《In the search of magic》 Gift from the sun god "Welcome to the world of your dreams! You have been chosen to reincarnate in the magical world of prithyu. The system will calculate the achievements and paths of your past life and you will be given titles and a job. Your memory and consciousness will remain intact in leau of you being a invited player. Enjoy your time and do provide a good entertainment to our patronage, Happy journey!" I heard someone saying this nearby and then the whole world grew dark. I thought that my life would pass in front of my eyes but it seems that you arrive in a dark place where you can''t move, feel, see, hear anything. I spent some time thinking that this place is a hallucination and that I will soon die but after a hour or two I got bored and started thinking. Well I am a retired author so I am pretty good at thinking. I thought of some ideas for my last book I was going to publish on my 80th birthday which unfortunately I won''t have. After the confusion died a overwhelming excitement came along. Magic existed! And I found it! The man named Ignia told me about the truth and showed me something no trick could accomplish. TERRAFORMING! He even conjured fire out of nowhere! I hadn''t thought that my life long search would end on my deathbed. Quite literally. I looked back at my life and realized that I had only one regret, not being able to use magic myself. He told me that I am too weak to use magic in a place without mana. It''s a familiar term I and many other authors often used to mention mythical energies. I was lost in my thoughts for a day or two. I was realizing that I was not hallucinating. I couldn''t feel anything nor see or hear something but despite that ,this place was quite warm and cozy. It was almost like I was back to that old cottage where I lived with my parents for almost 20 years. How loved I was there. They passed away when I was 43? I can''t seem to remember. Atleast they died so happily, smiling while holding each other''s hand and my mom patting my head like she used to when I was younger. I spent a lot of time remembering the good old days and as I was beginning to think that I will remain in this place forever the world around me went from pitch black to white and I suddenly found myself in a conference room surrounded by people dressed like drama characters. There were some birds and animals too, and all of them were staring at me. From the corner of my eyes I saw Ignia sitting at one of the chairs in the corner of the conference room. I was barely able to wave my hands at him before all my attention was drawn away by the majestic figure sitting on the sole throne in the room. I could not see anything about the figure on the throne but still felt an overwhelming awe from the figure''s presence alone. "Truly a wonderful child!" the deep voice resonated throughout the hall. All the people /creatures present here stiffened up which led me to believe that voice belonged to the person on the throne. "Ignia!" hearing his name Ignia suddenly appeared in front of the throne with one knee on the ground. "Yes my lord!" "I am truly happy that you brought such a wonderful child here. I will give you a wisp of eternal flame and a king earth spirit as a reward" "thank you my lord" Ignia said, still bowing down. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. "Evan! You shall get one wish from me as a gift in your next life!" the voice resounded once more. I wasn''t sure what was going on. What gift? Why the hell is he calling me a child?! And who the hell is he?! "Slow down your barrage of questions little one. Yes, I can read your thoughts so shut up" I was shocked at the fact that he could read my thoughts. Is he a.. "Yes I am the one you mortals call a God. Now I know what you want to ask so listen carefully. I am going to reincarnate you in prithyu. Ignia will visit you in a week or 2 so ask any question you have from him. I am the sun god Helios, and yes I am going to not listen to a word you want to say and seeing that you are not going to think about what you want anytime soon I declare you the chosen of Ignia, he will give you a spell of your liking and I am going to grant any one wish of yours. And before you think anything I dare you to wish for more wishes" I was talking with God! Wait, don''t get distracted. he will fulfill any wish of mine! I started thinking about the thing I want the most. Ability to use magic? No, the world I am going to will have magic. Monstrous talent? No, I want to learn magic not become a overlord or something. I thought about the most important things in my life and decided what I want. "Oh! an interesting choice. Well off you go!" the world became dark once again. I waited for something to happen for a while that felt like forever. I started to grow frustrated and lonely in this warm but dark place but the many thoughts in my head kept me occupied. After a eternity of wait I felt something. I felt something gently push me and saw a small peck of light that grew larger and larger until I was surrounded by light. It took a moment for me to adjust my eyes and as soon as I did I saw that I was being stared by a gaint old woman! "waaaaaa!" I shouted out in surprise. Heh? Why does my voice sound like a newborn''s cry? Ehh? Why are my hands so small? AM I A BABY! "yahwyxjdhwgifwuhalfuwhe" the old woman shouted in happiness and soon a tall man burst out in the room I was currently in. My eyes widened in shock at the sight of the fairly young man who snatched me from the old lady''s hands and was watching me with a grin on his face. How could I ever forget the one who gave me all I could ever ask for. My father! I heard someone gasp for air and as I looked over I started crying. There she was, looking at me with those warm eyes my mother! God had fulfilled the wish I asked for splendidly. I had wanted to be able to see my parents again. He made them my parents again. Oh god! Thank you, thank you so much!! I cried till I falled asleep from exhaustion. I didn''t know why I was being gifted such happiness but I''ll always remember the grand figure who gave me this gift. ~~~After some time~~~ I woke up after what felt like a few seconds. Looking around I found myself in a wooden room on a bed next to mom who was sleeping quite soundly. Everything was normal looking but I found something weird. Why the hell am I able to see! Aren''t babies not able to see clearly for almost 6 months? Anyway It''s a magic world so no need to bring earth''s facts here. There was a window next to the bed we were sleeping on and unfortunately the bed was too low for me to be able to see anything outside the window except the sky. It was night time as far as I can tell and judging by the temperature it should be summer. The god and the voice I heard before being transported to the dark place said something about the system didn''t they? "ehuh" ah yes. I am a baby and babies can''t talk. Though it seems that this was enough as a screen popped up in front of me. STATUS Name: Not given yet Rank: none Age: 9 hours Mentality: curious, disciplined, strong willed, confident Blessings: none Race: human Class: none Strength:0.1 Agility:0.07 Endurance: 0.13 Intelligence:1.5 Titles: The truth seeker locked locked Title effects: appraisal(common) ,locked , locked Skills: Appraisal Player can appraise other players who are not using any mana and are not higher then d-rank and manaless objects. Can be used by touching something and saying appraisal. Mana:0.01 Well this just got very interesting. I looked around to find a object to appraise and decided to appraise mom as I was already touching her hand. "uheh" Once again it seems this much was enough for this system and it showed another screen Name: Samantha Evelyn Rank: E rank Strength: 9 Agility:5 Endurance: 2 Intelligence: 1 Mana:3.7 "uh uh uh" I laughed in the manner I could. I just used some sort of magic! This was the first time in over 5 years I laughed. After only this much action I started to feel drowsy again. Slowly but surely my eyes felt heavy and they closed. This still feels like a dream The wait and the answers A week had passed since my rebirth. Life was pretty boring and embarrassing for me but I managed to pass my time by looking at mother and father. I would have thought that I was dreaming if I had not spent my entire life looking for something that might not even have existed! Feeding was still fine as it seems that instead of breastfeeding, people here fed some weird blue berries to babies that melted the moment they touched my tongue. I tried to use appraisal on it but it just showed the prompt that this thing contains mana and to use appraisal on it I had to wait for my mana core to mature, which I have no idea when will happen. The real problem was answering nature''s call. In my past life I had lived for a ripe age of 74! All the travelling I did made me very fit! It was only during the last month of my life did I become unable to walk without support but even then going to the toilet was no problem. But now? All I could do was try to hide my face in embarrassment when mom changed my diapers. And dad!? He was even more ridiculous than before. He would take me from mom''s lap and he will play frickin catch with me by throwing me and catching me!. I tried to learn whatever they were speaking but it remained outside of my comprehension. The only thing I knew was that mom was pronounced ''mut'' here and dad ''tat''. The house we lived in was a medieval wooden building with a stone fireplace. There didn''t seem to be any technological advancements like electricity or engines a fact about which I was glad. Lamps were being used as light sources while the fireplace was used to keep everyone warm and cozy. The house had 4 rooms and a basement. I had not been taken outside yet but I saw trees from the window, lots and lots of trees. It was so different from earth where my eyes could not find any trees near my hometown. The basement was used as the bedroom. One of the rooms was used as the kitchen and another for sitting leisurely before the fireplace. Currently I was in mom''s lap near the open window to let some air in. It has been approx 10 to 15 minutes since she dozed off and I was about to begin my daily meditation session. Why? Because in all the novels I wrote or ever read most of the ones which had mana had meditation to sense the said mana and for the past 6 days I had been trying to sense it using different methods. First I tried to just meditate and try to see something but it didn''t work. Then I tried to focus on my breathing and then hearing and then sense of touch but nothing worked. Maybe these things only work by sitting upright in the meditation pose but me being a baby can do nothing about that. On the 5th day I tried to sense something like mana flowing inside me but that didn''t work either and yesterday I tried to feel the mana core the system mentioned when I tried to appraise the berry but alas that didn''t work either. Today I was going to try the sole idea left in my mind, trying to sense my soul (which very clearly exist as I was just reincarnated) . After confirming that mom was indeed sleeping I closed my eyes and concentrated towards my head. All while trying to ignore my breathing and other senses. I hate to say this but as a teen after I found that magic was real I tried every frickin meditation method I found in novels and the internet which made me quite good at concentrating. After closing my eyes I tried to just see/ feel something and after a good while I saw a small white glowing orb and just as I was about to be able to see it clearly. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. "DING!" A notification like sound ran throughout my head . "ehuh" I cursed the system and opened whatever the system gave me the notification for. SYSTEM WARNING The player is trying to excess his soul space before the mana core is mature. System warns the player against it as it might cause the player to die from mana deficiency. And I take my curses back. "Haaaaah" I took a deep breath and calmed myself. I really need to stop my experiments until Ignia comes to visit. Atleast I now know what to do after my mana core matures. With that settled I closed my eyes once more. This time to sleep. Soon another week passed . I spent the last week just chilling and trying to learn the language here. The sole thing I learned this week is that my dad''s a farmer. I really don''t want to wait any longer to even enter the soul space but I don''t know when my mana core would mature. "gjakshdkhakd" dad said something to mom while she was cooking "kuhlaknrdknanyu" she answered without looking back This conservation went back and I stopped trying to understand whatever they were talking about. After about 2 minutes mum looked at me and nodded her head. She stopped cooking and after changing into nicer looking clothes she just left with dad leaving me alone? After a minute or two of me just laying on the kitchen counter awkwardly a familiar looking man entered through the front door. Finally! Ignia finally arrived here "uhehuheuhe" I asked before remembering I can''t speak "yeah, I can''t speak babish language. Don''t worry, let me mature your core first and then we can talk" saying this he put his hand on my chest and for the first time I felt like something was leaving his hand and entering my heart. It felt so warm, so magical. And just as soon he had put his hand on my chest he removed it. I looked at him in puzzlement. Was it over so soon? "yes it''s over. Now try to enter your soul space again" How did he kno... never mind, he is the subordinate of a real god so of course he knows about the things I did. I closed my eyes and tried to feel something and once again I saw a white orb floating in black space. I tried to make it come closer and after what felt like my consciousness being sucked out I blackened out. When I regained consciousness I was in a grassland with no light but somehow I could still see. I tried to look at myself and saw that I was a floating white colored orb. In front of me was Ignia. Still looking like he normally does. "Got anything to say?" "Quite a lot actually" my old voice resounded. Atleast I can talk here. "go ahead then" "First of all, do my parents just look like my parents or are they really my parents from my previous life?" "The souls of your past parents were transferred to this world and you are the child of the people the said souls were born as" The doubt that had started to creep in for the past 2 weeks vanished with this sentence. "How much time do we have exactly?" "Time flows really slowly comparing to the outside world in the soul space so you can spend more than a day here while only 1 hour would have passed in the outside world. So we got plenty of time." So I can ask plenty of questions from him. "why did the sun god reincarnate me here? Also are there other gods?" "I can''t answer the first question and yes there are many other gods." "why can''t you answer?" "Because the other gods wouldn''t like you knowing too much so soon. Also, you can''t ask super vague questions like what is magic? and how does magic works? That''s something out of the scope of mortal understanding. " "what i-" "Wait." After stopping me from talking in the middle of my sentence he froze in the same posture. He was frozen for barely 3 seconds and as I was about to do something he suddenly started moving again. "I have been ordered to only answer any 3 questions in the format of yes and no questions" "By whom?" I asked almost immediately. Maybe it''s the sun god? But why would he do this? There''s no motto for him to do so. "Sorry but I can''t answer any questions other than yes and no types" What the heck man! I have struggled so much for a glimpse of magic and when I got the chance to get all my questions answered he can''t even answer any meaningful questions? "Just tell me whether I can really do magic" "Yes" Ok so that wouldn''t be a problem "Are there other reincarnated people in this world?" "Yes" Last question. What should my last question be... how I wish I could be as powerful and all knowing as the sun god... wait a minute. "Can I become a god?" I asked the question before I could think of anything else. The smile on his face froze... And he laughed out loud. "Pfffff! You want to become a god! Hahahaha no no no. No mortal can ever become a god. Not with the help of system, which is itself the creation of gods, nor with the ancient system of mages. Once a mortal, forever a mortal" He looked at me with his laughing face and said "The really important information that is within the scope of mortals should be provided to you by your parents before they send you off to school. Now that we have your queries answered let''s make you my chosen and give you a spell" The gods dog "Now that we have your queries answered let''s make you my chosen and give you a spell" Saying this he waved his hand a weird barrier around the grassland became visible. Outside the barrier was filled with total blackness except a white crystal floating in the dark. He waved his hand again and this time the crystal appeared in front of us. "What is...this?" The crystal was so repulsive yet so strangely beautiful. "This is the system''s projection on your soul, every mortal has one." Even while talking to me his hands were dancing in a weird gesture. Sometimes his gestures cause the crystal to start spinning and other times it transferred lights from his hand to the crystal. The moment his hand stopped moving the crystal flashed and a screen appeared before me. Notification Congratulations! The demigod of fire and earth Ignia has give you the status ''chosen of Ignia''. You are now entitled for knowledge of language and basic knowledge of mana , Your mana core status is updated from ''temporarily matured'' to ''permanently matured'' "You didn''t mature my core permanently?" I asked "The status does that for me. Why would I waste energy on doing something that would be done anyway." "By the way, where did my parents go?" "They were called by the tax collector to give a estimate of the planted crops. Anyway, now that you are my chosen what spell you want?" "What are my options" I asked while failing to suppress the grin that was forming on my face. Finally I would be able to use magic! "fireball, water ball, air slash and earth wall" Water ball just sound too basic, no matter how far powerful it might be a ball of water just doesn''t seem that magical. Same thing with air slash. "Fireball" I said after thinking carefully. Eh who am I kidding, fireball just seems the coolest. "And done, I gave you the language skills too" He was speaking but I was too giddy to pay attention properly. "status" I quietly mouthed and there it was, in all its glory Skills: Appraisal, fireball "You might not be able to use it for a day or 2 by the way" "Why!" "While I matured your mana core you still haven''t undergone awakening. You should enter the soul space everyday and try to sense things outside that barrier. After you see mana try to pull it inside the barrier. You will get a skill named mana regeneration and then you are free to use the spell as much as your heart desires. And no more questions cause you know" he said while pointing towards the sky. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. "what am I supposed to do now?" "Imagine yourself waking up" Weird but ok. I closed my eyes and imagined that I was waking up. I opened my eyes and found myself back in the kitchen staring at Ignia. "Well then, I should get going." He turned around and started walking. ...but then he suddenly stopped and came back. He looked in my eyes and said the most shocking words I have ever heard "They are not looking anymore. This world is a entertainment house for them. You, me and every other person are just sources of entertainment." His playful personality was nowhere to be seen. "He called you in this world in order to make you happy and will most probably give you a class that can''t get any spells on your 12th birthday just to watch you break" His tone was as if he was telling me what he would eat for breakfast but his eyes betrayed his emotions. It was as if his eyes were telling a tale of his own. "I had tried to rebel against them, all the rebels except me were killed and I was made into a dog. Someone who barks when told and bites when told." "Remember this, they are no friend of yours. I imagine you don''t understand the implications of the class stuff and my rambling yet but one day you''ll understand. You will understand the sheer cruelty the gods do in the name of entertainment. Try not to loose your passion." He started walking away again and as he was about to exit the house his voice resounded in my mind. "If you ever want to learn real magic join the rebels and go visit a rebel named Edward. He should be living on the second largest peak of the eastern range." And with this he disappeared. My mind was in shambles trying to understand the sheer magnitude of his words. This whole world was a entertainment house for gods?! The sole reason I was reincarnated was for someone to enjoy watching me break mentally?! Was any decision I made in my past life my own? Think logically eric, think logically. If the sole purpose of this world is entertainment then they would not control actions of mortals as the fun of watching puppets should be many times lower. And thinking about it carefully, what would I even gain from thinking this much about beings of power I can''t even fathom. The sole thing I can do would be to follow the instructions already given to me by Ignia and if all my paths are blocked going forward I will go visit Edward. As for joining the rebels? Let''s leave that for the future me. Thinking like this my mind became clear and my eyes grew heavy. And soon I wandered off into sleep In the eastern ranges. There was a table and a chair on the roof of a small tower. At first the roof was devoid of any person but suddenly a man appeared on the chair with a cup of tea in one hand and a book in the other. He was wearing a black coat over a white shirt and black pants. Another middle aged man flew towards the tower and landed in front of the table. The man raised his eyes at the middle aged man and spoke. "Pleasure meeting you Ignia" His expression were anything but welcoming. "Don''t look at me this way Mr.Edward. We both know that I was forcefully made to sign the contract" "You want me to believe that you didn''t sign the contract in order to become a demigod! You didn''t listen to me when I told you to wait before trying to break the limit and you want me to believe you would let the chance go to do so?" He stood up and walked in front of Ignia. "Can you say this while looking straight at me Ignia" Edward growled. Ignia lowered his eyes Edward sat back down and continued to read the book. There was silence *sigh* "what do you want?" Edward said after a hour or 2 "A child named Eric might visit you at your academy, teach him magic" "Why? You have never really respected my ideals or my academy so why would you want me to teach someone?" "He is from earth, he saw me floating once and spent almost his entire life searching me in order to learn magic. I was ordered by you know who to meet him and used my invitation to bring him in this world. ''He'' wanted to break his spirit by giving him a permanent non-magical non-combat class. I figured he would be useful to you" Edward fell silent again "...I will decide after meeting him" He said and started reading his book again. Ignia was about to speak something else but turned around to leave after listening to Edward''s last sentence "Don''t ever show your face in front of me again or I will treat you like every other dog of them bastards" prelogue-1 "Son! We are going to be late!" a man in his late 40''s shouted at the top of his lungs. He was standing at the door of a old style brick house in casual clothes. At his call a teenager ran out of the house in full speed. He was carrying a camera in one hand and a sandwich in another. The teenager was a slim 15 or 16 year old boy with black hair and green eyes. On his back was a young girl around 4 to 5 years old who was pulling at the youth''s hair as if riding a horse. Dangling in front of his chest was a camera. The youth not paying attention to the girl on his back came and stood in front of his dad. "Leoral, don''t irritate Eric." "hai hai Mr. Sergeant!" the girl shouted while clumsily saluting the middle aged man. Haa~ the man sighed at his daughter''s antics and started walking towards a group of people standing far away on the road. A lady standing amongst the group waved her hands at the approaching trio and started smiling. "Eric! You took good care of your sister right?" "yes mom!" the boy immediately answered like a well trained soldier. The lady looked towards the middle aged man and smiled while saying. "you know Mr. Sergeant? You have trained our boy well" "You too darling?" The man looked towards his wife with a hurt look on his face. She chuckled and not saying anything else took her daughter from Eric''s back onto her own. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. "You didn''t really have to take us for a picnic the first day of your retirement , You could have given your old bones some rest after retiring cause of old age" She said with a smirk on her face. "I am not old! They retired me because of my slowly worsening eyesight! Even if my retirement was really because of age it doesn''t really matter cause the military can''t really expect middle aged men go around fighting young blood" As they were arguing Eric slowly distanced himself from them in order to not get swept in their argument, if this could be called one. "Mom! Big blother is sneaking off again" ''This little rascal'' "Eric!" ''Did I accidentally voiced my thoughts?'' "Don''t wander off too far!" ''Phew! Thank god'' Eric started ignoring his parents talking and started paying more attention to his surroundings. They lived in a suburban area full of gardens and forests, approx 5 km down this road was a mountain range where they were going to camp with a few family friends. The path was filled with all sorts of weeds, flowers and birds. He would click a photo or 2 for inspiration while writing characters. Soon they reached the camp site, there were 4 green tents in a row in a clearing and in front was a small circle traced out with stones. For a bonfire most probably, Eric and family were not the first to arrive as a family of 3 was already here. While his mom and the lady of the house in the family up front were chatting. Eric, being the oldest child here was tasked to gather firewood. He was given a bag for holding the firewood and a metal stick for safety. There were no wild animals here as any and all such animals had long been hunted either for sport or food but what could he say when his mom was adamant about him taking it. And off he went into the woods. He went around collecting firewood and then, he saw the thing that would change his life forever, a man with his back turned to him floating in the woods. First he was shocked beyond compare, then the shock changed into a compulsion to click a photo of this miracle. And that''s what he did, the moment he clicked the shutter the world around him froze, one moment the man had his back towards him and the next he was facing him. The man''s face was not visible, as if he was too lowly of an existence to view the man''s face. And just as fast as when he had turned to face him the man vanished. Eric''s camera was an old model that took 3 to 4 seconds to fully capture the details of anything and when the camera printed out a photo all that was visible was a black silhouette floating in the sky. soul space I woke up in the same place I was before sleeping, it was midnight and it seems that mom and dad went to sleep together today. Before the thoughts of existential dread managed to sneak in I decided to enter my soulspace to truly experience magic for the first time in my life. I closed my eyes and this time I didn''t have to spend too much time in order to find that little dot of light. My mind went blank for a moment and here I was, in the grassland once more. The sole difference being that the crystal that once floated in the weird void outside the soulspace was now in front of the white orb I turned into here. How am I floating like this? And how can I move without any limb? Anyway, recalling what I was supposed to do I tried emptying my mind and looking into the void outside. ... Absolutely nothing. I went near the crystal and it showed my status which was exactly the same as it was the last time I checked except the addition of Ignia''s blessing and the fireball under the skill section. I noticed many things I hadn''t before, first was the fact that the grassland was black and white, the second that the size of the soulspace was not as big as it seemed in the first glance, it was about as big as a 3m sphere if my perspective was the same as in the real world. I went near the barrier that while I didn''t notice while with Ignia, was grey in color and everything past it was pitch black. I moved a little closer to the barrier and noticed water like waves that started from seemingly nowhere and rippled throughout the barrier. It was kind of like a pond in light rain but with the rain drops not being visible. They looked colorful without any colors and beautiful even after looking like a everyday phenomena. I felt a strange compulsion to touch the barrier so I did. Then I suddenly felt my perspective change. One moment I was a orb and in the second a huge sphere. I looked around and found many white points of light surrounding me. I found mana!! I will become the greatest pyromani... I mean mage in the world. Truthfully speaking the biggest fantasy I had as a youth was to conjure fires huge enough to match entire countries in size. I was kind of discouraged by the things Ignia said but one thing I learned while roaming the world looking for a glimpse of supernatural was the fact that the outside world was not in man''s control, what he can influence is his actions. