Wizards of the Otherworldly Court: Alicia Part 1

Chapter 5: Maneg 101

"That... is peculiar."

"I know, even I still think it's magic. Moving on, maneg exists in pretty much every part of the world. When we, the Otherworldly Court, make contact with a new world, through various methods in which only one of them is intentional by us, it gets 'filled' with maneg from this world, Manegia, the source of all maneg. So we can technically say every world we come across has maneg."

"So that means our world originally did not have maneg?"

"Yeah. Anyway, before I can explain about maneg further, I need to explain what a Maneg Soul is.

"A Maneg Soul is a mass of Maneg formed in a special way that's very concentrated that it becomes sentient. Now the lifespan of these things is really short. About a day or so."

"Wait so then-"

"It's suspected as the reason why it would merge with our souls. The act of merging with us, the 'host's' soul allows it to live longer, as long as we are still alive."

"So then it wanted to live longer?"

"Precisely. And it's also why it gives us these powers. To keep us alive longer.

"When a Maneg Soul enters our soul, it will begin to merge with it. The time taken to merge with the target in which by that time its short lifespan gets prolonged. How long it takes to merge depends on our soul. I took about two weeks."

"I see..." So Alicia's Maneg Soul merged with her twice as fast as him.

"Also in the process, we will feel weird things that were never actually there. I'm pretty sure you felt it, right?"

"Right." So those fake sensations were her Maneg Soul merging with her soul. Probably relating to her having fire magic. "Then what was yours?"

"Eh, my skin feels cold, really cold. And even though I put on the heater on full blast and actually sweat a lot, I still feel cold."

"I see..."

"Anyway, once the Maneg Soul fully merged with us, whatever makes our soul, our lifeforce or whatnot, gets turned into maneg. Also, those feelings still persist even after our Maneg Souls fully merged with us, but it's toned down so we can just ignore it. And to give us the edge, the maneg inside our souls will go out to circulate in our bodies like our blood cells."

"I see. I understand."

"Right. Now we'll continue with maneg," Owen continued. "Maneg is actually an abbreviation of the words 'mana' and 'energy.' Mana because when using it, it looks like magic and mana is the most common term for magical energy. Energy because it acts like energy for some reason."

"Huh? What do you mean by that?"

"You still remember the conservation of energy back in middle school, right?"

"Yes... So that means maneg cannot be destroyed or created, therefore the amount of maneg is constant? But what of this world's maneg not be constant since it has to fill other worlds with its maneg?"

"Well, 'fill' isn't the correct word. The process is more complicated and not something for you to learn today. As for your first question, yeah that's right, in a given world. Also, the maneg stored inside of our Maneg Souls are included as well."

"Wait, then what would happen when we travel between worlds? Would our maneg leave us to keep to constant, or not? Or did that already happened to us?"

"Yeah, you're right about the maneg leaving us. But remember the dark room where we transfer to here? That's a special transfer device that mitigates the problem.