Influence and Control

The night sky at the border village is not particularly bright, the only thing that prevents the world below from being completely dark is from a crescent moon that didn't give too much light and with some sparse stars spreading out here and there in the dark night sky also didn't give much lighting either.

Usually, there's nothing interesting that you can see in this night sky, but today is slightly different. If you have an excellent eyesight and night vision, if you look very very closely to the sky, in a place where there is even less light than the area around it. You can actually see 2..or 4 people are flying in that dark spot.

"Dad, will one day I will be able to fly on my own using fusion magic?" Aiden asked his dad.

"Hmmm, using fusion magic to fly is still quite a long way, where you need full-fusion so that your body becomes one with the element, making you able to fly when using fire or wind fusion. But if you practice conjuring wind magic and attributeless magic, you can also fly as I and Isaac did."

Aiden grunted in his heart, but he didn't let out any comment. He did try to learn and conjure magic just like what Isaac did, but it is very hard for him to do and he is only able to conjure simple spells, so he took the easy way out and neglected his training on magic conjuring and still focused his training on his fusion-based magic instead.

"You will surely be able to do it Brother, but for now why don't you forget about training and just enjoy the view from up here like she did." Isaac pointed at the little girl that is currently sitting on his dad's left shoulder beside Aiden that is sitting on the right shoulder.

Despite the dark sky didn't offer much to see, flying on top of the village at night, she sees the wooden houses that are all over the village are only as big as her fist right now, and on the north of the village, she sees a vast forest that even her eyes can't see where the end lays even from way up here. The scene in front of her right now, could only she describe with the word beautiful.

Feeling the cold wind breeze passing through her body and the soft moonlight giving the night a pleasant calming feeling for her. And seeing the village that she had been living in for the past years from a different perspective got her thinking.

'What kind of beautiful scenery would I see if I traveled the world? Is there a much more beautiful place than the one I'm seeing right now? Sure it will! This is just a village on a corner of a kingdom. I'm sure this kind of scenery will be nothing when compared to the outside world!'

"Alright kids, let's focus on the real reason why we're here in the first place."

Mark called them kids because Eleora herself already figured out that the masked people that saved her earlier are in fact still children, so there is no use hiding it from her.

"Isaac, can your spirits tell us anything?"

"Not at the moment dad, I still can't fully communicate with them, all the things that I can understand from them is that there are a lot of people inside."

"Maybe you can choose to be a spiritualist in your next job if it appears, the spiritualist job may help you communicate better with them."

"Noted, thank dad."

"Okay now that you guys didn't have any methods to do the reckon, let me do it."

Mark once again gathered mana on his eyes, enhancing his eyesight. Channeling your mana to your eyes may enable you to see the mana attribute in the surrounding environment, but this is not what Mark is trying to do this time.

This world revolves around mana, there are no such things as qi or other internal energy other than mana. So by having finer control on your mana, you may enable your eyes to see how certain individuals attract more mana than others.

How most people use magic in this world is not by storing mana in their bodies, but instead by influencing mana in the environment to shape and conjure into magic. So the magical talent of the people in this world is not measured by how much mana is available in a person's body, but it is measured by how strong is the person's influence and capabilities in gathering and controlling the mana in the environment around them.

A person can be considered talented in magic when they are able to gather or influence a lot of mana to conjure their magic, but it is not the only way, how a person is able to control the mana skillfully and with creativity making complicated and intricate spells are also considered a talent.

For example, If there is a person who is able to influence a lot of mana for them to conjure, but their control of mana is not good and they are only capable of making simple things such as a gigantic fireball, that person will surely be defeated by someone who is capable of multicasting earth spikes at once from all direction to disrupt the fireball spell casting canceling the spell altogether and maybe killing the person in the process. So a balance of the two is preferred for all mage. But the reality is not all like that, the people who have talent in gathering mana, tend to neglect their control training and only trained their basic control such as how much mana they should use and the precision of their spells.

Now, fortunately, Mark being a part of the demon race, has an advantage with his natural talent to influence mana and he also trained his magic control since he was little. Making him now the 'perfect' mage. With his control, talent, and experience in mana, he is able to estimate the abilities of the people inside the house.

He looked around the house and saw some people who attracted some mana around them, but the amount is too little that he almost missed them so it is definitely not a threat for the twins. He also sees someone who attracts a life attribute mana, but the amount is also enough to be neglected. He focused a little bit more and now he is able to sense that there are 6 people who have a decent amount of mana about at least the second job, and one of them seems to have reached the third job.

The weakness of assessing the enemy's strength with this method is that Mark could only see the influence talent, not the controlling talent. But people with control talent even can't do much if they are not capable of gathering the mana needed to conjure the spells they wanted, so with people with only a second or third job, there should be no huge contrast with their abilities. Although his sons are an anomaly themselves, only having their first job but have influential and controlling talent that are several levels above their jobs, he can't consider that their enemies this time will have that kind of talent. And so he concluded that his sons will be able to deal with these people themselves while protecting the mayor's little daughter.

"Alright boys, I have decided that you two will go in and deal with them while also protecting Eleora at the same time."

"But d..leader…"

"Don't you trust my judgment?"

"Leader, I fully trust you, but can you promise me something first?" Isaac asked

"What is it?"

"PLEASE TEACH ME THAT SKILL TO MEASURE OPPONENT'S STRENGTH AFTER THIS!"

'This kid is really…' Mark wanted to facepalm so hard right now that his facial expression turned into an awkward grin. But he succeeded in holding it in and continued to speak,

"We'll talk about that later, but for now can you please focus on the mission first?"

"Ah yes sorry, so you said it's okay so there should be nothing that we should worry about right?"

"There is nothing special, but just be careful of the 6 people in the basement of the house, my advice is that you should deal with the people upstairs silently before going downstairs to the basement. And the plan on how to do that is entirely up to you. Don't worry if you failed, remember that I will always watch over you guys."

"Do you kids have any questions?"

"Me me!"

"What Eleora?"

"Sir, why did you change from your flame helmet to the stone mask? I liked the flame helmet better!"

"Ah, that's because a flame helmet at night is too eye-catching and we can't have that when doing this mission."

"Anything else?"

"Me!"

"Again Eleora? Please don't ask anything other than about the mission."

"Yes don't worry sir! Umm sir, but what should I do in there?"

"Just stay close to them and don't get yourself killed of course," Mark said with a smile