The Boy and His Magic

The boy turned in his sleep, his almond hair sliding down his smooth cheek, synchronous to his light snores. It was midnight, and Nolan had made a temporary shelter with sticks and a camouflaged blanket to shield himself from the elements. He had cast rudimentary concealment and sound masking spells to prevent any hostile, or curious, wild animals from sniffing him out.

A boy merely 10 years old, wandering the world with his empty grimoire in hand, with a goal to learn enough magic for a humble living. That was all.

Nolan himself did not remember his own origins: his parents or anyone/anything related to his birth, all he knew was that he had lived with a stranger, whose face was blurry in Nolan's memory, until he was 5, where he was then abandoned by the side of a lake to fend for himself. He made do himself from an absurdly young age, learning off books and scraps he scavenged from towns and villages and living off game meat he hunted using simple offensive spells he pieced together from bits and pieces learned from trashed grimoires he found in garbage dumps and abandoned houses out in the countryside. For his age, he was terrifying competent; having mastered most basic living skills: sewing, washing, cooking... and he had a good grip on the maintenance of his own makeshift tools he had made with, again, materials stolen from villages and towns. Nolan had never settled down in one place, and went wherever he was inclined to go, with his trusty ferroweed sack (sack woven from strips of ferroweed, a durable plant that absorbs iron from its surroundings for its signature dull grey sheen - a gift from a kind couple that encountered the boy in the wilds) and his set of tools that made wilderness living slightly easier. 

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Waking to a grey dawn, Nolan let out a muffled yawn from beneath the messy blankets he had stacked on top of one another to keep himself warm. It was another new day, another level of the game called Life. Chewing on a piece of jerky, Nolan started his daily magic training session. 

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The way that magic worked was very simple in theory. By intoning an incantation while visualizing a mana circle or theorem, or even just visualizing a mana circle or theorem (External silent casting), one would be able to draw in surrounding mana to cast a spell according to said circle or theorem. This is called external casting and is the basic casting method recognised throughout the lands. [Nolan does not know the following knowledge] However, certain species like dragons (not humans) can draw in external mana and form a mana core within their bodies which is a semitranslucent ball formed by thin threads of mana intertwined together. Throughout their lifetimes, these species condense more and more mana into their mana core, which allow it to increase in mana density. Due to this, there are different tiers to mana cores depending on mana density: smoky mana core (mana threads not condensed enough - concentrated mana particles in one area makes the air seem hazy), simple mana core (core has taken shape), condensed mana core, solid mana core (not actually solid - high concentrations of mana make the core seem solid), trinity mana core (core density too high leading to core splitting into 3 equal smaller cores), convergence mana core (mana in mana core is tempered so the concentrations of mana of each small core is much higher, then the cores are forcefully reintegrated with each other leading to a quantitative and qualitative breakthrough in mana - resulting in a single extremely dense core), collapsing mana core (similar to extremely dense planets collapsing on itself), supernova mana core (a very short temporary state of the mana core where mana control must be extremely precise to stop it from dissipating) -> möbius core (convergence mana control during supernova stage - near infinite amount of internal mana due to extreme efficiency of mana utilization and environmental absorption speed) or void core (divergence mana control during supernova stage - core produces anti-mana and since mana and anti-mana are contradictory, internal mana casting with the core is no longer possible)

[Placing these here first since I don't want this to progress like those martial arts novels where the author seems to be making up realms as the story progresses that haven't been mentioned elsewhere - the above stages don't include divinity ascension stages ]

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Nolan's magic training was very simple - draw mana into his body, expel it from his body in the form of elemental mana (e.g. fire, water, thunder…) and utilize that mana for external casting different spells. This method was instinctual to Nolan, and was not learned from any book or record he came across. As he practiced his magic, a faint hazy spherical lump of mana could be seen surrounding his heart, growing more clearly defined for every repetition of the training. Expelling fire mana into a small fireball using external casting, "Humph!" Nolan flung it (with visible exertion) at a unicorn boar nearby, hitting it right in between its eyes, blinding it. Nolan then boosted himself with wind mana jets from his soles, rushing over to the incapacitated board and slit its throat with a small skinning knife. Just in time for lunch.

Day by day passed like this, magic training in the morning and physical training in the afternoon. Very quickly, a month had passed by.

Nolan's smoky mana core had become a simple mana core, approaching the realm of a condensed mana core. Of course, Nolan had no clue to what was happening within his body as of the moment, since his mana sense was still underdeveloped. However, he could feel that his mana control and output had strengthened significantly, and his magic was absurdly strong for a 10 year old boy - Nolan was capable of casting fireballs that explode on contact. Although this sounded just mediocre, this was in fact not the case. Despite many people believing that a normal fireball would already explode on impact, it does not. Instead, it merely splashes fire in the collision area, similar to when a flamethrower torches a rock. In order to create an explosion, the fire mana must be compressed, creating pressure, which would then burst forth on the moment that the fireball splashes into a surface, creating an explosion. Mana control must be quite precise in order to accomplish such mana compression and regulation until the point of launching the spell.

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Taking a break, Nolan sat down on a tree stump nearby. Sweat dripped down the side of his face, and his palms were caked with dirt after his intense training.

"Its been a month already, huh."

It was about time for Nolan to move his camp again, and he was packing up his tools and food for his journey. As he picked up his grimoire to store it in his bag, he felt a faint sense of connection from his mana to the tome. This strange feeling prompted Nolan to infuse his own mana into his grimoire, further deepening the connection. Note that Nolan was not drawing any mana from his surroundings as he infused mana into the grimoire, indicating that this mana came from his mana core. Rather than Nolan consciously driving the mana from his mana core into the grimoire, it was the grimoire that seemed to be guiding his mana flow at this point. As this was happening, Nolan's consciousness entered the grimoire, and he was now floating in a void, surrounded by nothing but darkness.