Chapter 28: Circulation
Today is the 16th.
This ti is Alissa's turn to glaze her own face. If I ever paint them, it will be like this. Ciel stared at Alissa for a suspicious amount of ti, I have to continue influencing Ciel into enjoying my taste.
I unglue Lina out of
and we have our breakfast.
There's barely a minute after I finish my breakfast when soone knocks on the door.
"Good morning, Mr. Ryder. I am Artan, I have been sent by Da Vanea," a young man says and bows.
"Oh yes, I rember you from yesterday. Co in, we are going to the basent."
The only ones downstairs are Hana, who's slowly sipping her tea, Aoi, who's sleeping on the table, and Alissa, who's washing the dishes. They turn their heads and nod to him. The young man shivers at Hana's gaze, he's quite slim and he's only slightly taller than . Just her passive man-eating gaze must be enough to threaten n like him.
I lead him downstairs to the unused basent.
"Ok, open the portal here. Next ti when you call for
don't ever leave the basent. Co up only in case I don't answer. I value my privacy greatly," I say to him.
He straightens and salutes.
"Understood, Sir."
"Alright, now open up."
He chants and in 10 seconds the black circle opens. Gify decides to not make an appearance.
We step inside and the world loses color. I'm taken to a windowless room made of blue-grey bricks. The ceiling is rather uncomfortably low.
"Greetings, Mr. Ryder," says an old man.
There's a long table with a few very comfortable chairs around it. On the other side of the table there's an old man with olive skin looking at . He has a puffy white goatee with brown and white sweptback hair. His small blue eyes stare at
with reserved interest.
"Greetings. Forgive
but I was not given your na," I say with a respectful nod.
"Oh. I am Kyros, your teacher for [Godly Language]."
Artan bows to Kyros and leaves the room. The door is heavy and produces a loud "pomf" when closed. I think the walls and the doors are padded, sound proofing must be important for when I ss up.
"Pleasure to et you, Mr. Kyros."
"Likewise. Please sit," he motions to the chair, "Now, how are we going to go about this? From what I understand you have classes in the afternoon?"
I take a seat and my ass cheeks scream in happiness, I have to ask Vanea what these chairs are made off.
"Yes. My mornings are free."
"Then every morning until noon we should practice, how about this?"
"I would prefer if it would be every other day. There are still other things I want to train during my mornings."
"Fair enough. Then let's begin, I will introduce you to the language."
Good, no need for chit-chat.
"Do you know how [Godly Language] works?" He asks.
"Very little, all I know is it is an evolved form of chanting. While chanting aids a spell in altering reality, [Godly Language] alters reality directly with each word."
"Good. How are your 'Willpower', 'Intelligence', 'Charisma', and 'Piety' stats?"
"Sixteen, twenty one, twelve, and fourteen. Respectively."
"Ah, that's impressive," he smiles faintly, "You certainly have enough stats, your 'Charisma' is the only one that leaves to be desired. It really makes things much easier the more you have."
"I didn't know that 'Charisma' was that important."
"You could say you are literally 'charming' the soul of your target to obey your wishes. It obviously makes it easier when you are well-liked."
That's interesting. It affects the soul but I never heard of any ntion on it on my cursory look at [Spirit Magic].
"But you have a good set of stats, that's enough to start," he flicks his wrist to grab back my attention, "Moving on, do you know how to circulate your mana inside you?"
"Not really. I know how control and modify spells a small amount, like casting it in area, but I can only manipulate mana during chanting."
"What's the level of your [Mana Control]?"
"Ten."
"Good enough. You should have already started understanding this part."
I learned [Mana Control] by brute-forcing, so I'm not a standard student.
"I learned it by repetition, I don't really know much else."
His face remains still as he evaluates my words. Am I really that unusual? He finally sighs and continues, "Well then, I will have to start at the beginning. When you cast a spell, what do you feel?"
"I..." I stop myself to think. With system-aided spells I don't feel anything, really. Only when I chant is that I feel sothing. "I feel an 'emotion', or a 'form'. I try to force myself to copy that feeling when I'm learning a new spell."
