A/N: This chapter is a lot of copy and paste from chapter 2 of the novel so I'm sorry if it's repetitive. But, I did throw in more poop jokes though people tell me my sense of humor is crap. (Buh duh ch~)
Also, two chapters in a day??
Can you all think of a time when you were incredibly proud of yourself? I'd like you to think of the proudest moment in the entirety of your life, from the moment you were born until this very moment that you're listening to me.
Do you have it?
Well then, let me tell you something.
Whatever you're feeling right now is inconsequential compared to the amount of pride and joy I'm feeling right now.
Yeah, after two weeks of flailing my arms like a monkey, I've finally managed to do it!
I can control my shi—!
Ahem.
...I can crawl.
Alea watched as I began to crawl with a slightly worried expression as I made my way around the house at breakneck speeds... okay. Maybe not breakneck speeds but for me, who couldn't do anything but lie and do nothing for several weeks now, even the slightest voluntary movement was equivalent to me storming down the Autobahn in a Lambo.
...And yes, I can also now control my defecation to a degree.
Also, I managed to get a glimpse of myself in a mirror that Alea used. I had to admit, I was absolutely adorable. I suppose you could call me the spitting image of my mother. I had the same snow-white hair and pretty golden eyes. I don't know how I'd grow up, but I felt that I would definitely be better looking than in my old world.
In any case, after the weeks I spent attempting to crawl, I had finally succeeded, even managing to make my way to the bookshelf when Alea was absent.
What did she do anyway?
**
I closed the encyclopedia and situated myself more comfortably on the ground... basically, I just laid on my belly because crawling and sitting upright was so damn tiring.
Pondering over what I had just read, this world seemed pretty underdeveloped. From what I could infer, there didn't seem to be much technological advancement.
I didn't know a thing about transportation since I hadn't left the house in years.
It seemed that weapons were freely allowed and not really regulated unless you visited the royal family or people who held authority. Though it appeared that the peaceful nature of the city I lived in didn't require this as the people never carried weapons lest they were guards.
This seemed similar to my previous world, Earth, where some soldiers and guards carried concealed weapons. Though the guards in this city simply carried their weapons in broad daylight, they both carried out the similar function of deterring crimes from happening.
Another similarity that both this world and my previous world shared was the system of monarchy. The continent of Dicathen had Kingdoms, each ruled by a king and his royal family. Unlike Earth, though, the King was chosen based on lineage; the title passed down from the son of the King to his son and so on.
After scanning through the encyclopedia, there wasn't much information on other continents besides the one I was currently in. Though I found this a bit strange, I guess technology just hadn't advanced enough to have transcontinental ocean travel.
One thing that was going to be hard to get used to was the whole premise of magic in this world. If we were talking about superhuman powers, sure, the countries on Earth relied on such people.
On Earth, practitioners learned how to condense and utilize the innate ki they had in their bodies. Think of it as a muscle, if you will. Repeatedly breaking the ki center down through exhaustion followed by rest would cause the ki center to grow stronger, allowing access to a bigger pool of ki. The ki would then be channeled throughout the body via special veins or meridians and utilized to strengthen the body and weapon.
In this world, instead of ki, it seemed to be called mana, and the more surprising thing was that it existed in the atmosphere. Thus, Practitioners, or Mages as they called them here, would use the surrounding mana and draw it into their bodies, ultimately condensing it in their mana core. In my old world, ki only existed and formed inside the body. Whether ki had never existed in Earth's atmosphere in the first place or ceased to exist because of the pollution caused by humans, we'd never know.
While practice was incredibly important on Earth, the size of a user's innate ki center was even more important because the limited amount of ki one had in his body was all one could work with. Did that mean that one's innate mana core size wouldn't matter as much because of the available mana in the atmosphere?
The bigger the cup, the more you can hold, right?
In my case, my pool was just simply average. I wasn't exactly talented with the sword or much of anything. Still, I poured my heart and soul into practice, and with endless self-cultivation, I managed to climb my way up... though I was killed before I graduated.
"..."
... It's okay, Asher. You'll be fine this time. Mhm.
My newfound confidence came from a thought: if I could still practice the way ki practitioners used their ki, but with mana that was both present inside the mana core and in the surrounding atmosphere, couldn't I essentially double... no... triple the strength that I had before?
Still, that was just wishful thinking. I wasn't even that talented in the first place...
...I held back my tears.
The next book that I managed to pull from the bottom shelf answered a couple of questions for me.
[Beginner's Guide for the Privileged Mage]
[While the power to control mana is largely genetic, there are many cases where children of Magi come out unable to sense the mana around them. A recent census showed that roughly 1 in 100 children are able to sense mana, but the extent of which could only be tested when their mana core first completely developed—anywhere from their early adolescence to late teen years. It will be apparent when a mage first awakens by the initial repellence of the surrounding mana when their mana core manifests. This results in a translucent barrier forming around the awakened that lasts a couple of minutes.]
Mhm, mhm.
[An easy way to know measure your strength lies in the color of your mana core. Starting off, the mana core would be black, due to the body's blood and other impurities mixing with the mana particles as they formed into a mana core. As the mana inside the person's body becomes purer and the impurities get filtered out over time, it'll change into a dark red color. From there, the color of the mana core would get lighter, from dark red, to a solid red, and then to a lighter red.
The order goes as follows: black, red, orange, yellow, silver, and then white.
The colors split into three shades from the red mana core until the yellow mana core (Dark Orange, Solid Orange, Light Orange). Rule of thumb, the lighter the mana core's color, the purer one's mana core was and the more power they would have access to.]
