Chapter 13: Chapter 12: Spells, elves and spirits

Back at the mansion after this incident during which the ball Alice threw had been vaporized in the atmosphere, Serena was looking at Alice while seemingly thinking really hard.

“Is there something wrong?”
“Do you remember when I said you had a misconception about magic earlier?”
“I do, but you also said there was no need to tell me more as you were not sure about something…”
“That was before you made this gradual casting on your mana. Are you really certain you weren’t actively casting your magic the whole time?”
“Mmh… Again, all the casting happened at the exact same time the ball left my hand. After this, I was a spectator too…”
“As I thought… Then, I might as well tell you what I’m thinking right now.”

The atmosphere suddenly became much heavier than before, and Alice gulped. Even her maid Mia was feeling tense, even though she did not understand a thing about Alice’s magic.

“You got something wrong.”
“W-where did I make a mistake?”
“About easily being able to perform what you did simply because it’s included in your magic type.”
“How is that not true?”
"The more knowledgeable you are, the broader your magic type will be, and the more various things you will be able to do. That much is true. You probably heard countless times that knowledge equals power, right?"
“I did, why? Is it false?”
“It’s quite true within the scope of nobility and at the scale of a country. More complex and versatile elements do tend to elevate a kingdom's power. You could say it creates prestige. It’s undeniable that this increase in magical expertise is one of the reasons most human kingdoms have progressed so much during the last century.
"Then-"
"But less knowledgeable people with more restricted elements have a significant advantage."
"Eh?"

This was not something Alice had expected to hear. She had never heard about any advantage related to having unrefined magic types.
Guessing exactly that, Serena decided to elaborate.

"Uneducated people are pretty much guided by their magic type. They don't have to think at the lowest level about what they need to do in order to bend reality to their will like we do."
"What do you mean?"
"Take my magic. If my element only made me able to make, let's say, convex lenses with my mana, that would be quite restricted. As a result, however, I would simply have to merely think about the word "convex" to produce a convex lens. My magic type would basically do it automatically for me."
"Is that not your magic type already?"
"My magic type is 'refraction control'. With that, I am indeed able to create a convex lens, as well as a concave or a plane one. I can even envelop myself in mana to bend the light around me and appear almost invisible. My element is more general, so I can do more things. However, to do these three things, I have to calculate exactly how much refraction is needed and where to apply those magical operations. I am not guided as much as a person who would only have a 'convex lens' element."
"But then..."
"That’s why you’re strange. If you merely gave a strange power, energy or whatever to a projectile without thinking much about what you were doing, it would be explainable. You would have some kind of power-giving magic type that would do all the calculations for you and that would be it. But you can also do several other things just as easily.”

Alice looked at her hands and thought about everything she had done thus far.

“But if my magic type was something like ‘energy conversion’, would it not explain all of it?”
“That’s what I thought too at first but, just now, you made your mana gradually turn into magic without consciously thinking about it. Earlier, you even performed two large-scale conversions at the same time with those spheres. Even worse, you said you stopped monitoring your magic at some point and, yet, your magic was being continually cast. There is also the fact that, before then, your mana only truly transformed into something else on impact when you were throwing things. You have an extremely broad magic type but, somehow, you can do several things without breaking a sweat at all. It’s as if you had several spells."
"Um... What is this 'spell' thing?"

(Am I abnormal then?)

According to Serena, a spell was a specific usage of a mage's magic that was guided by their magic type. Normally humans were only guided for what their element was about, so they had only one spell. As such, the term 'spell' was most of the time interchangeable with 'magic type' and 'element'.
For example, Serena's magic type was broad enough to be described as 'changing the refraction of something'. That was also her only spell: when she wanted to create something concrete with that, like a lens, she had to use this same spell in different areas of the mana she was manipulating with different values, which could quickly become a complex task.

On the other hand, Alice seemed to be guided by her element in so many different ways that it was surreal. Apparently, she could even make her mana activate with some kind of delay or trigger, which was the most suspicious thing for Serena.
From Serena’s explanation, Alice was unnaturally guided for ‘converting her mana into X’, ‘converting X to Y with mana’, but also ‘adding a gradual activation of her mana’, ‘adding a trigger activation of her mana’ or even ‘performing many conversions simultaneously’. Just the last one would be suspicious enough for a beginner like Alice. Even Serena had trouble creating more than one lens at a time. This was actually the reason why, most of the time, she activated her magic on only one of her eyes.

The broadness of a magic type was so antagonistic to magic control that some people with extremely wide elements had no precise spell, or at least that they knew of: these mages did not know how to use the full potential of their magic. It was believed that dozens or even hundreds of potent magic types simply went under the radar every year in the world, with their wielders being seen as mediocre in magic.
For instance, what would ‘universe control’ be about? Surely it sounded like some kind of omnipotent element, but it would probably be way too hard to use this kind of magic consciously or even to sum it up into one concrete spell.
This was one of the reasons why a few kingdoms across the continent rejected this ‘knowledge is power’ ideology. They proned a simpler education system that would lead to simpler and more specialized magic types. There was a high chance to only get a restricted spell, indeed, but it would at least provide assistance to a mage and ensure the magic was usable. However, statistically, those rare kingdoms seemed to be behind the others in terms of power. The only exception to this rule was the Wetrekha Empire which had so many renowned magic prodigies.

"You have been insisting on the word 'humans' many times now... Do monsters have many spells or something?"
"I don't know much about monsters and their magic system. I was mostly thinking about other humanoid species."
"There are others?!"
"Wha-? You didn't know? You're really a sheltered girl..."

