The trip to the city had been peaceful aside from the one bandit attack, and while I didn’t get to explore much, what I saw impressed me. It seemed that high rise buildings were the norm there, unlike the conclave our clan lived in, which only had a few buildings that were over a couple of stories tall. Once we’d arrived fully within the city, we went over to a building, and I saw my father discussing with a small rotund man, likely about something about the mana stones we were carrying. I wasn’t sure if they were to be sold here, as our clan technically controlled this city, but I figured that there had to be some reason we were transporting the stones here. Maybe they were being brought here to be transported and sold to another power?
They finished talking as my conjectures continued, and I was forced to get off the vehicle as they began to unload the mana stones. I walked over to my father before asking him “could I go explore the city some?”
He looked at me with his standard glowering expression before nodding, adding a short “Just be back within an hour.” Hours weren’t precisely the hours from my old world, they were closer to an hour and a half, and there were only twenty of them in the day, meaning that the day here was a good deal longer than one on my old planet, but hour was the closest approximation I could come up with.
I grinned, and acting like the excited child I should be, I started walking off to explore. The multi story tall buildings were everywhere, some of them possibly exceeding the height of the skyscrapers from Earth. At the bottom floor of them, there would commonly be a store, then the space above them was likely used as workspace or housing. I wandered into a few stores, some of them similar to stores from my old world, grocery stores, clothing stores, even one I found dedicated to cooking implements, looking very similar to their earth counterparts, only powered by the ambient mana rather than needing to be plugged in.
Other stores though, had no comparison. There were ones dedicated to the selling and buying of monster parts to be used in the creation of relics. Relics were items used to focus your magic, or to enhance the mana you had to create useful effects, usually weapons to enhance your battle prowess, though there were others used to improve formation creation or to make alchemical items.
Another sold already finished relics, and yet another seemed to be an herb shop, but the outrageous prices on them clearly showed that they were items to be used in alchemy. I shook my head, alchemy wasn’t something I was particularly interested in learning about, so I quickly exited the store, and continued my exploration. There weren’t too many interesting stores, though I found out that superstores existed in both worlds, and soon I was heading back to the place we had brought the mana stones.
I arrived to a short acknowledging nod from my father, and was soon back in the now empty vehicle as we headed back to our small city… conclave… thing... Where we lived. The drive back was far more peaceful, without any bandit attacks, and when we arrived I was greeted by my mother, who I asked if bandit attacks were common. She instantly got an enraged look upon her face before answering.
“Bandits aren’t stupid enough to attack a Suyun group, one of the nearby groups is clearly getting uppity. Not that they’ll have left any links to them to the ‘bandits’.”
My eyes widened a bit, I’d wondered why the adults seemed to have so much trouble with them, from what I’d seen they were immeasurably stronger than the trainees I’d been training with, and the trainees were supposedly some of the most talented youths in the area. The bandits actually being an attack force made a lot more sense.
“I’m glad both you and Tyr are alright,” my mother said as she wrapped her arms around me in a hug, the angry expression she had when I told her we were attacked fading into a loving smile. My little sister, not sure why we were hugging, decided to join in while shouting “Hug!”. I smiled, she was still small and adorable, she hadn’t awoken yet, but she likely would soon, and I was worried she’d be yet another person to look down upon me with it being my first reincarnation.
I was honestly surprised by my mother’s showing of affection though, I didn’t see her much, and when we did there usually wasn’t any of the physical contact like this. I supposed that was to be expected with everyone being reincarnated rather than normal children. She clearly cared for us regardless though, and I found myself surprisingly happy at that fact.
“We wouldn’t have been if not for the old guy who threw fire around,” I said, hesitating before adding a bit more. “I want to be able to do that, do you think I could learn?”
“Of course you can. I’ll convince your father for you,” she said, alleviating my biggest worry about learning it. She was clearly aware of my father’s aversion for mages.
“Thanks!” I shouted before giving her another hug. It wasn’t until afterwards that I frowned a bit, I’d been relatively averse to physical contact in my old life, but here it seemed to be the norm, and it seemed I was really starting to see Odessa as my mother.
My father soon joined us, and we headed back to our home, a large building, though not to the extent of some of the practically mansions that some of the people here lived in. I was yawning by the time we got back, and slowly meandered my way to my room, collapsing on my bed as soon as I arrived.
I woke in the morning, and went to the common room as it was a bit early, deciding to hop on the equivalent of the internet with the family computer, as I had at least an hour until the day’s training began. I looked around a bit for recent news, which mostly focused on the different wars going on, and the prominent fighters in them, who seemed to take on the role of idols in this world.
My little sister came up to me as I was reading a bit, looking to play with me, and I did for a few minutes until she started falling asleep again, so I left her to finish sleeping on the couch as I went back to the computer.
I had been reading up on a war between two smaller city states, when my father came up from behind me.
“So I hear you wanted to learn how to be a mage.”
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I was a bit nervous, but nodded.
“We’ll get you some lessons, but you’ll need to give up your weekend for them.”
“Really? Thank you so much!” I ran up and hugged my father, who got a wry expression on his face. I wasn’t thrilled I’d be giving up my short weekend, two days out of the eight day week, but I was only lounging around the house and going online or watching television anyway, so it wasn’t going to hurt me, I had a decent amount of time after normal training to lounge around anyway.
The week of training passed seemingly less painfully than before, possibly due to my excitement at learning magic. I knew that the warriors could pull off some impressive things, sheathing their weapons in an element, or jumping around like gravity wasn’t working properly, but what I’d seen the mage do was completely different. He’d commanded the elements in the same way the warriors seemed to control their weapons.
The weekend arrived, and I was more excited than my past self would have been, it seems that my childlike body was having some form of influence on my thoughts. I woke up early, and waited downstairs on the computer, when not long after my father came from his and my mother’s room.
