I wake up the next day feeling fully refreshed.
I had woken up a few tis during the night, but there weren’t any signs of nearby danger, so I quickly dozed off again.
The only problem is... my body aches. It turns out that sleeping inside burrows is not very comfortable. It’s still preferable to being in the open, though.
I get out of the burrow and stretch, using so basic exercises I rember.
"I could use this mont to study and train before continuing the journey."
The thing is, my only combat tools are the taser aria, the lightning bolt aria, and the short sword.
I have no training with the sword, so the only uses I have for it right now are using it to finish off an immobilized opponent and as a last desperate resort if I ever find myself in combat without mana.
In any case, it would be wise to, at least, try to get my hands and arms used to swinging it around.
I don’t have any martial arts experience or anything, so I have no idea of proper form. But I guess just swinging it through repeated motions would at least strengthen my arms and my confidence.
So I take it in my hands, try so different swings to feel its weight and how those swings strain my body, until I settle into a couple that seem to force different muscles.
That will be my first morning routine. Swinging the blade several tis for each of those swings. I know that I’m not doing them the right way, but it’s better than nothing.
When I finish, I search around for another of those cacti, drink its water, and eat the rest of yesterday’s at.
At least the dry climate ans that cooked at takes longer to spoil. If I had the leeway to try to dry so at under the sun, I would do it.
With my hunger satiated, I devote myself to the second leg of my study.
:::
In this world, there is magic.
All magic here is based on either the Primary Elents of fire, water, air, and earth or the Composite Elents, like my lightning.
For example, my illusions are based on distorting the air currents to shift the light beams off a surface. It’s further empowered by so lightning, which has the property to create light in a limited manner, like LEDs.
It’s a really hard type of magic to master, to which I devoted the last four years of my life.
As it requires great capacity for minute manipulation of magic and has little use on the battlefield, most mages brush it off as useless.
It was my trump card for escaping that slavers’ den, but I wouldn’t have managed to do it if it weren’t for the two arias my mother taught .
But it demonstrates the greatest weakness of the mages of this world. They don’t seem to be able to imagine magic without the constraints of the elents.
And most don’t know about the Cosmic Elents.
The three elents of light, darkness, and spirit are a secret very well hidden by the Goddess and her Church.
Any book that ntions them will be imdiately confiscated, and any person who openly talks about them will be prosecuted as a heretic.
The light elent was the pure power of creation and birth. Its na was very misleading, because it didn’t have anything to do with proper light. It was the elent behind the healing spells that the Goddess blessed her priests with.
The dark elent also had a misleading na. It wasn’t about the absence of light but about decay, rotting, and death. Together with light, they ford the circle of rebirth.
Then, the spirit elent was the attribute of consciousness. It was what distinguished, for example, a rock imbued with magic from a golem.
Mastering any of those could potentially put a person on the path to godhood. And that was the reason for the Goddess of this world to conceal them.
How did my mother know about all of that?
When I asked, she just gave a sad smile and changed the topic.
Probably she was a heretic herself.
Which ans that maybe...
It doesn’t matter right now; focus, Sophia. Focus!
I need to improve the weapons and tools that I have right now. Let’s start reviewing my spells.
:::
The one I call ’strengthening’ is like drinking a liter of that drink that gives you wings and then taking an injection of growth hormones.
It manipulates synapses within your nervous system, using the lightning elent. It also reduces the perception of weariness, letting your body act like everything was right, and it also empowers your muscles.
Its aria has a lot of words that seem to be body parts in so old language. At this mont, I can’t do much with it.
The ’taser’ one is a lot simpler. It simply conjures lightning at the palm of my hand, which is imdiately released onto whatever the palm is touching.
The risk is that if I’m not touching anything when I activate it, it will be released on .
This aria is very rudintary, and it’s also in that ancient language. It’s very cost-effective, though, and it has proven itself very useful.
I used it as the basis for the ’lightning bolt’ aria, mixing it with so parts of a spell I had created that made the illusion of a burst of flas.
The main problem is that the spell I created is in the human language I learned from my mother, Esperansy.
So the lightning bolt aria ended up becoming a jumbled ss. It’s relatively powerful, but it consus too much mana to be a main weapon in a fight.
As it is, it’s a backup weapon for powerful or nurous foes, especially because of its big area of effect.
:::
Also, on everyone’s mana core, there are colors. Each color represents one elent.
While most people have only one or two, very rarely three, I have eight.
The biggest one by far is the purple of lightning.
The other ones are:
Teal - air;
Blue - water;
Dark red - fire;
Cyan - ice;
Dark grey - smoke;
White - radiance;
Black - vacuum.
In summary, I have access to three of the four Primary Elents, plus five Composite ones.
Including two composite ones that are directly related to the elents of light and darkness.
My mother told to avoid those two, radiance and vacuum, until I’m strong enough. She said that if badly handled, those elents might misfire in catastrophic ways.
Also, the size of those colors inside is indicative of how much affinity I have with each elent.
Using that as a reference, I’m primarily a lightning mage. In second place cos vacuum and radiance, then water and air, then ice, then fire and smoke.
My mother taught the nas of the elents in the ancient language. It was a pain to learn it all by heart without any writing utensil to rely on, but I pulled it off.
Now, let’s get to the practical tests.
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