Chapter 6: Chapter 4 – Magic System

"Before explaining Magic, Mana must be understood." Cynthia explained.

"Okay, so what is Mana then?"

"I was getting to that! Stop cutting off brat. Anyway, Mana is the universal, most primal form of energy, all other energy is just an inferior version of it... Is what those old hacks would say, haha!" Cynthia mockingly laughs, until she goes quiet and gazes into the distance.

"Again, we are running on borrowed time, what is Mana?" Snapping Cynthia out of her daze and quietly clearing her throat to hide her embarrassment.

"Right you are kid! Though the reason I'm taking my time isn't because we have excess time or anything. Its just important to make sure anything i'm teaching properly gets through that thick skull of yours! You learn so slow that I must teach slower. So if you are blaming anyone, then it should be yourself!" Cynthia chuckles.

"Getting back on topic.

Mana, is the energy that fuels matrixes to create Magic!" She casts a small spell making a fireball quadruple the size of her palm, "It is what i like to call, a higher derived energy. Other such cases are Ki, and Drana, what the religious fucks call their 'Divine Energy'."

Newt nodding along pauses for a moment before raising his hand.

"Yes?"

"Why do you call them 'higher derived energy'?" Newt questions, a large grin spreads across Cynthia's face sending a chilling shiver down Newt's back.

"Well its a working theory of mine that all energy types, Mana, Drana, Ki, and the other minor ones, are all derived from a single base core Energy.

The more i look into what each energy, is and does. The similarities become increasingly more apparent between the three higher Energy types. Of course they are also incredibly different, Mana allows for Magic, and the possibilities are nigh endless with what you can do with it. Drana and Ki i am far less experienced with, Drana being the least I know about. Though through some personal experiences and the scant few reports on the capabilities of Drana, shows that it seems to overpower and tries to cancel out other energy, stopping whatever they are doing and destroying them.

Drana i'm not too sure where to put in this theory however, because it has a point of origin, the gods, and most fascinating, is that of the 'Holy Guide' that only those that use Drana have, though that may just be correlation and not causation.

The Gods created the Holy Guide and also its preached that Drana is a holy energy that the Gods create and bestow upon their loyal followers, the Holy Guide however, seems to only appear in those born with Drana. The Information on the Holy Guide is very far and few between. Those born with Drana are fanatics to the highest degree, and would rather die than spill even a minor secret.

Weirdly enough, more and more people keep being born with Drana. Its like its spreading with time, and the longer we wait the more the Churches forces grow stronger.

Ah getting back on topic." Cynthia snaps out of her tangent and continues. "Drana has similar abilities to Ki and Mana. With Ki, their power is focused on body enhancement and weaponry. Once someone reaches a certain level of mastery with their weapons, to the point where their weapons become extensions of their body, allowing them to use Ki to not only amplify the strength of the weapon and mitimize their weakness, and one of the most common cases of Ki usage is known as Ki blade, covering the weapon with a layer of Ki that strengthen's it in numerous ways, but the most useful one is using the weapon and the Ki covering it, to create projectiles."

Newt began thinking of the first thing that came to mind and that only continued to grow as Cynthia explained it.

Cultivators!

"Are there different realms they slowly cultivate through to achieve immortality?!" Newt blurts out with a raised hand.

"Hmm? What are you talking about? Though they cultivate Ki over time, they just use the Ki for techniques to cause certain effects to happen and to strengthen their bodies more, i don't know much about it though."

"Certain effects?"

"Apparently once you reach a certain level, its said that you can effect the very reality we stand on, allowing them to shoot lightning from spears. Though its often criticized as very few have ever reached it, and even fewer recorded that have, the only person who its rumored to have reached said level is General Eclipse. It's highly likely its the whole thing is made up. Though it doesn't matter, you're learning magic!"

"Mana or more specifically Magic, is far superior to both of them, Ki blade and magic body enhancement are things that have been replicated in Magic! Even the destructive tendencies of Drana can be replicated! In theory at least."

Cynthia bragged and looked at Newt's confused face. "I can guess what your thinking, 'Then isn't Magic better than the others? Why would anyone use the others when Magic can just overpower them?'" Seeing Newt nod she grins and continues, "Good! Any half baked mage who has looked into this knowledge has asked the same question! However the answer was actually pretty simple and highly suspected, eventually getting confirmed by the extremely rare Magic-Ki wielding warriors, who have in the past few centuries become known as the, coincidentally named "Transcendent Sect". Maybe they also want to transcend and become immortals." She snorts, shakes her head and continues, "One of the elders of the sect confirmed our theory, Magic as a system of power, is far more complicated in comparison to Ki."

Newt tilted his head to show his confusion, Cynthia gestures for him to ask. "How is Mana more complicated than Ki?".

Cynthia starts laughing maniacally before turning her gaze back to Newt, who was even more confused. "You're serious?" Newt nods.

"Brat we are doing even more lessons since you cant see something so obvious." Dread and despair covers his face as she continues. "First to correct your misunderstanding, I said Magic as a system is far more complicated, not mana. However I get what you're asking, think about the different pathways to powers of both Mana and Ki."

Newt was half-heartedly thinking about it knowing the answer was going to be explained anyway, "Also if you answer correctly for why its more complicated, we won't do the extra lessons."

Suffice to say Newt's brain was running faster than sound to figure out the answer, and it didn't take long to find it. "Oh..." Newt muttered, Cynthia grins and gestures for him to continue.

"Mana is mostly used as fuel and is used to do Magic, however Magic covers such a massive range of spells ranging from changing the weather, summoning a meteorite, accelerating the growth of living organisms and more. Not to mention any spells require a spell formula and a unique Matrix. Learning and creating Magic spells are such a arduous and time consuming process that Ki would look far easier by just strengthening and coating weapons with it."

