion on the field didn’t mean he trusted him to fight by himself.

“Yeah, I guess I do.” Hector said to Jon’s surprise. “Alright.”