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. While the actions might ultimately turn out to be useless, what would matter in the end when you are lying on your death bed is fact that even if you achieved absolutely nothing in life you would have lived by your heart. I willed with all my imagination for the specks of light to move towards me and they did. I expected them to be blocked by the barrier but they passed without resistance. Strangely enough I didn''t feel anything at all. I saw the orbs that I absorbed get replaced by more orbs that were originally further away and I also noticed the fact that the barrier that was originally blocking the orbs that accidently touched it was now absorbing those orbs. I felt my perspective change again, I was once again the small white orb in the grassland. Why am I suddenly back here? *Sigh* it''s not as if I am getting any answers. I noticed that there were now specks of white sprinkled around the soulspace and they were slowly but surely being consumed by the crystal. I waited for a while for something to happen and as soon as the crystal absorbed all the orbs a screen appeared in front of me. NOTIFICATION! Congratulations to player for becoming a awakened. Player is awarded with the passive skill ''mana attraction'' and basic mana related knowledge. Start transfer of knowledge? (y/n) Finally, I am going to get some answers, yes! As soon as I thought the yes the screen vanished and almost immediately I was rushed with a torrent of information. It was not painful but uncomfortable nonetheless. And as soon as the torrent had swept me up in it''s currents the whole procedure stopped ... I finally have some answers! Not to many questions but answers nonetheless. First thing I understood is that I can practice spells here in a simulated room that can be accessed by touching the crystal and thinking about the spell you want to practice. When you enter the soulspace your body enters a sleep like state and if woken up you will instantly exit the soulspace and appear in the real world. The white orb I exist as in the soulspace is my consciousness and the grassland is the rest of the soul. Casting any spells directly inside the soulspace is highly dangerous as it might tear a hole in the barrier and any damage to the barrier will kill him. And lastly there were some pieces of information about the system itself. The spells I have is called a invocation spell and can be casted by saying ''Fireball''. I called out to the screen and it appeared in front of me. STATUS Name: Not given yet Rank: none Age: 2 weeks Mentality: curious, disciplined, strong willed, confident Blessings: demigod ignia''s blessing Race: demi-human Bloodline: 99% human, 1%cat Class: none Strength:0.1 Agility:0.07 Endurance: 0.13 Intelligence:1.5 Titles: The truth seeker locked locked Title effects: appraisal(common) ,locked , locked Skills: Appraisal, mana attraction,fireball Mana attraction: gain one mana every minute automatically. Fireball: Use 10 mana to produce a fireball that can be cast in any direction. Mana:10/100 Mana recovery speed: 1 mana/min I can finally use mag... wtf!!! Why am I 1 percent cat!? descent into MADNESS This world is frickin nuts, first the entertainment thing and now, as it turns out, I am not even a complete human!? It¡¯s one thing if the bloodline is of some epic creature like dragon or phoenix or that creature I made for one of my novels that is the god of that world but no! I have the bloodline of a cat! I am pretty sure I was 100% human the last time I checked. How do bloodlines work anyway! While my thoughts were going on a field trip of their own, I had unknowingly moved very close to the ¡®system¡¯. The surprise about the bloodline had almost made me forget the bubbling excitement inside me. I moved closer to the system till my orb like body was touching the crystal. I imagined a fireball being cast by me and with a sudden shift in surroundings I found myself in almost empty white room with a wooden dummy being the sole thing inside of it. I went from looking like a orb to looking like I did in my previous life My mana had rose to 23 in the meantime so I had enough mana to cast the spell twice. ¡°Fireball!¡± I tried shouting and while I heard nothing I felt something being drained from my body. The air in front of my hands turned slightly red a fireball slowly materialized in front of me. My hand were shaking from excitement as I felt the heat from the floating flame and the feeling of accomplishing an almost 70 year old goal. I looked towards the wooden target and willed the fireball to go hit it. The fire ball flew at a speed not too fast and hit the target¡¯s head which resulted in a firecracker like explosion. ¡°Fireball¡± I once again tried it, just to confirm that it wasn¡¯t a fluke and¡­ Sure enough, it hit the target once more. ¡°My go-goal, it¡¯s been done. After all this time, my goal is finally complete.¡± This had completed my life long quest to use magic. But why does my heart yearn for more? I had lived long enough in my previous life to truly understand myself. And I know this wasn¡¯t enough for me. How can the old madman be truly satisfied with just this fireball¡­ I felt a tear travelling on my cheek like a drop of dew that falls of the leaf when the sun rises. I will achieve the greatest heights possible with magic, learn everything there is to learn about it and then, maybe, my heart will be satisfied. Not wanting any adverse effects of trying to use the spell with less mana than required I decided it was enough for today. I exited the soul space to look whether my parents were home or not. And nope, I felt tired from the overexcitement and decided to close my eyes for a little bit and soon I was in the dream land¡­ <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> ¡°I completed the task my lord¡± Ignia said while bowing down towards his lord, the god of sun. ¡°Very well, go back to earth for another century. There might be some problems regarding those in a decade or 2. Summon me when they arrive¡± The voice resounded throughout the hall as always. ¡°I had a question my lord¡± ¡°Speak¡± the god asked. The gods were almighty beings that could turn any demigod into ashes but the powers of the demigods allowed them to escape the thought listening powers of the system. ¡°Why send him to Edward? We know he will run off to him sooner or later now that he knows that there is someone who can teach him magic. But what use was reincarnating his parents and spending so much divinity in summoning him from a different universe just to send him to the mages we can¡¯t observe?¡± ¡°There is joy in seeing how his story will end through the perspective of others, now that he knows it¡¯s all for the sake of our entertainment, he will for sure not accept the offers of becoming the demigod of other gods. Therefore he might be killed by an adventurer, or die in the hellhole they spend so much time and lives constraining, no matter what his end will be fun to watch¡± Ignia silently bowed towards him and went off to his next quest. Wondering whether the new toy of the gods would have lived a happier life if had not come under the radar of the sun god. ¡°haaa¡± He sighed and disappeared from the sun god¡¯s palace. <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. I was woken up by the voice of the gate opening. I saw my parents arriving inside with happy looks on their faces. ¡°He really is our lucky charm¡± mom said while pointing at me. ¡°Ever since he was born one good thing after other has started happening¡± ¡°true¡± my father replied ¡°First we managed to fully buy this house from the village and then the king announced that there will be no tax for 3 years because he finally had a son¡± ¡°By the way, have you decided what to name our son? I asked you when I was pregnant and you said you will tell me later. ¡°I want to name him Eric, Eric evelyn¡± ¡°Why do I feel that this name is really important?¡± ¡°Because it is the name of your son from now on stupid¡± ¡°What did you say!¡± my mother said before picking up her sandal and chasing after dad. It¡¯s like their personalities were photocopied from when they were young back on earth. It truly brings a smile to my face seeing them being able to walk and run around again. ¡°Hey! Look at our son, he is smiling looking at us¡± Dad said while trying to run away from mom. She looked at me and sure enough I was still smiling. Soon the day turned into night and I was laying next to mom and dad, supposed to sleep. But obviously I wouldn¡¯t sleep when I could literally shoot fire outta my as¡­ hands, I mean hands. I once again entered my soul space and first decided to look at my status. STATUS Name: Eric Evelyn Rank: Awakened Age: 2 weeks Mentality: curious, disciplined, strong willed, confident Blessings: Demigod Ignia¡¯s blessing Race: demi-human Bloodline: 99% human, 1%cat Class: none Strength:0.1 Agility:0.07 Endurance: 0.13 Intelligence:1.5 Titles: The truth seeker locked locked Title effects: appraisal(common) ,locked , locked Skills: Appraisal, mana attraction,fireball Mana attraction: gain one mana every minute automatically. Fireball: Use 10 mana to produce a fireball that can be cast in any direction. 20 second recharge. Mana:100/100 Mana recovery speed: 1 mana/min And I have recovered all my mana at the very least. I entered the training hall or whatever it was called and immediately used all my mana by casting fireball 10 times. The interesting thing was that when I threw the fireball 8 times I had the system screen pop up Congratulations on using the fireball spell 10 times! Your proficiency with the spell increased by 5 percent which increasing damage of the spell by 1 percent and speed of the spell by 0.5 percent. For the next milestone use the spell 40 times. Wasn¡¯t the increase kind of small? Completely exhausting my mana made me kind of dizzy for maybe 10 seconds but after that I was fine. Anyways I wanted to explore this space due to not being able to use fireball for 10 minutes or so. The place was kind of small, not much bigger than the grassland in overall volume. It was surrounded by walls around 3 meters high on all sided and there wasn¡¯t really something I could use to climb the wall to look what was on the other side. I waited till I had about 50 mana and immediately used the spell 5 more. All this time had a huge grin on my face. Throughout the night my grin slowly transformed into a frown. This didn¡¯t feel right, No matter how many times I used it I didn¡¯t understand how it worked. ¡­ Slowly the new day came, then the next and then the day after that. I tried many things like controlling the mana in my body or trying to manipulate my voice but it didn¡¯t work. It was like the spell wasn¡¯t my own. The clog of time slowly turned and it made me realize that increasing the proficiency was the sole way of making the spell better in anyway. I began to understand that the system why the system felt alien to me when I first visited the soul space. It was because the power it gave didn¡¯t belong to the person but to the system itself. I had a feeling that the power, the spells could be taken away as easily as they were given. And with nothing better to do, like the madman I was, I decided to try to raise the proficiency of the spell as much as possible and then leave to find Edward. Because this is not magic, this is just a game of the system and the gods. <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> On the second largest peak of the eastern ranges. There was a small tower at the top of the mountain, there were many people flying towards the tower in complete silence. A young man entered the building and was greeted by rows and rows of stairs leading downstairs. He starting heading downstairs. There was no sound of his footsteps because his feet were always and inch or 2 above the stairs. He soon arrived in a conference hall with a huge table surrounded by chairs on all sides. About half the chairs were already filled. He sat down at the far end of the table away from the main throne like seat that belonged to the greatest demigod ever born, Edward. Soon all the seats were filled but people kept arriving, some were standing behind the seats and some made seats with earth magic. Edward appeared out of no where with a cup of tea in his hand and the meeting started. ¡°I called all of you today¡± Edward said out loud ¡°To decide the time of war!¡± ¡°so soon?¡± ¡° I thought it would take a while¡± ¡°Do we only have 1 demigod?¡± murmurs started going round the hall like spooked rabbits running from a loin. Edward raised his hand to silence everyone present. He spoke again, ¡°We still need thousands of demigods to just match the amount of demigods they have and I am the only demigod of the mage society but the rules are the rules, we have to launch war against humans atleast once in a thousand years in order to survive¡± ¡°ENOUGH!¡± A old mage in all black stood up and shouted. ¡°For how long do we have to waste young talents in order to entertain the gods!?¡± ¡°Do you have any better option sir Farion? All we can do is wait, wait for a mage to become a god, hide around till we have enough to match the gods and then we fight¡± Another mage replied ¡°And is that even possible? What are the chances that the gods won¡¯t just kill us if they get ahold of something more interesting?¡± Farion sat down after saying this. ¡°Calm down all of you¡± Edward said ¡°The mage society has never stopped advancing since the gods came and conquered our world, I alone am confident enough to defeat 5 or 6 demigods of that time, if not for the rule of gods that only one mage demigod can exist at any given moment we would have gathered enough demigods and even some gods long ago¡± ¡°We battle after about 130 years in the season of winter. Try to raise the next generation of mages before dying off.¡± After saying this Edward once again disappeared and mages started leaving or teleporting one after the other. Farion stood up and came next to the young man we followed to arrive at this place. ¡°Let¡¯s go young one, you have yet to learn a lot before the fight arrives¡± ¡°Yes sir¡± The young man spoke for the first time after arriving in the hall. Farion stood up and after placing one hand on the shoulder of his disciple they too disappeared. Ch-6, A history lesson ¡°A long, long time ago, the world was ruled by the ancient evil mages and demons. The mages did experiments on humans and ruled with fear and corruption. While the demons ate humans and reared them like livestock The common people suffered a lot In those times. I am talking about the pre-descendence era. The mages and demons did such cruelties on the non-mages that our dear gods decided to descend from heavens to punish them. They killed heads of mage factions and the various demon kings. but the mage alliance along with some remnants of demons managed to survive. The gods decided to give the task of exterminating the evil to the mortals. They sometimes summon heroes or people with their past life¡¯s memories intact to help us in that goal. They also created the system that helps every human access supernatural powers. Which hel-¡° I was 4 years old when I was admitted to this village school and am now 5. For the last year, this story or ¡®history¡¯ had been repeated to us for what felt like thousands of times, along with descriptions of what type of tortures the mages did in vivid details I think no 4-year-old needed. We had been taught about a lot of times when heroes were summoned to defeat the demon kings, a classic, the many wars fought against the ¡®evil ancient mages¡¯ and some maths. There was no such thing as science so our syllabus included history, basic maths (which I always topped, not that I am proud of that) and 2 languages. One of our own locality and the other was the universal language of humanity. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. Our world was called Prithyu, which I already knew. There were 3 Continents on our planet, namely Galdoria, Tundrath and Nytara. We were currently in the Kingdom of Eldoria which was in Galdoria. Quite rhyming to be honest. I have been practicing the same spell for the last 5 years but while the proficiency increased, the amount of mana I had, and my mana recovery speed remained the same. I was getting kind of bored now to be honest. Soon I was walking towards my home. I still didn¡¯t have any friends in this world as there wasn¡¯t really a point in making friends with kids the age of my grandchildren if I had any. I didn¡¯t have any really good friend in my past life as well, I was too into weird ¡®theories¡¯ for many people to like me. I continued walking while musing about things and I soon reached my home. Mom was gone as always, she loved to help dad farm. She said I would help him instead of her when I turned 6 years old. I walked into my room and picked up the book titled ¡®Progression of humans¡¯ It sounded like a book that talked about the technological advancement of the world but it talked about the path to power in the system. Any awakened person was considered as F rank. Then in went to E, D, C, B, A and S The book vaguely mentioned the existence of ranks above S but didn¡¯t mention what it was. I know that the highest rank is demigods. Well above that is gods but according to what Ignia told me, there has never been a case of anyone becoming a god. There was not a single book in the whole village that mentioned how the f mana worked or how spells worked. And I was really looking forward to that information. I completed reading the book, went downstairs to my mother who was preparing dinner. Ate dinner and went to my room to sleep. I hoped that the day I turn 12 will come soon. Ch-7, The spoken and the unspoken ¡°Fireball! Fireball! Fireball!¡± Three hot red fireballs flew out of his hands Booom! They all hit the target with a loud noise. ¡®Congratulations on using the fireball spell a total of 2,50,000 times! Your proficiency with the spell has reached the maximum with the total increase in speed 500 percent and damage of the spell 2000 percent. The notification came as expected, but I couldn¡¯t feel any happiness. I will be 12 years old tomorrow. Ever since that day I got told that my new life was for the sake of entertainment of the gods I have practiced the one spell I had everyday. It increased in power and speed but I could not control it. This is not magic, this is not magic at all ¡°Status¡± STATUS Name: Eric Evelyn Rank: Awakened Age: 11 years Mentality: curious, disciplined, strong willed, confident, frustated Blessings: Demigod Ignia¡¯s blessing Race: demi-human Bloodline: 99% human, 1%cat Class: none Strength:1 Agility:1.2 Endurance: 0.9 Intelligence:1.8 Titles: The truth seeker locked locked Title effects: appraisal(common) ,locked , locked Skills: Appraisal, mana attraction, fireball(Max level) Mana attraction: gain one mana every minute automatically. Fireball: Use 10 mana to produce a fireball that can be cast in any direction. 0.2 second recharge. Mana:100/100 Mana recovery speed: 1 mana/min Nothing changed in the mana related stats as always. In the starting this bothered me but now I didn¡¯t even like doing this. I was sent to the local village school and even history seemed more interesting than just saying fireball and watching it shoot out of my hands. I had tried it in the real world many times but even that grew boring and exhausting real soon. Exiting the soul space I went to my room. It was currently mid night and mom and dad were sleeping. I was given my own room when I was 5. I was expecting a younger brother or sister but disappointingly, I remained a sibling less child. My room was filled with books and on a wall was a huge map with eastern ranges marked. I had prepared just in case I wanted to go to the rebels but I was not sure even now. Tomorrow is the last day for me to decide as in early morning I would be sent to the village priest for class awakening and then I, along with some 20 other children will go to the city for admittance to 1 of the many academies there. The best way of going to the eastern ranges would be to exit the moment mountains are visible on our path to the city. It would take about 3 days to reach the village nearest to the eastern ranges and another month or 2 to reach the top of the 2nd highest range. But I had to decide today whether I wanted to go or not. I looked at my hands and thought really hard about the things really important to me right now. Stolen novel; please report. My parents, learning magic and living a regretless life. ¡­ Mom and dad would be fear struck when they realize I just disappeared wouldn¡¯t they? Would I regret it if I go? Would I regret it if I don¡¯t? Would th- ¡°You are not asleep yet Eric?¡± My mother suddenly appeared behind me like a ghost. I wasn¡¯t even scared right now as I had got used to this a while ago. She for some reason could sneak up to me without me knowing any better in the most unexpected situations. ¡°No mom¡± ¡°Why?¡± ¡°I was just excited for tomorrow¡± I told a lie with a straight face. I was confused and worried if anything. Mom sat down on my bed and asked me to sit beside her. ¡°You know son, from the day you were born I knew you were special in some way. You didn¡¯t cry as much as other babies and even when you did it didn¡¯t seem genuine. You learned to speak and walk by the age of 3 and you never asked for anything except books, And a sister for some reason. Even though you never did anything that made you appear smarter, I could sense that in some ways you were smarter than even me and your dad.¡± She held my hands and my heart dropped. This could be said to be the day I had dreaded the most. I was afraid of them realizing th¡­ ¡°Be honest with me Eric. Do you have the memories of your past life?¡± Her eyes were slightly red but she still seemed strong as steel. I knew that there were 2 choices in front of me. Each might lead to a similar path but this day might decide whether I would have the support of my parents or not while walking on it. I didn¡¯t know what choice led to which but I decided to trust my heart. ¡°yes¡± She didn¡¯t cry but still looked hurt. ¡°How old were you when you died?¡± ¡°70+¡± ¡°Do you really consider us our parents?¡± A tear fell down her eyes. I felt my eyes becoming my eyes wet too. ¡°yes¡± I said while looking straight into her eyes. She took a deep breath and said ¡°Tell me about your previous life¡± And so a really big story of my theatrics in my previous life. ¡°And I died after finding that magic is real, when I came to my senses again I was in front of the god of sun again. He let me have a wish, and I wished for you both¡± ¡°For us?¡± By now her eyes didn¡¯t have a trace of warmth left. It really hurt me to see her like this but she deserved to know. What kind of son would I be if I don¡¯t even let my parents know the truth. ¡°I asked him for me to meet my parents again, he gave me both of you.¡± She slowly realized the implication of what I said. ¡°So?¡± ¡°You were my parents in my previous life too, you are my parents now and will always be my parents. Forgive me for not saying anything earlier but I was scared of you refusing to acknowledge me as your child.¡± I slowly looked at her and her face was filled with tears. I just silently hugged her. I looked behind and dad was standing near the door. He wasn¡¯t crying but looked deep in thought, as if trying to remember the past long forgotten. ¡°Look at me¡± Mom suddenly sat up straight and looked at me. ¡°You are Eric Evelyn. You are my child. I gave birth to you and raised you for the past 12 year so you are my child. Doesn¡¯t matter whether you have memories of your past life or not. No matter whether you are lying to me about this or not. You will forever be my child.¡± A tear fell down my face like the first rain drop that fell down the sky. Dad came, patted me on my shoulder and went away. ¡°Do you want to say anything else?¡± Mom looked at me with a smile. The warm smile that had always supported me in my past life. ¡°I want to roam the world maa, become what I couldn¡¯t in the past. I want to go somewhere else tomorrow due to that, somewhere that is not the academy.¡± I couldn¡¯t tell her about the entertainment thing. I didn¡¯t have it in my heart to tell her that the entire world¡¯s suffering was for the sake of gods, even me¡­ ¡°The eastern ranges?¡± ¡°Yes¡­ how did you know?¡± ¡°Your entire room is filled with maps of eastern ranges kiddo. Go, Just remember to visit every once in a while¡± She didn¡¯t even try to talk me out of it, or ask why I needed to go, or ask to go with me. Maybe she realized that I would still go if she refused. While talking to mom I realized that I knew what I wanted to do but couldn¡¯t gather the courage to go against the world. But you know what? Fuck the world. If I needed to join the rebels against the gods to learn some real magic then I would. What is worse than death is to live passionless. I will reach the peak of what is possible with magic. Even if just to find real magic. I am willing to spend another lifetime to make sure of that. <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> ¡°He decided to go to the rebels my lord¡± ¡°Finally!¡± The sun god Helios exclaimed in delight. He was watching the people of the god of light summon another hero and brainwashing him into thinking that the demon king was all bad. It was interesting but the same plot had been repeated so many times that he had grown bored of it. He waved his hand and white screen similar to a tv on which he had been watching the whole demon king business disappeared. ¡°We will give him the farmer class tomorrow my lord¡± A walking lizard spoke. ¡°You know what, I have a better idea¡± <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> I felt the warm sunlight hitting my face. I sat up in my bed, the world seemed a little brighter to be honest. My heart felt a lot lighter than it had in the past 12 years. I went downstairs and was greeted by the sight of mom making breakfast and dad hammering a nail in the table, it had broken down last week. Breakfast was served and we all sat down and started eating. All this while not a word was said about yesterday. ¡°Take this¡± dad said while handing a piece of paper to me. ¡®House no.83, near the old well, vale town¡¯ ¡°This is the address of your uncle named Aubrey. Last time we met was over 15 years ago when I married your mom and left my family. And before you get any weird thoughts, we are not some sort of fallen noble family that is seeking reven- Ow!¡± Mom hit his back with her elbow and continued eating her food nonchalantly. She had made curry and rice today, something I find really amusing as when I had left home for college in my past life she had made curry and rice too. I folded the paper given by dad nicely and put it in my pocket, intending to put it safely in the bag I had prepared (Mom sew it for me) With the little titbits of life passing by we set off towards the church for my class awakening. Kind of a useless thing but still seeing my parents so excited for it made me a bit excited too. Ch-8, The awakening and the departure When we reached the church I saw 2 more children standing there already. As the awakening was conducted on the 12th birthday of a person, many times only a single child will go for the awakening. The churches in this world were polytheistic. In other words, they had the statues of almost all the gods in them. The church was pure white in color, with golden threads adorning the building in some places. Grand is a word that could perfectly describe its appearance in one word. The large gate of the church opened and the priest of the church, a strict old man, beckoned for us to follow him. Me, along with my family and the 2 kids who were here alone for some reason entered the church with the priest. Just like the outside, the inside of the church was equally grand is not grander. It was a huge circular hall, with a huge glass ball in the center and more than a hundred statues of abstract things like the sun, the moon, stars, fire and water were surrounding the hall¡¯s circumference. ¡°Come here child¡± the priest said to me, gesturing me to come near the glass orb. Mom gave me an encouraging nod as I went forward and stood in front of the orb. ¡°Place your hands on the orb¡± I did what was asked. ¡°Oh the great gods, the protectors of us mortals, Give this poor child a speck of your powers and bless him with a class!¡± Just then the statue depicting the sun lit up. I felt my heart growing a little warm, and then, the system screen appeared in front of me. STATUS Name: Eric Evelyn Rank: Awakened(F) Age: 11 years Mentality: curious, disciplined, strong willed, confident, frustrated Blessings: Demigod Ignia¡¯s blessing Race: demi-human Bloodline: 99% human, 1%cat Class: The sun mage (legendary) Strength:1 Agility:1.2 Endurance: 0.9 Intelligence:1.8 Titles: The truth seeker locked locked Title effects: appraisal(common) ,locked , locked Skills: Appraisal, mana attraction, fireball(Max level), Sun burst, Nightfall Mana attraction: gain one mana every minute automatically. Fireball: Use 10 mana to produce a fireball that can be cast in any direction. 