"I did it!" I run in to to the living room. Part of me didn't think it was real, but after the sensation I felt, I feel like I really might become able to use magic!

"Lady Hannah, what's the next step?" Hannah is in the middle of knitting something, but quickly puts it away. She closes her eyes for a few moments, then opens them again.

"Show me" she says.

"You can see mana?" I ask

"Nevermind that, just show me quickly"

I do as she says and fire it like before. It is exactly the same as last time, a grating feeling in my hand and the sense of something escaping it. As Hannah sees it, she makes a grimace as if watching something unpleasant.

"Doesn't that hurt?" She asks me.

"It is uncomfortable, but I wouldn't say it really hurts. Is it not supposed to feel like that?"

Hannah sighs. She does that a lot. "Noone's emission is perfect at the start, but your is particularly crude." She says.

I just generally want to her to elaborate, so i put on my best puzzled expression.

"You can think of your mana emitted as a string. That string needs to be arranged into a certain pattern to take effect in the real world. Otherwise, it simply remains as an inert string, before dissolving into it's surroundings. You can roughly think of it as a spells potency coming from the string's thickness and it's duration from it's length. Yours is much too thick, though, well, everyones is at first. Yours is just much thicker than average."

She grimaces again, presumably from remembering the sight that made her make that face to begin with.

"To train magic, you need to practice manipulating the string, but if it is too thick you run out of mana and will have to wait for your soul vessel to refill, which usually takes between 3-5 days if you go from empty to full. Your first task will be to reduce the amount of mana you let out to the smallest amount possible, such that you can practice as much as possible."

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"And how do I do that?"

"You probably used some sort of image or idea to get it out the first time, but once you have felt the sensation, you're meant to focus on that and draw it out manually. Separating it from the primitive idea or image is necessary to manipulate it precisely"

I try and remember the sensation, then try feeling that sensation in my arm. Staring at my palm, I suddenly feel it once again, but it abruptly stops. "Ah" I let slip, surprised that it ceased so quickly.

"You just ran out of mana, didn't you?"

"Yeah, I think so" I admit quietly.

"It's probably gonna take some time to reduce the string, but magic school is officially back in season, now that you have the most essential requirement out of the way. I will see when your mana vessel has filled, so that you can practice in as long sessions as possible. When dealing with this at the start, it is important that you get as long sessions as possible to make progress."

"How do you see if my mana vessel is full?" I ask.

And Hannah explains "One of the most useful spells that everyone learns at first. This spell sends out a thin wave of your own mana, then returns a signal for each living thing with either a filled vessel, or none at all."

Sounds neat, like a radar for most living things.

"I use it pretty much constantly by habit, so I will simply inform you once you are ready to go. In the meantime, you will return to training normally with Jorgen, but instead of heading to the dungeon, you will practice patterns with me"

"Don't I have to have the mana to practice the patterns?"

"Well, yeah, but you can get a good feeling for them simply by trying them out in the dirt. Come, I'll show you what they call the three basic spells" Hannah proclaims joyfully, as she takes me by the hand and drags me outside. She breaks a stick off from a nearby tree, which makes me question her.

"Do you not respect trees?" I ask, remembering her origins.

"Nah, trees are just trees. The only thing that makes something worth caring about is a conscious mind, you know. Wood is just wood" She repeats herself before introducing me to three patterns, the first too of which are quite simple.

One is an indefinite series of spirals, the trace going once into the center, then out again making it look like an extremely curly ocean wave. The waves alternate between having two facing the right direction, then one in the other. The second pattern is mostly the the same, except the waves have rounded ends instead of pointed ones, it makes one more revolution and has two facing left, then one right.

And the last pattern is just an alternating line of rectangles and flat line in a string. The rectangles are not only the outline, but going back and forth in a jagged pattern to form the shape.

"These are the three basic spells, in order from top to bottom, heat, cool and force is produced when emitting this pattern".

I am then handed the stick and urged to reproduce them as closely as possible, which I initially thought would be easy given their simplicity. I am, however, quickly proven wrong as I look at a mess of lines and swirls, all uneven and different sizes.