Item #1: Let's Learn Magic! (3)

Everything started by acknowledging the existence of mana. After that, a beginning mage would have to 'sense' mana, not just in concept, but an actual understanding stemming from personal contact.

Now that they could sense mana, the next step was to reach out to the mana residing within themselves.

Sasha relaxed his muscles, willing himself to loosen control of his own body.

Inside every living being resides an amount of mana, which was a representation of their physical self.

Perhaps it was by design, or perhaps it was merely coincidence. For a human, the place where their internal mana was located was exactly within their heart. It wasn't that the organ was housing the mana. Instead, their location was simply overlapped with each other.

Sasha's goal was to take notice of this internal mana, allowing him to control it at will just like he could control his muscles with the slightest bit of thought.

It wasn't an easy task. If someone was suddenly told that they had a third eye, even it was real, they still wouldn't be able to use it if they wasn't used to its presence. But for people like Sasha, who had already experienced it firsthand, it was just a matter of familiarizing his body to that sensation of moving his internal mana once again.

From time to time, his fingers would twitch, a sign that he had failed. It meant that he had ended up sending signal to his muscles, his physical essence, instead of his mana. When that happened, he would stop and opened back his eyes.

Continuing in that fashion would be pointless, because his brain would just focus on the thing that had returned its stimulus instead of another thing that was still imaginary at this point. He would have to slowly numb his own body once again, and then concentrate from the beginning.

While it wasn't particularly physically tiring, it was severely taxing on the mind.

Two hours had already passed since he started. Even though the thick canopy had shielded him from the sun, his back was still drenched in sweat.

Sighing, he plopped down on the grass, taking a quick rest.

"Doing this on my own is so hard. I kind of understand why Celeste was so mad at Feldham."

This step had to be repeated multiple times until his brain grew accustomed to the notion that a thing called 'mana' existed in his body, and he could control it, for real. It was the same for every starting mage, regardless of their affinity. Now that he had finally experienced how difficult this step was, he could understand why the other mages would view Sasha, who was aided by the Holy Sword, with envy and disdain.

When he remembered how green Celeste's face was upon first seeing him wielding magic as if he had been born with it, he couldn't help but chuckle.

After a few minutes break, he resumed the training.

Just like this, he had lost track of time. Who knew how long he had been standing out here, doing nothing but breathing in and out the entire time? Only he could understand that as time passed, he was getting closer and closer toward that the mana in his body.

Closer... closer... infinitely closer...

Until finally,

"!"

He reached it.

Just like that. There wasn't much fanfare to it, he had simply 'got' it.

If he had to describe it with words, his internal mana would be akin to a sphere made of soft, silky strands. Those innumerable microscopic strands were constantly moving, never stopping, their momentum keeping them stable in their shape.

Sasha willed them to move according to his will.

At first, nothing had happened. And then, one of the those numerous strand began to very slightly change its trajectory.

It was such a small change, but Sasha felt unbounded joy in his heart.

After all, it was the first step toward magic! He had truly reached that stage!

"Alright, now I just have to keep doing this until it's ingrained in my mind!"

Learning magic was like that.

Taking the first step was ridiculously hard, but if a mage managed to do it even just once, doing that same thing become extremely simple.

At first, he could only control a tiny strand. As he kept going, the amount of strands he could control increased. The degree of control had also improved. The sphere began to change, turning bigger, smaller, becoming oblong... he was testing how precise he could control it at the moment.

As he was getting more and more absorbed in manipulating his internal mana, a voice suddenly broke him out of trance.

"Young master?"

Sasha let out a gasp.

He had numbed his body at will, in turn losing track of the outside world. When he opened his eyes, his body involuntarily swayed forward, brimming on the verge of falling down. Thankfully, a pair of strong arms caught him in time.

"Young master, are you okay? You've been standing here the entire day."

Sasha blinked his eyes a few times, forcing them back into focus. He was greeted with Rufus's concerned gaze.

"Entire day...? Ah."

The wind felt colder than before. When he looked up, the sun was no longer there. Instead, the sky was already dark, decorated with countless stars.

"Please have something to eat, you've already skipped lunch."

"Ah? Oh..."

His throat was parched. It seemed that he had been concentrating a bit too hard.

It would be best to stop for now.

Leading the boy back into the manor, Rufus couldn't help but ask the question that had been haunting him since noon.

