Chapter six: a pure elf

[Sherry Sinclair]

Level: 12

Race: Elf (Elf Aspect)

Health: 140/140

Mana: 2200/2200

Stamina: 130/130

Physical Attack: 9

Magic Attack: 165

Critical hit Chance: 8%

Critical Damage: 1.0x

Physical Defence Pierce: 0

Magic Defence Pierce: 10

Physical Defence: 3

Magic Defence: 25

Magic: 137

Wisdom: 129

Dexterity: 18

Strength: 3

Agility: 2

I almost spilt my drink reading this. “2200 Mana? What?” For a level 12 to possess that much mana point was unheard of, even for players in the game they wouldn’t have half as much. Heck, I didn’t have 2200 mana points when I was her level. Her magic and wisdom stats were also absurdly high for a mere five-year-old. “Actually, with that much mana she could probably start learning some skills.” I figured the main reason why magic and combat oriented studies were left until the fifth grade was because of a lack of mana and stamina most young children possess. However, Sherry’s case was different.

Incidentally, the reason why mana and stamina was labelled ‘infinite’ was because… well, I don’t think we really need to get into details, but it was because of a certain questline. There were only a handful of players that managed to finish the quest, though it was also true that there were only a handful of players left playing the game at that point too. Near the end of the game’s lifespan the developers just threw caution to the wind and slowly made things more overpowered in an attempt to make the game more fun and attract players, but that never ended up happening.

“Corentin, use this,” Sherry called out to me while handing me a tissue.

“Ah, thanks,” I graciously accepted and wiped the drink that I accidentally spilt. A few days had passed since our families became acquainted, and normal life was starting to resume. Maybelle had school and was gone for most of the day while Sherry’s mother was visiting our house and talking with my mother downstairs. It was just the two of us in my room; a scandalous situation if my opponent wasn’t a five-year-old girl. That said, I did manage to see something interesting, “so the racial categories remain the same. Only the primary races are switched out in the case of Pures,” I mumbled to myself while reading over her status screen. ‘Elf (Elf Aspect)’. “Going by that logic, it would make me a Pure too…”

“Umm, Corentin?” Sherry tugged on the edge of my sleeves. “It’s a bit embarrassing if you stare… so much.”

“Huh? Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize I was doing that,” I apologized. Speaking of which, bringing up someone’s status screen required me to concentrate on their person, and since they can’t see what I’m looking at, this would inevitably be the result. I should figure out a way to read these more subtly. “Sherry, do you know any magic?” I dismissed the stat screen and decided to entertain my guest like a good host.

“Magic?” she shook her head.

“That figures,” then I had a thought. “Then, do you want to learn some?”

She paused for a moment then looked at me confusedly, “how do I learn magic?”

“I’ll teach you.”

“Corentin, you know magic? Amazing!” her eyes lit up like fireworks. Her head bobbed up and down, “I want to, I want to learn magic! Please teach me!”

“Okay, but only on one condition,” I raised a finger. “You must never tell anyone you learnt it from me, and you must not tell anyone I can use magic. If you can promise me that then I’ll teach you some fun things.”

“Oh, umm, sure.”

“It’s a promise. The moment you break our promise will be the end of our friendship.”

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“Eh?!” her face went pale. No surprise, my sister and I were likely the only friends she had until now due to her being a Pure. Most children didn’t know about Aspects, so she probably just looked like an odd kid with long ears. “Okay, I promise not to tell anyone,” she answered, but this time with a much more concrete and firmer attitude.

When it came to magic, there was a skill in the game known as ‘magic mastery’ which basically served as a prerequisite skill necessary for learning other forms of magic. The game never had any classes, just a loose set of skills all around the world in which the players had to go learning them. Sometimes there’d be a long quest just to get one skill, other times you only needed to read a book. After learning a skill, it was only a matter of investing skill points into upgrading their effects and potency. In any case, because of this ‘magic mastery’ skill, it gave me an intrinsic understanding of how magic is supposed to operate and how to forms spells and such.

