Chapter 14: The Temple (Part One)

"Mary, stop," Jin said, either warping or silently walking up next to her. "Aero is definitely exhausted after the two barriers, so much so that he barely gave us goodnight hugs. Even if you woke him up, it'd still be a bit before he could cast a spell like that. We can ask him about it tomorrow and I'm sure he'll show us proudly."

Woohoo! Thank you, Jin for being a caring father!

"Yeah, I know. I'm just excited is all." Mary said turning back and walking with Jin toward the living room.

"I gotta say, man, you're different after having a kid," Nezu said, having moved somewhat from when he last spoke. "More mature than I've ever seen ya, and really put together for a guy our age, especially compared to our peers..."

I can just smell a 'but' coming.

"Man I can feel the 'although', just get on with it," Jin said, stealing the thought right out of my head.

"I was getting there, But, you've also become a lot more stubborn, narrowminded, and fixated on the weirdest things when it comes to raising a kid," Nezu said, sighing and audibly shaking his head. "First of all, Jin, you're a Lightning and Space prodigy, of course, you'd suck at barriers since you just dodge everything!" Nezu said, definitely pointing and pivoting an accusatory finger. 

"Whilst you, Mary, are trying to compare his magical talent to his physical when he's still a legitimate baby! Of course, he's lacking when he's compared to his immense talent in Barriers! Give him time to grow then try again.  You guys are way too expecting as parents." Nezu said in an exasperated tone. "I swear you saw one hint of talent and think he's already a saint, let him have some space to fail. Unless you wanna end up with a kid like me, who grabbed whatever he could from his overbearing brainiacs and split."

Ya know, I'm starting to really like this Nezu guy, a real stand-up Uncle.

Anyhow, after about ten more minutes of conversation, almost none of it about me, it looks like Nezu is getting ready to leave, and so should I. That was the plan anyway.

"One other thing I think you've done as a parent, which I thought I helped drill into you to never do, even in your own home," Nezu said, as his next words would doom me to close supervision for the next month.

"You really let your guard down," Nezu said, as I appeared in his lap with a thud. Looking up, I could see his eyes glowing with a faint teal light. 

Bastard. 

---

The next months passed in the blink of an eye, as I just continued to develop and train the two things that came naturally, Barriers, Wind, and my third discovered "talent" lightning. It took very little convincing on my part, as in I simply asked 'what's that?' the next time I saw Jin cast a lightning-based spell, and I had added it as a branch to my repertoire.

Of course, as far as Jin and Mary know, only under supervision.

Lightning progress comes much slower, but I have some big plans with it in the future, so I need to train whilst I can best, with the ever-learning body of a child.

However, one thing was coming soon, and it would change everything. My long, long over-due visit to 'The Temple.'

For children and parents on Veru, Veru being the name of the planet I've reincarnated on which I learned from the books in my chest, today is the most important day for parents expecting great magic from their children. Once a child reaches age two, their body's magical network usually fully develops. In cases such as genius children, mana networks have been seen being developed as early as four-months-old.

However, in every child no matter the latent talent or abilities, their networks will be completed at age two. So, in essence, I've been casting at a handicap for the first year or so of my magical practice. Thanks, biology. 

Since a whole bunch of stuff has happened, we were really able to head to the temple to do, whatever they do, to determine magical affinity. 

I learned all of this within the months leading up to my supposed visit, since for about four to six hours a day, sometimes even longer, I'm left completely unsupervised.

Jin needs to go into the woods for some reason, Mary needs to train, they work out together, keep the house in order, etc. So, once I'm left unsupervised, I either meditate and train within that state, or open my chest and continue to read.

At this point, I can move around freely within my meditative stance, I think I'm gonna call this state a Trance from now on, however it comes with a few burdens. First of all, I cannot cast any spells, as I'm already focused on sending mana out and away from my body, to force it to generate mana faster. Still have no idea how that works.

Second of all, it is a huge mental burden to keep doing. It's like trying to count to one thousand in your mind whilst reading a book out loud. I can do it, but it requires much more focus than normal. Also, after a while, my chest really really starts to hurt and I have to stop.

Of course, the benefits highly outweigh the drawbacks, as I can hear noticeably better, see noticeably farther, and feel overall stronger and more agile.

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Well, there's no way to prove how much stronger yet, but I have a good idea.

Using my training dagger, I thrust it as hard as possible at my dummy, causing a small indent to be left on its chest. Also known as literally nothing.

Then, doing the same thing however this time in a Trance, it makes a very small cut. So, the boost given might not be much, but it does exist.

Outside of developments with my Trance, I've been able to read two of the books completely.

I know I know, I've had what, eight months? I should have been able to finish all three, but I wanted to test and learn and absorb all the information from the first two before I moved on to the third. Nothing wrong with taking a little extra precaution ya know?

After I finished reading "Intro to Magic" I decided to move on to reading "Playing With Affinities", skipping over custom spells until I knew my affinities and what I would need later on. Besides, I've been wondering something ever since I thought Gary was an intruder, and the book "Playing with Affinities" answered a large section of that.

When I used the dome, Gary said he hadn't encountered one like that in a long time, meaning they have to either be hard to make, or useless. If a dome that blocked air was rare, then was I naturally suited to barrier magic, or were barriers seriously underdeveloped?

The answer I got, was a little bit of both.

Only about one out of every three people is born with a shred of latent magical talent, and that chance only gets lower and lower the more affinities a person has.

An affinity is a certain predisposition to being able to cast certain magic, a person with a fire-magic affinity will find it easier to ignite their mana, and have fire-based spells consume less mana for the effect.

The average person has only one affinity, and apparently, some equal parts powerful and insane figure aptly named The Mad Sage, had nine recorded magical affinities. Talk about being born with a silver spoon huh?

Any person with magical talent can cast any spell, but they'll be limited by the insane mana cost of some spells, as well as the increasing complexity of mana manipulation if they don't have an affinity for that certain element.

I should probably mention, through both books I've been able to find out every common branch of magic. There are other, more exotic types according to the book, but these are some of the most well-documented, at the time of this book's publishing.

In order from the most common to have an affinity with to the rarest, we have Fire, Wind, Water, Earth, Illusion, Enhancement, Lightning, Space, Light, Barrier, and Mind.

The small orbs I found also are used to further indicate affinities, the glow and amount of light given off indicating if you have the affinities and to what extent.

So, with that, I was able to find out generally, where my strengths lie.

My strongest affinity is to Barrier magic, which was kinda obvious, followed by Enhancement and  Lightning magic.

Then rounding out last place in terms of strength are Space and Wind magic, which is interesting. Although I've been practicing nothing but Barrier and Wind magic, Wind magic is my lowest quality affinity. Even stranger, of course, is although lightning is supposed to be one of my best, yet my progress with it is absolute dogshit. 

"Aero!" Mary called, breaking me from my deep thought and forcing me to quickly put away the books and marbles. 

Just as I put my stuff away and began to fire a ball of wind lazily at the dummy, Jin and Mary walked into my room, geared up and ready to travel.

"You excited to see what you're good at? You also get to meet another one of your real Uncles!" Mary said, picking me up into a big hug.

Well, I would be, if I didn't already know what affinities I had.

Man, this is why spoilers are so bad. It completely ruins the excitement of not knowing! Whatever, I guess I need to try and seem excited, it's not like I don't know what's coming, right?

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