05 - Mages

After lunch, I had to wait another two hours to fully recover my mana.

With my Mana full and the store empty, another round of tests began.

This time my idea was to remove a branch from the spell tree and see what change removing that branch would make to the final result.

Having already practiced and executed this spell once, the second attempt was much smoother and quicker, even saving me some Mana that I wasted correcting the mistakes in the first attempt.

Even though I had already seen this spell in operation, my eyes were just as attentive as they had been the first time as I watched the Mana travel through my body.

The beginning of the spell was much the same as the first run, until at the end of the spell, when the Mana left my left arm and returned to my hand, I realized that I hadn't received any information about my body!

Now I was in doubt, was the branch I ignored the branch that collected information from my body or the branch that transmitted the information to my mind?

Only further tests could answer that question.

Unfortunately, now I would have to wait another three hours to be able to do another test, and worse, the hunger I was feeling was getting worse and worse.

grrrrgle

My stomach started rumbling with hunger, even though it had been less than three hours since I'd had lunch and the next meal wouldn't be available for another few hours...

Spending Mana and having no nutrients in my body to sustain that spent Mana was painful...

I needed to somehow earn more money, at least to be able to feed myself properly and treat my malnutrition problem, but what could I do about it?

Thinking about the consultation fee of 15 copper coins from the old healer who went to look after Finn and Milla and calculating that the cost of a day's meals for a family of five like mine was a maximum of 5 copper coins, I began to see an opportunity in this.

The appointment she made at our house lasted less than 40 minutes and that was enough for her to receive the equivalent of 15 days' food for a single person, considering how many people she must see in a day, that old woman must be filthy rich compared to a poor family like mine.

If I managed to become her assistant, even if she only paid me a few copper coins a day, that would be enough to put an end to my hunger and malnutrition and maybe even help out at home.

Knowing that with this hunger I wouldn't be able to practice for a few more hours, I decided to take advantage of the fact that the store was empty and tried to sound out this idea with my Alden.

“Dad, what do you know about Lady Greta?” I asked as I pulled my stool closer to where he was sitting.

Looking at me a little surprised, he took a few seconds to try and remember everything he knew before explaining it to me. “As far as I know, Lady Greta arrived in the village when she was a little older than you, before I was even born.”

“As soon as she arrived and showed the villagers that she knew healing magic, people started looking for her to treat their injuries.”

“At first she didn't want to take care of anyone, but perhaps because of the insistence of the population at the time, after a few months she gave in and started treating people at a high price, perhaps as a way of scaring off customers. As she was the only healer in the village, even if the prices were too high for people to pay, everyone still kept several copper coins for emergency situations and whenever they needed them they went to her to be treated.”

Hearing this and remembering her grumpy attitude at our house this morning, I realized that this way of acting had apparently been with her since she was young.

“Is she a mage?” I asked curiously.

But my father shook his head. “No, apart from healing magic she's never used any other kind of magic. Some mages have been treated by her when they passed through our town, but none of these mages have referred to her as a mage.” This confused me.

This left me confused. “What categorizes a person as a mage?”

Thinking for a moment with a proud smile, my father began to explain. “For that I have to start explaining the basics.”

“Theoretically all people have an affinity with Mana, some people have such a low affinity that they can't even feel the Mana inside themselves, others more rarely have such a high affinity that they find it much easier to do anything related to Mana.”

“Your brother Hal is one of the people with a high affinity to Mana. As our blood carries our magical eyes, we already tend to have a high affinity, and as he didn't receive the eyes, his high affinity was even more exalted in his blood, making him stand out during the test for Avaloria Magic School and get a place to study there.”

“The more magic you use, the more you train your magic core and when your magic core crosses a specific bottleneck it evolves and you finally become a mage, passively absorbing Mana from the environment and nourishing your body with that Mana, transforming you almost into a higher life form called an 'Awakened Mage'.”

“Just by becoming an Awakened Mage and being a citizen of the kingdom you can already receive a lower noble status, like that of a knight, ceasing to be just a commoner and having access to more rights. Although Lady Greta is talented, she has never shown her status or any sign of becoming an Awakened Mage, so I think she's just someone with a high magical affinity.” My father explained.

Hearing this explanation made me doubt even more as I remembered the difference in how the ambient Mana reacted when I looked at random people walking past my bedroom window and how the Mana changed when Greta appeared in the street.

It was as if all the ambient Mana reacted to her and tried its best to enter her body, orbiting around her.

Shouldn't that be a sign of an Awakened Mage?

This raised an even bigger doubt in my mind: could my eyes and my father's see the same thing?

It didn't make sense that I could see Mana reacting like that when Greta appeared on the street and he couldn't see it.

To test it out, I held out my hand and tried to control the ambient Mana to form a tree with a few branches, but the tree had no effect except that some branches were thinner than others.

“Dad, how many branches can you see on this tree?” I asked as I pointed to my hand.

Looking where I was pointing, my father was a little surprised and began to stare at the tree in my hand for a few seconds while he counted.

“A large trunk in the center and four smaller branches.” He said as he nodded, certain of his answer. “Why?”

“Just out of curiosity.” I replied, trying to hide my surprise.

The tree didn't just have 4 branches, it actually had 8, with 2 very large branches, 2 branches smaller than the previous two and with each branch after that decreasing in size slightly to the maximum that I could control my Mana for something so small and delicate.

To make this tree I had to control the small particles of Mana little by little in the small sizes and keep adding more Mana to each branch to make these branches look bigger, just as I did in the spells I copied, but this seemed to surprise my father.

“Kael, how did you control the Mana to make that tree, is that a spell?” He asked confused.

“Spell? No, I just used my body's Mana as a guide and controlled the ambient Mana to group itself into this tree shape.” I explained.

Hearing this explanation, my father looked at my hand in surprise, returning his gaze to his hand as he tried to do the same thing, but surprisingly the only particles he could control were particles as thick as the two largest branches I had made.

After trying for a while, my father sighed in disappointment but looked at me with even more amazement. “Kael, every hour you surprise me even more with your talent... at this level I think you could even try for a place at a magic school, as long as we could somehow manage your Mana deficiency... your talent seems even greater than my grandfather's!”

Hearing his explanation and seeing him trying to control her Mana in his own way, I really realized that my talent might be greater than I had imagined. Especially considering that even my eyes were more powerful than his.

“Dad, can you teach me the healing magic you used on me when I was a child? Or maybe even some offensive magic too, I'm very curious to know the difference between these spells.” I asked.

Hearing my request, my father nodded and promised to show it to me when we got home, making me excited for closing time to arrive as soon as possible.