“So how do you plan on making me memorise it?”
“Well for that we will need [Mana sense] and a magitek device used in modern magic lessons, it can be done by using a book but that is needlessly difficult and we have little time so let's start.
To unlock a skill you have to meet certain conditions, for [Mana sense] you have to be able to expand your perception of mana outside of your own body, and how to do that, well to do that you have to first look inward and feel the mana inside you, and then you have to look outside and try to find traces of mana in the natural world.
That is simpler said than done.
Most people take hours if not days to sense mana.
I personally took 45 minutes to do it, and that is a really good time, now let's see how it goes for you.”
And so Raia started she felt her mana, trying to understand it, to see if there were distinct traces that it left, traces that could be tracked and after a few minutes of looking she found them.
When mana passed on a certain location that location would feel invigorated, not really invigorated but you got the feeling that it actually was even if it wasn't actually true.
That way though she would never find mana she would find where mana wasn't so she should look for places that didn't have that feeling, places that felt normal.
When she tried to perceive mana exterior to her body she found it difficult.
She couldn't quite do it, there was no feeling, no way to tell if mana was there or not, so she thought of something.
What if I take my mana outside of my body and feel that?
She tried and after a few minutes of struggles she succeeded, but there was also something unexpected.
You unlocked the skill [Mana sense]
You unlocked the skill [Mana manipulation]
You unlocked the skill [Mana regeneration]
“I may have done something wrong”
“What do you mean something wrong?”
“See for yourself I don't understand.”
Name:
Raia Akira
Status:
Never used a spell
Mana:
23999/24000
Spells:
None
Skills:
Mana sense Lv1; Mana manipulation Lv1; Mana regeneration Lv1.
Blessing:
Spell creation (Goddess of Magic)
Elements:
Antimagic; Created spells (no interference)
“What…” Mira sighed “I have an idea of what you just did but it's… it's just… Please explain what you did cause I don't believe what I'm thinking."
She was in disbelief, she didn't want to believe what she was sure Raia did.
It was so crazy that she didn't even think it was possible to achieve.
“First, I looked inside myself and tried to see if mana left traces that I could search when looking outward.”
Raia stopped for a second waiting to hear what Mira thought of her idea, Mira realised it nearly instantly and said “That was a good idea, continue please.”
“And I found it, I don't know how to explain it but mana leaves an area, like it is invigorated even if it is not true.
So I thought of searching for the opposite when feeling the outside world but I couldn't find it.
So… please promise you are not gonna get mad?”
Mara looked at Raia, and she saw the girl a little scared of her.
She realised that she could only base her opinions on someone's mood by their voice and not their facials expressions, so her tone for her might have seemed angry, so she quickly apologised “Raia I am not angry don't worry I am just astonished by the prospect of what I think you have done, and by the way there is no wrong method to unlock [Mana sense] everyone does it their own way.”
Raia breathed a sigh of relief and continued “So I thought of bringing my own mana outside and sensing that mana, because I already knew where it was.
I struggled a bit but after a few minutes I made it and this happened.”
“It is exactly as I thought and it is extremely scary, in the sense that you are more than extremely talented like the captain described you, you are a one in a lifetime genius. You probably don't understand how impressive what you just did is, and the thing is, it took you less than 30 minutes to do it.
Tu put it into perspective at the royal academy the average time to unlock [Mana sense] is one hour and a half, and the average to lime to unlock [Mana manipulation] is four to five hours and more so, most people that enter the royal academy haven't even unlocked [Mana manipulation] yet and those who did definitely didn't do it at 5 maybe 8 or 9. Do you understand how impressive what you did is?”
“No I really don't, by the time you told me I understand that it is extremely impressive but I don't know how strong people at Royal academy are.”
“Are you telling me that you don't know how the schooling system works?”
“Apart from the fact that everyone goes to school and that the academy in the capital is the biggest, nothing else.”
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Ok first magic theory lesson postponed, time to teach you how schools work.
First public schools are for people who by ten years old can't get even one skill to level 10 or can't get to at least low silver.
Normally these people are sons of the poorer part of the society, that doesn't mean they are less than you, remember farmers are mostly poor peoples but they are the ones who give you food.
Second is the royal academy which is divided in 2 the normal school and the elite school.
The difference is that, to enter the royal academy you have to pass a selection, for the normal one you have to get a skill to level 10 or be at least low silver, then you have to pass some tests.
For the elite one you have to have at least 3 level 10 skills and you have to be at least low gold level and obviously pass some tests.
Before you ask me, the exact tests vary each year but in general there is one combat test, one written test and a tournament for rankings inside the academy itself. Did you understand it all?”
“Yes I did, thanks for the explanation.”
“Perfect, we can continue with the lesson, and we don't even need to break the lesson plan even more to make you learn [Magic regeneration].
Now how to level skills and the best way to do it.
Skills have ten levels, five of those come from repeated use and four from different conditions depending on the skill, for example [Mana sense] has the conditions of: sensing little to no mana, sensing so much mana that it gives you a headache, sense the mana signature of 100 or more people at the same time and sensing the mana signature of a boss monster.
Now it's always best to let someone help you with some of these requirements, but in your case most of them will come along anyway by simply using the skill in the right moments.
We will need to ask captain Olaf if he considers this a seeing skill before I give you permission to use it full time, even if technically you don't see just perceive mana and objects containing mana around you it's still an improvement to your condition so we will see.
Going to your other skills now that they are unlocked, for [Mana regeneration] which was our objective the way to unlock the five repeated use levels is to have something blocking part of your natural mana regeneration, so those are guaranteed for the four condition levels, you will have to regenerate from mana depletion, witch is when you have no more mana, and that will happen this evening because it will be difficult to achieve on your own especially with your mana reserves and element, which is notoriously difficult to deplete at the start.
