Hardships

Arya spent most of the day reading that book. It described a few base magic spells, not going too much into detail about the calculations involved, but rather merely instructed on how to cast the spells.

Of course, he had tried doing what the book described, however without a mana core, he wasn't able to activate the calculation's sequence.

It wasn't a complete loss though. At least he could use the templates he had learned in the book for his research, and he now knew all the steps involved in casting spells.

{I'll have to ask Cassandra about the activation sequences of spells. Perhaps I can nullify my need for a mana core somewhere within the process,} thought Arya as he closed the book.

"Gray, where have you been?" shouted Lillian from the kitchen door. It was now dark out, and she had been sitting there for hours waiting for her son.

"Here," said Gray, handing Lillian at least a dozen squirrel-looking animals.

"W-Where did you get these?" asked Lillian. Gray had cuts and dirt all over his face. The clothes that he had gone out with were in worse shape than they were before, and his breathing was sort of labored as well.

"I doesn't matter mom," replied Gray, walking into the house.

"I asked where you got these," she shouted, turning Gray around by the shoulder.

"Around the forest," he whispered.

"D-Do you have any idea how dangerous that place is? You could've gotten hur-"

"I know, but what were we going to eat? Do you think I didn't notice that we were running out of food?! You think I didn't notice that you were starving yourself all for him?!" shouted Gray, the anger he had built up over the past few weeks finally coming to a climax.

"I'm just trying to help! I'm trying to keep the famil-"

*slap*

"You're a kid, Gray. What if you had gotten hurt, w-what if you had died?" asked Lillian, dropping the animals that Gray had hunted to the floor before tears began streaming down her face.

"Your father already sent someone to give us the money. What would I have told him if you had been killed by a magical beast?"

"What kind of mother would I be if I let you go out there, to do something that's supposed to be my responsibly?" asked Lillian, her voice now a whisper.

Gray stood there in silence. His eyes downcast.

"I-I just wanted to help, mom," he whispered before walking to his room.

{I feel guilty for being here,} thought Arya as he watched Lillian sob.

The trauma of almost losing one of her kids was still a fresh wound in her heart, and now another one had risked his life just to get food.

{I can't do this alone, Neel,} she thought to herself.

***

A few more days passed, those days slowly became weeks, and in turn, those weeks became a month.

Arya had gone to visit Cassandra twice, and on both occasions, he had asked her for books on activation sequences.

Of course, she was quite shocked by his interest in such a mundane matter, but she still gave him the few books she had nonetheless.

He had made steady progress in his research, at this point due to his eyes, he was able to tell what the template of low-level spells were at a mere glance.

That's not to say that he found a way to cast magic without a mana core yet. He knew how the mana core was involved in the spell casting process, but he was still unaware of how to find a suitable replacement for it.

Gray and Lillian's relationship had become a bit awkward ever since that day. Although Gray was merely nine, he had the mannerisms of an adult, making it hard for her to talk to him properly.

Streya and Armin were as silent as they had been during Lillian's breakdown. It didn't seem as if they'd be back to normal any time soon either.

In short, their family was in shambles.

{Okay, experiment number 231. Simplifying calculations to remove the need for a mana core,} as Arya thought this, he raised his baby hands out straight, taking a deep breath in.

"Arcia Virtu," he chanted. Wisps of blue dust circled around his hand, but in the end, nothing happened.

{Calculations were still too complex to be carried out without a mana core it seems,} said Elsa, as she noted down the reason for failure.

{Why are you helping me with my experiments again?} asked Arya, before looking at the calculations needed for the spell once more, and trying to find a better simplification.

{I-I don't know. It just feels fun to do research on magic. It feels like it's something I should be doing,} Esla replied, looking at the calculations as well.

{By the way, where did you learn this method of calculation? Based on how the people around you treat you, you've only been alive for a few years,} said Esla, intrigued by Arya's advanced mathematical concepts.

{I-I'm a fast learner,} he replied hesitantly, willing himself not to think about his past life.

Why? You may be asking. That's because he was skeptical of Esla's origins. He didn't know where she came from, or why she was here, but he wasn't about to share everything about himself with a strange voice in his head.

Helping him with magical research was one thing, but completely trusting her was not something he planned on doing anytime soon.

{What if we threw away the notion of trying to cast spells without calculations? After all, spells are an ongoing process, we can't try to solve this problem by using the problem itself,} said Esla, realizing that they would never simplify it enough.

{You have a point, trying to solve a question with another question is counter-intuitive. I've been thinking, perhaps we could use the miniature cores.}'

{That won't work, we've already tried remember. The miniature cores don't work the same as a mana core,} replied Esla.

{But what if we could design a spell that could make them work the same way? After all, the only difference between them is configuration,} he proposed.

{If we could make a spell to change its configuration then we could have Cassandra cast it on us,} she added.

Arya made special note of how Esla used the term us, instead of you. He wasn't certain what feeling that evoked in him, but it felt sort of warm and comfortable.