“In essence, there are two types of mana,” I began to explain to Sherry and put up two fingers. “The first type of mana is ‘external mana’, which is the mana in everyday life; it’s all around us like air. It’s theoretically possible to harness this mana with a lot of training, but for now we’ll just disregard it. The one we want to focus on first is the second type of mana: the ‘internal mana’. It’s inborn mana that everyone has.” I say that, however it’s not exactly as if every living organism possesses internal mana. During my few days in this world I’ve seen a few animals like cats and insects that don’t have any mana at all. It’s likely internal mana can only be gathered by organisms above a certain intelligence threshold. “You want to draw out this mana and cause a physical phenomenon. Like this,” I demonstrated by casting a low-level fire spell.

[Flare Bolt]: Low-level flame-attribute projectile. At higher ranks of this spell it can cause a persistent burn effect on an afflicted area, and inflict the ‘burnt’ condition upon the enemy.

A reddish flame with a bright orange core danced around my hand before I snuffed it out just in case the fire alarms are triggered by this. Though, I assume most fire alarms in this world could distinguish between magical flames and non-magical flames, or so I hope.

As if she had been caught in a trance, Sherry stared at my hand even long after the flames were gone. “How did you do that?”

“Okay, let’s do some mental exercises first. Imagine there is a dot somewhere around your body. Next, try to move that imaginary dot to the centre of your palms. Then, while maintaining that imagination, think about creating a fire.” I realized it was a very vague and hazy concept for a five-year-old to grasp, but that was the best way I could explain it. I guess I wasn’t really suited to become a teacher. “Wait what?” however, to my surprise she was able to manage conjuring a Flare Bolt in her first try.

A bright reddish glow burnt at the palm of her hands while she still had her eyes closed. In fact, because she was so concentrated on the image in her head she failed to notice that the flames were growing bigger and bigger. The heat that radiated off that spell was hotter than how it normally should be, though I managed to counteract it by quickly employing heat resistance to all the things in the room, so they aren’t burnt down. Her Flare Bolt grew ever more intense as a brilliant flash of orange formed at the centre of the spell, something it normally didn’t do until high ranks.

I was honestly astonished by her genius. She skipped through the initial phases of the spell and went straight for the stronger variants. “Is this the power of a Pure? Truly fascinating.”

“Eh?!” Sherry cried out as she finally opened her eyes and saw what was going on. “Ah…! Ah, what… what should I do?!” she began to panic, and the spell grew more rampantly. The flames danced around violently as it became the size of a basketball with no signs of it slowing down. “Co- Corentin, what should I do?!”

“I suppose it would be bad to let it erupt in this room. I sleep here, after all.”

I clicked my fingers and for a brief second everything went silent. Then as if it were a balloon made of glass, the rampant Flare Bolt burst into harmless sprinkles of mana.

[Spell Breaker]: Dismantle one spell. The higher the sophistication of the spell, the lower the chance of success.

“What was that? How did you make it go away?” there were sparkles in her eyes as she drew her face closer to mine. It seems all the awkward tension between us had faded away, or at least she had forgotten about it and replaced everything in her mind with curiosity of the arcane. It was a good sign of improvement and I wanted my little experiment… I mean friendship to continue to more fruitful endeavours.

“That? It's something called a 'Spell Breaker', I’ll teach you later down the line.”

“Okay,” she smiled and nodded.

“Honestly, I didn’t think you’d succeed on your first try either. You’re very special indeed, Sherry, however you’ll need to learn how to control magic first before conjuring it. Otherwise you might be labelled as a domestic terrorist.” After a brief contemplation I added another condition to her studying under me. “Sherry, from now if you ever want to practice magic without me be sure to do it outside and in a wide-open area, Okay?”

She nodded furiously. It was a good thing she understood safety first.

Honestly speaking, I was actually beginning to have fun teaching her this; I wanted to see how far she could go and what her limits were. It was the first time I realized, but the only thing ‘genius’ truly meant was that they had a bigger canvas to paint on, and I had so many things I wanted to paint.