The daily life

The memory of the vision never escapes the minds of those born after the war. It stays with them as a reminder of what had happened. But that had happened a long time ago. And today it is a different story. The dragon population had increased. They had developed laws and put systems in place. Schools were built and the city was expanded. Many islands were built for various purposes.

And in this world I, Leo, had been born unlucky. At first I was like every other child, but after the age of 8 my mana reserves had started dropping to the point where I could not maintain any draconic fixtures in my human for an extended period of time. Furthermore my draconic form I was born with had become unreachable which devastated me for a long time.

I turned 17 last month. This marks the end of my compulsory education. My grades were not the best, I had top marks on my theoretical classes, but could barely pass the practical ones. The teachers were merceles and pushed me through the ringer but I somehow passed.

Currently I am coming back from the public library. I walked home.

"I am back home"

From the kitchen you could hear my mother yell:

"Where have you been, you know you shouldn't stay out so late."

She had a pair of snow white wings on her back as well as a pair of small horns. It couldn't be seen but she also had a long white tail with a bluish pattern. On her face there was an exaggeratedly worried expression. It didn't suit her beautiful face.

"I know, I stayed up late studying in the library"

This has become a usual occurrence every day before dinner.

"Have you learned anything new?" she asked with a smile.

"No, maybe I will find something new next time."

I had already read most of the books in the library. At this point there was almost no book I hadn't read.

I washed my hands and sat on the table. In the meantime the dinner was already served. It was a usual breakfast consisting of vegetables and bread.

It is usual to see this type of meal. After all the plants grown had high mana contreration and meat was not common. Meat is only served on special occasions. The only families that can afford to eat it every day are the prestigious ones that usually have their own island.

I dug into my dinner and shortly after had finished eating. Started going to my room when I heard my mother.

"Leo, have you thought of which school you are going to enroll into."

"Not yet"

I hurried into my room not wanting to talk about it. I had no intention of going back to school. For me that place was a prison where the teachers were cruel and the kids even cruler.

At this point I started studying to distract me from unpleasant thoughts. I began tinkering with some of many magic circles scattered across the room. Currently I am trying to give multiple effects to one circle.

I had tried to overlap them before. Now I am doing something similar, but this time I am shifting the base circle to see if the effect is going to be different. For simplicity I am using two light emitting circles. Each is formed with a crest and symbols. I change the symbols on the second circle to change its color.

This experiment yielded similar effects with unstable operation of only one of the circles. After a couple of hours of this my mana reserves had been exsosted and I went to sleep even though it was still early.

When I woke up it was still early in the morning. Nonetheless I went down to the kitchen. There I saw my mother looking at a picture of my father. She doesn't like to talk about him. It didn't seem like she noticed me.

"Good morning, mom"

This seemed to have woken her up from her thoughts. She put down the picture frame and went to hug me.

" Good morning, to you too"

When she stopped I went to the kitchen and started making breakfast. At that time she had gone to her job. She is working as a tailor. Her main job is to apply magical enchantments to the clothes to make them more resilient and to connect them to a bracelet or a neckles. This is done so that the clothes can be stored during transformation.

I yelled from the kitchen when i heard the front door open:

"Goodbye, see you later"

"Love you, Leo"

"Love you too"

I start eating and thinking. After I am done I put the dishes in a dishwasher, it is an older model but works still the same by putting a magic stone in.

I take some money out with me and head to the library. The path is deselet, everyone else is using their wings to get around. When I enter the library the librarian, a male dragon with crimson features, greets me.

"Leo, you have come earlier than usual."

"Yea, I woke up early"

"We got some new books this morning. I heard they are a donation from the Brimstone highschool."

"Offly nice of them to donate, after all they are the ones hoarding all the good books."

"Yea but you should check them out anyway. You can find them in the cart out there."

"Thanks."

I walked over to the cart that was pointed out to me. I picked up the four books of obviously better quality. They have obviously been placed here for me. I should probably thank the librarian later.

I went and sat down to read. The first book was titled "human magic". I have read many books with a similar title and none of them have gone in detail. Instead they would say how even though more mana efficient the magic lacked firepower. They would never go into details about the magic from back before the war. I started reading expecting no difference, but to my surprise the very first chapter started talking about the basics of magic and how to maximize efficiency. I was pleasantly surprised and started reading more. The premise of the entire book was to decrease the size of the circle used by overlapping multiple parts of the same circle. The process of creating a circle is in turn more difficult and takes longer. The book states that this approach is used to make magical tools with a circle inscribed on it. The book also gives instructions on how not to lose that much firepower.

At the end of the book a small paragraph caught my attention.

"To be able to incorporate multiple circles into one it is necessary to modify all the circles so that they can achieve multiple functions. This process becomes proportionally more difficult with more circles. In practice it is possible to implement up to ten circles, just like the barrier circles of the famed city of knowledge."

The city of knowledge is the last city from the war. I guessed it was possible to overlap circles but I couldn't possibly guess it would be as difficult as the book says. Even with this short explanation I don't have any idea how to even begin stacking them. Nonetheless maybe there is something in the other books. I should read them.

"Huuuu"

I have read all of them but they don't mention anything as interesting. It is already late so I should get home.

"Did you find anything interesting"

"Yea, I must thank you for the recommendation."

"No worries, see you again."