Ruler Vol 1 Chapter 4
[previous_page]
[next_page]
Author: Anit666
【Sam’s POV】
The night passed and morning came, and I didn’t get any sleep. Just when I was contemplating whether I should sleep or not, Chloe barged into my room to wake me up. Her shocked look when she saw that I had woken up before her was a sight to behold, but I probably shouldn’t tell her that I didn’t sleep at all.
We had our breakfast in the same dining room in which we had dinner, but fortunately the royalty didn’t join us this time, except Alicia. And now it was time for the main event of this morning: magic training. For this Alicia led us to an underground training room.
While walking through the hallways, the soldiers we passed by bowed to us.
Are they paying respect to us, or Alicia who is guiding us? And why is Alicia the one doing that? She is the second princess of one of the largest kingdoms of this world. She surely must be very busy.
Upon asking the reason for that, she told me that the king himself had ordered her to take care of us. My condolences.
Though now that I think about it, I’ve yet to meet the first princess. I wonder what kind of person she is.
We reached the training room whose size was equal to 4 football grounds. How the hell is this a room? It’s so big! And even though we were underground there was light inside the room as if we were outside. The ceiling was also very high. It was actually the ceiling that was glowing like a sun. Must have been the work of magic.
We went to the middle of the room, where Reygus was already waiting for us. After escorting us, Alicia left us and went towards the wall, where a chair and an umbrella had already been set. A maid was also on standby, with a trolley on her side with a cup of steaming hot tea and snacks.
What is this, a beach?
We greeted Reygus, who greeted us back and our first lesson in magic started.
“Before getting into the basics of magic, let me first of all show what magic is.” (Reygus)
A demonstration before going into the theory huh.
After saying that he snapped his fingers and a small flame lit on the tip of his index finger. He showed it to us and then blew it out.
“This is one of the basic magic spells. Let me first talk about how a spell is constructed. What you need to cast magic is mana. Mana is basically the natural energy, or as some call it, life energy of this very world. Anything and everything in this world have some amount of mana in it. The ground we are standing on, the air we are breathing, the blood flowing in our body all have mana. Now, there are basically two ways of using mana to cast magic: Using the mana in your body, or using the mana of the nature. While the former is easier, the latter is much more efficient and powerful. I’ll first teach you how to use your body’s mana, and then we’ll move on to the nature’s mana. Is all of this clear to you?” (Reygus)
We three nodded. Though I might not look like it, I can still learn things very easily, while Jack and Chloe were the top scorers of all the exams of my school.
Satisfied with our nods, Reygus continued
“The power of the magic you can cast is directly proportional to your mana control. Mana control is basically how much mana you can control at a given time. The better it is, the more efficient is your magic. Theoretically, if your mana control is excellent, you would be able to cast magic spells powerful enough to wipe out an entire country.” (Reygus)
Wow, that’s quite dangerous, isn’t it? Wouldn’t that make it easier for terrorists to target this country? Reygus, unaware of what I was thinking, continued
“Though people who can actually do that number very less. Now, the question is: how does one cast magic? For that you first of all control the mana inside or around you and gather it up. Then you strongly imagine the result you want with your magic, and then direct that gathered up mana to achieve the said result. Alternatively, you can replace the second step related to imagination with a chant. Using a chant is easier, but the degree of freedom it provides is much less. Now first of all I’ll teach you to feel, control and gather mana. For that, concentrate on your body and try to feel the flow of energy in it. This is probably the hardest step in learning magic as there is no proper way to teach you how to feel mana, but you’ll get the hang of it.” (Reygus)
Feeling the energy flowing in me, huh… What does he mean by energy anyway? How am I supposed to feel something as abstract as that? But I have to try anyway.
I closed my eyes and shut down all the noise coming from outside so that I could use all of my senses to feel that energy inside me. Jack and Chloe were probably doing the same. Concentrate, concentrate, concentrate……
Ah! There it is. I can feel the blood flowing through my vessels, and along it flows the Dark Repulsive Energy. That bottomless energy tha was swirling and rampaging inside me. Is this the mana Reygus was talking about? Now I understand why I couldn’t use it properly. Looks like mana and energy are the same.
But this feeling is vague, and I feel like I’ll lose it the moment my concentration breaks. Let’s concentrate some more. Concentrate, concentrate, concentrate…… Yeah now I can feel that energy more clearly. That energy is flowing in the same direction as the flow of blood, and it feels as if it is going through every single cell of my body. And all this energy starts and ends at my heart. This should be the mana.
