Nana looks at the notes in her diary. “With this, even if I die, this world will be saved, right?” she mutters, shutting the book and locking it with a key.
Hearing footsteps, she places her diary on a bookshelf.
“What are you doing, Nana?” Seth says, appearing around the corner.
She picks a book and rifles through it. “Just some research. Did you finish your class? It seems a little early.”
“I skipped.”
“Isn’t attendance mandatory?”
“I’ll just say I was sick. I’m the best student in class anyway; no teachers should complain.” Sett pulls out a chair from a table nearby and sits down.
“Sure sure, whatever you say. If I was you, I’d still go to class.” Nana pulls out her notes from a portal and spreads them out on the table.
“It seems to me that watching you research would be more informative than going to class. What are you researching anyway?”
Nana raises her brow at Seth before returning to her notes. “You’ve learned the rules of magic, yes? Explain it.”
“In order to perform magic, two things are needed. Mana and a medium for conversion. Mediums normally take the form of runes and magic circles, and enough mana must be provided in order for the action to be performed.”
“What if you don’t have enough mana? How can you acquire it?”
“You can get it from a source. Everything in this world has mana, and you can also manually store it.”
“Right. So what makes a mage better than the next?”
“The amount of mana they have, how fast they can use mediums, and how effective their mediums are.”
“What affects the effectiveness of the medium?”
“How fast it draws mana and converts it into an action.”
“Precisely. I am researching how to minimize the conversion ratio.”
“I thought the runes were long since perfected.”
“Different combinations of runes are used to convey different actions. For example, in language, if you use ’I am angry’ instead of ‘I am disappointed,’ you aren’t using the correct phrase to convey your emotion. If you use the wrong combination, then the effectiveness of the rune goes down.”
“Do you mean to create new spells?”
“I mean to perfect and create spells.”
“How would you perfect the spells? They’ve been perfected to the point of being put into grimoires.”
“When you want to experiment like this, you start with something small, something that simple. I’ve already perfected a spell’s efficiency by approximately half a second.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“How is that even possible? The spells use runes that have been perfected over the course of years.” Seth’s brow furrows, and then his eyes widen and his jaw drops.
Nana smirks. “You saw it, didn’t you?”
“Combined runes. You’re using combined runes to increase efficiency.”
“Correct.”
“Combined runes are dangerous! Using them incorrectly could damage you.”
“That’s why I started small. There are less drawbacks for simpler spells. It’s only dangerous if the spell is of a high enough tier.” She points to one of her pages of notes. “If you gauge the amount of mana needed for your average spell in each Tier, Tier 1 spells need approximately 25 mana, Tier 2 spells need 50, Tier 3 100, Tier 4 200, and so on. 25 mana is barely enough to kill a fly, let alone harm a human being.”
“But it’s still dangerous-”
“That’s why I theorize before I apply it. Theoretically, anything is possible with magic. I am merely applying theory.”
“That’s blasphemous thinking… it would never go by the Magical Bureau.”
“That’s precisely why this is a secret.”
“But you’re telling it to me so easily.”
Smiling widely, Nana walks over to Seth and places a hand on his shoulder and he stiffens. She leans and whispers into his ear, “I trust you.” Turning around, she walks over to the bookshelf. “Besides, you would never report me. If you did, your father’s enemies would take this chance to have both you and your father placed under suspicion. Furthermore, you wouldn’t get any more information out of me and this world will end if my research is not completed.”
“What does me reporting you have to do with my father?”
“Who knows what information I would give up under torture? Or maybe they will suspect because I would run away.” She pulls a book from the shelf and flips through it. “Considering I know the future and the past, along with being a Morana family member, if I fell into the hands of the MB as it is, our current society would perish as it stands.”
“You mean to say the MB is not working in the interest of humanity?”
“To be more precise, it’s working in the interests of the current highest powers.” She returns the book to the shelf and pulls out another one.
“As corrupt as it is, the MB still needs to work in the interest of humanity as a whole.”
“That is not so. The MB can call fake news and keep the public under control with headlines like ‘Demon Uprising put to Rest’ and ‘Humanity emerges Victorious Once Again.’ Besides, the MB as it is right now will not even understand that humanity is under such a huge threat. By the time it realizes, most of humanity will be wiped out, and anyone with any power to resist the demonic forces will have either fled into hiding or been wiped out.”
“What about moving to a new dimension?”
“The reason why humanity has not moved is precisely because this dimension is the most stable and best suited for maintaining life. That is also why the demons wish to take over.”
“What do you mean ‘best suited?’”
“Not all dimensions contain energy to sustain life. Each one has a varying amount of resources, and so far, all of the ones that I have explored do not have nearly as much as this one.” She sits in a chair and begins writing some notes. “Over the years, the demons took over and infected most of the dimensions with dark mana. All the animals and plants became demonic, and they no longer have the qualities of living beings anymore. They are mere husks. Zombies. This is why demons are so terrifying.”
“Then what about the Morana Family? How can it continue to live in dimensions separate from this one?”
“That is because someone in it has to pay a price like me. Something in exchange for the ability to maintain the energy in an area around them. But that is also only possible because of the innate ability of those in the Morana Family.”
“Innate ability? You mean there’s more than just being able to use dimensional magic?”
“Mana is like air. It’s filled with many different types of particles. Carbon dioxide, Oxygen, Nitrogen. When it passes into a human, it becomes filtered. Everything except for certain mana particles leave the body. This filtered mana is the mana that the particular person is able to use. The more a person trains, the more raw the mana they can use is.”
“That’s why mages train from a young age.”
“Exactly. However, the Morana Family members are different. The reason that we can use dimensional magic in the first place is because the mana that courses through our bodies is pure and unfiltered. Our bodies have the same natural properties as demons’ bodies. This idea, a well-kept secret except to those associated with the family and the highest powers of the MB, is the basis for the rumor that the Morana Family worked with the demons.”