0.2 second recharge. Mana:100/1000 Mana recovery speed: 10 mana/min My eyes froze on the sight of the legendary class and the new spells Had he not said I will be given a farmer class? What did just happen? I heard the priest congratulating my parents and them looking at me happily. Maybe there is no need to visit the rebels after all? We reached home in a blur. I ran to my room immediately after reaching home and entered the now familiar training room in my soul space. I raised my hands, my hand shaking in excitement. ¡°Sun burst¡± I said and felt myself become drained almost immediately. A huge ball of fire appeared before me and hit the target with a loud band. Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. If the fireball ball spell was a firecracker than this spell was a frickin bomb. I looked at my hands. This spell still feels mechanical in nature, I wasn¡¯t in control of any part of the spell. It still felt like a game rather than real magic. ¡®Sigh!¡¯ I exited the soul space and was back among the living. In another hour, I, along with the 2 kids who awakened with me will start the journey towards the city. The fact that they never thought us how to fight was a thing that I find very weird but seeing how the system gives power without an ounce of hardwork required, I could understand that no one would train when they would be spoon fed everything later. And while there are beasts in the forest, the ones that can do real harm to anyone were all intelligent enough to not attack humans. I went downstairs, mom was dad were sitting together while holding hands. ¡°And look whose here! A legendary class mage! After maybe a month or 2 we would have to bow down before you when you arrive¡± ¡°No mom, I am pretty sure you would beat me with a slipper if I even mention you bowing before me.¡± ¡°You know me, just wait till you become a really big person. Then I will beat you and then I can brag how I beat Eric Evelyn¡± ¡°I forgot to ask but, where will you go in eastern ranges?¡± dad asked. ¡°An academy, I got invited by half a god¡± Dad thought I was jesting and glared at me. I can¡¯t even tell a truth nowadays. The other explanation, that I am going to the ancient mages to learn magic which will make me the enemy of the whole world and the gods. I wonder how the heck no book ever mentions any of the crazy stuff in the world, it¡¯s almost like the gods don¡¯t want the common people to know about the mages and wars and stuff. Time had passed like a river in this small house. I studied a little, played around with that spell, had existential crises, learned how to read and write and enjoyed the company of my parents for the last 12 years. And now, I would leave for the greater wider world. While most children would go to academies alone at the age of 12, I, a ¡®child¡¯, will be going on an epic quest to acquire magic that felt like magic, power that belonged to me. I bid farewell to my parents, mom cried a lot, and even dad shed a tear for his son. I went to the village gate where a carriage with the twins from earlier already in it was parked. Along with the twins the carriage was filled with grain for trade. Such carriages left the village every month, and any awakened kids would go with the grain to the city in order to get admitted to any academy. I sat down too, and then the month long journey started. <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> ¡°What¡¯s your name¡± The male twin asked me. ¡°Eric, yours?¡± ¡°My name is Ronn and this is my sister Hermoinne¡± DID YOU PUT YOUR NAME IN THE GOBLET HARRY Dumbledoor had asked calmly as far as I remember. ¡°Is your friend named Harry potter?¡± ¡°I do have a friend named Harry Proter but how did you know? This guy¡­ I didn¡¯t say anything and just sat while looking outside. On earth if a 12 year old child was going somewhere far from home for more than a week, their parents would certainly go with them but not here. The age of awakening was somewhat like turning 18 back on earth. You gained a lot of freedom to move around from the day of awakening. The age to get married was still the somewhat acceptable 16 years old but that was the one thing that didn¡¯t matter to me. A wise man once said that a person can only have one true love. In my past life it was writing. In the current it was magic. And you can¡¯t exactly get married to writing or magic. ¡°What is your class eric?¡± The female twin, hermoinne, asked with her eyes sparking with curiosity. ¡°Farmer¡± ¡°Ehh! Don¡¯t lie, there isn¡¯t any legendary class of farmer profession¡± It seems she had paid attention to the fact that I awakened a legendary class but didn¡¯t know my class. ¡°But there is, Its called the sun farmer¡± She pouted and turned her head away from me. One easy way to handle kids was to just give them silly answers. They would naturally shut up after a while. ¡°But seriously what is your class?¡± Ronn asked ¡°Sun Farmer¡± He pouted and turned his head away from me. Like sister like brother I guess. ¡­ It had been a week since we left the village. According to the calculations I made before leaving and the currently visible mountain directly in front, I had to leave tonight and then go towards east for 3 days in order to reach the village closest to the eastern ranges. Everyone on the carriage was required to bring their own food so I was safe in that regard and I had brought a bow for self-protection. As for why a bow and not something like a sword or a dagger, I had a knife in my pocket right now and I, being a man of many hobbies in my past life had learned archery for a solid 10 years. Even in this life I shot an arrow or 2 every day in order to maintain my skills. And the question why a bow at all? Because I will run out of mana after firing about a 100 fireballs. Even though I was only carrying 10 arrows with me, it was 10 extra chances of saving my life from any sort of enemy. These 2 twins both had C-grade classes, with the boy being a healer and the girl a warrior. I wonder if there is anyway of increasing the grade of classes, after all the grade limited the rank a person could reach in his or her life. As an example this boy could become a C-rank healer if he worked hard but had no chance at all of reaching B-rank with his class. I could become higher than a S ranker with my class at the very least, but due to lack of information I was not really sure about what rank was my maximum. What I was more interested in knowing was that how did the rebels came to be known as rebels. How have they managed to not get wiped out when the opponents are literal gods? I guess I will know soon. Screech The carriage slowly stopped and me, along with the twins jumped out of the carriage. We had arrived at the base of the Mountain the 2 ¡®uncles¡¯ driving the carriages had decided to stop for today. I took out a piece of jerky from the huge bag of jerky mom had prepared for the trip and started munching on it. The 2 middle aged men prepared a fire and sat down each holding a piece of jerky of their own. I sat near the carriage waiting for night to fall and all the members of the group to fall asleep. Tonight is the night of the start of another round of adventures in the life of Eric Evelyn. Ch-9, Mr. Aubrey ¡°You are not going to sleep Eric?¡± Ronn asked me while he was setting his mat to sleep besides the fire. ¡°I will, but not right now¡± ¡°Just sleep when you want to *Yawn* I am sleepy¡± saying this he laid down and after barely a minute the sound of his breath deepened. Everyone was asleep now. I started preparing to sneak out. As for why I was sneaking out and not just telling the adults about my destination? Attending the academy was compulsory. My parents might have approved of my decision but they or me couldn¡¯t and can¡¯t ask these 2 men to let me go half way through as the responsibility and fine would fall on them. I picked up the almost 5kg jerky bag and put it in my backpack along with my clothes and my water bottle. I slide a letter that explained I was leaving the caravan for a destination planned by me. Looking at all the sleeping members again I took out my compass, checked what direction was east and left the path carved by countless carriages, finally entering the jungle. There were no creatures in this jungle that a fireball couldn¡¯t handle. Mostly it was filled with small animals like rabbits, insects, birds etc. The only hostile creature in this jungle according to the teacher that taught geography in the elementary school are goblins and they too are only sometimes seen in the center of the forest. The last time a human encountered a goblin in this forest while being outside the center was more than a decade ago so I think the goblins are safe for now It¡¯s not as if the goblins can hurt me. I was a veteran mage who mastered a spell by the system¡¯s standard by now. I continued to check my compass every once in a while and continued walking for about 3 hours. After making sure that I was sufficiently far from the caravan I climbed a suitable tree and using my backpack as a pillow I slept. I was lucky that there weren¡¯t any tree climbing monsters in this jungle. <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> It had been 3 days since I started walking. My legs were hurting by now from all the walking and climbing. Thankfully the season was quite warm so I didn¡¯t need to start a fire till now and water and food were sufficiently available in the form of the jerky I carried and the many rivers. I took out my map and the compass. Judging by the amount of time I walked since my last encounter with a river I should find the city nearest to the eastern ranges, named ¡°The vale town¡± after walking for maybe another half an hour. Despite the many-many differences between earth and this world, the jungles were quite similar except the creatures they carried. Even the creatures were pretty much the same for the small animals. It¡¯s just the bigger animals that got magical and new creatures that are extra in this world. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. There weren¡¯t any floating island or glowing rocks in this jungle, nor was anything like this mentioned in any of the books in the village libraries. I jungle started becoming sparse and I soon saw the city in the distance. Unlike my village, this city had 3 meter high walls and a big gate to match. It was nowhere near as tall as the 30 meter high wall of the royal capital of this country but it was enough for this place I guess. As I neared the city gates I noticed that there were barely 5 people in front of the gate. Out of which 2 were guards. They were checking the bags and identification of all the people entering. Because of the lack of people by the time I reached the door the last man had entered already. ¡°And where are you going kiddo?¡± The female guard asked while the male guard took my bag and started checking it. ¡°To my uncle¡¯s place¡± ¡°And who is your uncle lad?¡± ¡°Mr. Aubrey from House no.83, near the old well¡± ¡°To think he had a cousin and he never told us. You heard that dear? He is the cousin of Aubrey¡± ¡°Heard it loud and clear. I think he himself might not know that he has a cousin. Give me your id card kid¡± I handed him my id ¡°Eric Evelyn, 12 years old and¡­ this is valid. Here you go Eric¡± He handed me back the id along with my bag. I put the id back in my pocket and slung the bag on my shoulder, another visitor had arrived by now so they started checking his stuff. I entered through the gates and was greeted by the same old looking medieval houses as my village. But the roads were wider and made of stone and the materials used for making the houses was stone and wood instead of just woods. What I don¡¯t understand is why no one has made concrete and phones and stuff if people like Ignia, who have full knowledge of earth exists. ¡°Excuse me, where is the house of Mr. Aubrey, house no.83¡± I asked an old lady passing by the road. ¡°See the sign with the hammer lad? Go to that shop and take a left. The second last house in that street should be House no. 83¡± ¡°Thank you¡± I started walking according to the direction she gave. Funny enough that I was probably older than the old lady that gave directions right now. Soon I reached the house. The white stone used to made the house had turned yellow form age. *Knock**Knock* ¡°who is it?¡± A rough voice asked from the inside. ¡°I have come here to meet Mr. Aubrey Evelyn¡± ¡°Coming¡± I heard the footsteps arriving closer to the door and the door soon opened. ¡°What do you want bo¡­ you certainly seem similar to family, are you someone related to me?¡± ¡°I am your nephew. Son of Ashley Evelyn.¡± Hearing the name of dad his eyes turned a lot warmer. He examined me from head to toe and removed himself from the front of the door. ¡°So he decided to send his son to see me after a whole 12 years of not contacting me. Enter kiddo, what was your name again?¡± ¡°Name¡¯s Eric¡± I said while entering his house. There was a small rack made of wood with some shoes already on it on the right side and on the left was a bucket full of water. The house was just one big room with no walls in between. Directly in front was a huge painting with 2 adults and 3 children. One of them, I presumed, was dad. Seeing me notice the painting, he stood next to me and said ¡°This is your father, me, and our sister, along with our parents. This was painted by your great grandfather when he felt his time had come, so he had decided to leave something that will bring smiles to the future generations of his family.¡± ¡°And where is aunt?¡± ¡°You didn¡¯t see the female and male guard pair at the door? Those are your aunt and her husband¡± ¡­ Seriously, why was I not surprised. She kind of did look like dad. Might have been sarcastic when she told her husband that I was the cousin of Aubrey. ¡°And what class did you awaken? I don¡¯t think Ashley would have let you come all the way here without you awakening first. ¡°The legendary class Sun mage¡± Hearing this his jaw hung in air, I might have decided to not walk the system¡¯s path but seeing the expression of people when I say that I have awakened a legendary class is still interesting. ¡°You jest?¡± He looked at me expecting me to be joking but seeing my expression, his jaw tightened once more and his slight smile widened into a huge grin. ¡°We are going to have a powerhouse come from our family! Your father is going to have to give a huge party kiddo! What are you doing here anyways? Why aren¡¯t you going to the academies¡± ¡°I will be going to a academy in the mountains¡± ¡°I don¡¯t remember there being a academy in the mountains, Is it new or something?¡± ¡°Yup¡± ¡°Good good¡± He took out a jar from a cupboard, a cookie jar, and handed it to me. ¡°How long are you staying here?¡± ¡°About a day or 2, the time it takes for me to gather the supplies for about a 2 month long journey¡± CH-10, First fight of the new life ¡°Leave the supplies to me, I still got enough in my bones to do atleast that much for family¡± I nodded while munching on the cookies he gave me. Delicious enough, also, no need to deny a free favor I guess. He asked me to sit still while he went outside to arrange the supplies. I reached my hands into the jar and¡­ Nothing! Oh the pain of an old man, not even being able to enjoy cookies without them running out. Anyways I stood up and started looking around, not a heavy task as the whole thing was just one big room. There wasn¡¯t really something too interesting except the painting and a portion of the wall which was decorated by wooden staffs of various sizes. I took one out and started swinging it around. ¡°Hello Eric!¡± I turned around and the female guard who was standing with uncle at the door was waving at me. ¡°Hi¡± I gave her a response and put the stick back at it¡¯s place. ¡°You will be eating food at my place today eric, along with Aubrey of course.¡± <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> ¡°Bye Eric! Continue to visit us in the future, Along with your father if possible¡± Uncle Aubrey said as he helped me put my stuff on the horses back. When they said they will be giving me a horse to take along I had refused because horses are so expensive but when they told me that the horse was bought with part of the money my dad had to his name in my grandfather¡¯s will. They also bought the supplies for me with this money and the rest was given to me. A full 5 silver coins were spent on this while the rest, a total of 15 silver coins were given to me. A thing to pay attention to was the fact that out of the 5 silver coins spent, 4 silver coins and 78 copper coins were spent on the horse. In this world the currency was the classic gold silver bronze coins. 1 silver coin was equal to a 100 copper coins and 1 gold coin was equal to 100 silver coins. 1 silver coin was enough for an average family of 4 to eat for about 6 months, a year if they were frugal. So I had received quite a fortune for this trip. I had originally planned on using the 3 silver coins I had saved throughout the last 12 years to buy food, water sacks and a cart that would help in transportation of the said food.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. If the money was insufficient, I was ready to spend a year or 2 in this town to earn some bucks Not the first time I would would have done that anyway, I had spent over 4 years in China because my passport was confiscated as I had contacted the Tibetan monks to see whether they could do anything ¡®magical¡¯. I had to spend all my money bribing a border officer to let me go to Russia, where I contacted my countries embassy to get a new passport made. While I had not spent much time on a horse back, I knew enough to ride one comfortably. Both from my past life and current one. There was a course on horse riding in the school I went till I was 11 years old. ¡°You did said good bye to your aunt right? She will fight with me if you haven¡¯t¡± ¡°I did uncle, good bye now, see you soon¡± saying this I loosened the reins of the horse, and the horse started walking forward. I went out the east gate of the town while waving my uncle and aunt goodbye. The journey till now had been really peaceful, but from henceforth I will encounter the creatures of fantasy, goblins, orcs and what not. Soon I left the open area surrounding the city and was going through the forest. For some reason going through a forest always invoked a feeling of awe in my heart, maybe because the first encounter I had with Ignia happened in a forest. *crack* I heard the sound of something breaking somewhere to the right of me. Intrigued, I would very obviously check what sort of mythical creature I encountered. I silently jumped down form the horse, tied it to a tree and went towards the source of the noise. I silently peaked through a bush when I reached what I believed was the source of the noise. Looking around I saw¡­ A rabbit¡­ not really a mythical creature. I had just turned around when I heard another sound from the same place. Turning around I saw a wooden spear embedding the rabbit to the ground. A greenish humanoid creature walked out of another bush, this thing was absolutely huge, 3 meters tall minimum. A orc! Slowly I stood up, just as I did the orc¡¯s focus changed from the rabbit to me. ¡°Hi?¡± I gave an awkward greeting just to make sure that this thing couldn¡¯t talk. It would be sad if I killed a sentient creature without any reason. *RAHH* it gave an high pitched scream and started to pickup the wooden spear, presumably to throw it at me, leaving the rabbit still on the ground, still twitching. ¡°Fireball¡± I mouthed quietly and a foot ball sized fireball flew towards the orc, hitting it straight in the head with a loud bang and a flash. I waited for the smoke to clear and when it cleared, the orc was still standing, about 10 meters away from me, but now its head had a large burn mark, with the dense hair on its head having been burned off. It looked at me with a angry look. It started running towar.. ¡°Fireball¡± Another fireball hit it at the same spot. A little blood oozed out of the injury and it let out a cry of pain. ¡°Fireball¡± ¡°Fireball¡± ¡°Fireball¡± 3 more fireball flew towards it. It tried to deflect them with the stick in hand but after the first fireball exploded the stick in hand the other 2 hit the same spot on it head again, the orc¡¯s thick skull finally cracked open which resulted in its death. I took a arrow from the quiver hanging by my side and poked it a little, confirming it¡¯s death. Orcs are defined anywhere from tier-F to tier-C depending on its side. The one I fought was a somewhat strong F-Tier. This forest was mainly filled with F tiers which was why I dared to come here alone. I fired one more fireball at its head which burned its head off and revealed a small blue stone with a few small branches extending outwards. This was the mana core of this creature, Humans, for some reason, didn¡¯t have a physical mana core. Mana cores were not that useful, humans couldn¡¯t absorb them and no known use for these cores was available to commoners. But, you could sell them to any church for a handsome reward. Putting the Mana core in my bag I started moving back towards the horse. Ch-11, The Beautiful World After getting back to the horse I once again started travelling towards the foot of the eastern range. There was still about half a day¡¯s worth of relatively easy travel left, after which the hellish journey would start. After I reach the foot of the eastern ranges, what awaited me was about half a month of navigating through the mountains to get to the 2nd highest peak, funnily enough named 2nd peak, and about 2 months of climbing the almost 10 km mountain by foot. The horse wouldn¡¯t survive climbing the mountain so I planned on setting it free before I started the hike. Now, I don¡¯t know how gravity worked in this world but this world had a diameter of almost 1 hundred thousand km. This would result in approximately 500 times the volume as compared to earth. Maybe its because of the presence of mana that allows the use of magic that life is possible here. Anyways maybe due to the increased volume, or maybe due to magic, but unawakened humans could survive without any additional support even at the height of 100km from the surface of the planet. Therefore breathing should not be a problem while climbing. *Fwoosh* I heard the sound of something breaking through the air. I lowered my head and saw a small stone fly by. Turning around, a goblin the height of a dog was in the posture of throwing another stone. ¡°Fireball¡± I fired one fireball at its head which resulted in immediate and hopefully painless death for the goblin. It seems as though monsters were a lot more abundant in this forest than I thought. If I had affiliated with a god and received a monster slaying quest I could have become a lot stronger in this forest. A pity that such power seemed too foreign for me to accept. By the time I reached the start of the eastern ranges, filled with rocks and trees of all sizes and a slight slope that lead to many towering mountains in the distance, the sun had began to set and I had killed 6 more goblins. Looking around for a place to sleep I found a little valley like structure formed by 2 large stones . I could climb down to sleep but I couldn¡¯t think of any other creature that could hurt me there except orcs and trolls, but those creature are known to sleep so soundly at night that they wouldn¡¯t wake-up even if you put a feast in front of their faces. I gathered some dry wood and twigs and managed to start a fire before the sun set. Tying my horse near the fire I started warming my body near the fire. I would look for a place to bath tomorrow as I would most certainly not be able to bath in the chilling cold of the mountains. At least the mountains will be full of trees for the majority of the journey. ¡°What are you doing here old man¡± A heavy voice suddenly came from behind me. I almost shouted fireball but seeing as the voice could have killed me anytime he wanted I scraped the idea. Turning around I saw a middle aged man with black eyes, short brownish hair and a thick half white half brown beard. He was staring at my head while his eyes glowed an eerie blue color. ¡°Do I look like an old man from any angle?¡± ¡°Physically certainly not but your soul most certainly is older than me, maybe 80 years old. You reincarnated old man? Or did you possess this body? No that¡¯s improbable seeing that you are not a mage.¡± ¡±Reincarnated¡± I said while feeling shocked that it took the man in front of me barely a minute to figure out that I was reincarnated. ¡°You here to defeat some evil mage then? Or are you here to challenge some ¡®traitor¡¯¡± he asked with a mocking smile on his face.This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. ¡°Ehh, you are not as wise as you think youngster, what makes you think that I am here for any of that?¡± ¡°You changed your tone pretty fast that¡¯s for sure, what else could a hero come here for?¡± The more he spoke the more puzzled I became. We are talking in the same dimension right? ¡°what are you talking about ? what hero? I was here to join Mr.Edward¡¯s academy for magic studies¡± He looked at me with a confused look for a few seconds, then started smiling and then started laughing. ¡°I see I see! You found out the truth then huh? Come here then old man, lets take you to see Sir Edward.¡± He took my hand and suddenly we started floating in the air. My bag floated behind him almost as If it had a life of its own. The world beneath me became smaller and smaller the higher we rose. By the time the 2 stones I was planning on sleeping in appeared as though they were grains of salt we started moving forward. I looked down at the beautiful world beneath me, I looked at the direction I had come from and sure enough a bunch of buildings were visible. I felt so serene and¡­ free. ¡°How old were you when you died old man?¡± He looked at me and asked curiously. ¡°I was in my early seventies.¡± ¡°So you from earth or were you originally from prithyu?¡± I once again looked at this man in shock, just how can he know so much? ¡°This is common knowledge amongst the mages oldie, we figured out long ago that if they want to make things more interesting for themselves they often reincarnate people from earth to Prithyu. Although most of these people are made into heroes and sent to either fight the poor demons who rarely even manage to have a legendary ranker alive for more than a year or sent our way in order to free the world of the ¡®traitors¡¯, some are told the truth by some lackey demigod and then they roam the world figuring out ways to get stronger without the system. I think the warrior faction got some man who was a extremely skilled archer in his past life and they are now raising him as if he was the illegitimate son of the sole demigod they ever had¡± I guess I wasn¡¯t as unique as I thought. ¡°Did you people get some reincarnated person other than me?¡± ¡°We had the most number of people, but Sir Edward threw most of them out saying that those who love power can¡¯t learn true magic. As for how many still remain you can ask him yourself.¡± After this sentence silence spread. I looked beneath to see that the plains area was no longer visible and beneath us were various small mountains. I had not paid that much attention to a lot of things due to that damned fireball but, The world was absolutely gorgeous. The sun was setting in the distance, the sky was a dull red. Behind us was green hills and in front whitish peaks as far as the eyes could see. A hint of serenity arose in my mind. For the first time in a few months my mind was absolutely clear of any thoughts. I just enjoyed the scenery. We flew for about 2 hours more, each minute passing by in absolute silence. He dropped me off at a pure white mountain. ¡°Here¡¯s the 2nd peak old man, come with me¡± He said and started walking, my bag still floating behind him. I started following him and soon a small tower came into view, it was only one story tall and just as white as the snow surrounding it. I hadn¡¯t got the chance to wear the warm clothes in my bag but while flying I didn¡¯t feel a tinge of cold. But now, I could feel the cold seeping in my bones. ¡°Atleast give me something warmer to wear from my bag¡± I asked the man in front. He just silently took out a robe from seemingly nowhere, classic mage, and handed it to me. After wearing it I felt the cold immediately become bearable. We entered the tower and he took me straight to the roof. On the roof was a empty round table with a single chair. ¡°Another reincarnator came sir¡± He said this and silently sat down after taking out a small chair out of nowhere, classic mage really. ¡°Where are you taking out all this stuff from?¡± ¡°You should have accessed your soul space as you are gathering some amount of mana unconsciously, every good mage usually carry atleast a house worth of items in their soul space.¡± ¡°You can put stuff in soul space? How?