But if I can feel it inside of my body, maybe I can feel the mana in my surroundings as well. I remember the sensation of feeling mana inside of my body, and applied it to my surroundings. What’s most important in feeling this mana is my imagination. How well can I imagine the flow of this mana will decide how well I can feel it, and hence how well I can use it.
Well, let’s do it. Let’s try to feel the mana in the air I breathe and the ground that I stand on.
The harder I concentrated, the more I could feel the mana in the air that enters into my lungs and the mana that is trying to escape through my feet to the ground. I extend that feelings to the entire area around me and……..
Overwhelming! The amount of mana that I could feel around me was so large that it’s completely overwhelming! My vision and hearing vanished, and it felt that I had entered a completely different dimension. Mana was all around me.
I feel that I could destroy the entire world if I could somehow use all of this mana. Yosh, let’s try to control and gather it up. But I have to simultaneously imagine the result of my magic. This seems to be difficult, but let’s try it.
But…….. imagining the result seems less efficient than imagining the process itself. For example, what we need for a flame is oxygen. What if I imagine a result where the air inside a fixed area is completely turned into Oxygen and then light it up? And what if I also add Hydrogen into that mixture? The added Hydrogen would act as a bomb. It would be dangerous to do it right now though.
Let’s try the first process of using only Oxygen. But oxygen itself doesn’t burn. I also need a fuel to burn. And for that I’ll use a mana ball. What I’ll be basically doing is that I’ll create a concentrated ball of mana that can burn, and can also replenish itself from the surrounding mana. Then I’ll set an area around it that consists purely of oxygen. This should probably increase the temperature.
I gathered mana and imagined the said process.
Gathering mana itself is easy. It’s something like trying to inhale the air around you as much as possible.
I raised my hand and gathered as much mana as possible on the tip of my finger continuously, while simultaneously imagining the said process. After reaching my limits of gathering mana, I strongly imagined the result of lighting that up after snapping my fingers. Then I snapped my fingers and opened my eyes, and what I saw at the tip of my finger was………. a fireball the size of a small tennis ball. And it’s colour was azure.
But.. hot! Hot! Hot! The temperature of that fireball is too much for my fingers!
After being unable to handle that temperature I threw the fireball away.
Whew that was dangerous. It felt that that fireball would have melted my very hand if I had kept it any longer. Looks like I also need to add a process that doesn’t burn off my hand.
But before I could proceed to do that, someone caught my hand. And that someone was Reygus.
He had an indescribable expression on his face, but I could see fear and confusion in his eyes. Alicia Chloe also had a similar expression, while Jack had his usual apathetic face.
“W-What happened, everyone…?” (Sam)
I timidly asked.
“What happened? You do something like this and then ask me what happened?” (Reygus)
He said in an awestruck tone.
Reygus had a scary look his face, as if he would just eat me up right now.
“Anyway, what was that? Why were you able to make an eternal flame?” (Reygus)
Huh? What is this ultra-old man talking about?
“What was that, you ask… I just cast magic just as you had instructed. I first felt the mana inside me, then extended that sensation to my surroundings, then I tried to gather that mana to recreate what you had shown us. Though the temperature was too much so I had to throw it away.” (Sam)
“…….” (Reygus)
Reygus’s face went expressionless and he pointed somewhere. When I followed his finger, what I found was the blue fireball I had just thrown. It was floating a few inches above the ground. The ground below it had already been turned into glass.
Whew, it’s good that I threw it away on time. Or might have left with only 9 fingers. Magic is dangerous! But wait, why is it still burning? Is it because of the function that I added in it which allowed it to get a continuous supply of pure oxygen gas?
“That, is the eternal flame. A flame that never goes out, and is so hot that it could melt everything it touches. Eternal flame is one of the most difficult magic spells ever created. And you, who shouldn’t even know the basics of magic, created an eternal flame on your first try at magic. Now do you understand what have you done?” (Reygus)
Wow. Seems like I actually did something outrageous. But is creating it that difficult? I could probably make a lot of them simultaneously after getting the hang of using mana, but let’s not say that.
“What the actual fuck Sam……” (Chloe)
Chloe voiced the thoughts of everyone present there.
But I must admit that although this way of casting magic is very difficult, it is much more efficient and powerful. If me and Jack could get the hang of it and use it as naturally as breathing, then taking on those 5 at the same time and defeating them would actually be possible.
Things sure have become very interesting.
[previous_page]
[next_page]
Comment (0)