Flipping through the pages, I found something that caught my attention.
[...Mana can be used in a couple of ways. The two most common methods of utilizing mana are: enhancement of the body with mana (augmenter), and emission of mana to the outside world (conjurer)...]
[.... augmenters are most commonly seen amongst warriors who utilize mana, channeling it through their body to strengthen themselves and their attacks.]
[... The practice of conjuring is seen in Mages, who, after utilizing their mana, can cast spells to give off a certain effect on the surrounding area or directly at a target.]
[Weaknesses and Limitations]
[While augmenters can possess incredible strength, defense and agility, their weakness lies in their limited range...]
[conjurers possess unfathomable powers, being able to bend their surroundings to their will. However, such powers come with limits. Unlike augmenters, who utilize most of the mana in their own mana cores, conjurers need to borrow mana from the outside world, in addition to their own mana core, to exert mana into their surroundings in the form of a spell.]
[While both types of Mages, or Mana Manipulators, for the more scientifically accurate term, depend on and are categorized by their mana core, augmenters and conjurers also have different ways of measuring their aptitude.]
—flip
[An augmenter's prowess or talent is measured by the strength of the mana channels in their body, which measures the speed and efficiency in relocating their mana from their mana core into various parts of their bodies...]
[...A conjurer's power and talent, comparatively, is measured by the power of their mana veins, which indicates the speed and effectiveness of absorbing mana from the outside world to cast a spell.]
—flip
[...Mages (Mana Manipulators) are typically categorized into one of these two divisions since attempting to be proficient in both from an early stage is incredibly time consuming and inefficient. Most are born with a skewed difference in their mana channels and mana veins...]
[...augmenters do not need very strong mana veins because they mostly utilize the mana from their cores, while conjurers do not need very powerful mana channels because they do not release their mana into their own bodies.]
[As proficiency level rises, the distinction between augmenters and conjurers lessens naturally, but that is only so at an advanced level...]
...Why is this so complicated? Aren't they just basically saying that augmenters are melee and conjurers are long-distance?
As a certain skeleton said, I understand all of it, and yet none of it makes sense.
I continued to flip through the book, picking up everything I could.
[There are a few, rare deviants. The two most well-known types of deviants are elemental deviants and Emitters. While there are still some undiscovered, ones that are highly sought after are the Emitters, more commonly known as healers. Healers possess the rare ability to cast their unique restorative mana unto others, directly, recovering injuries and impairments.]
[Fundamentals of Conjuring]
[The proper steps of utilizing mana for conjurers is to gather the surrounding mana in the area, drawing it into your body, then, after circulating it into your mana core to stabilize and purify the atmosphere's diluted mana, you channel it into an appropriate conductor (a staff, wand, ring, of some sort) with the incantations as a mental controller for your will into shaping the mana into whatever spell you want...]
—flip
[...The more powerful the spell, the longer it will take to draw in surrounding mana, store it in your mana core, where it is condensed and purified, and finally channel and release...]
—flip
[Because conjuring involves exerting focused mana into a particular spell, conjurers will notice that they have a special aptitude of certain elements (Air, Water, Fire, Earth), but with proper training, can become adequate in the basics of all elements.]
—flip, flip
[Fundamentals of Augmenting]
[Unlike conjuring, much less time can be spent gathering the surrounding mana. Efficient use of augmenting requires speed and precision in the use of the mana from your core and less from the mana in the atmosphere...]
This was where I began to understand. Augmenting was very close to using ki, except you could also draw mana in from your surroundings. The reason why there weren't any kinds of conjurers in my old world of Earth was that there was no mana in the atmosphere to draw from and create a phenomenon.
But that wouldn't help much since my talent when it came to ki was average, if not worse. And conjuring? Well, I'd be an absolute beginner, if anything at all.
In any case, I continued to read.
[...augmenting requires proper distribution of mana into different parts of the body, depending on how the user sees fit. While it seems simple at a glance, augmenting requires much insight into the individual's own body. Being able to utilize the mana channels efficiently requires years of both mental and physical practice.]
—flip
[Because augmenting involves extracting mana in its purest form from the user's mana core, there are no highly notable distinctions in an elemental sense at an early stage. However, augmenters are able to control their mana more freely, resulting in vastly different forms of fighting through augmentation.]
—flip
[The phenomenon called 'Backlash' occurs in both types of practitioners. For augmenters, it occurs from depletion of the mana core, causing extreme bodily pain, depending on how strenuous the damage to the mana core is. For conjurers, backlash occurs from overfilling of the mana core. This is caused by overuse of spells beyond the practitioner's capacity, or using a spell too powerful for his or her mana core to handle.]
I closed the book and started processing the new information.
Because of the similarities between the ki center from my old world and the mana core in this world, I found it hard to believe that you needed to be a young adolescent to manipulate mana. In my old world, children could already meditate and sense the ki scattered inside their bodies. Once the ki migrated into a single place, the ki center would form.
Following that train of thought, would that mean I would be able to also create a mana core?
Testing my hypothesis, I began to meditate, searching my innermost recesses to try and find...
"Ah, Ash! Did you poop again?"
...Did she have to be so crass?
Suddenly, I felt, er, a certain... "aroma" that I hadn't smelt before.
...It seems I'll have to retract my early statement of controlling my sphincter muscles.
I feltmy face redden as she picked me up at an arm's length with one hand andpinching her nose with the other.