Chapter 165 Fundamentals Of Magic
‘What was that?’
I asked Sunalla after I managed to calm down. Sunalla grit her teeth then spoke.
“Daxia.”
‘Who?’
“The Queen of The Bloody Seas, Daxia. Ruler of SharkFang Kingdom, one of the 3 nations of The Mass Blue.”
‘3 nations?’
Sunalla shrugged.
“Yes, three nations. Atlantis, SharkFang and Exsuole, although the last insists it’s an Empire.”
‘So… why did Daxia come after us?’
Guppies swam up to the princess and she played with them quietly.
“Because we retrieved the princess, obviously.”
‘But… I thought you said she was away.’
“She was. It should have taken her at least a full day to catch up to get to the tower from the Bloody Sea. At least 3 days to get to where we were. Daxia, does not follow the rules of logic.”
‘Isn’t it because she’s too strong?’
“You could say that.”
“So, when are we going back?”
Yokino asked from nowhere.
“Tomorrow. Daxia would have grown bored by then.”
In the end, they decided we would return the next day. I decided it would be best for me to focus on other things. I left the area and returned to the mansion.
When I got there, I discovered that some of the monsters were slowly returning, although majority preferred to remain in the dungeons.
I met Grimm and he described the events to me as best as he could. Apparently, the thing that came was stronger than anything he had seen in his travels. He claimed to have seen a lot of stuff.
Unlike the others, he didn’t try to hide, rather he watched the fight from a safe distance, although I couldn’t tell what exactly a safe distance was in a fight between 2 tyrants and something stronger than them.
After reporting to me, I asked him of a favour since he was really good at watching things without being noticed. He was reluctant at first, but eventually agreed to my request and left. In the mansion, I ran across the boy from earlier. Erwin Dolus and he was cleaning up the place with some kobolds.
I said my hellos to them and passed by. The place was kind of a mess and how they were going to patch it up would be a miracle.
I decided to check out the library, and there I found Kara. She was busily reading through books, but I decided to talk to her to pass the time. She kept fumbling with her words, probably not over the events of that night, but I wasn’t here for that.
I was just looking for simple solace and that came in the form of Ulva bursting through the door. She jumped on my back and bit into my neck greedily. I knocked her and lectured her on the importance of asking my permission before feeding.
She gave me the cutest puppy eyes and pout that I had ever seen, making me forgive her almost instantaneously. Afterwards, she told me about how she and Sylvie had started to get along a lot. Apparently, she could be of help to Sylvie in some way since she was a fan of alchemy. Maybe due to influence from her parents? But then, I wasn’t sure.
Ulva always said she’d lived a simple life before being sold, so her having an interest in alchemy was intriguing to me. Maybe because she was a kid trying different things at the time.
According to her, Sylvie had made some potions out of herbs called Takite Mushrooms. This potion was one that helped in boosting mana capacity. They wanted me to test it out and that was one of the reasons Ulva came here.
Kara was a bit sceptic about it, telling me not to consume it without further investigation. When I used [Analyst], I discovered that the potion had some serious side effects. Not only was there a 10% chance of success, but if you weren’t careful, you could get struck with Mana Overload.
Mana Overload was a disease in which your mana circuits would start absorbing mana from the atmosphere at a rate the circuits weren’t built for. You wouldn’t even have the necessary containment units to store it and eventually, your mana would run free and you would die of mana exhaustion.
I told Ulva to refine it a bit more before presenting me with it again. If I saw Sylvie, I would have to punch her. She almost killed me for the second time in a row!
Kara laughed gently, and I was starting to feel a bit at ease. I then brought in the topic of Aeri leaving. The ogre princess told me the disappointing news about Aeri’s new personal mission. I comforted her with the promise of Aeri eventually coming back to us.
It would seem that Kara had grown attached to her quite a bit. I could sort of understand it, given that Kara said she had no real friends back in the East. After, I tried reading some of the books. I ended up learning of several spells and felt that the people of this world were really stupid.