"By the way, young master, what were you doing in the backyard? When I come to check on you, you were just standing still in the middle of the clearing."

"It's magic training," Sasha casually replied.

The head butler's lips twitched. Standing ramrod straight all day could turn you into a mage? That sounds implausible!

"Don't worry, it's just the first day. I still got two days left, right?"

...Fine, if that was what the young master say. As a butler, he would just support him from behind!

---

The next morning, Sasha returned back to his spot in the little forest. His father was still absent during breakfast. Perhaps he would do the same for tomorrow as well.

Nevermind. Sasha was more interested in continuing where he'd left off anyway.

He'd spent the entire night remembering every little knowledge that Celeste had imparted to him. He wasn't casting a spell through the Holy Sword anymore. The words of a proper mage would held more ground than his own experience.

Now, what is Magic?

When broken down to the most basic term, magic was an act of miracle that defied the law of the world by producing something out of nothing. Whether it was an object like water or stones, or a phenomenon like fire and thunder, mages were people who could conjure these things with a flick of their fingers.

However, this 'nothing' was only in relation to the physical world. In reality, there was something else that was consumed in order to produce magic.

That something was mana.

In the physical world, everything had their own properties. Mana, on the other hand, was homogeneous, entirely lacking of distinguishing features. The mana in the sea was the exact same thing as the mana in the sky. Of course, the same could be said for the mana residing in living beings.

It was exactly this property which was sought after by mages.

In the ancient time, the first mages found out that mana could be guided and molded until they took physical properties, which in turn turned them into physical entities that could be interacted with. Performing this process required an amount of mana proportional to the physical entity that was being created.

At first, these mages used their own internal mana. It was fine when the entity was created in a small scale. However, when it was getting bigger and more complex, the mages began to die one after another.

Clearly, the internal mana of a living being wasn't enough. Not even the Elves, blessed they were by mana, would be able to sustain the scale of their magic with internal mana alone.

Thus, the mages turned their attention to the mana circulating in the world, which was excessively abundant enough to not run out in the millions of lifetime.

It was the first time that a line was drawn between internal mana, which could be controlled by the mages directly, and external mana.

Performing magic was relatively simple. First, imagine the thing that you want to realize. After you had created a clear image, use your internal mana to attract the mana in your surrounding. Let them gather in your body, and then mold them at will.

Of course, the actual process wouldn't be that easy.

Sasha began by making his lump of internal mana shrank in size. And then, he made them expand. Shrank. Expand. He kept doing this until the rhythm was consistent.

It was as if he had second beating heart.

The mana in his surrounding started to sway with each beat. They began to gather closer to him. Closer. Closer. When they began to enter his body, he felt a sensation as if warm liquid was seeping through the pores of his skin.

He imagined these mana as strands. They flew along his veins until they reached the sphere that was his internal mana. They then joined his mana's strands as they swirled around the surface of the sphere. Bit by bit, the sphere swelled in size.

A sense of dread struck him in an instant. It was his survival instinct telling him that something bad was starting to happen.

Aside from their own internal mana, living beings could only withstood certain amount of mana concentration within their physical body. A high concentration staying in a long period of time would corrode a living being's body, in the end inducing death.

This was measured as a person's mana capacity. It was the second property that was considered when evaluating magical affinity.

In Sasha's case, his evaluation of low affinity came from both. His sensitivity to mana was insufficient, and his mana capacity was below average. As such, he couldn't keep this much mana circulating in his body for too long.

He began to change how his internal mana worked. Instead of attracting external mana, he willed it to reject them instead.

In the first beat, the surrounding mana slowed their flow into Sasha's body. With more beats, they began to change direction. Instead of coming inside, they flowed outside, spreading out until they were diluted away.

Only then could Sasha breath easy.

As long as he could control his internal mana, attracting external mana was easy. The problem was keeping just enough to reach his maximum capacity, no more, no less.

"Let's try again."

He repeated the process. This time, he had gathered too little, perhaps because his body unconsciously tried to limit the amount that he could take.

Overcoming this trauma of getting overwhelmed by external mana was also a part of a beginning mage's training!

"I still can't control it well... but this should be enough for now."

He just need to show his father that he can use magic. Doesn't have to be something extravagant. A simple one would do.

Now, what kind of magic should he do for this very first endeavor?

"Problem is, I have to have a clear image of what I want to make."

