Chapter 19: A Wall and an Idea

A year and a half.

It's been a year and a half since my visit to the temple and the visits from each of the magic academy reps. A few more have trickled in over these last few months, but otherwise? Crickets. My third birthday came and went peacefully, we had different guests over, as usual, and this time Uncle Vince even dropped by to say hello and wish me a happy birthday. 

Yet in a year and a half, not only have I hit levels of boredom I didn't think possible, but I've also only made marginal progress in the magical field. I still can't move in my meditation even after a year of practice, and at this point, meditation is almost pointless unless I'm trying to focus or create some type of new magic since apparently, I've hit my limit.

No matter how much I try to meditate, expend mana, train, or do anything outside of routine training, nothing happens. My mana pool doesn't gain any significant amount, and in fact, I can feel as if whenever it tries to expand, the mana circulating through my body and mana heart goes haywire, causing a ton of pain in my chest and body.

On a day-to-day basis, it's fine, I use my mana till it's all gone and fall asleep. But trying to push it to expand any faster than that just ends in pain. Why?

Biological limits? Does that even make sense? I thought magic was, well, magical. Tied to a person's mind or soul or whatever. Not limited by my body. Like an MP bar in a video game.

Huh. I guess I have been considering magic more of a game than anything else since I got here. But it makes sense if I take my head out of my ass. This is real life, not a game. No shit a child can't just infinitely expand their mana. 

I've been thinking about just trying to push through it, but if I think of my mana system as a muscle, overuse could probably ruin it just like it could ruin a muscle, damaging it permanently.

There's no chance I'm taking that gamble. Slowly but surely I can feel the cap expanding, but it just seems for now that my body cannot keep up with my mana. So truly, I've become stuck.

There is only so much control I can have with lightning, only so powerful of a dome or barrier, only levitate for so long, until I run out of either new ideas or mana. Without expanding my mana, I can only levitate for a few minutes. If I'm unable to levitate, I can't work on the spell or learn how to do it more efficiently, and if I can't do it more efficiently, I won't be able to make any real progress. Sure, I can float a little longer, and move a little better in the air, but without more mana or magical understanding, it's useless.

And I can't gain any deeper magical knowledge outside of this stupid trial and error since my books got taken away! 

That has to be the second worst, penultimate frustration of this last year of boredom hell. I can't even read the books I rightfully stole.

I can't get any more information out of them either, since that would reveal I'm much more capable than I've let on so far. Sure, they know about my mana capacity and ability to make barrier domes, but that's about it. I can't risk being put under a ton of attention until I figure out what's normal to do and what's not. No use in more burdensome expectations. 

This entire month I've only been able to make slight progress on controlling my lighting magic. I can curve a beam of lightning in any cardinal direction with the flick of my wrist. How shocking. I just wish I could get some practice on things that move. 

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I can't exactly ask my parents do it, I don't have any siblings, and it's not like...

YES, I CAN!

Sitting up and widening my eyes, it's as if I've just reached enlightenment. A solution to every problem I've been having!

I'll go into the woods! If I can just find some animals or magical animals to hunt, I could try out new spells and ideas! I just have to make sure to stay away from Magical Beasts! That'll not only provide me with plenty of practical practice, inspiration, and moving targets but also the more time I spend on meaningful training, the longer I can put off the itch.

Magical Beasts were described in "Intro to Magic" as normal or magical animals that have been exposed to enough natural mana or have killed another magical beast, from that, they have evolved and adapted to use advanced forms of magic. They're pretty easy to spot, covered usually in unnatural colors and just oozing violent feeling mana, like Uncle Vinny after one too many drinks.

So, my plan is to try and find and hunt different animals, both with and without magic. If the animals have magic, I'll try to steal it for myself, if not, I'll try to hunt them with the magic I have now. It's perfect! This plan literally can't go tits up!

Sure, it might not be the most efficient way of training, but it can give me new ideas for magic and also help me use it in a practical way. Now, all I have to do is find out what is around us, and that's probably the easiest part of this plan. I have a walking almanac right at home!

Walking out into the kitchen and giving Jin the biggest puppy eyes I could muster, I took my shot.

"Hey, dad? What kind of stuff is in the forest?" I asked with innocent curiosity.

"Well, in our little slice of land here, we have plenty of animals all around! We have ones with magic like me and you too!" He said as he prepared the fireplace to cook stew.  "But don't worry about your mom and me silly, there are no monsters here! Even in there were, your mom and I are tough enough to stop em in their tracks! That answer ya question?" Jin was many things, but dishonest was not one of them.

"Yep! Thank you," I said, walking back to my room without much more of a fuss.

Now that I know I most likely wouldn't run into any Magical Beats, tonight would be a perfect night to test out my hunting magic! Jin sleeps at roughly ten o'clock at night, every single night, without fail. So I'll just leave an hour after he's gone to bed.

Now all that's left, is to wait for nightfall and begin my new training. I'm shaking just thinking about it.

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