The second condition is to have something that is affecting your natural mana regeneration not consume one point of your mana for 24 hours, another guaranteed level for you; the third is to have your mana regeneration affected for a month, and the fourth is to have this skill save you from mana depletion.
This mean that you have to have your mana declining and only thanks to the skill giving you more regeneration than normal your mana didn't hit zero; basically if when you are using {Antimagic aura} and you have let's say 200 mana left, and someone attack you with 350 mana you would have to consume 350 mana to deplete the attack; but right now you can't because you only get 140 mana every 15 minutes but now thanks to [Mana regeneration] at Lv1 you get 164 mana every 15 minutes so you wouldn't hit 0 mana if you were attacked at the right time do you understand.”
“It is a little convoluted but I understand, as for [Mana manipulation] how do you get it to level ten?”
“Well that's the tricky part you don't, unless you are
The reason is that 2 of the requirements are extremely risky so only a small percentage of people are allowed to know them and even attempt to do them.
Technically you also can get it to level 10 by merit of you being captain Olaf apprentice but till you hit level 8 those are off limits even for you, ok?”
“Ok so what are the requirements I can know?”
“One is to create a 1 cubic meter space where mana is basically non-existent, and the other is to create a 1 cubic meter of space where there is an extreme amount of mana.
You can use these 2 requirements to also complete the similar ones for [Mana sense].
For the repeated use I would recommend an armor of pure mana, I will teach you how to do it this afternoon like your first two spells.”
When Mira looked at the clock, nearly two hours had already passed, so she quickly decided to give Raia a introduction on what mana is and how it works so that she would at least know what she is doing in the 2 hours they would have for practice.
“Now a quick explanation about mana; Mana is the fundamental force that holds reality as we know it together, so by manipulating mana we are manipulating the very fabric of reality.
Thanks to this we can create phenomenons that would never happen without our intervention, the reason mana is so important is that with the right amount and the correct spell we can do basically anything.
Even more important than raw mana in the air is solid mana found in magic crystals.
1 mana point worth of solid mana is equivalent to 100 of normal mana and we managed to artificially produce them, not in a mass production way but definitely better than mining for them.
I have some schematics for new magic circles that could speed up the production but without someone with spell creation I can't see if they work, and you came at the perfect time.
You are still not ready for spells of that complexity but you are gonna get there quickly enough.
Our lesson is nearly finished so we can start heading for the dining room.”
Raia was left at the dining room by Mira who returned to her laboratory, she dined with her mother and some of her colleagues.
After eating she went to the same space she and captain Olaf used in the morning for her training, and she repeated the same routine, she also asked him the question Mira wanted to ask herself about the use of [Mana sense] and he responded by giving her a blindfold and saying this. “This will damper the effect of the skill to only detecting spells, the only reason you can take it off is to get the levels in the skill that require effectively sensing mana, or to train in some specific ways that require it but for that you or Mira will have to ask me ok?”
“Yes”
“Oh one other thing this blind fold has other effects to but they are not active at the moment, once you are ready I will activate them and also tell you how to do it yourself.”
Raia then put on the blindfold and activated the skill, getting the levels for repeated use was something she could do even if she couldn't actually be affected by the skill cause of the blindfold itself.
After the two hours of phisical and combat training she with capitan Olaf waited for Mira to arrive.
When she did, she and the captain had a little chat about the blindfold and that's when the captain came to know about the way she obtained [Mana sense] and he was shocked.
“Come here Raia, I have to change the effects of the blindfold so that you can sense the mana controlled by [Mana manipulation], be it yours or someone else's skill.”
When the effect changed there was nothing different, probably because they weren't using the skill Raia though.
She was partially right.
After this the lesson started, the first thing that Mira did was take out a device to simulate the activation of a spell, she used it to simulate the magic circle of the 2 spells that she wanted to teach Raia.
First she used it enough times for Raia to memorise the circle, once she used both spells for the first time and she now had the circles memorised and in her stat sheet they could start to practice them while doing other things like: running, dodging and other movements that a close quarter fighter would have to perform; not actual fighting because she still wasn't ready to actually fight but with her rate of progress she would be soon.
They also trained the timing with {Negation}, both of this training went decently and while moving she was able to activate both spells with a decent rate, the timing with {Negation} was a bit off while moving but that was fixable with training.
Towards the end Mira asked Raia to activate {Antimagic aura} so that she could with the help of captain Olaf help her achieve the 2 condition levels of Mana depletion and Being saved from mana depletion.
[Mana regeneration] has reached Lv2
[Mana regeneration] has reached Lv3
“Good, now that that's done the other levels you will have to do on your own; the only other things that we will teach you are leveling conditions in case you get other skills or help you with levels if the skill has particularly difficulties with the requirements.” said Olaf.
“Last thing for today, the best way to level [Mana manipulation], the way to do it is to conjure an armor made of pure mana or elemental mana.
To manipulate elemental mana is advised to have the skill to at least level 5, but with your talent I wouldn't be surprised if you could already do it… so we try.
To manipulate elemental mana you have to take some mana from the air and in a way taint it with your element.
To actually do that you have to take it near you and use some of your mana to start the reaction, from then on all the mana you control will come into contact with the already tainted mana and become tainted itself, after that move it to the most vulnerable parts of your body.
The general rule for the future, when you will have protection, is to use it if you don't have those protections on.
Your elemental mana is extremely weak against physical attack but extremely good against magical ones, so for you the general rule shouldn't apply.
I would recommend maintaining it at all times and all around your body, you will level faster, and have an actual anti magic armor at all times.
The only thing is, to maintain it if you get attacked you'll need more mana than with {Antimagic aura}, so if you do you should activate the spell and drop the armor.
Now try, let's see what you can do.