According to the text book “Fundamentals of Magic Vol.1”, there were 2 types of magic.
1. Chant Magic
2. Runic Magic
Chant magic was one where you said a chant of power to fuel yourself up and cast a spell. These were used by 90% of the world’s population, due to lack of proper imagination. In all honesty, it wasn’t like the chant themselves had any power, it was simply a trigger that allowed them to remember how the spell was supposed to look.
“Great art thou, the Sun God, Sol. Provide me with thine gentlest flame. Fire Ball.”
I muttered out, but what came out was a water ball. That was because I was thinking of a water ball, while reciting the chant for a fire ball.
Kara was confused about what I’d just done. I explained it to her and she shrugged. She told me that she was not able to memorise the chants, so she went with the runic magic option. She said out of the two, Runic magic was the strongest, although not the most popular. This was due to the fact that Runic magic required months of constant practice and drawing to even be able to make your first spell.
It was actually an unnecessarily complex form of magic use. One was required to draw symbols of power. These symbols once charged with mana would act like mana circuits, and end up creating your desired spell. Runic magic was the equivalent of what I knew to be magic circles. However, this time it took countless hours of studying learning the very stroke of the first rune. One wrong stroke and it could cause an implosion. The only benefit to this was that it boasted of twice the amount of power Chant Magic did. Disadvantages was its slow cast time, but if you reached at least Kara’s level, summoning a rune out of thing air would make up for the difference in cast time. In the long run, it was beneficial to learn Runic Magic over Chant Magic. I now understood her reason for doing so.
So now, my question was why she was using any of these forms of magic. From what I had seen of Tsuna and Yuuna, those two used neither of these two types of magic. It was pure instinct for them and so they easily cast the spells, while wasting no time.
Once this question came up, the agent explained in a cool way. Way to go, Agent!
So, monsters who were born with mana were born to wield it. Monsters that weren’t born with mana wouldn’t be able to wield it. The interesting about monsters was that, once they received names, they got mana as well. Long story short, Kara had to learn Runic magic due to the fact that right from birth, she was not someone who was supposed to use magic. She however persevered to this point for reasons beyond me. Tsuna and Yuuna on the other hand were born with mana, although their ability to use it came up later. By pure virtue of this, using mana was an instinct ingrained into their minds from before they were born.
Then there was me. I already knew that I was supposed to get mana from birth, the only condition was that it would take some time for my mana circuits to be built. Me getting named didn’t even affect that fact, proof that either way, using spells without magic was something I would always be able to use. What I didn’t understand now was humans.
How did they come to the conclusion of using chants and runes? Why would they suddenly have a need for any of those? Did that mean, inherently, humans were never supposed to wield mana? If that was the case, how and why were they able to do anything they could do.
The more I thought about certain things, the more everything got confusing. I decided to not waste my brain power then. I was inclined to ask the agent, but something stopped me from asking.
DAILY ACHIEVEMENTS
[Tori received 3 ramen cups from completing the Daily Quests]
[The skill level of [Super Stealth] rose to [Super Stealth Level 2]]
[The skill level of [Aquatic Form] rose to [Aquatic Form Level 3]]
[The skill [Telepathy] has become [Thought Projection]]
[The skill level of [Fusion] rose to [Fusion Level 4]]
[The skill level of [Synthesis] rose to [Synthesis Level 2]]
FUSION
[Chimera’s Enhanced Durability] + [Chimera’s Enhanced Stealth] + [Chimera’s Flexibility] + [Basilisk’s Enhanced Flexibility] + [Chimera’s Enhanced Lung Capacity] = [Chimera Body]
[Fluid Armor] + [Anguix Bug Armor] = [Venomous Exoskeleton]
<A/N: Extra chapter from last week's Power stone challenge. Please leave a comment or review to help in getting more readers! Also join the discord here: https://discord.gg/Ew44jhbVym or message me on discord here: Rados47#5271 to get invited>