"Right," he crosses his arms and nods, "This is the correct path, the 'emotion' or 'form' is a rather abstract 'construct' of mana. Spells manipulate mana on a pattern, they follow five phases. Gathering, conversion, building, expulsion, and trigger."
Oh yeah, Toroo talked about this.
"Mana is spread throughout the body, so the first phase is gathering it inside you. The place that it most easily gathers is the heart. Your brain also contains lots of mana but it's a bad place to cast a spell from, you will get so headaches if you try to do it from there. So spells have the mana gather on specific places, like [Illusion Magic] most often gathers mana on the eyes."
"The second phase is conversion, you convert mana into sothing else. [Fireball] converts mana into a fuel, oxygen, and heat. You don't convert the fire directly into your heart, you convert mana into a "frozen" version of the materials required for the spell. Like when cooking, you first pull out all ingredients necessary for the recipe before putting them into the pot.
"The building phase is when you 'organize' the materials in a way that makes them ready for use. In [Illusion Magic] the building phase is the most important as the conversion phase is nearly non-existent. This phase is where you create the scenario that's going to replay on the mind of your target. While with a spell like [Fireball] the mix of the ingredients is what defines your fla so the building phase is where you fine-tune the paraters of the spell.
"The expulsion phase is where you hold the spell outside of your body. It's when you construct and maintain the fla on your hand. This is important for spells like [Fireball] because you are directly interfering with the world. Spells like [Lighting Bolt] use this phase to manipulate the world and improve the 'path' to the target. I assu you know of the abstract concepts of [Electric Magic], correct?"
"Yes," I answer, "I have enough knowledge in [Electric Magic] to understand this part."
"Alright. Then cos the trigger part. This is where you add the last stabilizers, finish conditions and release the spell. With spells like [Earth Bullet], this is where you add the propulsion that will launch the spell, how long it will last and how strong it will be. With [Illusion Magic] it is where you add how long the spell will affect the target and how strong is the interference on his brain-soul connection."
Wow, this is surprisingly close to programming. This is what true direct mana manipulation is all about.
"This is only a standardized way of teaching how to manipulate spells. You can try to create a spell on your own in any way you want, it's just that you have a bigger chance of materializing the spell inside yourself if you don't follow the standard way. Imagine materializing [Fireball] inside yourself, you can explode your heart in an instant."
Ooooh. This is how Roxanne create [Explosion], I could recreate this spell myself one day. I guess the real difficulty of creating [Explosion] is doing it on a safe way.
"So we are going to practice the gathering phase. Instead of gathering inside your heart we will keep moving the gathering point around your body, effectively 'circulating' your mana. This is also the beginning of a proper way to increase your MP or 'Magic Power' so we can derive from this later."
Holy shit, I need this, I need this technique.
"Did you understand what I said?"
"Yes! I heard about it once so I have a good idea of what you are talking about. I learned about these five phases on my [Reduced Mana Cost] classes. One of my colleagues was learning this skill by improving her building phase."
He smiles and reclines back, relaxing his posture.
"Your colleague is on the right path. If she can manipulate the building phase with confidence then she has so talent. So, we talked a lot, now let's start practice. What's the level of your 'Perception' and your [Sense Mana]?"
"15 and 9. Respectively."
"Hm," he strokes his goatee, "Pretty good. I don't want you to hug
so close your eyes and sense my mana, try to copy my 'form'."
too.
I obey and start focusing on feeling mana. I got an idea, what if I forcefully use [Redirect Mana] on soone while they are forming a spell? To be honest this could be rather dangerous, an explosion would be the least worse of results.
Anyway, focus! I see a very small vortex of mana, it slowly moves in an oval. Paying more attention to it I realize it's not exactly moving, but rather it is shifting positions instantly in such small incrents it looks like it's a continuous movent. This will take so effort.
The vortex feels like I am "grabbing" a rubber ball. I didn't pay that much attention to what exactly I am feeling while I sense spells until now. It's sothing like seeing a "soul
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