Chương 60: Chapter 52: First Steps as a Wizard

During the first two weeks, I dove into learning about mana using the first three books Lis had given me. I tackled three runes at a time and then kept reading about mana. The first book mostly covered what I'd already figured out on my own: sensing the surrounding mana, scanning objects with my mana sense to detect the mana inside them, and recognizing that mana had its own color or flavor. It was also the only book that was relatively easy to read, and I got the sense it was written for young readers.

Maybe not kids, but definitely adolescents at most. Some parts were still tangled, and I had to reread them a few times to untangle the language, but overall, it was relatively reader-friendly. From this book, I picked up that mana has both an aspect and an element. Turned out they're not the same thing, and mana can have both. Elements are the natural things, more than just the four basics Lis had mentioned, and aspects are the various actions mana can do.

It was confusing at first because fire, for instance, has the element of fire but also has aspects like "heat," "consumption," or "changing the state of matter." It took me a while to grasp the difference since at first they seemed the same and felt identical when I examined the mana. With practice and intense focus, I eventually learned to distinguish between them now and then, but it was still a struggle. The second book was about the practical uses of mana.

Basically, it explained that mana gains both an aspect and an element based on the Wizard's intent when casting a spell. You could layer these elements to create complex spells or use mana as a tool. And this book was awful. No, that's not strong enough. It was a nightmare wrapped in horror with some suffering on top. Not the subject itself but the writing. Once I unraveled the words, I could understand the concepts it presented, but the writing itself was just awful.

It was written in convoluted purple prose, full of imagery, similes, and metaphors. On top of that, each sentence was a few miles long, and with almost no punctuation. When you stripped away all those confusing additions, what was left was a basic idea that could've been written in a sentence or two. It was a slog.

What raises the Wizard above the husks of glyph counters and the dust eaters of ritual is the restless freedom to press bare hands into the endless torrent of shifting mana to twist its rivers like molten glass to scatter its storms like seeds of fire to coax its silence into thunder and its thunder into silence and in that ceaseless shaping the Wizard does not hold a tool nor a weapon nor an art but something greater and stranger the single vast ungraspable inheritance that masquerades as all of these at once the crown and the blade and the lantern and the wall the thing without which no spell can stand and no miracle can sing...

It took me ten minutes to untangle that word vomit, and what I got out of it was something like,"mana manipulation is the greatest tool a Wizard has." When I harvested the mukar, the mana didn't have any clear aspect or element, yet I could still use it for a specific purpose. I realized why the system didn't recognize my harvesting as a spell. It wasn't a spell. I was using my mana like a tool: free mana manipulation.

It was great to know, and I was proud I could do it, but I still wanted to smack the book every other paragraph. A few times, I didn't hold back and actually smacked it, not that it helped much. The book also provided exercises to practice adding aspects or elements to mana. Once I untangled the text, adding elements was relatively easy, but aspects were trickier. I was familiar with the "flavor" of the four major elements: fire, earth, air, and water, so adding their colors to mana was straightforward.

Adding aspects was another matter. I had some experience with this from my healing spells, but the exercises in the book demanded a finer touch, which I struggled with. It wasn't as simple as saying, "I want to cut something." Instead, it required a composition of aspects such as "sharpness," "transition through matter," and "separation," all balanced in harmony to avoid canceling each other out.

I realized my medical knowledge helped me create healing spells with intention, and I probably applied the right aspects subconsciously. The third book focused on working with mana, including balancing mana levels, cleansing it of specific aspects or elements for high-level rituals, locating areas with higher mana for rituals, and predicting where dungeons or mana portals might appear. This one was also a convoluted mess, but of a different flavor.

Instead of the extra purple prose, it jumped through ten subjects in a single paragraph, finishing none of them. It still had plenty of similes and metaphors, often to some strange things, but it wasn't as bad. The real problem was the breadcrumbs of ideas. It went on and on until, finally, spread across a few pages, I could piece together the complete thought. I actually considered using different color markers to highlight the various ideas so I could follow them, but I didn't want to ruin Lis's book.

