Chapter 3: 3. Prepared

I woke up early. I couldn’t stay sleeping knowing what was happening today. Today I was going to start training to be a hunter! Even if I think adventuring is better, I have to start somewhere. After getting my room clean enough, I walk downstairs to see mom off on her way to town. 

“Byeee! I love you mom!”

“Love you more. I’ll see you later.” she says before giving dad a kiss. Disgusting. I’ve already told them how I feel about kissing, but it didn’t stop them the last 20 times, so now I just make sure they can see me cringe. I watch as mom walks through the door before turning to dad. 

“When can I learn to be like you!”

“You’ll never be as good as me but, maybe with a lot of hard work you might be able to come close,”

Before I can respond the door opens again.

“Nope. Not one person is leaving for town.” My mom says while making an overdramatized ‘X’ shape with her hands, “Bad things are going to happen there and we’re not going to be a part of it.”

“Think it’s that damn cult making trouble?” he says while getting visibly annoyed.

“Just because you don’t like them doesn’t mean everything is their fault,” Alyssa playfully rolls her eyes, “could be a plague, or a backed up sewer system for all we know. You don’t have to jump to conclusions.”

“Why do you think something bad is going to happen?” I wonder.

“I don’t think something bad will happen, I know it, I can feel it in my bones. But on the upside, this means I can spend more time with my wonderful daughter and maybe even help with your training.”

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“Now, Alice do you know what magic is?”, my mother questions while pushing up a pair of glasses that materialized out of thin air a few seconds ago.

“That!” I shout while pointing at the witchcraft before me. If that’s not magic, what is?

“Nice try, but this technically isn’t magic. It’s classified as a miracle.”

“What’s the difference? Magic is magic.”

“No and yes, there is one small yet very important difference: A miracle is the magic of a god. For example, if you were to pray for a fireball That is a miracle. But, if you make the fireball yourself, that’s magic. Another thing is, miracles are normally too powerful for use outside of emergencies, the fireball you get from a miracle would probably be an immortal flame that burns everything and can never be extinguished, at the very least.” After a short pause she continues, “ what I’m going to teach you is magic and the first step is sensing and manipulating mana. Any questions? “

“Mmh..”I mumble while trying to organize my thoughts, “Wait! How are you using miracles if their too powerful?”

“I said they are normally  too strong, always make sure to remember that there’s an exception to every rule.

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“Any more questions?

“Umm… What makes magic possible? How can a human do make their own miracles?” I ask after a bit of thought.

“Good question. A human and a god might be different in all kinds of ways but they will always have one thing in common: their soul. The soul is made up three parts: a very incredibly teeny tiny speck of divinity, too small to even see, a thick shell of solidified mana around that, and then a layer of loose mana after that. The loose mana is what is used for spells as it is already separate from the soul, trying to use the hard mana ,dubbed a mana core, for a spell might lead to a stronger spell but could cause permanent damage to the soul, and while there is ambient mana in the air, the steps you have to take to use it are long and tedious.” Looking winded from the long tirade about the basics of the soul she takes a moment to collect herself. “ So in short you need to feel the mana in your soul before anything else can happen. Even though the theory part of the lesson was rather short, that’s because a lot of practice has to be put into this.” 

Immediately I tried to put it into practice and find my soul. Then I realized, that I didn’t know where my soul was.I tried focusing on feeling the mana in my body, with no results. I tried following my blood to see if something was at wherever it ended up, maybe it had something to do with breathing, apparently not? Through out many iterations of trial and error I noticed I noticed that in all these attempts, I could always feel something at the edge of my awareness, but the more I tried to grasp it the more fluid it became, evading capture no matter what I did to contain it. It was a confusing situation; I couldn’t contain it, but I needed it to stay still enough for me to use it, maybe I could—

“Time’s up!” my mother shouts, following it with two whistles from a small, wooden whistle, “This can be your homework for today. But don’t stay up too late, you’ll have all the time you need to get it right.”

Eh. Why stop me when I’m so close! Wait… How long was I doing that for? I look up at the sky; the sun was already setting? What happened to lunch? How in the world did we spend a full day on barely anything!?

I guess it’s time for dinner now. I also have to get ready for hunting tomorrow.

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“So. Any luck with that magic stuff” he asks after looking particularly tired. 

“No.” I mumble dejected.

“Well all the better. You don’t need any of that mystical mumbo jumbo for hunting, especially since that’s what we’re doing for tomorrow.”

“Really!”

“Yeah, just be prepared for a whole lot of hard work. If you’re not tired tomorrow, you’re doing something wrong.”

“I’ll make sure to enjoy it! Also where’s mom?”

“Don’t worry, she’s just resting in bed for a bit — seems like there was a price to pay for playing around with miracles so much.”

After talking for a bit more I go to bed, after all I have a long day ahead of me tomorrow.

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