Chapter 35 – A Magic Lesson #2
“Good morning everyone, I hope you all had a wonderful sleep.” Said Jen enthusiastically.
“Morning Mum…” Said Anna, notably less enthusiastically. They were happy to start today’s lesson, but it was hard to match Jen’s constant excitement.
After the talk the three of them had yesterday, they decided to go with the flow and actively participate in Jen’s lesson to ensure there was no conflict.
They were outside today, near the forest but close enough to easily be able to walk back to their house in a moment.
Jen had a small table with some books and papers on it, and they had brought out two chairs from the house to sit on.
“You okay, you sound tired?”
Syrus replied, “I’m fine, you’ve just been making us wait.”
“That’s fair,” Jen clapped, “Well let’s start class.”
Today's class was about magic, which was related to one's use of mana and attributes.
Jen started, “So magic, in its simplest definition, is the act of using one's mana and attribute in such a way to enhance and modify the effect.”
Anna opened the book that Jen had provided and went over what she was saying.
“The first step is intent and controlling one’s mana, the same as using one’s attribute normally. Easy enough, the next step requires splitting one’s attribute mana into parts, blocks, strings, multiple components, etc, and having them interact in the formation. This varies greatly between attributes and it's hard to translate magic for one attribute to be used for another.”
Jen then asked, “So magic can be hard to perform, and it is very difficult to create in the first place, so why do we try?”
Luna answered, “Because it can enhance the effect of certain attributes.”
[I can feel your smugness.] (Syrus)
[I’m just making her happy.] (Luna)
“Correct!” Jen proudly smiled, extra happy that Luna emphasised ‘certain’.
“It can be as simple as two splits of attribute mana that collide into each other to make a big boom or a complicated web of attribute mana that is designed to create a specific effect. However, complexity doesn’t necessarily equal power.”
Jen pulled out a big piece of paper and referencing yesterday's lesson she said, “Once again, this is me making stuff up because I haven’t been able to acquire the right books on the subject. But I personally split magic into three tiers, based on their complexity–Tiers 1 to 3! Don’t ask about too many details, I haven’t researched this so this is my own speculation.”
Jen presented a graph to Anna, titled ‘The Average Output of Spells – Observed by Jen. On it were two scales, complexity and output. The line started in the bottom corner at complexity-0 output-1 and then went up in an exponential curve before it quickly flipped into a logarithmic growth plateauing at output-10.
Eva was excited to look at the graph, [Wow, she put a lot of effort into this.]
[Heh, right up your alley Eva.] (Syrus)
[...] Eva paused, embarrassed.
[Nothing to be embarrassed about.] (Syrus)
Jen pointed at the graph, “Now while basic magic is powerful, making it more complex doesn’t necessarily make it much stronger–I should specify, this is in general–there are some crazy magics in the world after all.”
Anna nodded along, “Okay.”
Jen continued explaining how magic was made. How different groups of researchers, churches, tribes and people spent ages dedicating themselves to specific groups of magic.
[Did you two learn much magic?] (Eva)
[Too much, but also not enough.] Luna sighed.
[Ehh, not much. I kept it to what I needed, and that worked well enough. With enough experience you know what works best.] Syrus answered, then asked [How many did you learn, Eva?]
Eva replied, [None..] But she still stayed in the body. While Luna really wanted to elbow Syrus if she could.
Jen sighed as she really wished she had a drink of water right now, “Now there are plenty of attributes which you don’t need to use magic for, and that are just as strong without the use of magic.”
Syrus chimed in this time, [Yep, don’t really need to use any magic for a Blood gift.]
[How about using Blood outside the body?] Eva asked, curious about the application.
[That… would require it, yeah. And honestly, a damn complicated magic to do so. It’s why in those books the only people that use blood outside their body are those fancy bodies with too much time on their hands.] (Syrus)
“Okay, now the explanation is done!” Jen handed Anna a book, “It is time for the practical component.”
“Finally,” Syrus rolled her eyes.
Jen grabbed her heart, “Anna…”
Luna apologised, “Sorry Mum, you did hype up today's lesson by saying it had a practical element. And it took over an hour for us to reach it.”
Eva added, “It might be better to format the lesson to be more efficient…”
Jen couldn’t reply, all her children were against her!
Anna started to open the book when Jen spoke again, “But… it was interesting right…?”
Eva replied, “Yes… but different lessons work for different people… but an hour-long lesson where you did go over points one too many times can get tedious.”
Jen gracefully accepted defeat and Anna got to reading.
In the book were the instructions for three simple Fire magic.
One was an attack that launched a ball of fire at high velocity, while the other two were more for utility. The second was magic that created a wall of fire that lasted for about a minute and the third created a small ball of fire–it didn’t float but could be placed in a torch or something similar.
[Yep, I have similar tricks already.] (Syrus)
[So you don’t need to learn them?] (Lilly)
[I don’t, but I will, just to show off anyway.] (Syrus)
“Neat,” Syrus said, “Do I just begin trying to put these into practice?”
Jen replied, “Yes, start with the first one.”
“The offensive one first?” Luna asked. Syrus was also confused, usually, any offensive trick was learned last.
“Yes… I don’t want you to get hurt… in a fight with anything dangerous” Jen sternly said, “So you need to be able to defend yourself.”
Syrus nodded, “Well I’m not complaining, time to set stuff on fire.”
Jen paused, “Do… keep it somewhat constrained please.”
They started to practise the magic in the book. It would take days for a normal person to even begin to understand magic, so Syrus faked it–with Luna’s help–to pretend to be learning from scratch. George later came over once he was done with his work, to provide tips and share his own experiences.
A family activity, with a healthy amount of internal and external bantering. It made Anna excited for the next day to continue the practice, however, that excitement was extremely misplaced.