¡± I had to know how to put stuff in my soul space, imagine, if I am able to make stuff appear and disappear then I can be considered atleast half a real magician right? ¡°It¡¯s something you can¡¯t do without spending atleast a year or 2 learning magic oldie¡± ¡°Can you atleast stop calling me oldie? Even though I have lived for over 80 years by now I have only been in this world for like 12 years¡± ¡°Nah, I prefer to call oldies oldies,besides, other than me only 4 or 5 more people should be able to tell that you are in reality a oldie in these mountains. You are not planning on marrying anyone are you? I remember when a reincarnator came here to learn magic about 5 years ago, when we tested his soulspace it was the most dirty thing we had ever seen. And when we tested his mentality you know what his deepest desire was?¡± ¡°What?¡± ¡°To get married to 10 girls! And his physical age was 50 during that time, Truly a sick sick man, Sir Edward threw him in the prison. He is still in that same prison to this day¡± ¡°Dirty soul space? Also no I am not going to get married to children the age of my grandchildren if I had any!¡± ¡°Good to know, still we¡¯ll see when we perform the same tests on you, soul spaces are the reflection of you consciousness on your soul, so the way a soul space looks is a good indicator on what kind of person someone is.¡± ¡°Who did you bring this time Elen?¡± A man had appeared on the chair by the table, holding a tea cup in hand and taking a sip while looking at me curiously. Ch-12, Sir Edward He was wearing a sky blue overcoat and white shirt. He looked really young, maybe 23 24 years old. His whole body seemed as though it was filled with power. His eyes were just as blue as his coat, and I don¡¯t know why but he seemed more majestic than even Ignia. ¡°Ignia sent me Sir Edward, in order to learn magic¡± He looked at Elen and nodded. Elen brought out 2 mirrors and began setting them up at the the wall facing the table where Edward sat. ¡°So you are Eric¡­ Ignia told me quite a few things about you, but I don¡¯t trust that bastard one bit, so lets do some little tests shall we? In order to figure out whether your mentality is good enough to carry forward the mage legacy¡± I nodded at him, feeling a little nervous. What if he said that I was not at all suitable to learn magic? What should I do then? Just beg and hope it works or try to find some mage willing to be my teacher? ¡°Stand in front of this mirror oldie, it will show us and yourself what your soul space truly looks like¡± Elen said to me. I slowly moved in front of the mirror. Everything looked normal? ¡°Look at you eyes eric, your eyes in the mirror¡± Sir Edward said from behind. I did as asked and ¡­ A grassland as vast as the starry skies above, and the old me standing in front was reflected in my eyes. Then the reflection suddenly glowed and expanded, the reflection of the room disappeared and in its place stood the old me with a stick in hand. Behind was the grassland that seemed similar yet different to the grassland in my soul space. ¡°That¡¯s enough¡± Sir edward¡¯s voice came and the grassland along with the mirror disappeared. ¡°Take the other test. I would still like to see the desires of the person so deeply obsessed with something that his soul became a single color¡± ¡°Is that a praise or critique?¡± I tried cracking a joke, but immediately regreted making such a bad joke. ¡°A praise if I say so myself, its been quite a while since I saw a soul filled with such purity and peace. You had been on a long journey to find something hadn¡¯t you¡± Edward asked me ¡°Yes, I went around the world once to find magic, it was a journey of a life time, literally¡± ¡°You did find magic, better to say you found Ignia. But it seems on that journey you also found something much more precious.¡± ¡°What?¡± I certainly didn¡¯t except this man to start going philosophical on me. But still I wanted to know what this man thought about the journey I spent my entire life on. ¡°You found yourself, I became the youngest mage demigod ever born and I still don¡¯t know who I am, but you, you found what you are and what you wanted to be¡± ¡°so does it help in any way while learning magic?¡± He face froze for a second after hearing this question but then he started laughing. ¡°You really don¡¯t care much about the mental stuff do you? Perhaps only by not caring can one truly figure out oneself. And no, it doesn¡¯t matter at all¡± ¡°The second mirror is also ready sir¡± Elen said. ¡°Take the second test Eric¡± I Stood in front of the other mirror and once again looked at my eyes in the reflection. ¡°You have to touch the mirror for this one¡±Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. I nodded and touched the mirror with the tip of my finger. The world in front of me suddenly changed. One moment I was in the room and the other I was in a empty black space. In front of me was the reflection of the current me. But in the hand of the reflection was a small water drop that floated around and changed its shape as it floated. From a water drop to a cloud to a ship to a dragon. Then I was back in the room. ¡°You desire control over magic eh? To see all kinds of magic and learn them too, respectable desire, you know Elen here, his desire was to eat all the delicacies in the world and m-¡± ¡°SIR! You promised you would never tell anyone anything about that!¡± ¡°Did I? I don¡¯t exactly remember saying that I wouldn¡¯t tell anyone that you wanted to marry your teacher during that -¡± ¡°SIR! Please sir!¡± Sir Edward grinned and gestured Elen to leave. ¡°Funny kid isn¡¯t he? He was 12 during that time and wanted to marry his teacher who was 29. He even proposed to her! I still laugh at the expression she made.¡± ¡°Sir, I don¡¯t think this is very appropriate¡± The impression I had of him immediately lowered by a lot. ¡°Then why are you grinning¡± Oops. ¡°Eric Evelyn¡± He said with a serious expression, I also stopped laughing and looked at him seriously. ¡°Being the current head of the ancient mage faction, the demigod of water and life, I invite you to join our academy and learn the true art of mana and magic. Do you accept this opportunity and and the duties that would come with the opportunity?¡± ¡°Yes¡± ¡°It has been a while since I saw someone with such genuine passion for magic, I want to accept you as my personal student, I do accept about 50 personal students each year and the sole benefit of being taught by me can be said to be being taught by me sometimes, do you accept?¡± Whatever you might say about this man, he was honest. And being taught by a demigod seemed like a opportunity you had to be stupid to not accept. ¡°Yes, teacher¡± He grinned. ¡°Then welcome to the academy of magic research and mage inheritance.¡± A white light flashed and the surroundings changed. From the roof of the tower we appeared in a room decorated with all kind of exotic things, from a list of names to horns and from a preserved ant to a skull. He was sitting on a really luxurious chair in front of a rectangular table this time. ¡°You really like teleporting on chairs¡± I commented while looking at the decorations in this room. ¡°I do actually, other than magic as a whole the favourite activities of mages as a whole can be said to be flying and teleportation.¡± ¡°So when can I start with learning magic?¡± ¡°Well first of all we have to remove the projection of the system from your soul, which is painful to say the least considering that it has been with you since the day you were born.¡± ¡°How painful are we talking about?¡± He smiled and gave me a wink, suddenly I was in a room full of kids and a single adult. ¡°Another one arrives for the cleansing, what¡¯s your name kiddo?¡± The sole adult in the room spoke. ¡°Eric Evelyn¡± He nodded and went towards another kid that had entered the room normally, unlike me who was teleported by half a god. ¡°So cool eric! Is your guardian a arcmage?¡± A boy about my age asked. ¡°Kind off¡± Lying was better than having to explain to a kid that the owner of this academy just became my teacher. ¡°My maa is only a 8th tier mage, she said she can¡¯t become a arcmage anymore so I should become one for her¡± Hoo, sweet old dream projection to your children. ¡°Best of luck then¡± ¡°Best of luck to you too¡± Saying this the boy started talking to a girl. After a few minutes passed the man came again. ¡°So how many of you know exactly what will happen inside¡± He asked like a teacher asking students. About half the children here raised hands. ¡°So not all, no worries I will explain everything once. You are all above 12, and awakened different classes. Now, this awakening have allowed you all to access your soul space. What we are going to do is to empty your soul space of all your mana in a controlled manner which is painful but not lethal. As the mana in your soul space is mostly system given the projection of the system will exit your soulspace. Then we will change your soulspace with a potion that will awaken the soulspace in the ancient style, basically allowing you to learn real magic and awaken mana affinities. It will also terminate your mana core which is basically useless for humans and allow mana to enter your soul and allow you to control it.¡± ¡°My father said that I had mana storage talent, what is that?¡± ¡°good question, Mana storage is the term used to describe how many units of mana out of a 100 can someone store safely in the soul, people who can store hundred out of hundred since birth are said to have mana storage talent.¡± ¡°Does that talent affect your path as a mage in any way sir?¡± I asked ¡°absolutely, anything lower than that talent can be said to be absolutely useless as a mage, In ancient times the most common necessity to become a mage was to have mana storage talent and the ability to access your soulspace. But no worries , the master of the current dean of this academy added a special mage rank known as initiate mage before apprentice mages, anyone who doesn¡¯t have this talent will start their journey as a initiate mage, you won¡¯t have any ability to use mana for a year but by the time the year ends you will have the ability to store each drop of mana that enters your soul perfectly and you would also gain a additional spell slot in your soul you can use to ingrave talent spells like mana control¡± Ch-13, New Looks And A New Beginning ¡°Ingraving spells? Do we have to ingrave the spell to use them?¡± A girl who had entered barely a minute ago asked. ¡°Yes and no, depends on what your definition of spell is. You will learn all about the related topics when you join the classes.¡± ¡°Enough on the questioning now¡± An old lady, maybe in her 70¡¯s entered the room. She silenced anyone who was talking and said, ¡°We are ready for the ritual. Everyone sit down on the floor and bite something in case you are afraid of pain.¡± I thought they will be taking us to some solemnly lighted room with candles and circles and stuff. Everyone who had been standing including me sat down . ¡°We will be exiting the room now, best of luck¡± The man who had been answering the questions till now said and exited the room with the old woman in tow. *Buzzz* a weird buzzing sound started coming off from the walls and the floors. I felt a small amount of pain in my head and say many children start putting handkerchiefs in their mouths. Honestly, its not that b- *BUZZZZZ* The sound intesified and suddenly it felt like my head was about to fall off, There¡¯s pain that can make you scream and then there¡¯s pain that doesn¡¯t even allow someone to scream. This was the second type. I felt that my head was about to burst and then everything went blank. <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> ¡°How is the process going¡± Edward asked after suddenly appearing behind the old women who was incharge of this whole process. ¡°I swear to god Edward I will kill you someday if you don¡¯t improve your habit of suddenly materializing behind me!¡± ¡°you can try, It won¡¯t be a very successful attempt but you can try.¡± The old lady was about to curse but took a deep breath and said. ¡°Three people fainted, 2 had legendary classes and 1 was born with a condition that makes her more susceptible to pain. We will have to increase the potion injection dosage for the 2 kids who had legendary classes. Other than the presence of someone with legendary classes here everything else is fine I guess¡± ¡°Start the dosage and double it for candidate numbers 78 and 69¡± she shouted. ¡°What was the reaction of the kid I teleported in?¡± ¡°That kid? He one of the kids who had legendary classes. He could have enjoyed a great life under the gods but now he ought to suffer with us.¡± Edward suddenly fell silent and then started laughing. ¡°I thought this kid came here because he had a farmer class! I grow more and more intrigued every second.¡± The old women, knowing that the current demigod of the mage faction is half crazy, didn¡¯t say anything and watched as the awake kids were made to stand in lines and injected with the potions. As for the kids that fainted, a single examiner went ahead and injected Eric and the other boy with the legendary class with a a dosage that was twice that of other kids. The method of injecting was also quite suitable for a magic academy. A snake like contraption that was filled with the dosage and clamped on the wrists which then injected the potion.The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. ¡°The creator of this potion was truly ingenious, to use the body as a filter to figure out what the most suitable element is and then letting the potion overload the soul with the same elements to change the soul space¡± The old lady commented. After about 10 minutes passed a metallic orb which was connected to a needle was brought in. The kids were once again made to stand in line the examiners, the examiner jabbed the needle straight in the skull of the kid first in line, the kid shouted a little and then just stood as if it didn¡¯t result in any pain. Suddenly his left hand glowed a little and a little blue flower appeared on his hand. ¡°Water element affinity¡± She took out a the needle and weirdly enough there was not even a mark on the his head. The kid walked out of the line and the girl just behind him nervously walked forward. The examiner jabbed the needle in her forehead, this time nothing happened even after 30 seconds. The examiner took out the needle from her forehead. ¡°Mana storage talent¡± ¡°Umm sir?¡± the girl said. ¡°Yes?¡± ¡°what about my mana affinity?¡± ¡°Your guardian didn¡¯t tell you? Oh wait you are from the town right?¡± ¡°Yes sir¡± ¡°That explains it, you remember that I said that anything less than 100 percent mana storage is useless? Its because if the mana storage unit is not 100 percent then that means the kid doesn¡¯t have affinity with all the elements, which automatically meant that they couldn¡¯t become even a tier-1 mage, The initiate mage rank solves that of course, simply put you have all element affinity¡± while saying this he pushed the girl to the side and continued with the tests for other kids. There were barely 3 or 4 people with the mana storage talent and the rest mostly had 2 element affinity, with some people having 1 or 3 elemental affinities. Different types of patterns appeared on all kids, some had tattoos and some had hair color changed, there were 2 kids whose eye color changed! The examiner quickly tested almost all the kids and soon only the 3 unconscious kids were left. ===================================================================================== Uhh, what happened? Oh right, I lost consciousness from the pain. I opened my eyes and¡­ ¡°AHH!¡± I jumped and landed on my feet, away from the needle that was dangerously close to my head. I looked at the person holding the needle and found the man who was lecturing us earlier looking at me with a dumbfounded expression. ¡°HA HA HAA!¡± I heard a loud laugh which sounded suspiciously similar to Edward¡¯s voice. Soon all the kids started laughing and even the man who was about to do something with a needle started laughing. ¡°It¡¯s a test kiddo, All the kids took it and I promise it doesn¡¯t hurt¡± He said. I just looked at him with suspicion. He went towards another unconscious kid and jabbed the needle in the kids head. The kid didn¡¯t react at all, soon his head started glowing and his hair turned a mixture of red filled with little bits of brown. ¡°Earth and fire affinity¡± He took out the needle and there was not a drop of blood, nor was their anything else that would imply that there was any damage done. He looked at me and beckoned me to come closer. And I did, he didn¡¯t say anything and quickly jabbed the needle in my head before I could react. This actually didn¡¯t hurt. For a few seconds I felt nothing but then I felt a warm sensation travelling from my head to toes. I noticed my forehead was glowing. ¡°Fire, water and wind affinity¡± He said and moved to the last person still unconscious, I wonder if everyone went unconscious. ¡°How cool man! Your eyes look so cool!¡± A girl who was standing nearby said. Perhaps seeing the confusion on my face she took out a mirror from a small purse she was carrying. Truly a women¡¯s purse could have anything inside. I remember seeing my younger sister¡¯s purse once and she was carrying a bottle of cooking oil, and she just shrugged when I asked! I took the mirror from her and the first thing that caught my attention was that a small red flame mark was visible on the right side of my forehead. Next thing I noticed was that my eyes had turned multicolored, One eye blue and the other red. I looked at my reflection dumbfounded while the girl continued rambling about how she only got a little 2 color flower on her finger.How she didn¡¯t have a mana storage talent and how this talent basically meant that they had all element affinity. I mean, I don¡¯t hate the change, I love it actually, I look really mysterious right now and I fricking love it. What? Old men can¡¯t love such things? But I am a youngster right now! As for the girl, I thanked her for the information and started looking around. I noticed one girl whose hair had turned completely red. She was looking at a girl with a depressed look on her face. ¡°Mana storage talent¡± The examiner declared after testing the girl who was still unconscious. ¡°Congratulations kiddos! From now onwards you are free from the system, Any knowledge you learn is yours, any power you earn is yours, You are, from hence forth, the successors of the glory that ancient mages have commanded since the dark ages!¡± The kids started clapping and I joined. I touched the shirt I was wearing and mumbled ¡°Appraisal¡± Nothing happened, ¡°Fireball¡± Nothing happened. I felt a little empty knowing that this washed away the effort I had put into that fireball spell but felt excited about a new beginning. Ch-14, A New Group ¡°How was the experience Eric?¡± Thomas¡¯s voice sounded from behind me, I looked behind and there he was. ¡°Don¡¯t you think that you are addicted to teleportation sir?¡± ¡°Better than being addicted to alcohol, But that is a past time for people less handsome than me, Let¡¯s go then¡± He tapped the staff he carried and suddenly we were back in what I assumed was his office, but now about 40 more kids were also standing there looking confused. The girl who had been unconscious when I woke up was here too, but now she was looking around the room, maybe trying to figure out how she got here. ¡°You all were selected by me as my personal students due to some unique qualities that I think makes you truly qualified to be real mages. I will be personally teaching you all.¡± He looked tapped his staff again and we all started floating and shuffling around the the room. After we landed I noticed we were standing in groups with the smallest being 3, the one in which I was, and the largest being 20 something. Also, this guy just loved to show off a little too much. ¡°Based on matching qualities I have divided you all in groups, the groups are numbered, you can look up to see the numbers, and for the next 4 years you will be taught topics ranging from mana control to the art of explosions by me.¡± I looked up and saw the number 2 engraved on the roof. Not giving us much time to process what he said he tapped his staff again, damn god it is annoying but cool, and I found myself in front of a small house along with the 2 kids that had been assigned in the same group as me, a somewhat muscular boy with black hair, brown eyes and a small fire mark on his neck and the girl with greenish eyes who had been jabbed the last. I Looked around and saw that we were surrounded by different sized houses on all sides. The sun had set and the visibility came from a full moon that shone in the sky. ¡°We should start with introductions shouldn¡¯t we? myself Adiel, Adiel Stubborn¡± the boy said with a smile. ¡°Eric Evelyn¡± ¡°Delsa Welst¡± We shook hands and started talking about small topics. ¡°I wonder what the similarities between us are that made Sir Edward put us together in a team¡± ¡°You all ar-¡± ¡°Ahh!¡± Delsa suddenly screamed as the voice had come from behind her. Now obviously it was Edward who was standing their with a small grin on his face. ¡°As I was saying, You are all reincarnated from different places. You might want to talk about it as I left all the other kids in order to listen to your stories¡± ¡°Sir Edward has anyone ever told you that they will kill you if you continue the random teleportations?¡± Delsa said. ¡°Just today, barely half-an-hour ago, my answer is always the same, you can try if you want to. It will take nothing less than a god to end me for good. Now let¡¯s go inside and have a heart to heart talk about your lives so that I can go and do something actually productive¡± He started walking towards the house with lengthy strides but none of us followed. He looked behind at us as if to ask what happened. ¡°You can walk too sir Edward? I thought you just teleport everywhere¡± ¡°Not everywhere Eric¡± He said while we started to walk behind him.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. ¡°I usually teleport if the distance is less than a hundred km. If its more then I prefer to fly in order to truly appreciate the journey¡± He continued as we entered the house. It had only one floor with 3 rooms and a hall with a sofa in between. No television as far as I could see, Not a huge issue but still. He asked us to sit on the sofa and he sat on a chair he just conjured. ¡°Let¡¯s start with Eric, What was your occupation in your past life?¡± This guy was really serious. ¡°And if I choose not to answer?¡± ¡°Then I will choose to throw you out of the academy¡± He said with the same smile on his face. *Sigh* ¡°I was a writer, used to write stories about magic¡± He continues to ask questions ranging from my age when I died to the final question, what was the goal of my life. He made me speak everything about myself, basically my life¡¯s story. ¡°Your life really was amazing if I say so myself, don¡¯t you agree Delsa?¡± Edward commented ¡°It was certainly a beautiful life if I say so myself, But Eric, you lived till your seventies but still didn¡¯t marry?¡± ¡°This I had answered to a man who had asked me why I didn¡¯t marry when I was in my sixties, I was travelling in the mountains during that time, I said to him that I have loved stories since my childhood, I was looking around for magic, how can a man such as myself marry someone?¡± ¡°You sure you couldn¡¯t just find a women who was willing to marry you¡± Edward jumped in. I just grinned at his joke. He turned his sight towards Delsa and asked her to tell us her past life. ¡°You are not gonna ask questions?¡± ¡°Nope, you should understand by now that I just want to hear about your lives, It will help me better understand my students.¡± ¡°As you know my name is Delsa Welst, I was a scientist on earth in my past life and lived till the age of 57. I always wanted to understand how the world worked and the truth about it all but while I was relatively successful I didn¡¯t figure out anything ground-breaking. I married a electrician and had 2 kids. I died due to a lung infection, I was thinking about how I wanted to understand so much more before going and then I was standing in total darkness for a while. After which a god read my mind, told me that the craziest truth was that this world had magic and I was going to be born in this world. I was born to a mother who left me in front of an orphanage where he sent a demigod to me as a companion, From conversations with the demigod I slowly figured out that this world¡¯s purpose was to serve as a entertainment house for the gods. The demigod praised me for my intelligence and sent me here with the message of ¡®you could have been a chosen but due to your intelligence you are to join the truth seekers, the rebels, the mages. Honestly it¡¯s not that bad that I came here, atleast most people here want to know more about the world and that is wonderful¡± Edward nodded and said, ¡°Your turn Adiel, and I am the most curious about yours because your soul space is just a graveyard of half-buried iron tools, books and a sword. What made you crave glory and knowledge so much?¡± ¡°I was born a slave mr, I used to see kids going to schools and talk about what they wanted to do when they grew up, I started sneaking into schools in my free time even though I was beaten and threatened to be killed if I didn¡¯t stop. One teacher noticed this and, bless that lady, she secretly taught me everything she knew, from alphabets to history to calculus I was taught many things over the span of 16 years by her. The government was about to change and I would have gained my freedom when I was 31 years old but just a week before the new changes were implemented I was sent to mine some stuff and there the mine somehow collapsed on me! You know how angry I was while dying! I missed freedom and the chance to learn more things, the chance to become something. Funnily enough the man who used to own me, knowing that he would be beheaded if it was suspected that a slave was killed by him, tried to save me as if I was related to him by blood but I obviously died, that¡¯s why I am here.¡± Poor guy, I hope the person who enslaved him was really beheaded. After about a minute of silence Edward said good bye and left. ¡°You 2 are really motivating, Perhaps if I had seeked the truth as much as you seeked magic and you seeked knowledge I might have truly become a great scientist.¡± Delsa said while shaking her head. ¡°I am choosing that room¡± She said while pointing at the rightmost room. She went to the room she just choose to look around and in the meanwhile me and Adiel talked while looking around the room. I saw a small table and 2 chairs with something that I think decided what we were going to do for entertainment. ¡­ ¡°The rooms are really nice?¡± Delsa came out of the room but as she looked at us her tone changed from happy to confused real fast. We were sitting on 2 chairs playing chess. ¡°Where did you get this?¡± She asked while looking at the board. ¡°It was underneath this table¡± I said while pointing at the table the chess board was on. ¡°Well then, enjoy I guess, I don¡¯t like chess that much so I am going to sleep¡± Saying this she went back to her room. ¡°You are good Eric¡± He commented after I threatened a royal fork if he didn¡¯t move his pawn which would put his pawn in my bishops line of fire. ¡°You are too¡± I said after he sacrificed his pawn to put his horse in the center. We continued to play till midnight. He won 8 games and I won 6, 3 games were a draw. Soon we too went to our rooms, I chose the leftmost and he the middle. Ch-15, A History Lesson A group of small white birds flew around with the rising sun. Three of them separated and flew into the house assigned to group no.2. ¡°Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!¡± I saw a small bird enter the room through the window and it started screaming human words. ¡°But I am awake?¡± I said seeing that the bird had no intention of stopping. The bird stopped after hearing my words¡­ ¡°WAKE UP!¡± The bird shouted and suddenly started flying towards me. Startled I stood up and started running out of the room. I noticed Adiel and Delsa running out of their rooms in the same way, As soon as I reached the hall the bird stopped chasing me and flew away. ¡°What the fuck¡± Delsa exclaimed seeing the birds fly away. ¡°Mine didn¡¯t fly away?¡± Adiel said while pointing at the bird that was now sitting at the sofa, looking as if it was ready to attack. ¡°Should we get ready then?¡± I asked them. ¡°I don¡¯t have my clothes with me, what are we supposed to wear?¡± Adiel said. ¡°There are clothes in the cupboard in the rooms, your belongings if you had any should also be there. At least mine were.¡± Delsa said and went back to her room to change. Adiel shrugged and went to his room. I entered my room and this time paid attention to how it looked like. It was 5 by 5 meters, The floor was wooden while the walls were white. The bed was by the window that gave view of the trees outside the house. In front of the bed was a cupboard. I opened it and found a bunch of Black overcoats, white shirts and brown pants, is this a uniform? Under these clothes was my bag, which I think that Mr. Edward definitely didn¡¯t teleport here. Just how much that guy loved the teleportation spell was a mystery to me. Besides the window was another door, which when I opened revealed a small bathroom with a tap? I quickly ran and touched it, to make sure my eyes weren¡¯t playing tricks on me. I turned it and sure enough water ran through it. I almost cried seeing a tap after 12 whole years. Wait a second, what was lighting my room? I quickly checked and saw a glass orb which was hanging to the roof by a thread and had a smaller metal ball floating inside. My god, this place has actual technology! It make sense actually, making things more comfortable was a natural thing for humans, How there wasn¡¯t anything like this in other places even after more than a million years of human history was weird. I went back to the bathroom and saw a toilet that was not just a hole in the ground, It was an actual toilet with a flush and all! There was also a mirror in the bathroom. I found a towel neatly folded in a corner. I bathed, wore the uniform and exited my room. Adiel was already outside in a similar uniform. ¡°Chess?