If he wanted to create fire, he would need to know what exactly a fire is, how it was created, and what was the process of creating it. He would then need to guide the mana to do that process from zero until he could reach the intended result. If this process wasn't detailed enough, then the mana would fail to project and they would simply scatter away.

Perhaps, it would be simpler to just create water, something that he could touch? Or should he create wind? Or earth...

"If it's water, I could mistake it with my sweat... wind... it could just be fart. Earth... it's even more abstract than fire. What is earth anyway?"

Thus, he decided that his first magic would be to create fire.

Hey, fire is cool, okay? If we're talking about magic, fire was definitely the top 'coolest' magic in the list! He won't accept anything else but this!

"Let's start by imagining fire!"

He started to move his internal mana again, letting surrounding mana to enter his body. Then, he began to mold them.

He closed his eyes, creating the image of a burning flame in his mind. When he was camping with his companions, they would make bonfire by gathering twigs and start the fire by striking flint on their knives near the twigs. It should be the same thing here.

...Wait, wouldn't he have to create twig first, then? Oh, the flint too. And the dagger.

No, no, one step at a time. Start with the twigs first.

Twig was... wood. He could imagine the shape, but how did he make a twig in the first place? Did he have to grow trees? Ah, then he would need to create seeds. And then...

While he was getting confused, the collected mana had dispersed away.

"..."

Fine, doing it that way wasn't possible. Let's see what other methods he had accumulated during his past two lives.

He remembered that the Dwarves had this liquid called 'flaming water'. They could start fire just by splashing this liquid around, and then threw a flint on the soaked area. However, he didn't know what this 'flaming water' was made of.

Unusable. Next.

How about this one? When they had no flint, they would find a piece of dry wood, and then spin it above gathered twigs and leaves. It would become warm enough until they started burning. It was worth a try.

This time, he willed the mana to simulate the pressure given by the spinning wood. However, there was nothing to spin on... it was still the same problem, he would need to create the combustible materials first.

Feeling dejected, he gave up thinking and just imagined the final product. A burning flame that was swaying and crackling... the warmth it was oozing off... he focused his will on it, and then pushed the gathered mana toward that shape.

The mana swirled before violently exploding out, leaving him dumbfounded.

Failed again.

"..."

...What now?

"I know. If I have to understand how it was made, then I'll just make some fire and observe them closely!"

As expected, Sasha had skipped lunch that day as well.

When dusk had arrived, Rufus headed toward the backyard, intending to bring the young master back in a bit earlier. He had expected to see the same scenery like before, with Sasha standing completely still among the bushes and trees.

Instead, he saw four bonfires. Huge, towering bonfires with licks almost reaching the darkening sky.

"Holy. Mother. Of. Goddesses."

In the middle area between the four bonfires was a young boy. He was crouching dangerously close to the bonfires while frowning, his gaze as if he wanted to capture every single thing that was happening at the moment.

Judging by how tight his lips had curved downward, the result didn't seem to be great.

"Young master! What. The. Actual. Fu-"

"Sshh, not now, I almost get it."

Sasha waved his hand as if he was shooing a stray cat. He was focusing his attention at the burning leaves at the center.

Rufus had left in a hurry. Not a long time later, he returned with an army of maids, butlers, and exactly one gardener. Each of them carried buckets filled to the brim with water.

Upon reaching the bonfires, their first reaction was to freeze on their tracks, their mouth opened wide agape. After getting slapped back to their sense by Rufus, they proceeded to rain down cold liquid over the fiery incarnation of camping utilities.

Sasha, who was in the middle, took the collateral damage. He was wet from head to toe, his hair dripping water endlessly.

"..."

"Well, uh... we kinda panicked," Rufus fidgeted nervously. The entire squad had betrayed him... uh, had fled the scene after they noticed the state of their young master, so he alone was left to deal with the aftermath.

"..." Sasha was still dead silent, his eyes looking as if life no longer had any meaning.

Rufus cleared his throat.

"Ahem. A-anyway, young master... what were you doing just now?"

"It's... magic... training..." Sasha murmured in a raspy voice.

The head butler's lips twitched. Becoming an arsonist could turn you into a mage? That sounds really dangerous!

"...Take me inside...?"

He was just too tired to care about his actual age at the moment. Like a spoiled child, he reached his hands out, wanting the butler to carry him.

"...As you wish, young master."

Rufus's lips was still twitching, but he complied regardless.

Fine, it didn't matter even if his young master got a bit senile. As a butler, he would just support him from behind!