I checked my Storage and found some colorful pencils I could erase, then spent two days hunting down idea fragments throughout the book and underlining them in different colors. Once I did that, studying it became much easier, even though it looked strange. I had to read each chapter at least five to seven times, each pass following a different idea thread. Still, it was better than getting lost somewhere between the words and never finding my way out. Enjoying this book?

Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. It also covered techniques to drain an area of all mana, creating what the book referred to as a "dead zone." Well, dead zone was my translation.

The book called it"The realm with no soul, void of all reflections of the blessed light, where the sacred flame is extinguished and even shadow finds no purchase; a place where being unravels into unbeing, where the breath of life falters, and the vast emptiness folds upon itself in endless, self-consuming bleakness, presided over by the cold hand of nothingness eternal." It took me a while to figure out what the author meant.

Once I did, it gave me an idea: if I mastered those techniques and created a true dead zone, I'd be able to use technology there. No mana = no tech issues. I bookmarked that for future practice. For now, I had other priorities and couldn't spare the time to master something so complex. This book also introduced me to "mana vents." It described how the world has vents through which mana rises from the core to the surface.

I remembered something similar from Earth books called Ley Lines, though the descriptions were different. In fantasy stories, they were a network spanning the world, while this book described them more like vents leading straight up from the world's core. Regardless, the topic was fascinating, even if I had to hunt for the details all over the place. All three books on mana came with exercises to practice what they taught. Some were simple, like sitting with your eyes closed and feeling the surrounding mana.

Others were more complicated, such as focusing on a small ball of mana and shifting its flavor, which helped sharpen the ability to distinguish between elements and aspects. One particularly intricate exercise had me creating a stable mana construct and gradually adding aspects like heating, cooling, or sharpness while maintaining overall balance. That built skill in handling several aspects at once without letting them cancel each other out. Another exercise had me forming mana patterns or symbols in the air.

It took meticulous control and a good understanding of how aspects and elements worked together, and I mostly failed. The goal of all these exercises was to improve mana manipulation and deepen understanding of how to use mana effectively for magic. Yeah, despite the suffering the writing caused me, I was learning to wizard. Yay me! Once I finished the mana books, I moved on to rituals. The shift was jarring, but soooooo welcome.

While the mana books were over-the-top with flowery descriptions and philosophical musings about existence, the ritual books were technical with precise rules, measurements, diagrams for creating mana channels to connect runes or magic scripts, and other specifics. It felt like studying electronics or computer hardware engineering. The first book laid out the basics, showing how to start with the outcome you want and work backward, step by step, until you get to the starting point.

The second book contained diagrams and drawings of different ritual structures and their uses. There were basic structures like rings, either separate or overlapping by up to 30%, cubes built from magic script and mana, and stars with four to seven points. Both books were highly technical, and the learning process was a far cry from the first set.

My daily routine became a cycle of breakfast, learning three runes, studying a chapter from the rituals book, mana exercises, sketching or outlining the steps to make sure I actually understood, revisiting the chapter to clarify or remember details, lunch, learning three more runes, more mana exercises, more sketching or outlining, a new chapter, additional mana exercises, dinner, reviewing ritual material, more mana exercises, and finally, sleep.

It took me three weeks to get through these two books, and I still didn't feel like I'd mastered the subject. It was too technical. I realized I couldn't learn them by heart. You had to understand the basics and use the books as regular references when crafting a ritual. With time, everything would stick. For now, it was overwhelming. I started reading the book about familiars, which mostly said what Lis had briefly summarized.

It had more details on awakening animals, a lengthy discussion of the pros and cons of different familiars, and other insights. The most exciting revelation was that, with time, mana beasts might develop magical abilities. This magic could be elemental if the beast or its master had an inclination in that direction, or it could take other forms. For example, there was a story about a snow wolf that developed an ice attack, magic to sharpen its teeth, and a sonic attack to stun its prey.

The subject was absolutely fascinating. And the best part? The writing was concise and easy to understand, with no embellishments and no technical details except in the two rituals. But I was nice and forgave it those two slips, since it treated me so kindly everywhere else. After five weeks, I felt ready to start working on the ritual. Lis would be back soon, so I didn't want to delay. I took a day off to clear my mind and rest mentally.

I played with Rue, played my guitar, cooked, took a long, hot bath, and relaxed. Tomorrow, it was time to start with the ritual.