¡± ¡°Chess¡± And so we started setting up the pieces. I was just about to move the first piece when Delsa came out of her room. Her uniform was pure white, the designs were similar to ours but she was wearing a large white hat too. As soon as she came out too the bird that had been silently chilling till now started flying around and shouting ¡®Follow me¡¯. The bird took us out of the house and started taking us through the zig-zaggy path between the houses. We soon at a ground in front of a huge 2 story building. This was the school building I suppose. There was a chair on a stage surrounded by chairs on all sides in between of the ground. I noticed that while there weren¡¯t any children here yet there were quite a few young adults, oldies and middle aged people sitting near the stage of different chairs. I sat down near the stage with Adiel and Delsa in tow. ¡°Mr. Edward is going to appear on that chair with a tea cup in his hand¡± I pointed at the chair and said. While Adiel and I were betting on the chances of what I said happening, other children led by birds started arriving. When all the seats were filled, Edward suddenly materialized on the chair with a tea cup in his hand. ¡°I won¡± I whispered near his ear with a grin. ¡°I am not going take much time, First of all, welcome to the most ancient academy on Prithyu! I wish you all the best of wishes for the path onward as mages! I do hope that I see some arcmages, grand mages and legendaries rise from your ranks. From now onward this place is your home. These are the teachers that will be your mentors for the next 4 years¡± He said while pointing at the adults who were seated near him. ¡°They will call the names of the students they have been assigned and you will go stand in front of them. Of course you will not be taught by any one teacher completely, The teacher most qualified for teaching a subject is the one you will learn from. The teachers should begin with this while the children that I chose are to assemble in front of one of the guardian spirits of our institute, protector no.11¡±The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Edward disappeared from the chair in usual Edward style. All the birds that had been flying in the air till now flew around in a circle and they suddenly merged into a large green and white owl. The owl flew down and sat on the chair that Edward just disappeared from. After all the kids had been assembled into neat lines by the teachers we were taken into the Building. ¡°Take these stairs and go to the first room on the 2nd floor, if you need to ask any questions you will find me in the garden if I am free.¡± The owl said in his surprisingly rough voice and flew away. The other teachers took the students with them to the class, I guess Edward is too cool for that. We followed the instructions and found ourselves in a huge lecture hall. ¡°Hurry up and get seated¡± Edward didn¡¯t magically appear on the chair this time but was already in the chair. I sat near the first benches with Adiel and Delsa. Even after all the 40 something kids sat down the room was mostly empty. Edward stood up and walked up to the board. ¡°I will tell about the curriculum today, the students of last year will give you the introduction of the buildings of our college and later you can explore by yourself.¡± ¡°For the first year no one will be taught magic. You will be taught the basics theories needed for mana manipulation and maths so that you can understand higher level knowledge later. During this time I will teach you knowledge of much higher level so that you can build solid theoretical foundations. Also, the kids without the mana storage talent would enter and complete the initiate mage rank and you will be taught how to ingrave spell and how to use mana without engraving spells. In the second year you will start engraving spells and learning what you could call real magic, by the 3rd year you will have become quasi mages. Then the knowledge you learned till now will be put to test as you will have to go on missions throughout the world for half a year, during the rest of the year we assist you in creating and choosing your path as mages and by the end of the fourth year you will be tier 1 mages if you are not lazy¡± ¡°Talent doesn¡¯t matter anymore, It used to when the initiate mage rank didn¡¯t exist but it doesn¡¯t matter now, what matter now is the amount of blood sweat and tears you are willing to put on line for the sake of magic¡± ¡°Can we become Demigods then sir?¡± A boy raised his hands and asked. ¡°You have to add a lot of crazy to the hardwork situation but yes, you can become the next demigod of the mage faction.¡± ¡°Crazy in what sense?¡± Delsa asked ¡°Crazy as in ready to give up everything for power. I will not go in details but to become a demigod you have to risk your life, on a probability of 1 to 100, 99percent chance that you die and 1 percent that you survive.¡± ¡°That low?¡± The same boy who asked the first question asked. Edward nodded. ¡°This topic, I was planning on starting tomorrow but I should teach you a bit of history today. You might know from the propaganda that gods circulate that they descended to punish the mages, it is not exactly wrong.¡± ¡°How so sir?¡± ¡°This planet originally only had 1 god, a total tyrant too. That time period is called the dark ages by us. The mages, in short managed to gather 500 demigods and killed that god after a lot of sacrifices. After that god¡¯s death all the other gods gathered to see how one of their own could have been slain, they took away our path to become demigods, which made us have to play with death to become demigods, and they made our planet there central entertainment channel.¡± The class grew silent for a second. ¡°You might think that today is hard for us, but the truly tough times were before the mages discovered the way to become demigods, The god that could rule over the world liked to play the bad guy character, he would send entire fleets of armies out to our lands to kill and conquer every decade, The mages fought side by side with warriors and other people to try and protect what was left of humanity in those times. Then news arrived that the god had grown bored of humans and was about to send all his subordinates, which meant that hundreds of creatures equal in power to the strongest mage in the army would arrive and kill every human on this planet.¡± I looked to the side and saw a kid gulping. ¡°What happened next was recorded by mages of those times in order to serve as proof that there once was a society of mages that existed on this planet.¡± He tapped his staff on the ground and soon the whole world grew dark. ¡°You, the future generations of mages have to watch this recording at some point. You have to ingrain in your minds the fact that no matter how bad the times get, there was once a time that the entire humanity faced extinction.¡± Soon his voice faded in the darkness and a bright light flashed. ¡°Has the recording started yet?¡± ¡°The audio yes but the video will start in about 30 seconds¡± ¡°I have to go fight too, you will record every sacrifice made, every mage who fell, every warrior who lost their lives and then use your life as fuel to teleport the records safely in the core of the planet.¡± ¡°Y-eayes sir¡± The voice of the female cracked a bit. Just then the video turned on and I saw a young man wearing a bright red robe standing in front of a women dressed in simple clothes. ¡°I would have proposed to you if I had the chance to live through this war¡± The man said with a sad smile, I noticed a small tear drop fall down his face. ¡°And I would have accepted dear¡± The female mage said with a smile that could have melted the stars. The male flew out of the room and the female soon followed. The perspective we were shown was of the female mage. She walked forward with quick steps and as soon as she reached the end of the path the walls of a fortress came in view and beyond those walls stood thousands upon thousands of things. I almost vomited seeing the grotesque creatures that seemed as though they were made after someone took all the organs and limbs animals had and mixed it all together randomly. There were people of all ages standing on the walls and out of their hands flew fire, lightning, stones at the speed of bullets and all sorts of element. Floating in the air were mages who did about the same spells but on a much larger scale. ¡°Is this a grand-mage?¡± A horrible voice came from the enemy army and a creature holding a human figure flew and and threw it to the fortress. A floating mage flew ahead and soon I heard a roar of anguish so loud that it shook my heart. 2 or 3 floating mages went ahead and brought the human silhouette and the mage back to the fortress. I saw a human, No something that used to be a human. The man¡¯s eyes had been gouged out, face disfigured and everything below the waist cut off, But somehow I saw the man say something, the women walked towards the man and when the man said it again I heard what he wanted to say. ¡°Bring me a piano *cough* I want to play music for the last time in my life¡± The mage who had originally caught him had now started crying and he made a piano appear out of nowhere in front of him. The man was helped in standing and finding the keys with the help of 2 mages who had been firing spells from the ground. I felt tears forming in my eyes too, why would any benevolent creature enjoy such a war? The man took a deep breath. I watched the opposing army slowly approach the fortress despite the mage¡¯s spells. I watched the man who had just confessed his love getting torn in half while trying to stop the opposing parties approach. I watched the man who had cried at his friend¡¯s condition get crushed by a abomination who jumped and caught him. I watched a warrior killing dozens of those abominations, hundreds of these abominations tore her apart. Just as the abominations were about to touch the fortress the world suddenly froze. The man started playing. His playing started getting faster and faster while the world remained frozen. The I looked at the sky and watched as the sky slowly turned green, fire appeared randomly in the air and the clouds approached the ground. And then the music stopped too, I looked at the man and saw him crying as he watched the horizon through the eyes that had appeared just as mysteriously as the green sky. I turned my head and saw that the entire army that had been threatening these brave protectors had been burned to death. The man looked at the torn body of his friend and after giving a weak smile he too turned to ash. What was left was a message on the piano written in blood. ¡®Let everything that made you a great mage burn away, in those ashes is the seed that will lead you to the path of power¡¯ Ch-16, Eleven The surroundings once again turned black and a man materialized where the lady who had been recording the war had been. ¡°To all the future generations¡± The man began ¡°This man is the first demigod ever, the epitome of human will, the best mage that the world will ever see. He is Grand mage Thomas, His name shall be remembered for as long as even a single man can use magic. The path that this man opened up will be eternal, Humanity will be eternal! Magic will be eternal! MAGES WILL BE ETERNAL!¡± He shouted and I saw a tear drop fall down his eyes I... I was quite shook, When the blackness receded and the view of the class once again became clear I saw that every student had tears in their eyes ¡°This is the legacy you carry, the legacy that started from the first person to harness the energy in nature for their own use. The legacy that was saved by the grand mage thomas, the legacy has been protected by the lives of uncountable mages for the hundreds of thousands of years.¡± Edward said after looking around the class. ¡°So straighten your backs and work hard, because the sacrifices that have to be made for this legacy will be made by you from now on. And now the previous batch students will continue with the introductions and the tour of the institute premises¡± He said and with a somewhat sad smile on his face and disappeared. The class remained silent, I turned my sight over to Adiel and saw him deep in thought. I had wondered a lot about the history of this world but never expected this. Though the possibility remained that all this could be fake as well I was willing to believe it to be real. The raw emotions in the voice of the announcer after the recording had ended couldn¡¯t be faked. ¡°Hello freshers?¡± a girl around 15-16 years old entered the room, maybe expecting to see exited faces but her gaze became confused after seeing the many tear stained faces. ¡°Did he show you the recording?¡± A boy nodded. ¡°All¡¯s not sad in their stories, you remember the couple that got separated in the beginning? Turns out the mage who was torn in half had a spell in place that would transfer his soul into a parrot. Both of them lived a weird but happy life together, and the Grand mage Thomas? His wife gave birth to his daughter 3 months after his death and she was became the first mage after her father to reach a level of power beyond legendaries.¡± ¡°So she became a demigod?¡±Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. ¡°Yes, In fact the teacher of Sir Edward is the direct descendant of The grand mage Thomas¡± ¡°Soo cool!¡± Ah children, so quick to forget and move on, I wonder if I had been their age and watched the same recording what my reaction would have been. She gave little titbits of information for a while before the gloomy faces of the children lit up again. ¡°Now should we move ahead with the introductions? My name is Ari,I am in the 3rd year and am a Half-mage. You should introduce yourselves to each other sometimes later, for now let¡¯s go and I will tell you about the premises of the school as we move along¡± The class stood up and we slowly exited the building. ¡°This is the school building where the classes for all the students take place.¡± She said as we started moving in the direction of the dormitories. ¡°The school building is in the dead center of the entire place. And while we are in the eastern ranges you would not be able to find your way out of here as the entire place is covered by a huge illusion and materialization spell that from the outside doesn¡¯t allow people to discover this place easily and people from the inside makes sure that no kid who hasn¡¯t become a half-mage would not be able to exit. The entire school premise is a huge circle, about 2 km in diameter, in the south west is this dormitory¡± She said when we arrived near the buildings the had had been assigned to the students. She took us to the east which she pointed out can easily be told by either paying attention to the sun or the huge cloud in the sky that always stayed in the same place because it had been made by magic. Their she showed us the buildings that looked the same as ours which as it turns out were the teachers dormitory. Then, in the north was the huge garden that was used for recreational purposes and training purposes. It also had some really cool hidden places which were made by the current headmaster. To the east of the garden were a bunch of huge buildings where the principal¡¯s office and the other official buildings that also served as the mage headquarters were located. After showing us around she went off. Some of us went around looking at stuff while some decided to head home. Adiel and Delsa decided to head home while I decided to roam through the garden in order to look for someone practicing magic. My hands were really itching for some magic. The garden could barely be called a garden, it was basically a jungle but with somewhat less trees and a lot of flowering plants. Most of the trees had flowers too. I had seen a lot of beautiful places on earth, But maybe the presence of magic made moments such as these feel breathtakingly amazing. I wandered aimlessly, thinking about the recording that had been shown today and the sheer brutality of the scene and the sheer presence of the Grand mage Thomas. I wonder if he would have been happy at the moment of his death if he knew how grand his name had been after his death, most probably not I guess. ¡°Enjoying the peace?¡± A somewhat familier voice sounded from behind me. Turning around I saw the owl whose clones? Body doubles? Whose something woke us up so brutally. ¡°I am, But I don¡¯t mind company¡± He sat down on a tree branch and I climbed the tree he was sitting on and sat down on a branch directly next to him. ¡°What¡¯s your name¡± ¡°Eric, yours?¡± ¡°We don¡¯t get names, I am called Eleven as I am the Guardian no. 11. You can just call me that¡± ¡°Were the little birds that woke us up your clones?¡± ¡°Not exactly, i used a spell to put a set of commands in little pieces of mana that materialized as birds.¡± ¡°What exactly were the commands? Cause they way we were woke up was brutal¡± ¡°But that was hilarious wasn¡¯t it? I did the same thing last year and there was one kid who liked to sleep naked, he ran around the whole dormitory without looking back naked!¡± I looked at the deadpan expression of the owl and a chuckle escaped my lips. ¡°Isn¡¯t this a little childish?¡± ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter, I am barely 2 years old anyways, I got almost a hundred years of life left as a spirit and as I would be spending almost half my entire life here it has to be atleast entertaining, You know how hard it is here? It has been 2 months since I last ate a monster core! I have been living off of air currents since birth!¡± I took out the goblin core I had stuffed in my overcoat just in case and saw the gaze of eleven get fixed on it immediately. ¡°Soo¡­ how about a favor in exchange for that?¡± I just threw the stone at it and as the stone approached the bird it slowed down and slowly eleven opened his beak and swallowed the stone Ch-17, What The Future Of Magic Rests On ¡°You got more?¡± Eleven said after swallowing the stone. I might have refused to give him any more if I didn¡¯t know he was 2 years old but now that I did it was really hard for me to refuse. I took out 3 more goblin cores and fed them to Eleven. He ate with relish and after eating looked at me with a look asking for more. ¡°I don¡¯t have anymore¡± I said while showing my empty pocket to the owl. ¡°baah! After I am freed of my duties in this college I will go conquer the whole world and then eat Dragon cores everyday!¡± I smiled at the stupidly brave dream of the owl. ¡°Can you not just do it now?¡± ¡°I¡­ I cannot leave¡± ¡°Why?¡± ¡°Because as I am a spirit I am forced by the restrictions my ancestors put on their bloodline by taking a oath to always serve as the guardian of the mage academy. Edward decided that it was too harsh and decided to half the time but still¡­¡± I felt pity for this creature, it was clearly so young and full of dreams but has been forced to stay as a guardian. ¡°Enough of this talk, What do you want to do?¡± ¡°Me? I want to cover the skies with fire¡± I gave an answer just as ludicrous. ¡°Why didn¡¯t I think of that!¡± I noticed the owl¡¯s eyes widening and had the thought that maybe my words had some unintended effect. As we talked some more I noticed that despite the really young age of Eleven, except the dream he talked about he was really rational and filled up to the brim with knowledge. ¡°I think you would enjoy meeting my team mate Adiel¡± I said after we had talked for a while. ¡°Why not meet him now¡± He said I climbed down the tree and slowly started heading back home with the owl following behind me. As soon as I entered the house Adiel came out of his room. I stepped aside and Eleven also flew in. Adiel raised his eyebrow at the intrusion but didn¡¯t say anything. ¡­ ¡­(After 15 mins) ¡­ ¡°What the ..¡± Delsa exclaimed after coming after her room. Me, Adiel and Eleven all turned to look at her at the exact same time. I was playing chess with Adiel while the owl was sitting on my head. While Eleven was not small, maybe due to being a air spirit he barely weighed anything. ¡°Another draw¡± He said after making his move. ¡°I will play against Adiel next¡± Eleven said as all the pieces started floating and rearranged in the air.I crossed my arms and sat with more comfort. ¡°What is a owl doing here?¡± she asked seeing that we had become engrossed in our game again. ¡°Why can¡¯t a owl be here¡± Eleven¡¯s voice rang. ¡°Aren¡¯t you the guardian that woke us up?¡±This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. ¡°He is that owl, And now he is our friend¡± Adiel added while moving a piece, Classic london opening it seems. Delsa looked at the owl, then at me me and finally at the chess board before shaking her head and heading back to her room. After we both lost to the owl 5 times in a row each we decided it was enough for today. ¡°Are all owls this intelligent?¡± ¡°Not at all, First of all while I am from the owl family of the wind spirit species, Therefore it would be wrong to call me an owl. Secondly, not all wind spirits are smart, Its only the owl family of the air spirits that are called the spirits of wisdom, the sole reason we are rarely contracted by mages is that we don¡¯t have much to boast of except intelligence, Even after contracting the sole way to strengthen us is to share our mana which no mage would do as it is solely a benefit of the wind spirit¡± ¡°Do you want to be contracted?¡± I asked ¡°Kind off, I would be able to leave much immediately if some mage or mage apprentice would contract me.¡± ¡°are contracts like master sla-¡± ¡°No! All contracts between spirits and mages are equal based on the oath took by our ancestors after the gods decided to gather on our planet.¡± The owl cut off Adiel in between, as if even thinking about such a thing was blasphemous ¡°Should we go sleep now?¡± I said after looking at the slowly setting sun in the distance. While I had access to well lighted rooms here the past 10 plus years of sleeping and waking up with the sun had become a habit. ¡°Good spending time with you Adiel, And thank you for the company Eric¡± We both nodded at Eleven and the owl spirit flew away. ¡°Good night Eric¡± Adiel said and went to his room, He seemed a bit reserved but he is a good person, he will slowly open up. After all, if prison left scars in someone¡¯s mind being subjected to slavery was a concept I could not even fathom. But I could not and should not pity him, he fought for knowledge in a life filled with misery and that made him someone not to pity but someone to respect. Thinking about such things I went back to my room and slowly fell asleep. ¡­ (The next morning) I slowly opened my eyes and sat up. I drank a glass of water and saw a bunch of birds flying near the houses. One slowly approached my room but seeing that I was awake flew away. ¡®It seems that a mild one was at duty today¡¯ I thought, Eleven had told me that most guardians when assigned the wake up duty just run around screaming but a few do things a bit more mildly. I heard the sound of wake up from the next room. *sigh* I went outside and found a disheveled Delsa standing outside her room. The Guardian who woke us up today was not that mild I guess. Adiel was already sitting in the room, watching the outside through the window. We slowly dressed up and retraced the steps we had taken yesterday to go to the classroom, while I wondered what wonders I will see today. ¡°Good morning everyone, From today onwards you all start your journey as mages. You will be taught for 3 hours everyday by me, which might be extended based on circumstances, and you will be spending the rest of the time as you deem fit after you do the work I assign to you daily. You all are smart kids and I would not be teaching you any maths except some practical stuff, what I will be doing is assigning each of you some math exercises. Now, any questions before we start?¡± The boy who had asked quite a few questions yesterday raised his hand. ¡°Yes Theo¡± ¡°Why do we have to learn maths sir?¡± ¡°Do you not want to?¡± ¡°I never said that sir, its just that I wanted to know why we were learning maths before I started spending time on it.¡± ¡°This is good trait for a scholar but not for a mage theo, While we do a lot more than what our jobs ought to be the first and foremost duty of a mage is to strive for knowledge. A mage who thinks how knowledge about the world can be useful to them can never be a great mage. Also, remember the name of Grand mage Thomas? There¡¯s a very famous line he used to say, that is; ¡®The future of mages is not written by grand mages, it is written through the hands of mathematicians¡¯ In order to advance as a mage, to create a path that you will be walking for the rest of your lives as mages, you need to make many calculations. In order to become a legendary mage, in order to figure out how to evolve your soul from the limits of a mortal to something beyond, You have to recreate a natural phenomenon in your soul, and that requires such a robust understanding of the world that nothing less then the absolute peak of what we have achieved in math has to be fully grasped.¡± The boy, fully satisfied with the answer sat down and stopped talking. ¡°All the kids who don¡¯t have the mana storage talent, basically everyone except from Delsa, will read this at home and do what is written¡± He tapped his staff and a sheet of paper titled ¡®Initiate mage¡¯ Appeared in front of everyone. ¡°Sir¡± Delsa raised her hand. ¡°Yes?¡± ¡°If entering this initiate mage rank can allow one to have one more spell and we will be taught magic at the same time why don¡¯t the people with the talent enter this rank?¡± ¡°Good question, and it is also connected to what you will be taught today. Engraving spells has to be done with the help of mana and I will show you how throughout this week, One thing about engraving spells is there are limits, and what the limit is depends on the type of spell and the development of your soul. While I will teach about this today to answer your question, you cannot engrave a talent spell, spells that work without the need of a mage¡¯s interference and improve the basic qualities of a mage, without a change in the soul. The initiate mage rank is the rank to grant everyone mana storage talent, but if you already have the talent the soul would not change and it would be meaningless¡± Ch-18, An Old Man, An Old Women And a Middle Aged Man After answering Delsa Edward continued. ¡°There are 2 types of spells as far as engraved spells are concerned, Talent spells and otherwise. Talent spells, as I told you earlier were automatic spells, which means they continue to do what the spell is supposed to do without any need for intervention. Usually a very limited amount of talent spells can be engraved on the soul, one per rank, due to the fact that the soul cannot handle the complexity of these spells functions, Another reason is that talent spells are engraved inside the soul, not on the boundary of it¡­ ¡­ ¡°what he gave us is not that hard¡± Delsa said while looking at the singular question paper that had been assigned to the 3 of us. It was calculas¡­ ¡°It is hard but not too much¡± Adiel said while scratching his head while looking at an integration question. It is gonna take a lot of practice isn¡¯t it? I lamented as I also did the questions that had been assigned to us. While I had learned some maths for a novel I didn¡¯t have much experience in integration which became the reason for my suffering. We were sitting in the library, a huge room with tens of thousands of books, most of these books were densely filled with either maths or physics, the rest being the accounts of different paths to power taken by the previous generation of mages. ¡°I think Edward just assumed that just because you two are good with maths I would be too¡± I said while looking at the incomprehensible set of numbers in front of me, I didn¡¯t find it bad or boring but realizing that I couldn¡¯t understand quite a lot of these math questions still felt bad. But with the help of Delsa and Adiel I managed to do all the questions. By the time I was finished Delsa had picked up a book titled ¡®Paths to power, an introduction to the way mages advance¡¯ ¡°So what are the paths to power?¡± Adiel asked ¡°It seems that the way someone advances as a mage depends on how they became a tier 1 mage, suppose when becoming a tier 1 mage someone changed their soulspace into a river, then their future path to advance would be to condense more and more rivers which eventually becomes a ocean when you become a tier 10 mage, at which point the path can be said to be complete, of course such paths lead to a dead end as they are recreations of lesser truth. But I wonder why the phenomenon on which the soul space is based on matter?¡± ¡°They matter because mana, the energy, is a reflection of the world, and the closer to the truth of the world someone¡¯s soulspace is, the stronger the phenomenon that the tier 1 advancement was based on is, the more mana they can carry and store, and the farther they will walk as mages.