6 Learning Magic

Four year old Edmund spent his time reading about the mystical wonders of magic. He wanted to become a powerful mage and explore the world.

As soon as he read about mages, he started looking for ways to become a mage himself. He scoured the library for techniques to help him unseal his mana channels. He found many of them. He narrowed down the most amazing sounding and the most powerful ones. In the end, he went with the one called Pure Resonance, which was the technique that the old kings of the Angus royal family used. The royals now used a different technique that balanced and combined the attributes of multiple techniques to make neutral, jack of all trades mana channels.

Pure Resonance, on the other hand, was a purity-focused technique, that valued purity above all. It made all mana gathered through meditation assimilate and be compressed further while passing through the mana channels. The purity of the final product would be the same purity as the pre-existing internal mana. That way, the user would only need to purify their internal mana once, and it would never go below that level of purity. The disadvantage of this technique was that it basically sacrificed mana capacity in exchange for higher purity.

Edmund sat down on the floor and started to meditate. He looked inside himself and took a portion of his pre-existing internal mana from his mana core. Then he brought it in front of the entrance of a mana channel, and made the mana channel and the mana resonate with each other. The vibrations created by this process began to slowly destroy the debris and impurities in the channel. The vibrations became stronger, until there wasn't anything clogging the channel. The channel and the mana glowed together, then settled down.

Edmund felt that all muscles and parts that were around his mana channel were free and light. It was like there was a weight that had suddenly been lifted. He then proceeded to repeat this process with all his mana channels, until his whole body felt refreshed. He felt like he could punch through a dragon.

He then started to compress his internal mana as much as he could. The technique purified external mana according to the standard set by the internal mana, so it was important to refine it as much as he could. He felt like he was knitting a sweater. He passed the next few hours doing that, until he could feel that the mana quantity was too small to continue compressing. He needed to meditate and gather more mana to start refining again.

A few days after refining and meditating, over and over, young Edmund started to look into specializations. There were many things a mage could do. He could divine and see the future or the past. He could become an alchemist and concoct pills and potions. He could even raise the dead.

But after searching through the various specializations, Edmund was greatly disappointed. Many fields, like Alchemy and Formations, required components and materials specific to the spells and formations he wanted to cast. This limited what he could study efficiently. He still researched the beginning concepts of each study. Even if he couldn't practice the study, it didn't mean he couldn't learn the basics.

In the end, he chose to focus on Mesmerizing and Healing Magic. Mesmerizing because it sounded cool, while healing magic in case his siblings or Albern got hurt. Plus, these two fields rarely required specific components and catalysts.

Mesmerizing was extremely complicated. It dealt with the matters of the mind. Masters of this craft could make their opponents' body think they're dead, therefore stopping the heart and killing them without them even figuring out what had happened. They could manipulate the minds of those around them to think they're in heaven or hell. Even memory manipulation was possible with this study. Controlling an opponent would give an edge in battle to anyone. Mesmerizers were highly regulated in all countries. The consequences of a rampant mesmerizer were obvious to all. Studying it without informing the Crown was forbidden.

Edmund just thought that he would hide it from Albern and it would all be alright. He found the study of the mind very complicated, so he enjoyed it a lot. Figuring out how to cure traumas and imagine butterflies were high accomplishments in the field of mesmerizing. The traumas were unconscious aversions, making them very hard to remove. Even an experienced practitioner could fail. Same with anything to do with imagination. Imagination was mostly abstract thinking, and that made manipulating it extremely difficult, and unpredictable results were very common. Sanity and insanity were just a few steps from one another in the mind. Edmund enjoyed all these, seeing them as challenges and riddles. He tried his best, but without a test subject he was basically stuck. He didn't want to try it out on anyone at the Sanctuary, because there were many labels in the books that warned that it was extremely dangerous and should not be used except when absolutely necessary. Still, he enjoyed the challenge it posed.

Healing magic, on the other hand, was the complete opposite of mesmerizing. While mesmerizing focused on abstract thoughts and ideas, healing focused on physical stability and order. It focused on the body. Muscles, bones, tendons, skin, and every other part was it's own world. Every cell being a world in it's own right, with millions of moving parts inside it. Each one supporting each other in every movement, in every action. Bones supported the body, but they also produced marrow, supporting the circulatory system as well. It was all one big machine! If Edmund didn't know any better, he would think that someone with intelligent design had created the human body. When he saw all this, even he had to admit that the legends about gods might be true. Still, he studied every one of these systems and organs, down to the proteins.

Edmund continued reading as many books as he could, while also meditating and purifying his mana. Hour after hour, day after day, month after month, year after year.