Learning

Liam whose consciousness was flickering from being awake and being asleep felt like he was moving. He could feel something warm, it was at that moment he saw the back of someone familiar. He wasn't sure who the person carrying him was but it felt warm and safe, so Liam who was still feeling a bit dizzy closed his eyes and slept.

The next time he woke up, he was already in his room. He looked around, still confused as to what happened.

'Was that all a dream?' He then looked at his body and saw that he was still wearing his school uniform, it even had the same stains he had in his supposed dream. He touched his face and felt that there were bandages on it, as he finally felt his whole body aching.

'It wasn't a dream... So who was the one that saved me?' Liam tried to remember every detail of what happened before he blacked out. He could vaguely remember a voice, it was a very familiar voice. As he was trying to figure out who's voice was that the silhouette of a certain person started appearing in his mind.

"It can't be?... It couldn't possibly be?..."

While he was thinking of the person who saved him, somebody knocked on his door. A person then entered his room, it was none other than his older brother Loki.

"I see that you are awake. Are you feeling better?"

"What happened? The last thing I remember was getting beaten up by some random thugs, and then for some reason, I heard your voice." Loki took a nearby chair and sat beside Liam's bed.

"Would you believe me if I said I talked to them?" Hearing Loki's answer, Liam looked at him dumbfounded.

"Do you think I'm stupid? Those guys wouldn't have listened to you. They would have beaten you up too before talking to you. So tell me the truth, what truly happened?" Loki looked at Liam's eyes for a second and sighed.

"Okay, here's the truth. I came to the arcade, saw the thugs were beating you up. So I came closer, warned them to back off, but instead, they became hostile and tried to attack me, so I retaliated. The first guy tried to punch me and I hit him with a counter to the chin. He didn't faint after the first hit so I followed up with a kick to his face, and that's what knocked him out. That was when two other guys came rushing towards me. One of them tried to kick me so I evaded, used the momentum of his kick, and redirected it towards his other companion who proceeded to fall. I then punched the one who tried to kick me and upon receiving the punch to the gut, he fainted as well. The last one took out a knife, but before he could do anything, I kicked him multiple times until he too fainted. Once I was done dealing with them, I took you home. That's what happened."

Liam looked at his brother with a dumbfounded expression on his face. It took him a moment to digest what Loki just said, and then he replied with a tinge of anger in his voice.

"Do you think I'm a fool?! You think a person like you, who I haven't seen thrown a punch, was able to take down a group of thugs? All you do is read in your room and surf the net and you want me to believe that your scrawny ass knows how to fight?! Are you f*cking kidding me?! Do you think I was born yesterday?!"

Loki was surprised by Liam's outburst but his facial expression remained stoic. Loki continued to remain silent for a few seconds before shrugging his shoulders and replied.

"Yeah, you're right, what I said was pretty unbelievable... I just called the cops and I told the thugs what I did. When they heard that the cops were coming, they immediately fled the scene. That was when I carried you back home."

Liam found that this new answer was much more believable but he still felt that there were some holes in this story. Yet he couldn't quite grasp what they were. As Liam was thinking, Loki stood up and spoke.

"I'll tell Alisa to bring up some food for you. I'll leave you now so that you can rest. I hope you get better soon." Loki didn't wait for Liam to respond and simply left the room.

...

After that incident, Liam no longer bothered Loki about it and actually treated him a bit better, which made Alisa happy. The following day Alisa and Liam were off to school, while Loki stayed behind because of his sick leave. Alisa didn't want to leave her sick big brother alone, but Loki insisted that he was alright and that she needed to go to school. The moment he was alone he once again started reading the books in his room.

Every now and then some bits of memories from the previous owner of the body would sneak into Loki's mind. This helped him understand the content of the books faster and also helped in understanding some of the new terms he heard recently.

After a few hours of reading books, Loki took some time to digest the things he read. Once he was done with that, he started to try and circulate mana into his body. The mana that he could circulate was minuscule, but now that he had calmed down a bit he found it strange that there was mana in this world. Based on the history books he has read there was no mention of mana or the like. In fact, he couldn't feel any traces of mana within any of the nearby humans and animals. Everyone except for him was manaless.

'At first, I thought this world was manaless, but now that I think about it, for even this little amount to exist means that there is mana here. It is possible that this area I'm in just has little mana, and there are places with more mana. Hmmm, I wonder if there are holy grounds in this world that have more mana?... I need to gather more information before I can come to some kind of conclusion.'

Loki then looked at the computer on his desk, he had some understanding of how to use the thing as yesterday when Alisa was explaining how to use it Loki had recovered a few of his memories regarding the item. Still, he wasn't that sure about it, so he just used his phone to search through the internet.

After checking for the keyword mages, there were many things that came out. It was mostly literature, it would seem that mages were a thing of fantasy in this world. There were also things called movies that had people acting out like mages.

After skimming through various content, Loki found some of the stories to actually have the proper way on how to train one's mana. There were even some stories that used actual spell words that he knew existed in his old world. There were also mention of mages, witches, and sorcerers in the age of myth in this world.

'Where there's smoke there's fire. It's possible that this world used to have mages, but as the mana of this world slowly depleted the age of mages ended and they became myth.'