¡±A voice sounded from my behind, I turned around and saw Elen standing with a monocle on his eyes. ¡°How are you old man¡± He said as soon as my eyes met his. ¡°And old women¡± ¡°And middle aged man¡± ¡°what the fuck¡± Delsa cursed.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. ¡°He can see the soul of someone I think¡± I said. What a weird way to greet someone. ¡°How are you doing youngster¡± Adiel looked at me, his eyes filled with a lot of questions. ¡°You people know about each other¡¯s past lives right?¡± ¡°We do yes, Adiel, Delsa, this is the person who helped me meet Mr.Edward.¡± ¡°You guys done with your homework?¡± Elen asked. ¡°Yeah?¡± ¡°Then get lost, the library is going to be used for administration purposes for now.¡± ¡°Eh?¡± ¡°Haaa, just¡­ nevermind, I am going to do it myself¡± He pointed a finger at us and we, along with our books started floating and were thrown out of the library. Delsa looked at the library with a weird expression as she got up and started cleaning her clothes. ¡°Is that guy sane?¡± Adiel asked the question that had been roaming around in my mind. ¡°Considering that he could make us float it would be a safe bet to say he can hear us and I am pretty sure you don¡¯t want him hearing us question his sanity.¡± I said while we started walking towards our home. Adiel and Delsa continued to talk about what just happened while I seperated from them in order to go to the garden. I went to a beautiful clearing in the garden full of trees and sat down. Taking out the page that had been given to us by Edward I started reading it. While I was pretty excited about learning magic I realized that I was calmly following the steps that had been given to us by Edward. I didn¡¯t even read any of the books in the library. Perhaps knowing that I had become a part of something much grander than my desire to learn and control magic had lead to this outcome. I started reading the page. Enter the soul space, After doing so start gathering mana, continue to do so for 3 hours. After discontinuing this a sizable amount of mana would have gathered in the soul space. Imagine the mana gathering into the shape of a pointed object, preferably a needle but a stick would work just fine. Then engrave the following pattern on the wall of the soul space using the object. ¡­ After that stab the needle in the center of the pattern and will the mana to disperse. Doing so will result in the enlarging of the pattern. The usage of the pattern: Gather mana 2 hours everyday for 328 days. In case of individual use without the help of at least a tier-3 mage mana should be gathered for 1 whole year. The successful following of the steps would result in a bodily condition identical to Mana storage talents. Feels so much better than the system magic. It was like watching a archer shoot and then getting the chance to shoot yourself. Its obvious that the second one would feel better. I entered my soulspace. I had entered the soulspace after they performed the ritual and except the absence of the system crystal it was the same. I looked at the mana I had collected all night just to see if something would happen, before the ritual the system crystal would just absorb everything but after the ritual the mana just remained floating in grassland that my soul was. While I could not control the mana I absorbed that day with the hope that It would work today I tried to will to contract¡­ Nothing *Sigh* I was doing something wrong but I could not tell what it was. I guess Edward will help us with this shit tomorrow. I stood up, stretched and started walking towards the area I had found Eleven in. Maybe he knows what to do. ¡®¡¯Looking for me?¡± Eleven flew down after I had spent about 10 minutes trying to find him. I told him about what happened and asked if he knew what I could do in order to control the mana I had gathered. It was weird to be honest. I could control the mana that was outside my body to collect it but couldn¡¯t control it after it became mine. ¡°I don¡¯t have any clue, spirits like either have to gather mana manually like you do, which I stored in the body instead of the soul like for mages, or eat mana that has been collected by a mage, which saves up a lot of time while we are trying to become stronger. But only with contracted spirits is such a task possible. Getting back into the topic I don¡¯t know because I never had any reason to aqcuire such knowledge.¡± ¡°So what am I supposed to do?¡± ¡°Wait for Edward to tell you what you are supposed to do. In the meanwhile we can of course do this.¡± The owls eyes glowed a little and a little wooden chess board flew our way from the tree Eleven had flew down from. ¡°I guess I have no reason to say no¡± And thus another session of a man being beaten without remorse by a owl in chess began. Ch-19, An Initiate Mage ¡°How many of you managed to control mana?¡± Some 3 or 4 students raised their hands, Adiel raised his hand too. How unexpected, I would have asked him instead of Eleven if I knew he managed to control the mana he had gathered. ¡°The ones who managed to do so are to continue to control mana everyday, try to mold it into a needle or staff like shape. Just make sure it is thinner than the size of your thumb.¡± He said, addressing the kids who had managed to control mana. ¡°As for the rest, meditate and read some good books from the library, after a month or so your consciousness should be strong enough to control it.¡± After saying this he suddenly turned his gaze towards me. ¡°As for you Eric, you sure you followed each step perfectly? Your consciousness should be able to control the mana gathered for 6 hours, speak less of 3 hours.¡± Ehhh, I guess I see the problem? ¡°Does the amount of mana gathered affect anything?¡± ¡°Just how much mana did you gather?¡± He, realizing that I had gathered mana in excess. His eyes glowed blue for a second and then he looked at me in annoyance. ¡°Seriously? You should be patient Eric, No mage ever achieved anything without being patient and calm¡± Saying this he tapped his staff on the floor and I felt a little empty all of a sudden. ¡°I left a appropriate amount of mana for you to work with, complete the carving after the class and the math worksheet. Anyways, I will be talking about mana circles today, just like the one you will be carving on the walls of your soul spaces, If you notice it carefully there are 4 spirals in the circle, they transmit the 4 elemental mana into your soul. And in the middle is a small dotted circle with many lines extending in all directions, this is where you will feed the mana you gather everyday for the next 1 year, there is no varying depth or 3 dimensionality to the circle, such elements lead to an unlimited amount of things that you can do with such circles as long as you have enough mana. When you become a tier-1 mage your soul will dissolve into the soul space thus the following¡­¡± ¡­ ¡°And I am done¡± I said as I stood up from my seat in the library and after bidding Adiel and Delsa farewell I basically ran towards the garden. Sitting down, I calmed myself and entered my soul space. I saw that in the usual colorless grassland, the amount of floating lights that had filled the empty space were now quite a lot sparse. I willed them to come together, nothing happened. I tried many different way and slowly but surely the mana started listening to me. It was kind of discovering that you had a 3rd limb all along and trying to figure out how to use it. As I willed the mana to come together I noticed that it was gathering in the shape of a sphere. I tried to only squish the circle from 2 directions, it worked after about 15 mins and the sphere became a flat circle. I floated towards the circle as the small orb I became in the soul space and touched it. It felt slightly warm. I relaxed my control over the mana and it spread again. I once again started condensing it but in the shape of a skewer.The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. Even though it felt akward to move the mana it still listened and formed a skewer shape. But can I move it? The only possible answer being to test it out I tried to move the mana skewer forward. It did, I started moving the skewer all around the soul space. It even passed through my soul uninhibited. Remembering the pattern that had been on the page I went towards one corner of the wall. What if I remembered wrong? Just to make sure I relaxed my control once more and exited the soul space. The sun had started approaching the horizon in the meanwhile. Maybe in another hour the sun will begin setting. I took out the page that had been given to us and looked at the magic circle once more. 4 spirals connected by lines with a circle bisected by 1, 2 ¡­ 16 lines, in between. I once more entered the soul space and after condensing the skewer shape brought it close to the wall. The moment I touched it with the needle I felt as though.. I felt a exposing sensation so intense that it blanked my brain for a second. Almost like that time I had been forced to go naked for a week as I had been caught by some sort of satanic cult which I had approached to see if Satan was real. The only thing I realized that it doesn¡¯t matter if Satan was real if people like these existed. I would have probably been eaten if not for those dumb fuckers forgetting to lock the door of cell they had thrown all sorts of people in. Even though it was traumatizing for the 38 year old me, I remember telling the story with quite a laughter to many people, most didn¡¯t believe me though. It was not bad enough to freeze me, so I kept going. 4 spirals, circle in the middle, 16 lines. The moment I drew the last line the feeling of being intensified for a few moments and then disappeared. I looked at the pattern I had drawn on the wall. Following the last step I willed the mana to disperse. As soon as I did the circle in the middle of the circle started absorbing the mana at a pretty slow rate and with the absorption it started expanding. The 4 spirals started glowing in red, blue, green and brown colors each. It looked surreal, color in the soulspace that was black and white. After the circle had covered the entire spherical wall everything turned darker¡­ And then the the grass turned green, I looked at myself and I had turned from a white orb to a bluish orb. The mana that floated all around glowing just like stars in the sky created a sight beautiful beyond belief. The spirals that had been glowing till now started dimming down and then they stopped glowing. All the mana had been consumed. I exited the soulspace and saw that the sun had set and the skies had darkened. I walked back home to the seen of Adiel and Eleven playing chess and Delsa carving a little wooden owl with the help of a small knife. ¡°You know how to carve?¡± I asked She nodded and continued. I played a few games of chess and then decided to go to sleep. ¡­ ¡°Today we will be talking about the soul space and the dangers of other people entering your soul space.. For this we would need a student here, Eric! Seeing that you have become a initiate mage now you would be perfect.¡± Edward said after appearing on his seat in class as usual. I stood up and went forward. ¡°Now enter you soul space, I will probe your soulspace with mine and you have to try to not resist.¡± I entered my soulspace, now filled with color, and as soon as I did I saw a little blue dot in the distance visible through the walls of the soul space. The dot slowly grew in size and slowly a huge floating ocean came into view. Another smaller part separated from the ocean and touched my soul space. I felt as though someone was touching my organs, I resisted the urge to resist and soon saw a small fox? Enter through the soulspace. A sense of incongruity went though my body, a feeling of something being wrong, and then I was back in the class. ¡°Now students, I entered his soulspace through a small spirit and now I will show you the dangers of something like this happening to you.¡± He suddenly turned to look at me. ¡°What is your name?¡± What¡¯s with this question? Did he make me forget my name, but I clearly remember it. My name.. ¡°My name is Gaylord Chickenegg¡± ¡°HAAHAAHA!¡± A loud laughter rang throughout the class. Almost everyone was laughing. Is something on my face. ¡°Ok so gaylord, go back to your seat and we will continue with the class.¡± I sat back down while checking if my face had anything on it. ¡°Now the risks of someone entering your soulspace, specially by someone much stronger than you should be clear to you all. This is related to the fact that your soul space is basically your consiousness. Any changes made in it reflect immediately unless these changes were made by you yourself. And unless the change is small and done by a demigod like what happened with gaylord-¡± ¡°Pfff¡± ¡°Silence! So like what happened with him, the soul will be damaged and it will slowly turn that person into an complete idiot. Anyways, there are various¡­¡± ¡­ I walked to the library with Adiel and Delsa in tow. They would look at me and try to stop their laughter and when I would ask them what happened they would just say nothing. After completing today¡¯s work I went to the garden and sat dwon while trying to figure out just wtf happened today. ¡°How are you Eric¡± Eleven approached me. But who¡¯s eri- Wait a second, my name was Eric wasn¡¯t it? But then who is gaylo- ¡°fuck¡± ¡°What?¡± ¡°FUUUUCK!¡± Prelogue-2 ¡°Next is Mr.Eric, He is getting a graduation certificate in English literature¡± Eric walked up the stage while trying to suppress the excitement on his face. He shook the dean¡¯s hand and was given the certificate. Then he exited his college and went towards his home. ¡°I am home maa¡± He said while taking off his shoes. ¡°I know!¡± A shout came from inside the house. He entered his room and put the certificate near the awards for various story writing competitions. And to think it all started from that one photo. He opened the drawer that was besides his desk and took out the photo he had clicked over 7 years ago, the photo of the floating man. ¡°And who is newly graduated boy now¡± His mom entered the room with a jar of cookies. She was about to hand him the jar but- ¡°But I guess you are a big boy now huh? You aren¡¯t gonna like your maa¡¯s cookies anymore then?¡±Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. ¡°Maa! Never mind the growing up stuff, your cooking is golden and I want that jar¡± saying this Eric jumped up from his bed, grabbed the cookie jar and sat back down. ¡°You still want to find the floating man?¡± She said noticing the photo on the bed. Everyone he ever showed the picture too had laughed at him saying that he was clearly lying, Everyone except his mother. She had laughed at first, then she asked if I was serious and then said that if I say I saw a floating man then I saw a floating man. He had talked to her about this before. He had asked why she believed him, she told him that life is hard, and surely miracles can make it a lot more bearable, she was willing to believe that a miracle happened with her son just to think that Eric¡¯s life is going to be meaningful, happy and filled with magic. What mother wouldn¡¯t want that. ¡°Of course I do, I will roam the entire planet if it means finding a man filled with so much magic again. I am willing die to m-¡± *Thck* ¡°Sorry maa!!¡± Eric ran outside his room after his mother threw her slipper at him. ¡°Always talking about dying and stuff, can¡¯t you talk about something better!¡± She shouted and then shook her head. ¡®I hope that what he saw was real¡¯ She prayed sometimes, she felt he would do something drastic if he didn¡¯t find such a miracle again. Of course she could never know how drastic and dangerous his actions would become when he truly tried to find something magical. ¡°Give me something to eat! I am dying of hunger!¡± She heard a shout from downstairs. She shook her head with a wry smile and exited the room. Ch-20, A Kid Is A Kid After All ¡°Can you stop with your laughing at me?! It has been a whole week since then and the only thing you have done all this while is laugh at me! It was funny not gonna lie but everything has a limit¡± ¡°Ok Mr. Gaylord¡± *Sigh* I sighed and decided to ignore their laughing, I was not really irritated by it but it was too damn distracting when I was trying to do calculas. ¡°Did you manage to complete the task?¡± Delsa asked Adiel, This task that was being talked about was given to us 4 days ago. Edward gave us the task to compress mana and make it spin, then continue to add mana to it until It can hold a spherical shape and uniform rotation without any external pressure. I had managed to do this yesterday morning and Delsa did this yesterday night. ¡°Yup, just this morning¡±. ¡°How curious is the existence of mana, It seems like energy but we can see it and it exists in particle form, its kind of like electrons if electrons could be controlled through mental prowess¡± Delsa pondered and went off to no doubt find Elen. ¡°She really was a scientist huh?¡± Adiel said and went off behind her. I can¡¯t help but wonder if something was going to happened between these 2, they have been staying together more and more the past 3 day. Good for them I guess. I went to the garden where Eleven stayed and played chess with him for a while. After all what can a old man do to quickly pass time and wait for the next day. ¡­ ¡­ ¡°Good morning class, before we start with anything let me ask you this, how many of you are done with the assignment I gave you 4 days back.¡± Edward asked right after appearing on his chair. 3 people raised their hands- me, Adiel and Delsa. ¡°Well If by the end of the month you all have not completed the assignment then it would not be the issue of not enough mental fortitude but an issue of laziness, and I will throw someone not serious in the study of magic out of this institute forever¡± A page with another set of instructions appeared in front of our group only. ¡°As for you three, follow these instructions to use mana in the real life. You can the diagrams of some magic circles to try out in the 1st floor library. Remember to knock before entering, the teacher their can sometimes be drawing really elaborate magic circles on the floor and sudden entry might anger her enough to make her punish you. ¡°today we will be learning about the flow of mana depending on the size of the place from where the mana is passing through. Interestingly enough the relation is not linear, while generally the amount of mana that can flow increases when the size of the transmitter increases, there are a few sizes where the flow is abnormal, fluctuating between high and low, Like if we take 1 unit as the size of one mana particle then the closer you approach numbers like pi, the golden ratio etc the more intense the fluctuations become, it is theorized that if you make a line with perfect pi width then the mana flow in it would fluctuate between 0 and 2 times the normal flow¡­ ¡­ The moment the class ended me, Adiel and Delsa ran out the class towards our house. Thankfully Edward didn¡¯t give us any homework today. The page had the following instructions.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work. Control the mana to form a really fine needle. Preferable thickness is about the diameter of a floating mana orb in the soulspace(1 unit) Carve a spiral pattern on top of the mana orb made in the previous assignment. The pattern should look the following way. .. The depth can be variable but the depth should not invoke a feeling of dread. If a feeling of dread comes up while engraving the pattern, that means that the engraving was about to reach too deep, discontinue and wait for atleast 27 hours before trying again in such a case. Upon the successful carving the mana inside the soul space should gather in the orb in small quantities. Control mana to form a staff atleast half the width of the orb and use the needle to form the following Magic circle on the staff. Depth of the carving should be at most 3 units. .. Upon the carving of the magic circle even after releasing the control of the staff it should not lose its shape. Carve the following magic circles on the top of the staff, bottom of the orb and bottom of the staff. Preferred thickness 3 units. .. Then touch the orb with the staff. It will connect like a magnet. Then stab the staff in the middle of your soulspace. ¡°This is really descriptive¡± I commented. ¡°I would be worried if it wasn¡¯t, as that would mean we are playing a guess game, and I am pretty sure the soul is not something we should play a guess game with. ¡°It would take atleast 4 hours to remember the 3 patterns without missing a line.¡± Adiel said ¡°Lets make copies of it first so that we don¡¯t have to read from the same page. I wonder why he didn¡¯t just give us 3 copies?¡± ¡°Maybe to help us practice drawing the magic circles?¡± After a bit of small talk we copied the magic circles, Adiel and Delsa sat on the sofa and I decided to go sit in the garden while doing this. I had become too used to sitting in the green grass in my life, so used to infact that I didn¡¯t even appreciate it till I was too old to move too far away from my house. Perhaps this has lead to my tendency to go to the garden anytime I get the chance. The only thing I desired while I was waiting for death to come was a few more years to travel a bit more, maybe I was not even desiring magic that much, maybe the journey itself had become magical for me. ¡°What are you thinking about Eric?¡± Eleven¡¯s voice came from the side. He was sitting on a tree branch near the grass I was laying down on. ¡°A journey perhaps, I am not that sure¡± ¡°Do you want to talk?¡± ¡°Sure, what do you want to talk about?¡± ¡°No no no, What do YOU want to talk about¡± His eyes seemed to shine. ¡°I¡­ Did I tell you that I have lived another life?¡± ¡°I know already¡± ¡°You do?¡± ¡°Yes, any and all staff members that might interact with you are told about your reincarnation¡± ¡°I had suspicions about that, I guess it is now confirmed¡± The way the staff members and Eleven talked to us felt a little bit off from the first day, as if they are not talking to children but full fledged adults. ¡°So, what were you thinking about?¡± ¡°Did they tell you that my original world didn¡¯t have any sort of magic?¡± ¡°Yes¡± ¡°So one day a demigod by the name of ignia was floating in a jungle, and me, who was just a teenager at the time, accidently saw him and took a pictu- You know what a picture is?¡± ¡°Isn¡¯t that a still frame?¡± ¡°Exactly, So the moment I took the picture he saw me and disappeared. All I managed to capture in the picture was a still image.¡± ¡°Then?¡± It was almost like narrating a story to children, but in this case the child was a super smart owl. ¡°Then I went on a long long journey in order to find floating man¡± ¡°Why?¡± I noticed a childlike wonder in the eyes of Eleven. ¡°To find a bit of magic in a otherwise normal world, I travelled every country in the world, almost got eaten al-¡± ¡°Explain the getting eaten part first¡± ¡°I went to this cult who worshiped the devil in order to figure out if the devil was real and could be found. Before I could find the devil they found me and took me to their lair in order to be cooked, luckily the devil wasn¡¯t real and they forgot to lock the door of some other prisoner, who freed us all and helped us escape¡± ¡°Continue now¡± ¡°So I did all that while I continued to write stories, which was my second greatest obsession after magic¡± ¡°Really?¡± ¡­ The conversation became me telling stories about myself to Eleven, who, while was a lot smarter than most people I knew, was just a kid who wanted to explore the world. What sort of parents would make an oath to force their children to kill their dreams to serve another? Better yet how great was the legacy of the mages that the spirits would be willing to do so? After entertaining the owl for an hour I asked him to let me study, which he he reluctantly allowed me to do. After spending the rest of the daylight remembering the mana circles, practicing drawing them on the ground and finally following the steps of the pages, the soulspace glowed a little and then... Nothing? I did feel a little more refreshed than before I guess? Deciding that all will be answered in tomorrow¡¯s class I decided to go home and sleep. *Thud* I heard a small noise from behind and saw Eleven sitting on a branch with a log with a chess board carved on top in front. I guess 2 or 3 chess games wouldn¡¯t hurt. What¡¯s with Eleven¡¯s weird chess obsession anyways? Ch-21, The 4 Elements ¡°Sir, what are we supposed to do next¡± Delsa asked when the class for the day was about to end. ¡°I told you didn¡¯t I? Go to the 1st floor library¡± After saying this he gave everyone their maths assignment for the day and tapped his staff, disappearing off to another chair no doubt. We completed the vector questions in a hurry and then went to the first floor. The whole school was basically a huge cube, with a squarish hallway on each floor. One side of the hallway lead to classrooms and the other to different libraries assigned for different things. As we approached the library door I noticed it was closed. The sound of something scratching the ground came from the inside. *Knockknock* The scratching sound immediately stopped. ¡°You can come inside¡± a female voice sounded from the inside. I entered first, and as soon as I did an intense smell of iron filled my nose. I looked and a lady, maybe 25 or so, was sitting on the ground while looking at a paper with an intense gaze. A nail was moving on a metal plate that was filled with a pattern that made me confused about the a lot of things, some lines had bumps in the depths, some split in 2 lines of varying depths, there were smaller patterns on some of the lines, while some lines split off into many smaller branches that thinned slowly. We continued to watch the needle stabbed the plate in some places and cut it in others. The needle finally stopped, it flew in the hands of the women who put the needle in the overcoat that all mages except Edward seemed to be wearing. ¡°What do you want?¡± She looked at us with the eye that seemed to indicate what real insomnia looked like, two big dark circles were visible under her eyes and I worried she might drop dead if she didn¡¯t sleep right now. ¡°some magic circles for initiate mages¡± ¡°You people did that assignment already? Are you the group- 2?¡± ¡°Yes?¡± ¡°That makes sense, you would expect reincarnators to have more mental fortitude than kids.¡± Just how many people knew about the reincarnation!? ¡°You know?¡± Adiel asked a little shocked. ¡°I guess it makes a lot of sense that the teachers will be informed about that¡± Adiel mumbled before the teacher in front could answer. ¡°What does that do?¡± Delsa asked while pointing at the metal plate. ¡°Glad you asked! Come here¡± She us near the metal plate and made us sit down. ¡°You know how gravity works?¡± I nodded. ¡°Good, now what this does is turn off the gravity field in the area of about 3 by 3 by 3 meters.¡± Saying this she took out a mana core, which was atleast 10 times as big as the goblin cores I fed Eleven, and put it in the small hole that had been made in the middle of the pattern/mana circle.If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. *wrrrrrr* The plate started vibrating and suddenly I felt blood rush to my head and my body suddenly felt really light. I pushed the ground with my hand and slowly I started floating. I kept getting higher and higher slowly. I felt fre- *Thud* ¡°Ouch!¡± all 3 of us suddenly exclaimed as we fell down from varying heights. The mana core she had put in the middle of the plate had vanished, turned to ash. ¡°Its just that it doesn¡¯t last very long¡± It looks like she is kind of an air head, not that it¡¯s a big deal. Its much better then people who used to scroll through tiktok throughout the day back on earth. ¡°What did you want again? Right, mana circles. What element do you all want?¡± ¡°Can we have one of each?¡± ¡°Nope¡± Delsa looked at the librarian with a questioning gaze. ¡°You shouldn¡¯t have been taught about this yet but you can only use 1 element as a mage apprentice, and even as a quasi mage you can only use a limited amount of elements that depends on your path to power. This is why the school policy is to let kids focus only on 1 element before they become quasi mages. You should go in the library and read about the various paths to power throughout the history, that should give you a good enough idea about what element you want to focus on.¡± ¡°What are the options¡± Adiel is asking some real questions here. ¡°The same pair of four, why do you ask?¡± ¡°I was just wondering why there are only 4 elements, isn¡¯t their something like lightning, ice, light, dark and plant type elements?