“Good, you’re awake. Follow me.”
I nodded, and started walking after him, going to a part of our conclave that I hadn’t explored before, not that I’d been around much more than the training areas. We passed quite a few houses, then arrived at one that seemed a bit isolated from all of the other ones.
We walked up to the door, and my dad knocked firmly against the wood before we began to wait. It wasn’t long until the door was answered by a gigantic man. He had to be at least six and a half feet tall, and was heavily built, with arms seemingly the size of my child sized waist.
I blinked a few times, but the monster sized man didn’t go away.
“Sen, this will be your teacher, Quell. Quell, this is my son Sen, he’s the one you’ll be teaching.”
After the greeting, my father headed off, to wherever he goes during the day, and I sat there a bit awkwardly, shifting from foot to foot under Quell’s gaze.
“So how many reincarnations are you at then?” Quell eventually asked.
“It’s my first reincarnation sir,” I awkwardly answered, not happy with how this conversation started.
Surprisingly though, Quell’s expression changed to a grin upon the answer as I looked up at him with confusion.
“That’s perfect. No snooty I know it all attitude to deal with, no misconceptions I have to fix, this will go well, follow me.”
I followed him as he had asked, and arrived in a sand training area which had been hidden behind the house, with runes inscribed into a formation all around it, and a target covered in yet more formation runes at one side of the field.
“This is the target field. It’ll block any magic from getting out, and the target is the next thing to indestructible. So first things first, I think we should go over the basics of magic. What do you know about magic?”
“Honestly, nothing really, I just saw someone use it and thought that I wanted to be able to do that.”
Quell frowned for a moment, but it was soon gone, and he began to explain. “Magic is a bit different than your martial skills. Rather than just using your personal mana, you only use your personal mana to influence the natural mana in the atmosphere, convincing it with your mana to create whatever effect you’re looking for. Magic is almost entirely based on image. If you can imagine a flame, then draw out your mana and push that image into it, it will cause the external mana to ignite, turning into a real flame. Some people use the image of vibrating molecules, others use the sensation they have to flames, the flickering look and feel of heat radiating from them. Everyone has their own image, and it’s this image that lets you create magic. It’s standard practice to shape your mental image with either words or motions, and I’ll be teaching by showing you the standard motions I use. When you become more practiced, you can omit the motions, though it will always be easier to use them. To be able to push out more of your internal mana to influence the external mana, you’ll need to work on enhancing your mana channels. You can use the standard breathing technique, just focus on the mana channels rather than evenly distributing your mana.”
I listened with rapt attention to the lecture, and was about to say something when he continued.
“We’re going to start with something simple, creating light. I want you to focus on your mana, and push it out of your body. It’s probably best to use your hand for this, as many of the mana channels end there.”
I listened to him, and focused on my mana, willing it to move. I slowly siphoned off a bit from what would become my mana furnace, which would be quickly replaced by the ambient mana, and tried to push it out of my hand, feeling some resistance as it reached the extremities of my hand.
“It will be difficult at first, as you haven’t strengthened your mana channels at all, but you should be able to release enough to make some light at least.”
I idly zoned out his words, and continued to press on my mana until a thin thread was pushed out of my hand.
“He seemed to notice I had succeeded, though I wasn’t sure if it was from my expression or from some other method, and continued to guide me.
“Now you just need to focus on an image of light, and then press it into the mana outside of you.”
Trying to listen to his advice, I slowly focused on the image of the sun, how it felt to stand in it, the light warmth on your skin, the pain caused by looking into it, the overbearing brightness of a summer’s day. Once I felt I had a solid grasp on my image, I took those sensations and pressed them as best I could into the thin thread of mana exiting my hand, only to blind myself as it erupted into light. I cursed as Quell chuckled.
“Well you seem to have the general idea down, right now you just need to focus on enhancing your mana channels and practicing your image. It took you a good five minutes of focus until you managed to focus your image enough to press it out, and to be a proper mage you’ll need to be able to do it in a few seconds. You’ll also need to wait until you ignite your mana furnace before you can handle enough mana and strengthen your mana channels to create big effects, but that will come much more easily, even if it’s more time consuming.”
The rest of the day was spent with him instructing me. It was quite interesting, as he’d have me do some motions reminiscent of tai chi as I would create an image, a different motion for each image, one for creating flame, which I could only make a flame the size of that on a candle, another for earth, where I would make a tiny pebble appear from nowhere, something which utterly destroyed my belief in the conservation of mass, even though it would disappear after the mana I fed it ran out. There were motions for water and wind as well, and when I asked about other elements such as lightning, Quell simply said to not get ahead of myself, and practice the base elements first.
I wasn’t sure exactly why those four were considered the base elements, and why he had me start with the image of light if it wasn’t a base element, but I wasn’t willing to go against my teacher, and so I would practice the motions as I would create an image. According to Quell, after a time, the motions themselves would create the image in my mind, due to simple association. My mouth pursed, I supposed it worked the same way as pavlov’s dogs.
The day continued, and Quell then guided me through finding my mana channels as I meditated using the breathing technique I had been taught, focusing the mana which entered my body into strengthening those channels rather than just evenly distributing it like I was used to. Once I had gotten the hang of it, he left me to it for a few hours, before he said that it was about time to go home. Looking around, it seemed to the sun was a good ways down, around the time that my normal classes normally ended.
Getting up, I groaned. I had gotten stiff from sitting on the ground for a few hours, and my butt was sore, things I hadn’t noticed until I ceased my meditation. I limped home until I got the feeling back in my legs, and was soon climbing the stairs to my room, where I simply laid down on my bed and continued the meditation, completely ignoring that fact that most people would sit legs crossed or lotus style to meditate, until I began to nod off and I went to sleep.