Nothing

"Today will be your first lesson on your path to becoming a powerful mage. We will first begin with the basics of the basics. What do you know about mana." Aaron asked as his gaze landed on Kai, who had just finished his daily exercise for knight training, with his face beat red.

"Mana is a type of energy which exists everywhere. Everything that is alive, and everything that is not, was not, and will not be alive contains mana. This energy can be absorbed into your body the more training you do and the longer you do the training for, and then can be used in things like External Arts." Kai answered while wiping away the sweat from his face.

"Hmm… That is not a bad understanding of what mana is to you. However, Mana is so much more than just that. Mana is an energy, yes, but Mana is also an existence."

Kai frowned slightly upon hearing that. 'Did that mean mana was alive? And had a consciousness?' Kai mused.

"Mana is not present in everything, but rather, mana is everything. You need to understand this very basic concept in order for the rest of a mage's existence to be even remotely comprehendible."

"Since Mana is everything, in a sense, you can make anything using mana. And this is where spells are derived from. If you want fire, turn mana into fire, and there you have it! Fire!"

"Of course, there are many limitations, the largest one being spiritual power, which is the energy within a mage's spirit. Spiritual energy is stored in your mental space and is what allows a Mage to communicate with mana. Using Spiritual Energy, a mage can convert mana into various things and use them for battle, or research, or both!"

"That means Mages don't need to absorb mana into their bodies to use spells? They can just use Spiritual Energy to convert the mana around them into attacks?" Kai mused out loud.

"Not exactly. I will explain a few things. Firstly, a mage must learn a spell in order to use it. This does not include something as simple as memorising a spell, but it means etching the runes of the spell into your mental space by using your Spiritual Energy as ink. Only then will a spell be usable for a mage." Aaron replied.

"Does that mean if you have less Spiritual Energy, you will not be able to progress further after making a single spell?" Kai asked in bewilderment.

"No. Spiritual Energy recovers over time. Furthermore, once you successfully inscribe a rune of a Ranked spell, the amount of Spiritual Energy you can store will be greatly increased."

"This is the process of becoming a Mage, little Kai, so listen carefully. In order to become a mage, one must first have enough talent; talent in terms of comprehending spells, as well as talent in terms of increasing Spiritual Energy. If one has enough of both of them, you will be taught how to proceed further."

"To do this, you will have to first choose a Rank 0 Spell. You will then have to memorise the rune, or runes for this spell. Not just that, but then you will have to run countless calculations in your mind; don't worry, instructions for these come with each spell. The calculations are necessary to be conducted by you alone in order to not harm your future growth. Anyways, these calculations are done in order to optimise the spell to be best suited for your unique Spiritual Energy and Mental Space. After your teacher has confirmed you have enough spiritual power, you will be allowed to inscribe the rune into your mental space. Doing this successfully will mean that you successfully became a Rank 0 mage; also known as an Apprentice."

"Of course, once you learn more than once spell at this rank. This is a very important decision to make, since learning more than one spell doubles the difficulty of progressing to the next rank since you will need to completely inscribe the runes for all the spells in the next rank in order to reach that rank. However, if you are able to successfully grow with multiple spells, you will be far more powerful than others at the same rank."

"There is a rule, however; you cannot learn more than a single spell of each element. It is impossible to learn more spells of an element of the same rank. Therefore, the number of spells you can learn is also dependent on your affinity to elements. This is not very important since almost all those who chose multiple spells at the apprentice Rank remain at the apprentice Rank for all their lives. Even I am only a single-element mage."

"Anyways, with each rank, all you need to do is inscribe the runes of the next rank in your mental space. If you have multiple spells at the previous rank, you will need to inscribe spells of each of those elements until you successfully reach the next rank."

"Also, do remember that after inscribing mana into your mental space, it will slowly collect mana until it reached its capacity. This capacity, as well as the effectiveness of the spell, is dependent on your calculations and optimisation of the rune. Using the spell will reduce the collected mana, and you will have to wait for more mana to accumulate before using it again."

"That is all for theory. We will instead get you to practice meditation for the rest of your time practicing Magic."

"Meditation?"

"Yes. There are meditation methods which are used to increase your spiritual energy; however, I cannot reveal those to you at the moment. Instead, you should just get used to sitting down and meditating. You need to allow meditation to become your second nature as you should be able to fall into a deep-meditative state at any moment, especially in the battlefield where you will need to do this to rapidly recover spent mana and Spiritual Energy. For now, just sit down on the ground cross-legged and close your eyes. What you need to do is… think about nothing."

"????"