¡± ¡°You just completed the assignment too fast, if you had completed it when the majority completes their you would have been taught all this by your class teacher, in your case the principle¡± She conjured 2 chairs and made us sit down before taking out a marble board and a chalk. ¡°So the universe is filled with mana¡± she said while drawing a circle. ¡°You can liken mana to the blood of the universe, We have had contact with a few other universes throughout the years and the worlds which don¡¯t have mana either have another energy that tears the universe apart after some time or they are so unstable that they explode. We have contacted moe then 10 universes throughout the years and 8 of them had mana, one had another energy and one was on the verge of exploding. This another energy is called dark energy by the earthlings, from the nearest universe to ours¡± My god¡­ So the reason I couldn¡¯t find magic on earth was due to me being born in a fucking universe that had dark energy? What are the chances? Like 10 percent?? ¡°Now in the universes that have mana, if I don¡¯t complicate things too much, mana behaves like everyday phenomena. In short because there are 4 fundamental forces, gravitational, electro-magnetic and strong and weak nuclear forces, their are 4 corresponding elements. Earth for gravity, fire for electromagnetic, wind for weak nuclear and water for strong nuclear. So what happens is that if you want let¡¯s say ice element or metal element, they can be derived from water and earth element respectively. Though if you work hard enough you could derive metal element from any element. As for light element it can easily be derived from any element, darkness is just the absence of light and lightning is just and impractical element to derive, though if you wanted to you could derive it from each element except earth.¡± She looked at us after completing this lecture and saw 1 face that understood everything and 2 faces that were pretending that they understood everything. ¡°Not going to lie while it was understandable I have long forgotten what strong and weak nuclear forces were, but I guess I get the jist of it.¡± I said and Adiel nodded. ¡°Now go and come after thinking about what element you want.¡± Delsa stood up and started walking towards the door when she noticed neither me nor Adiel was following her. ¡°I want fire¡± ¡°And I want air¡± Me and Adiel spoke in rapid succession. ¡°You sure¡± We both nodded. ¡°Here you go then¡± Saying this she walked up to a bookshelf and took out 2 books which she handed to us. Transformation of mana to fire mana and a collection of pure mana and fire mana circles with derivations of their working. The name was a mouthful. ¡°These books also contain some really useful spells of other elements that we thought have to be taught to every mage. Also, remember to not try each other¡¯s book, as when you draw mana circles your mana slowly becomes attuned to that element and starts to reject other elements. You two take this¡± she said while handing us a bag each. ¡°These are all the materials you are going to need for a couple hundred spells. And lastly, I would advice you to improve mana control as much as possible.¡± ¡°As for you, come back here after you decide what element you want¡± saying this she waved her hand telling us to get lost and that¡¯s what we did. We exited the room. ¡°I am going to the library¡± and off Delsa went. ¡°I guess I am going too¡± And he went behind Delsa. Ah the blossoming of love, always so wonderful. Ch-22, Love Blossoms, Circles Explode I went to the garden, to the same old place I have been sitting in for the last week and opened the book. Deciding on the simplest circle I could find, a circle that would glow a little when mana is supplied, I started following the steps. I took out some salt from the bag, poured it in the pipe bag like thing made of metal and started drawing the circle. A circle here, a circle there, a line there and a tangent in between, another line, a line with bumps at depth? And done. And it barely took me 5 minutes. I read the last step, to pour mana in the middle of the circle, and sat down. I obviously tried to get mana to come out of my body and succeeded last night, though after it leaves my body controlling it is like trying to climb a rampaging horse. I put my hands above the circle and started willing my mana to leave my body through my hands, which was still quite hard as the mana just seemed to want to leave through every point on my body. In fact, Edward had mentioned in the class that it usually takes anywhere from 10 days to a month to control mana enough to direct it out of specific body parts. Though it seems that having lived for more than 80 years helped a lot. As the mana gradually began to leave my hands, it was white in color and glowing a little, the mana spread everywhere instead of in the circle, so I brought my hand closer to the circle until my mana was going in the circle. And it began to glow the color of the sunset. I continued to supply the circle with mana for another 15 minutes, after which I began to feel a bit empty. I entered my soul space and saw that the mana sphere had shrunk by a lot, I meditated until the sphere stopped absorbing any more mana, and after feeding the mana circle on the wall its daily dose of mana, I hope it could function faster, a year for the whatever talent while being reasonable left a bitter feeling in mind. ¡°A magic circle eh eric? You managed to use it?¡± Eleven asked as I opened my eyes. He had at some point sat on the ground directly next to me. Instead of answering I once again used the magic circle. ¡°You use mana really ineffectively you know, any mange worth their salt should be able to do this much¡± He waved his wing and green mana surged out of it. But instead of spreading or going ahead it stopped in place. I saw eleven¡¯s eyes glow green and then the mana started to spin in a ring shape, then it became a arrow and lastly it turned into a crescent which he shot at a tree, cutting it in half. ¡°You mana will do zero to no damage as it is not elementalized yet, nor will it be for another year, but you have to have enough control to use the mana in any way after you do attune it to a element.¡± ¡°And how should I get this control?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know, use it more or something, I could do this from birth.¡± I couldn¡¯t help but wonder why he seemed to be getting more and more like a bragger the more I got to know him. ¡°You know any magic circles?¡± I asked him. ¡°I guess I do know a couple¡±Stolen novel; please report. ¡°Why don¡¯t you show me¡± The owl stared at me for a few seconds, then waved his wing and a thin line of green mana condensed in front of him. It started to bend into a magic circle and within a few seconds a magic circle that was much more complex than the one I drew appeared in front of me. As soon as the circle was complete Eleven started to pour more mana which was absorbed in the circle and soon the a bunch of birds flew out of the circle. Ohh, so that¡¯s what he used to summon the birds. Wait a second¡­ ¡°Hey Eleven, if we combine these 2 circles can we make glowing birds?¡± ¡°I guess so? I don¡¯t know too many circles because they are hard to remember if you don¡¯t want to study the theory of their working. I am not at all interested in magic circles, theoretical physics is much more to my liking¡± Miss Belinda, my 12th grade physics teacher, would have been so happy being here, knowing that their were infact peop- I mean spirits that liked physics. Its not like I hated physics, but it couldn¡¯t answer my questions, how could a man float? What is consciousness, religion could answer those but couldn¡¯t prove anything. But still, my utmost respect is with the people who study phenomena they can¡¯t observe, just in a vain hope of understanding the universe. I played a few games of chess with eleven, after which I started reading the theory behind the light spell. After all to truly do crazy stuff with anything you should be familiar with the roots. <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> The more she looked at him the more she couldn¡¯t understand him. Eric was respectfully half crazy about magic, She herself wanted to understand the world a little better before death, but why does Adiel study so hard? Atleast Eric took breaks, maybe in his craziness he understood that with breaks he would do better overall, but Adiel was always either exercising or studying other then the half hour he played chess with Eleven and Eric. ¡°Why?¡± Delsa spoke. ¡°Huh?¡± Adiel lifted his eyes from the book he was holding, it was titled Higher dimesional application of vectors. Perhaps confused about what delsa just said.. ¡°Why do you work so hard?¡± ¡°What do you mean?¡± ¡°Anytime I see you you are studying like your life depends on it.¡± ¡°And what¡¯s wrong with that?¡± ¡°There¡¯s nothing wrong, Its just that I wanted to know what drives you.¡± ¡°Well, Eric studies just as much as me, if not mor- nevermind he¡¯s just crazy about magic.¡± Both of them chuckled remembering the way Eric looked at magic theory books as if they were his precious lover. ¡°Just like the way Eric¡¯s motivation is his obsession with anything fantastical, what is your motivation?¡± ¡°What is yours?¡± The 2 stared at each other for a moment. ¡°I guess I want to know, know what mana is, know what is outside the world, I want to see the phenomena I could only prove the existence of in equations. You could say that curiosity is what drives me forward, and curiosity ain¡¯t killing this cat!¡± She stuck a victory pose, which Adiel found hilarious enough that he laughed for a solid 3 minutes. ¡°Do I look that funny to you¡± Delsa said while pretending to be angry. Adiel, trying not to die of laughter, just started laughing harder. ¡°HA HA! *cough* Just stop! *Cough**cough*¡± He gradually calmed down. ¡°So what is your motivation?¡± His smile slowly expressed the melancholy he felt at the question. ¡°I am not sure, magic is cool but not something that motivates me, I don¡¯t want power or money either, perhaps I just seek knowledge like you, Not for the sake of curiosity but for the sake of safety? When I was younger, I didn¡¯t want to accept the fact that I was a slave. I sneaked out even after being beaten quite a lot for it, and learned to read and write, to do math, to think like a human from the school that was nearby. One day the owner¡¯s son, some officer in the military, retired and decided to continue and expand his father¡¯s business. He came to know of my adventures from the owner, and decided to test my knowledge. Me, who was 17 at that time, sat in front of him and we started talking. I had learned much more than him by that point. He made me the manager of the business, allowed me to be given salary and to visit his personal library at any time. All this from the knowledge I sought to have some purpose in life. Perhaps the fact knowledge begets power and safety is why I pursue it, perhaps it is some trauma, I think I will figure it out someday.¡± A deep silence spread throughout the room, neither party willing to disturb the other¡¯s thoughts. Finally, Delsa broke the quiet. ¡°Thank you, for sharing this¡± Adiel smiled ¡°And thank you for listening¡± The 2 smiled at each other for a while and then resumed their studies. Something a little more than friendship blossomed in between Meanwhile Eric managed to make the light circle explode by adding a few lines meant to convert mana to heat in the light spell. Needless to say he thought of the explosion as a feature instead of an error. Ch-23, Why Do It? ¡°Now that its been 3 months since we began our classes, all of you, as my students, are allowed to request materials, knowledge and help for reasonable academic related requests. Half of you have yet to manage to use a magic circle for more than a few seconds. You should try to focus mana out of your hands instead of throwing out of the whole body like an idiot. As for the people who did manage to control their mana enough to only focus your mana out of your hands you should try to control the mana when it exists your body. Adiel, Delsa and Theo¡± Adiel, delsa and the kid who had asked Edward why study maths stood up. ¡°You 3 managed to control your mana after it exists your body. I can see you worked hard. You next goal is to try to make mana circles from the mana that exits your body.¡± The three sat down. ¡°And Eric¡± I stood up. ¡°Just why?¡± Edward looked at me with a dumbfounded expression on his face. It is commonly believed that it takes anywhere from 1 to 2 years of practice to manage to make a magic circle out of mana alone. During a conversation with Eleven he had revealed that he knows a magic circle that can let not sleeping at night be harmless. I had him teach me the circle and then sat all night while reading books and controlling mana to go in circles after exiting my body and using different magic circles. My mana also gradually turned a little red after 3 months of continuous fire mana circle use. ¡°I am not saying that you are doing something wrong but there¡¯s no need to go that far? Make sure it doesn¡¯t negatively impact you¡± He asked me. Of course, he being a demigod will know what I am doing. ¡°no worries sir, it has had zero impact on my health, mental or otherwise¡± I spoke the truth. While I had a little headache during the morning I slept on sundays to relieve my brain and had some fun discovering ways to explode mana circles (Which I am ashamed to say had become the favourite past time of mine) Which resulted in my health not worsening in any way. ¡°Just do whatever you are doing, it is clearly effective. Try to make the circles faster.¡± Saying this he ended today¡¯s class. For the past 2 months he had been focusing on the theory behind magic circles, and now I could design a simple magic circle like light or heat on my own. ¡°You should sleep man, you might just end up becoming a vampire otherwise¡± Adiel commented as soon as Edward vanished. They of course knew about this spell, both of them tried it too but Delsa decided that it was not worth losing her sleep and the spell was not compatible with Adiel so he could not do what I did. ¡°Did you finish the Basics of mana circles? Give it to me as soon as you do.¡± Theo asked.Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. ¡°Yes, Here you go¡± I passed the book in his hand to Theo, who exited the class while reading the book. As for how I knew him? He found the place I usually sit around in the garden. I was drawing the circle for sleep prevention on the ground for practice and he asked what it was for. Upon knowing what it could do he immediately pestered me to teach it to him. I did and as far as I am aware he only sleeps once every 3 days, the rest of the time he is reading books. He has the same fascination with magic I carry, and since I am a little ahead of him in the magic circle study he sometimes comes to the garden to ask me questions. I wonder if this is what having children feels like, I pondered as I went to the garden. I saw Theo sitting in the spot I sit in with a bundle of books no doubt borrowed from the library. ¡°Probably not¡± ¡°What?¡± ¡°Nothing nothing, what is your doubt now?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t understand what the disconnected lines with 2 parallel lines in between are supposed to do¡± He asked while showing me a page in the book I had given to him in the class. ¡°It is meant to keep the supply of mana in the circle constant and allow the circle to operate for a few seconds more after the supply has been stopped¡± He nodded and then sat down near me, I still remember the way he had jumped when Eleven had first appeared behind him. I also picked up the next book I wanted to read while I made a mana circle that I had edited to explode around my index finger and absorbed the mana back in my body just before it exploded. I had tried to make 2 of these repititions work continuesly but discontinued that thought as it made my head hurt a lot more in the morning, and I was certainly not a masochist. The stars It was about the workings of stars like the sun. When I came to know that we will have to design our own paths after we become quasi-mages I decided to have some ideas in my mind before hand. And I am sure about what I want to do. Tomorrow was Sunday, and I decided to roam the garden The thought seemed a little funny to be honest, Tomorrow is Sunday and I have a gun in my jacket. Would have been a fun dialogue for a novel for sure. Anyways another fun activity I liked doing was trying to find the hidden places in the garden on Saturday afternoons. I had found 3 so far, but sadly all three had students already sitting in it, I wanted to find some silent place. *Brrr* The sound of water hitting rocks suddenly ecoed in my ears. Is there a waterfall here? I walked towards the sound, and just before I reached the place I decided to shout warnings 3 times just in case someone was bathing. ¡°I am walking towards the waterfall! I am about to reach it! Its not my fault if someone decided to ignore the shouts and is still bathing!¡± After waiting for a few seconds and receiving no reply I went ahead. Climbing the boulder that blocked my view from what I believed was the source of the sound. What greeted my eyes was a small waterfall, barely 5 meters in height that originated from a small plateau like structure, that fell in a pool that was about 20 meters wide. The lake was crystal clear, perfect for a dip. I looked at the sun that was about to set. I decided to come back here tomorrow, I was not in the mood for a bath at this time. Retracing my steps I slowly walked towards the dorms, but I slightly detoured like always to fully explore the garden without spending too much time on it. Today and went slightly east, after walking for a while I turned toward the dorms and started walking. *Scratch* I turned to the origin of the sound and saw a small wooden hut in the distance. As people say, curiousity is the greatest boon and the greatest curse of mankind, I decided to check out the hut. As I neared the hut I noticed that the surroundings were clean, as if someone had very recently cleaned it. There was no window, just a slightly open door and the sound of something scratching coming from the inside. I opened the do- nope. I turned back and started walking right back. No need to tempt fate, I myself had written quite a few stories about dumb people who entered places that very clearly seemed haunted. I was not going to be stupid enough to do that in a place where I am pretty sure the existance of ghosts and what not could be proven. *Baam* A sudden sound of explosion came from inside the hut, just as I was feeling lucky about not entering the place I heard the door open with a loud noise behind. ¡°WHO IS IT!¡± I turned around and saw a middle aged man walking towards me with a very angry look on his face. After glaring at me for a few seconds he continued. ¡°Do you understand what you just did young man!?¡± He thundered. ¡°You just ruined all the work I had put into the staff for the last 2 months!!¡± ¡°But I didn¡¯t even do anything!¡± I had not even made a single sound since I was near the hut. I noticed his gaze was on my hand. I slowly turned my head and saw a mana circle floating on my finger. Ah,.. Fuck. Ch-24, Madman ¡°Have you not been told that using magic within 30 meters of any buildings in the garden is banned!¡± ¡°No?¡± As far as I could remember no such rule had been mentioned by anyone to me. ¡°I will make sure you are expelled from this academy and your guardian is made to pay of my staff¡± Saying this he took out a snap-able bracelet from his soulspace(The making things appear and disappear was actually just putting them in the soulspace or taking them out of it) and slapped it on my wrist before I could react. An immediate sense of dread and pain overtook me, I tried to remove the bracelet but couldn¡¯t do so. I made a mana circle¡­ Why is nothing happening? I paid attention to my mana and realised that all mana that was outside my soulspace was chaotic. The mana that usually stayed near the brain when I made it exit the soulspace was now chaotically running around my whole body and causing a lot of pain, Even though I tried to control it even the smallest portion didn¡¯t listen. He waved his hand and a sudden gust of wind picked me up. ¡°I was never told about this rul-hmph¡± He had waved his hands again and no matter how a spoke no legible words escaped my mouth. He took me inside the hut, which only had a furnace and a wooden staff broken in half. Taking out a chain he snapped it shut on my ankle and tied the other end to the roof by floating. ¡°You better wish sir Edward is in a good mood today otherwise this crime would not result in a simple expulsion¡± Saying this he exited the hut and flew away. I continued trying to use my mana, but the mana that usually obeyed me in a 5 meter sphere around my body didn¡¯t listen at all now. The pain was bearable, but I had become so used to being able to use mana that not being able to use it felt like I was amputated. I swear to god I will give him a good beating if I ever get the chance. <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> ¡°What happened?¡± Edward appeared in his office and asked the middle aged man who had been waiting for the last 5 minutes. ¡°Some 2nd or 3rd year kid used mana near my place, and the staff I was working on broke in half.¡± ¡°You asked the name?¡± ¡°No but I can project the face¡± ¡°Then show the face to the teachers for 2nd and 3rd years and try to find out who his guardian or parent is.¡± Saying this Edward went away in the Edward style, disappearing from his chair. The man went around, Going from staff room to staff room, for half a day, but he couldn¡¯t find out whose student he was, this left only the personal students of Sir Edward. But he couldn¡¯t believe that his students could ever violate perhaps one of the only rules mentioned in class each month. They were after all personally taught by perhaps the greatest demigod of all time. Still he could only ask him who this kid was. ¡°Sir?¡± He said after reaching Edward¡¯s empty office. After a while Edward appeared in the room, somehow without a tea cup In his han¡­Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. Nevermind he just took it out of his soulspace. ¡°What happened?¡± ¡°He is not the student of any teacher in the institute, only you ar-¡± Edward suddenly frowned, seeing his expression the man suddenly bent 90 degrees and said. ¡°I am not implying that he is your student, I just wanted to know whether you knew him¡± About 5 minutes passed, Edward suddenly sighed and had him stand up straight. ¡°Just look if he is one of these¡± He waved his hand and a bunch of multicolored mana left his body. The mana took the shape of 3 batch of students, and the man shook his head after watching each image. ¡°if you talked to every teacher our institute don¡¯t have any other students above the first year.¡± ¡°But he made a mana circle at his finger¡± Edward suddenly looked at him with a look of realization. ¡°What did he look like¡± The man waved his hand and mostly blue mana flowed out of his fingers. While not as beautifully or smoothly or as fast as Edward he completed a veiwable portrait of Eric in some 10 minutes. ¡°He is Eric Evelyn, one of my students¡± The man was about to say something but he couldn¡¯t as Edward continued. ¡°He is in the first year-¡± ¡°But th- He is in the group of the 3 reincarnators?¡± Edward nodded. ¡°I apologize for the inconveniences caused sir, I will release him now.¡± He bowed once more and exited the room. The reason why he decided to forgive Eric is because he is in the first year, all the teachers follow a set pattern of teaching evolved over time by thousands of different demigods of the mage faction. In that curriculum, First year are not told about any magic related rules as it has been seen as a distraction from actually making a mana circle from mana. This resulted in some talents and some obsessed people achieving the task in the first year and not knowing the rules. As for the normal students, even though they could make mana circles on the ground it was slow enough to not cause any damage to any delicate research equipment or in his case, equipment research. In short it was not Eric¡¯s fault, it was kind of on the teachers that they forgot to tell him about the rule, Though he couldn¡¯t help but feel sure that Edward had some plan in this, maybe he wanted him to meet Eric. As for why? Who knows? He is a demigod, a invincible demigod if the man¡¯s calculations were right, Edward could do whatever he wants to whoever he wants. He reached his hut exactly 3 hours after he left. <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> I had grown used to the pain these bracelets caused, it was not that high anyway, and I think my pain tolerance is much higher than the usual person. After all I had been tortured by the North Korea¡¯s military when I had tried to contact some ¡®miracle¡¯ people that lived there. Luckily after about 3 months I somehow got to talk with a guy from the royal family and he told me he had ordered them to not disable me as he didn¡¯t like torturing people but could not stop it fully. He let me go free. I later realized that he wanted me to be caught by the military again so that he could watch me fully break but he underestimated my skills. I was young enough to build a small raft and sail to Russia within a month without getting caught, its not as if North Korea had radars back then to track me. But the pain of not being able to use magic left me wondering how I could grow so used to something I had barely had for 3 months. After I had used all my strength to try and use my magic I just sat on the single chair in the room and started trying to open either the bracelet or the chain. Just as I was trying to bite the chain to open it, which has surprisingly worked for me once before, The man entered back in the room with the anger in his face gone. He silently came up to me, waved his hand through which the chain and the bracelet both disappeared. I immediately made a light spell, explosion one of course, and after sending it outside the gate let it explode, which made a lot of dust fly up. ¡°Eager to use magic huh? Sorry about that, It seems you truly didn¡¯t know about the rule¡± He said and took out 2 cups of steaming hot tea, one of which was handed to me. As I took a sip and restarted my exercise of making circles appear and disappear on my finger I noticed it was somewhat easier than before. ¡°Say, do these bracelets improve mana control?¡± ¡°Yeah?¡± ¡­ ¡°You should be sorry for what you did right?¡± I talked comfortably knowing that most probably he had a talk with Mr. Edward, and he should now not treat me as a kid but a old man he had wronged. He looked at me with a awkward smile. ¡°Just tell me what you want¡± A smile came up to my face. ¡°just a few questions first, if the mana control is strong enough can you magic while wearing the bracelet?¡± ¡°yes¡± ¡°And if someone decided to wear a bracelet that is lets say 1 fourth of the strength of this one, slowly start using magic in that one, and shift to half the strength, would the mana strength training be much faster¡± ¡°Don¡¯t even think about it, the chaotic mana slowly results in the body adapting to the chaotic mana, which for some reason doesn¡¯t lower the bracelets effect but it slowly become much more painful.¡± ¡°Are the bracelets stackable?¡± I asked ignoring his words, I could handle pain, but I could not handle the feeling of not being able to use magic. I don¡¯t want to experience this ever again, Even if it meant staying in pain. ¡°Yes¡± ¡°Give me as many of the strongest you can build, and one each of gradually lowering strength until you reach a bracelet through which I can extent my mana out of my body but can¡¯t control it well enough to make mana magic circles.¡± The man didn¡¯t want to hand over mana restriction bracelets for a student to use on himself but through gradual convincing and me telling him the training program I thought of he agreed with these words. ¡°You fucking madman¡± Ch-25, Mage Apprentice ¡°Congratulations for completing the first year of your education, and also good of luck in becoming a apprentice mage. I have graded the talent spell you designed, and most of you did pretty good. I have written some suggestions near the bottom. I have said this many times before, but as you all will be completing the Initiate mage rank and finally getting the mana storage talent soon, maybe today, maybe in the future or maybe you already did. The assignment for this week is to work on the shortcomings of the designed spells and engrave it in your soul. There will be no classes this week. If you want me to check your designs after you improve upon then just come to this room and leave them on any desk.