Disaster: No End In Sight - A Future Card Buddyfight Story

22 - Magic and Melanie

(September 25th, 2030)

*Lord Tenbu's Sanctuary*

I was going to keep up with my promise to Arkaid. Whether I liked it or not, I needed to keep up with the training regimen that Arkaid has provided for me. It may seem odd that I do not appear completely motivated by this amount of practice, but that is solely due to how she hopes to instruct me in the ways of magic. Needless to say, a human being such as myself is not fully aligned when it comes to magical talent. Melanie, according to what Mizaru later informed me, took quite some time in training just so that she could cast a simple spell. I could only sigh at the amount of work needed to be done.

Arkaid brought back a few items from Magic World, items that even I, to this day, cannot bring myself to remember. These gems possess an uncanny property to help align oneself with the ability to cast magic. Her magical practice, in regards to training me, consisted of reading and meditation. Reading was the easiest aspect of it all, for she instructed me on the sorts of spells I should be able to perform. The few aspects I understood immediately was the difference between normal offensive spells and healing ones. Healing ones took more mana and stamina to perform. When performing such a spell, you are hastening your body's way of healing wounds and projecting it onto another person. Even though you may not be the one being healed (generally, when casting this spell, you are expected to heal others since magicians are fighting in the back, away from physical combat), magicians using healing spells feel exhaustion depending on how much they healed an ally and their amount of skill in it. Offensive spells, on the other hand, were purely mana based and were much easier to use. However, using any spell involved allowing these gems to align themselves with your own being. According to Arkaid, since I'm a being that wasn't born with the innate magical talent (while most people in Magic World are), the best means of doing this is through direct meditation. It was grueling at first, especially since my mind continued to remain unclear. Certain events were transpiring back on Earth, making it so I was consistently distracted. For starters, Liam had not contacted me ever since he stormed out of my apartment that night. I have been asking around and texting him, hoping that I could get some sort of clue. Unfortunately, I could not obtain a single one. However, when it comes to my employment, I was still on my paid leave. I hated it, especially since my team was managing to make progress in their investigation on The Will of Kyoya. Four more criminals were captured and were sent to be interrogated. Because of my paid leave, I was unable to actually learn anything myself. My position left me utterly restricted, and I couldn't help but break out of my concentration each time I pondered about it.

My eyes popped open with the array of crystals resting in front of me. The mana emanating from the crystals glistened with an undeniably beautiful set of colors. Each crystal resonated with an element, and I was to meditate in front of these crystals in order to align myself with their mana. Citizens from Dragon World did not learn magic themselves; they only began to learn it once a select few went in-between this world and Magic World, allowing themselves to bury themselves in magician's studies. Some citizens managed to work their way into Magic World the rifts connecting to Earth now were even established, making it so a select few clans were ahead of the times in comparison to the others. Even then, however, other clans survived due to military prowess and strength. I didn't have the latter, so my best hope was to become the jack of all trades that Arkaid saw me as. To be honest, I viewed myself in a similar manner. However, as I glumly looked at the array of crystals before me, I couldn't help but occasionally wonder if this was right for me.

Arkaid seemed to read my mind when I thought that. "Even if you feel your mind slip, do not lose yourself." She was sitting in a meditative position on my right. Even though her eyes were closed, she appeared to have focused on all of her surroundings. Her short, light-brown hair waved in the soft winds, allowing her to feel each follicle of hair as it waved in unison with the others. I could only tell she sensed each small movement from how her head occasionally strayed. Even so, she remained relaxed, even when a small insect nestled itself on her robe. She was not someone meditating. Instead, she made herself become a part of the environment; a piece of land for the world to affect with its wind and nature while the insects roam on her to make their way through the plain.