Apparently, there were a few other species that lived in many parts of this world, and the elves were among them. Even though they did have pointy ears and were much closer to nature than humans were, there were many differences between them and the classic elven traits from Alice's dreams. For one thing, they did not all have blond hair and they did not exclusively wear green clothes. They were not particularly more proficient with bows than other species either, and did not live in trees or even in forests at all. The stereotype of elves being masters of magic did live on, though.
Still, it was surprising to Alice that they were considered a whole different species instead of just another race like it was custom in most scenarios she knew from her former world.

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(Are they too biologically divergent to be part of the same species?)

"I know an elf guy myself, and he hates when humans use the term 'spell' to describe a magic type, even though it's practically the same thing for us humans. The reason for his discontent is that it’s not rare for elves to have many spells despite having only one element. So, they are not truly the same thing. Honestly, elves don't like the terms 'magic type' and 'element' either. They're so picky."
"What kind of other spells do they have then?"
"Just like us, one of their spells is basically their magic type. But many elves have more spells, which could be called declinations or their element."

Alice thought about all the RPGs she had seen her former self play. Having many variations of the same type of magic made sense to her. Like, in the case of fire magic, in addition to the classic ‘fireball’, there were often some declinations like ‘fire prison’ or ‘fire golem’. So, this word seemed related to the spells in Alice’s memories, at least a little bit.

"So, if you were an elf, despite your element being broad, you could still easily create mana lenses without having to do all the work yourself?"
"Yeah, exactly. Even though my main spell would still be ‘change refraction’, I might still have one that lets me construct a lens easily, and maybe even another that would guide me into becoming near-invisible. That's why I'm wondering if you have some elven blood running in your family or something..."
"... Would that be possible?"
"Hardly. As far as I know, hybrids are barely fertile."
"Oh... I see."

(So demi-humans exist too, but they have trouble reproducing... Maybe only the males are truly sterile, like tigons and ligers on Earth. In the case of elves, a cross-breeding would result either in... a hulf if the father is a human or an elman if he's an elf? Maybe the demis' traits are different depending on which one it is...)

Or maybe only one hybrid between hulves and elmans was possible. This happened a lot for hybrids on Earth, especially from two different plant species.
Alice was getting really interested in this topic about genetics and started to ask Serena what the other humanoid species were like. According to the stories that Alice's former self had read, there might be dwarves, beastfolks and demons. Maybe centaurs too?

"Listen, I'm merely a practical instructor. You will study these other species soon enough during your theoretical lessons, I'm sure. Let's go back to our talk about your awfully convenient magic."
"Alright..."
“Just to be sure, it was the first time that your mana gradually turned into this energy of motion and that you performed a constant mana-to-heat or heat-to-mana conversion, right?”
“Yes, it was.”
“So, if they’re really different spells, you either conveniently had them at the ready before, or…”
“Or I created them in the moment?”
“... Which even having elven blood wouldn’t explain. The most proficient elves have to train their magic for years before a new spell is eventually created. Good thing they live long. If you were able to create one in a few seconds, I would not be surprised if they wanted to kill you.”
“W-why would they want to do this?!”

(Were they not supposed to be a peaceful tribe living in nature?!)

“Because they consider us humans to be quite blasphemous when it comes to magic, to begin with…”
“How so?”
“It’s related to our way of envisioning magic, which is different from theirs. We call the origin of our magic an element, or a magic type. We think of them as intrinsically connected to us, merely an extension of ourselves.”
“... Is that not the case?”
“Well, elves strongly disagree with that. They think of their element as something beyond them, like a superior entity that is somehow connected to their soul.”
“Like a deity?”
“Basically a personal god, yes. They call those entities ‘spirits’ instead of ‘magic types’. They believe that respecting the spirits and praying daily can increase the chances of developing a new spell.”
“Do you think their version is the correct one?”
“I can’t say for sure, especially when I’ve always been told that the human interpretation is the best one. I cannot deny that elves seem to be much better than us humans when it comes to magic though, so maybe they’re right about our magic coming from one spirit that decided to lend us its abilities. Who knows?”

Alice was wondering if elves really had started getting more spells only after praying for spirits became a tradition or if they already had an excellent compatibility with their magic beforehand. If it was the latter, it sounded a lot like a superstition based on nothing.
Still, this belief that some invisible entities like spirits were the true origin of magic was neither stupid, nor original. It might explain why Alice had many spells: maybe she had a strong connection with the spirit that was attached to her. Having watched countless hours of RPGs gameplays in her dreams, Alice felt like she probably understood even better the feeling of abstracting magical operations into various declinations than elves did.

Also, if her magic really came from a superior being with a consciousness of sorts, Alice was hoping that they would prevent her from accidentally killing herself while casting magic. Maybe, she thought, this spell that gradually turned mana into kinetic energy instead of converting everything in one go was simply her spirit protecting her from the heat loss.
She would not bet on it and start acting carelessly again, but it sure was a reassuring thought.

“Honestly, for a first day, I learned way too much information about you. Yet, somehow, I have even more questions than I did before meeting you. I can’t possibly report everything to Master Viktor…”
“Um… Do you really have to tell him everything?”
“I suppose I don’t. I might not tell him this thing about you having many spells for now, but I’ll still have to report that you are also able to deprive this ‘power’ thing from objects and such.”
“This is understandable…”

Since Serena would accompany Alice to the Vallmonts the day after instead of the Countess, and as it was getting late, it was decided that she would stay in the Ravendalls' manor for the night. During dinner, as Alice had expected, the main topic of the conversation was... about magic. Was there anything else in Serena's head not mana-related?

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