¡± Saying this he disappeared. Last week he had told us we have learned enough to design a spell, and as most of us except Delsa were Initiate mages we could engrave a single talent spell inside our soul. They work automatically so we could be pretty daring with the designs. I looked at the sheet of paper I had submitted to Edward. Perpetual sense 8X times the length of the soulspace. Mana sense spells worked by dispersing a small amount of mana in the surroundings, and after observing how the mana reacted with the surrounding the spell would feed that information to the brain. It allowed mages to observe any oncoming projectile, magical or otherwise, allowed the slowing down of perspective, which can be termed as slowing down time for everyone except the user¡¯s brain, though this remains a highly inaccurate example the spell does work, allowed the caster to see mana in the real life and improve mana control by upto 3 times. Due to this Mana sense was a very popular talent spell. (Mana circles and spells are the same thing, though talent spells are different from normal spells in the fact that they are ingraved inside the soul while the normal spell are engraved on the soul) What did I do different then? The principle I worked on reduced the mana control increment to 2 times, instead it increased the range from 2 times that of the soulspace, i.e, 10m, to 8 times that of the soulspace, i.e, 40m, and let the brain automatically slow down when a projectile approached. This was actually not a popular choice as improving mana control was much harder than just engraving one or 2 normal spells to get almost as good of an effect. Though talent spells improve with the rank of a mage and the normal spells don¡¯t, so the unique aspects of the spells keep improving beyond what normal spells can do. I saw that some errors had been marked in the designed circle with ways to correct them and some correct parts marked to improve them. Below a note was written, Good choice, with the amount of mana restriction bracelets you have worn till now your mana control is easily 10 times better than the second in line Theo, though I don¡¯t know how you handle the pain. Though Reincarnators have a unfair advantage over traditional mages. Due to their souls being made to cross over worlds their souls have been strengthened and have changed, so they can handle half a spell more then usual. You can change the mana circle to use the full space and if you add the characteristics of a pure mana control talent spell to this it should improve the control increase from 2 times to 4 times. I stared at the note as a tiny grin crept up on my face. I looked sideways and saw Delsa and Adiel with the same small grin on their face. Adiel had also chosen the mana sense spell, though instead of the time slowing variation he had gone for the telekinesis variation. It allowed users to exert small amounts of force on any object. Though legendary mages with this ability were known to be able to lift thousands of people. As for Delsa, I have absolutely no idea what she did, but seeing the grin on her face it was surely something good for her. Both of them had started sitting and staying with each other more and more over the last year. Good for them I guess. I exited the class and made my way to the waterfall. It had become my new sitting spot since I discovered it. And perhaps due to the way the trees were surrounding it the sound of the waterfall didn¡¯t go very far, which had made me encounter no students while I sit here. I removed the bracelet that was on my arm, the moment I did a feeling of freedom swept over me. This was the bracelet that was half as powerful as the one he had used on me back then, but now I could make a small mana circle almost instantaneously wearing it. As for what I could do after removing it? I kept the bracelet in the inner pocket of my robe and waved my hand. All the mana that I could safely use without making the mana orb I had made for the assignment unstable came forth and I made a magic circle almost 1 meters in diameter in barely 10 seconds.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. As soon as it was complete a small tornado was summoned in the middle. I waved my hand at it and it disappeared. While it was a little underwhelming the magnitude would change significantly with the amount of mana supplied in the circle. And also, magic circles were never meant as attack spells anyway, they were to do tasks that didn¡¯t require brute force. A mage¡¯s attack power all came from the talent spell we will engrave as mage apprentices, the one that transforms mana into elemental mana. One thing about elemental mana is that it instantly transforms into the physical element as soon as it exists the mage¡¯s body, without hurting the mage of course, one¡¯s own mana never hurt oneself. For example I will be carving a fire element transformation talent spell after carving the mana sense talent spell as I had already completed the initiate mage rank and the moment I did carve the fire circle I would become a mage apprentice. Anyways after I do I will be finally be able to do what had been the starting of my dreams after all this while. I will control fire! And the fire becomes hotter and harder to put out with each increase in rank. The process of talent spell carving was a lot different than anything I had done before. I had not even carved a real spell till now, only apprentice mages could do that. But it was not that hard, not after the oh so painful bracelets I had worn for so much time. The circle on the walls had disappeared, and the walls had turned a bit transparent from the usual black, This happened when the mage had completed the requirements to advance to the next rank and could begin the process of advancing. I gathered mana for a while, in order to replenish what I had lost and started working on the talent spell while feeling happy, after all the first of my dreams was so close to completion that I could taste it. ¡­ Soon a week had passed and the class was about to begin again. I had submitted the magic circle twice this week, once after first editing it and secondly after correcting the errors he pointed out in the first one. I was waiting to receive his feedback once more before going ahead with the engraving. Edward appeared on his seat right on time. ¡°Good morning everyone¡± He began. ¡°Everyone amongst you is ready to truly begin your paths as mages. I have reviewed everyone¡¯s talent spells and all of you are ready to engrave them, all of you are also ready to advance to the mage apprentice level, so in order to ensure your safety all of you will be doing both under my supervision today. Here are the talent spells you designed¡± He tapped his staff and a sheet of paper appeared in front of me, on it was the talent spell I had designed. ¡°And if you turn the page you will find the mana conversion spells, you will be engraving them both today¡± I turned the page and sure enough there was another mana circle drawn there, this one I had not seen before. But it was just as complex as the mana sense spell. I had wondered about the great advantage of mage initiate rank over even the natural mana storage talents, but when I asked the 2nd floor librarian she told me that overall the naturals were still much better than the ones who had once become initiate mages, because the naturals found it easier to breakthrough to new ranks as compared to others. About 15 percent easier to be exact. Edward told us to start engraving the talent spell we designed first. I I entered my soulspace and started controlling the mana present into the mana sense spell circle. As soon as the pattern matched the real engraving could happen. To engrave this circle as a talent spell I had to surround myself, aka the soul, with it and then let it slowly sink inside without letting even a single line change. To most students this would be a monumental task, and the appearance of any flaw could change the effectiveness of the spell completely, which made the presence of Edward a blessing as he could help stabilize the spell. But for me it was quite simple, after all even Edward himself had acknowledged my mana control as much better than normal for my rank. When the circle was complete I brought it closer to my soul, and soon as the 2 touched a electrifying sensation, kind of like blood returning to a limb after sitting in a wrong posture for too long. I surrounded my soul completely with the circle, and then slowly shrunk it till it was touching my soul completely. Then, paying attention to the structure of the circle I slowly continued to shrink it. As soon as the circle was completely inside my soul it felt as though I heard a click, the surroundings immediately felt a little brighter, the grass in the soulspace greener and the floating mana with a little more tinge of red. I exited the soulspace and saw little white speck of lights floating around. I could see mana now! When I paid attention I could also see behind me without turning my head. I saw a fly flying inside the room, I imagined the fly slowing down, and it actually did slow down, not by much but I visibly felt the difference. I was the only one who was done, Edward nodded at me and then closed his eyes, perhaps to make sure of the other student¡¯s progress. I turned the page and started remembering the mana conversion talent spell. After maybe 30 minutes the last student opened his eyes. As soon as she did Edward started speaking. ¡°All of you managed to complete it without my help, excellent¡± A smile appeared on his usually nonchalant face. ¡°Now, I will help each one of you individually to become mage apprentices as the mana conversion spell is much more complex than the ones you designed.¡± He said and beckoned the student on the first row to come forward. ¡°Eric and Theo, you 2 can just engrave the spell on your own, be careful and you should be easily able to engrave the spells¡± Ah yes, Theo, this kid. I am the one who is called the madman but he is the one who truly deserves that title if you consider that he is really a kid. When he discovered that my mana control was improving drastically he started pestering me, Seeing his passion for magic I told him about the mana restraining bracelets. I asked me for the weakest one I had, and when I said it is really painful after a while he just said that he can handle it for magic. This fucking madlad wears it for 5 hours each day, which while being much less then my constant usage of stronger bracelets was much more respectful for a god damn 12 year old. I could not have handled half the pain for 10 seconds if I was his age, and this kid goes around wearing it for 5 hours daily. I shook my head and started the engraving process, which while being of a much more complec spell I managed to handle. The moment I felt the click sound again I felt time freeze, then the whole soulspace started shaking, the wall started blackening while moving further and further away from me, it stopped when the diameter of the soulspace was about 10 meters. Then the mana orb that had allowed me to use mana outside the soulspace till now dissolved into nothingness, and the white mana that only had a tinge of red till now turned completely red. A huge amount of bright red mana suddenly surged from outside the walls and rushed inside, only stopping when I felt a sense of being full. The moment the soulspace stabilized I exited the soulspace and summoned my mana from the soulspace, which mage apprentices could do naturally, the amount of mana mage apprentices had also became fixed, to grow as mages in the future requires the growth of mana as well, though the recovery of mana no longer requires manual gathering of mana, it had become automatic. As soon as the mana exited my body a huge smile came on my face. On my finger floated a small flame, made without any mana circles or the influence of mana, something I had spent so long on.. This, This is magic. End of Vol.1, The beginning of a journey Ch-26, Theos Soul In a huge hall, with a large number of seats surrounding a single pond, there sat the beings known as gods. ¡°I welcome you all to today¡¯s meeting, and today¡¯s topic of discussion is Prithyu.¡± A god began. But perhaps no being other than themselves could tell who was the one that spoke. It was impossible to distinguish between them as they all seemed like blurry silhouettes. ¡°Are you still doing the hero summoning thing? Don¡¯t you get bored?¡± ¡°Nope, I try new things regularly, like letting the hero realize that the demon god was not at all evil, or have the hero watch his family getting burned, or the classic hero saves the world and go home for memories sake.¡± ¡°But the mages are the most entertaining¡± ¡°True¡± The voices discussed in indistinguishable ways. They perhaps had no need to talk, no need to pretend to be sitting on chairs, yet they did, maybe for the sake of entertainment, maybe just to make the ¡®entertainment house¡¯ a little more entertaining. ¡°Isn¡¯t that about to happen again?¡± ¡°Yes, yes it is¡± ¡°Then I have an idea, they think the next crusade will happen in 130 years?¡± ¡°Yes, yes it will¡± ¡°Then I have an amazing idea, wh¡­ <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> ¡°Welcome to my academy Mr. Farion¡± Edward appeared, somehow not on a chair but standing up straight. ¡°You had no need to come here personally¡± The old man, Farion the fiery as people liked to call him, someone who barely didn¡¯t manage to become a demigod due to an old injury, spoke in a respectful tone. The young man who stood next to him, his direct apprentice barely of 19 years of age, bowed his head in the direction of Edward. ¡°Of course I had to come personally, I had once been taught by you after all!¡± A rare smile of excitement and joy was on his face. ¡°You have become a big man Edward, no, Sir Edward, and I would do no injustice to a demigod, much less one taught by me, by making them wait on me¡± ¡°Stop with the formalities teach, you would make me blush¡± ¡°HA! You remain the same as always you brat! What was with you way of speaking at the conference huh?!¡± Farion spoke in mock anger. The 2 had been very close, Edward almost being considered his personal disciple, the one who almost inherited his legacy. ¡°Sit down first teach¡± Saying this Edward took out 2 chairs from his soulspace, and both of them sat down on these chairs. The boy calmly took his place behind Farion. ¡°So, why did you call me?¡± Farion began after taking a sip of tea from a cup that was most likely conjured from his soulspace, though the habit of Edward always having a cup of tea in his hand might have come from somewhere around here. ¡°To give a few lectures to the students perhaps, who knows you might like someone and take them in as your personal disciple¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think that many people carry enough passion in them to impress me¡± Edward took a sip out of his tea cup, which he had taken out somewhere in the conversation. ¡°You will be surprised by what sort of kids we have, one particular person I think you would want to pass on your legacy too¡± ¡°Show me then, I am getting a little excited so I hope you don¡¯t disappoint me¡± ¡°Have I ever disappointed anyone?¡± Edward lightly mumbled, though even the young man behind Farion could hear what was said. ¡°Go outside and play¡± Farion said, hearing this he quickly exited the room. ¡°Son¡± Farion placed a hand Edward¡¯s shoulder. ¡°Sometimes, a few burdens are too heavy to carry for even the greatest of shoulders, No matter what you believe I would always say that my son¡¯s death was not your fault, perhaps if I-¡± ¡°No teach! You couldn¡¯t have known what was about to happen!¡± ¡°But¡­ Could you have known? Let it go, Let this old man carry that burden while you carry our future on these very capable hands¡± Farion patted Edward¡¯s shoulder with a proud expression and stood up. This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. The man who was said to be the greatest demigod ever had his own problems, his own regrets, regrets strong enough to drown the strongest of people. But perhaps that¡¯s why he was called great, because he still lived for magic. ¡°Now show me what kind of mages you are raising.¡± ¡°Half-crazy people, I have seen, make for excellent mages¡± Edward said while looking at Farion. ¡°You want to be hung upside down again Huh!?¡± ¡°Try it old man¡± Without saying another word Farion waved his hand and a wave of fire came out of his hands. Edward just gazed at the water and it disappeared. ¡°You could have actually hung me upside down¡± Edward said with a smile. ¡°And you could disintegrated me you cheeky bastard!¡± Farion said with a smile no lesser then Edward¡¯s. Meanwhile the young man wondered why he was so unlucky, Knowing someone¡¯s secrets is always dangerous, specially when that someone was one of the strongest people alive. Luckily though neither of the 2 ever bothered to look at him, and after a while Edward teleported them all to a viewing room, directly in front of stage surrounded by many such viewing rooms and a single hallway, saying that the 2nd year students will be doing the most impressive things they can do with mana, for the teachers to see their progress. After a while of chatting between the 2, A girl came up on the stage, slowly water flowed out of her hands, in perhaps 5 seconds the water took the shape of a magic circle above her and a bluish barrier appeared around her. She maintained the mana circle for 10 seconds, and then with a slightly tired face exited the stage. ¡°How did she did?¡± Farion asked his disciple, Laven ¡°Her mana control is not upto the mark, with the amount of mana she has if her mana control was optimal then she could have maintained it for atleast 4 hours minimum.¡± Edward nodded at his answer, and then the next student entered who floated around for a few minutes and then went off stage. ¡°He used mana really ineffectively, The air mana he was using to float was just thrown at the ground without any regards for the way air moves.¡± One by one a bunch of student entered came up on the stage, With Laven only acknowledging a single performance as ok , of someone who used 2 made 2 separate shapes from earth mana at once. ¡°Is that all you got?¡± Farion asked with his eyes glued to his staff. ¡°Of course not, I still got 4 students left, among which 3 are reincarnators¡± Upon hearing that Farion nodded and put his gaze from the staff to the stage. Another girl came on the stage, ¡°This is Delsa, a reincarnator¡± ¡°What did her soulspace looked like?¡± Farion was one of the few people who wanted to know what someone¡¯s soulspace looked like if he was intrigued. ¡°A library¡± ¡°A truth seeker.. I see¡± Delsa closed her eyes for a moment, and then 4 water droplets appeared around her, the 4 droplets started spinning in a slowly enclosing circle, drawing a magic circle in barely 2 or 3 seconds, the moment it was complete the whole stage was filled with water droplets that came down lightning fast towards the stage, lightly wetting the ground. ¡°It was a good performance no doubt, it would have been much more impressive and damaging if she did it without a mana circle with pure water mana but still she did pretty good, though her being a reincarnator is a pretty unfair advantage¡± Laven commented. ¡°It is not a unfair advantage young one, you could hardly call it a advantage if I say so myself¡± Farion said. ¡°Next up is the 2nd reincarnator we have, Adiel, His soulspace looked like a mountain, with a single rose on the top¡± ¡°Deep, really deep, He will rise pretty high if his commitment is towards magic¡± Adiel came forward the stage, and drew the same magic circle with the same method as Delsa, though instead of water drops a gentle wind started to blow towards the ground. ¡°Same as the last one I believe?¡± Edward asked Laven before he could speak, making him hurriedly nod his head. After Adiel exited the stage Theo came up, and Edward began with the introductions. ¡°This is the most devoted person to magic we had in a while, though he shares this title with one other. His soulspace was a garden with a statue of a mage controlling a small statue made from earth¡± ¡°That was you wasn¡¯t it¡± Farion asked. ¡°What could I have done! He just kept asking me to show him some magic and the moment I did he followed me like a magnet, saying he wanted to learn how to do it, when I told him that he could do it with the system he said it was not magical. I was forced to take him around for a year after that and just decided to take him in¡± ¡°A good child¡± Farion said while Theo came onto the stage. He just stared at the ground, and 3 dolls came out from the ground, the 3 dolls started play fighting while Theo slowly started smiling. ¡°Excellent! To simultaneously make and control 3 earth statues, and to make them untraced is a skill he should have really worked hard for since the start of his education¡± Laven commented while Edward nodded in approval. ¡°What did he do to reach such high mana control level at such a young age¡± ¡°He used the no sleep magic circle throughout the previous and current year¡± Farion looked really excited about someone for the first time since the performances started.. ¡°I will teach him if that¡¯s what you want¡± ¡°I am sure he would be happy to be taught by the legend maker, the one who has taught 57 legendary mages and 1 demigod¡± ¡°Flattery is not getting you anywhere kiddo¡± Farion said though a slight smile came to his face after the praise. ¡°The last person, Eric, is a reincarnated person too, nearly 80 when he died. His soulspace was a green grassland, with no other color in sight¡± ¡°What did he follow to the extent of leaving his soul with a single color? And why such a calm personality with such intense passion?¡± ¡°You will see¡± Edward said, and Farion understood that he wanted it to be kept a secret. When Edward came up on stage he waved his hand, and 5 fireballs appeared in front of him, he started moving them around with no intention of stopping even after 3 minutes. ¡°That¡¯s it?¡± ¡­ After receiving no reply for a solid minute he looked at his master¡¯s face. It was a little wide-eyed, a expression that was entirely unfamiliar on Farion¡¯s face. ¡°What happened?¡± Farion raised his finger and pointed at Eric. ¡°His fucking hand¡± He had never heard his master curse. He looked at Eric¡¯s hand and saw that 4 small read specks were floating around near his hand. Now that is impressi- ¡°What the..¡± was all he managed to get out of his mouth when his gaze turned a little upwards on his hand. 4 thin bracelets. ¡°This fucking madman is wearing mana suppression bracelets! 4 of them! What the fuck are you doing Edward! He will go mad from the pain!¡± Farion suddenly started shouting at Edward. ¡°I told him that the pain might drive him mad¡± ¡°And what did he say?¡± ¡°He said that he would rather go mad in order to fill his life with more magic than live normally again¡± ¡°Did he not live a fulfilling life?¡± ¡°Not at all, he searched for magic after seeing a single scene of a man floating on earth, and he actually found magic¡± All this talk was going above Laven¡¯s head, The sole thing he understood was that this was a madman the likes of which are rarely seen. Ch-27, The Legen Maker *Clack* a sound rang out four times. I threw the 4 devil bracelets as I liked to call them towards the chair and laid down in bed feeling as free as a floating dandelion after doing so. These things hurt more than a stick or slipper ever could. The class began in an hour, and as I had just got back after running now I was wondering whether I should just go sit in the class or just sleep for an hour more. I closed my eyes¡­ ¡­ I am going to the class I guess. I stood up, wore the bracelets back and exited my room. Neither of the 2 were awake yet. I was pretty sure one day I will wake up only to find the 2 naked somewhere in the home. Though an amusing thought I shook my head and after eating some baked bread along with a bunch of cooked vegetables I went to my class. ¡°Morning Eric!¡± a jovial voice came from overhead, from a smart feathery friend. ¡°Good morning Eleven¡± After this brief greeting he flew away to no doubt cause another bunch of students to start their day with a bird screaming in their ear. When I reached the class I pushed the door open, usually the class is devoid of any students at this time and this was true today too but today the old man who had been sitting with Edward during yesterday¡¯s test was sitting on a chair right next to Edward¡¯s chair. He had a tea cup in his hand, and was sipping on it¡­ I see¡­ Was this old man Edward¡¯s father? I nodded at him out of courtesy, and he nodded back. Sitting down at my usual spot I took out my diary and started scribbling some mana circles on it I was planning on engraving on my soul. A lot of experimentation was allowed as a hundred spells were engraved on the soul and 1 talent spell inside before advancing to become a quasi mage. I did engrave the sleepless spell, it was a bother drawing it with chalk for each night of practice and it was a spell that couldn¡¯t be drawn with mana. Soon the page I was working on was filled with a mana circle, a circle used to summon and give commands to little bundles of fire mana, the spell I was going to engrave tonight. ¡°So, You are named Eric right?¡± ¡°Yes, and what is your name sir?¡± ¡°Farion¡± Silence grew in the room, with the only sound coming from the seldom scribbling of my pen on the paper. ¡°Will you be teaching us today?¡± ¡°Not all of you, only Theo and you¡± My eyes widened ever so slightly at this answer. ¡®Why?¡¯ I was about to ask but I knew, because we both were the most excellent mages in this batch of students. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. While Delsa and Adiel were not too far behind and they indeed worked hard, they were still within the categories of paying attention to physical and mental health. Which for some reason Theo had completely forgotten. What? I was the same? No no it was a lot different for me. After another 15 minutes of me drawing some magic circles and him just sipping on another cup of tea, I mean what are the chances that he had been sipping on water or wine in a tea cup, Edward appeared on his chair. He looked at me first, then looked at Farion and finally took out a tea cup and started sipping on tea. ¡®These damn tea addicts¡¯ I thought. Though when I gained the ability to store things in my soul space I was surely going to store a bucket full of tea in it at all times. Just in case I came across any other tea addicts it could serve helpful in bribing them. The day was not that far, Initiate mages had to draw a magic circle in order to send mana out of the body while mage apprentices could do so naturally and finally quasi mages gained to ability to store and take out items from their soulspace. ¡°Did you two talk about the mentorship?¡± ¡°No, I did tell him that I was going to be teaching only Theo and him though¡± ¡°Eric¡± Am I getting a new teacher? ¡°Yes?¡± ¡°Meet Mr. Farion, also titled the Legend maker, he has raised many a great mages, and his list of students include me too. He wants to take you in as his personal disciple, you along with that kid Theo.¡± I looked at Farion, He was wearing a bright red robe, with many patches of orange fire on it. He was wearing spectacles, small round ones. His head was half bald half white, and no matter how you looked at him he looked like a random old man you would find anywhere. But his eyes, when I looked at his eyes I felt as though I was staring at the sun, those eyes just as red as his robe felt as though they were glowing. ¡°Do you accept Eric?¡± ¡°Tell me something honestly Mr.Edward, would I benefit more under him rather than your tutelage?¡± I asked the man himself. I was familiar with the concept of students surpassing their disciples leaving their students behind and it would not be funny if I accepted only to later regret it. ¡°You would find no teacher better than him, better fighters perhaps many but he is the best teacher no doubt.¡± ¡°Then I agree¡± Edward nodded with an ¡®as expected¡¯ expression. ¡°Let¡¯s go then!¡± Farion said and took out his staff. *Sigh* They are replicas. He tapped his staff on the ground and my vision blurred. When my vision cleared I found myself in a room, with theo sleeping on the ground, me standing right next to him and Farion sitting on a chair in front. ¡°Wake up kiddo¡± He tapped Theo¡¯s face with the end of his staff . ¡°Huh, wait whhat?¡± He woke up and looked around. Poor kid, he only slept 3 days a week and on this day he had to encounter whatever the fuck Farion was trying to do. It looked as though he had decided that it was a dream and he laid back down to sleep. ¡°Wake up you stupid bastard!¡± This time Farion hit Theo directly on his forehead. ¡°AH!¡± and he was standing up in a instant, He looked at me in a daze. ¡°Eric?¡± Then he turned his gaze towards Farion. ¡°And who are you?¡± ¡°I am your new teacher, Farion¡± ¡°And how did I get here? I am pretty sure I was in my room¡± ¡°Good old teleportation¡± Theo nodded, seemingly convinced, and sat down on the floor. ¡°What are you going to be teaching me?¡± He asked. ¡°Nothing much to be honest, just a few paths to power of my school.¡± ¡°Paths to power? Weren¡¯t they supposed to be one person per path kind of deal?¡± Theo asked and looked at me for confirmation. ¡°No kiddo, many people can walk the same path, though if someone becomes a demigod that path is blocked forever.¡± Farion answered, while I nodded. This fact I had figured out after many debates with Delsa. ¡°So¡­ what are we doing now?¡± I asked seeing the awkward silence that was about to consume the room. ¡°Now, you will listen to a story, the story of how the paths of power I will teach you about came to be¡± I saw a look of excitement come up on Theo¡¯s face. ¡°When I was younger, after I became a Grand mage, I looked outside our world for the first time in my life. I went near the sun and saw it with my own eyes, I saw clouds of dust surrounding it, I saw how the dust particles collided, it inspired me to create a new path. Which I did. When you are a Quasi mage no matter what your element is you would just fill your soul space with mana, after some spell engraving and other things this cloud would resemble the one found in space! The ones with Fire mana would have a star be birthed from this cloud when they become a tier 1 mage. The air and earth elements would make gaseous planets and rocky planets respectively. Though I couldn¡¯t figure out a phenomenon for water mana.¡± ¡°Hasn¡¯t been done in lots of variation before?¡± I asked ¡°Yes, but mine is still an overall improvement due to better physics used.¡± I suddenly felt that this oldie was not at all reliable.