"Excellent! You get a 1 out of 10." Cynthia replies surprising Newt since he was certain he was right.

"Firstly i get the point of oversimplification the use of Ki, so that's fine. Still -1."

"You just said it was fine?!" Newt exclaims.

"Yes, it was fine for me, but you have to do better than my expectations, even if in the same situation i would do the same."

"That's ridiculous!"

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"Moving on."

Cynthia thinks for a moment and continues, "I haven't taught you much on spell formulas, so your explanation on what every spell needs was very limited. -3"

"How is that my fault?! You just said you hadn't taught me much! It's your fault!"

"Don't try explain something you don't understand, especially to someone who actually understands the subject."

"Oh come on!"

"Professionals have standards brat, if you ever go to a Magic Academy make sure to keep everything i say in mind."

"Next, the elder actually confirmed not only the theory but also added on a few major points that we didn't think about, such as that Mana is far harder to manipulate than Ki. The difference is, in his words, 'The difficulty between trying to push a pebble and the difference of pushing a boulder.' -2"

"Okay now you're just making fun of me! How was i suppose to know something some of the best minds of the past few decades and you didn't realise! With less information might i add!"

"Okay you're getting the extra lessons no matter what, now you’ll need to bring up this point total over the rest of the day or you will be getting mandatory discipline lessons for your rude attitude." Cynthia threatens with a clenched fist and a terrifying smile. Newt internally yells, SINCE WHEN WAS THIS NOT MANDATORY?!

"Finally, the other main point the elder said, and something which we actually tested, Ki is simple but more powerful, think of Magic as a Jack of all trades, while Ki is a Master of one, any replication or reverse engineering from even the most talented people I know couldn't replicate the strength and efficiency of it. We can create an inferior, weaker, more energy expensive version of say, a Ki blade. That doesn't mean all Ki Blades will always defeat all Mana Blades, just that if anything of similar energy use and mastery, then Ki Blades will always win."

"Honestly while Mana Blades can be useful in very specific cases, it usually is more cost efficient to just use a spell that costs less but has far more destructive capabilities." Cynthia finishes explaining.

"Back to Drana as a certain brat kept getting sidetracked." She glares at Newt who is internally complaining about the lack of justice.

"Kid." Cynthia stops glaring and looks dead in Newts eyes. All sound outside of Cynthia’s voice seemed to disappear as Newt sensed the seriousness in her tone.

"If you ever run into a someone skilled with a similar energy quantity of Drana, or gods forbid someone who outclasses you. Run."

"W-Why though? I'm learning magic and clearly its superior to other energy types?"

Cynthia groans and chastises him, "Kid, i wasn't explaining the other energy types and Magic because Mana is superior. Because simply its not, all of them have their strengths, however Drana has almost no known weakness, with the help of the Holy Guide, its nature, how fast it grows with it, and finally 2 dangerous trump cards. Drana is the most dangerous energy an enemy can have.

First of the trump cards is that Drana can be used in a very similar way to Ki, not only that, its on par with Ki meaning they have all the upsides of Ki."

"The other however is arguably even worse. They have their version of Magic, inferior version, less efficient, but still tremendously powerful, known as Prayers. A Prayer calls for the help of a god to perform an act, the act is limited by the amount of Drana used for it and the complexity of the Prayer. These Prayers take time to perform however there are cases of people not only sacrificing something such as life span to not only speed up the time required for the prayer, but also the strength of the effect it creates. The most terrifying part is, they can be performed in a group."

"How is that more terrifying? Mages can do the same?"

"Fool, what was the first thing i showed you about Magi-Artificing?”

Newt in a panic thinks back. "The fireball difference?"

"Yes...Magi-Artificing is the culmination of my relentless research and testing. To try and bring artifacts up to a level where they can combat their Prayers..."

"Why don't Mages just manually do a group spell?"

"Mana incompatibility."

Newt's confused face looked at the grim smile plastered on Cynthia’s face.

"Mana, like Ki, is cultivated, however unlike Ki, Mana acclimates to your body, on the other hand Ki, changes your body, forces your body to be compatible with it."

"Once you regularly use Mana and have it stored in your body, your body changes slightly and changes all Mana that enters your body into a more compatible version of Mana. So everyone has near identical but different types of Mana, which start to conflict whenever it interacts with other Mana and Magic. Meaning the only solution to accomplish a group spell was Magi-Artificing, to forcefully convert Personalized-Mana into pure Mana. Another option was to have artifacts with stored personalised mana to cast and power the spell, however that comes with its own issues such as mental exhaustion or decrease mana purity. One being expensive, time consuming but relatively efficient in use for that one person, the other however losing excessive amounts of mana, and you bodies mana pathways getting damaged from mana poisoning or having the mana purity drop further.

"This is one of the main reasons Magi-Artificing is great, while it can be time consuming, once everything is finished with the Artifact and its all done properly, the lost Mana and amplification becomes damn near non-existent, becoming a powerful and useful Artifact usable by everyone. The only downside is to design and create a top tier Artifact, takes a long time, however once its designed, the time to create it drastically decreases."

"Honestly, I had thought that if i had published my Craftmanship in Uniune, i could have made the single biggest step towards defeating and annihilating the churches." Cynthia chuckles in sadness.

"Thought? Past tense?" Newt questions.

"Remember that scrolls and papers i stole which has set the entire city into lockdown?"

"Yes?"

"Would you like to know what is on those scrolls? On those reports?" Cynthia asks with a somber look on her face.

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