Everybody gathered in a small clearing in the forest that had a few scorch marks on the opposite side of where I was. Staash stood in front of me while the others moved to the side and Kora stood in the middle and assumed a defensive position.

"OK, Kora will protect the little human from any missed flame. Now, you just need to use your strongest fire breath on me. Don't worry about my safety, I have enough skills to protect me" Staash said as he prepared to face me.

I nodded, not sure if this was normal dragon behavior or just this world's normal behavior. I began accumulating magicules in the bottom of my throat and felt something mixing with it as there was a sudden buildup of energy and pressure. Analyzing it while there wasn't any danger that required me to expel my breath attack gave me some sort of natural understanding of my own power. First, the thing my magicules mixed up with was somehow supercharging them, and that was the reason for the pressure and energy buildup I was feeling. Second, that thing was coming from somewhere between the base of my throat and my heart, it's hard to describe as I can only feel the flow of energy like when you drink cold water and feel it descending your esophagus.

The pressure hit the maximum I could hold, I cast a final glance towards Staash and he gave me an affirmative nod. I released my breath attack and a beam of pure plasma made its way through my throat and mouth towards Staash, igniting the oxygen in the air around it and forming a cone of flames that surrounded the plasma beam. The plasma itself was a blue almost violet color, the flames in the air were the normal red flame as the air molecules don't have the chance to heat enough for the flame to change color as they move out of the way and cold air moves in to replace it.

My aim was true and it hit Staash on the chest, the sudden obstacle threw the plasma all around him, scorching the dirt, stone and cutting through trees like a hot knife cut through butter. Staash didn't let my attack continue to hit him right in the chest and put one of his front legs to protect himself from the beam, fortunately it didn't last more than a few seconds like that and I ran out of juice for it.

"Staash?" Kora said with worry in her voice as she saw her brother panting, but he held his paw up to stop her from coming too close.

With his already up paw, he turned it towards the sky and a beam of thermal energy shot from out of his hand towards the sky, piercing the air as it passed through. The beam itself was outside of the human vision range, so for Jana it looked like Staash was just holding his hand up, doing nothing.

After several moments, the beam faded and Staash was visibly colder, even the air around him dropped maybe a dozen degrees.

"That was an amazing fire breath, it even surpassed my [Heat Resistance] with ease and I had to use magic to keep myself from overheating… Did you even hear me now? I, a fire drake, had to keep myself from overheating, oh boy, that's the good stuff you got there" he praised me. "If I'm not mistaken, your fire was even stronger than most of the other fire dragons I've ever met, if not all"

"Thanks…" I said, the place where my cheeks would relatively be becoming hotter as I blushed.

"And let me say, I loved the whole color changing thingy you got there" he continued. "I must say, when I saw your bright yellow color the last thing I thought was that you were a fire dragon, then you changed to red back in our house, then back to yellow and now the blue spreading from your throat outwards towards your body just before your fire breath was amazing"

I was beginning to feel embarrassed, and him commenting of how I was changing to a violet color was not helping at all

"Tho, I'll say that I felt it was a bit lacking" Staash said, caughting me by surprise.

"What do you mean?" I asked curiously.

"For the amount of magicules you've spent on it, it felt just like a shadow of what it could be. Just like when Kora tried to cast a fire spell, you know, when you have a terrible affinity towards an element and just waste a bunch of magicules to compensate for the lack of mana" He explained.

I didn't know how to respond as I only had learned how to cast one single spell and it was the [Fireball] spell, so I couldn't compare it to other things I could do, I didn't even know if my skills were considered proper magic to compare them. As I heard the explanation, something Staash said bugged my mind like a fly that flew over your ear when you were just about to sleep.

"You said mana like it isn't the same thing as magicules" I questioned.

Staash gave me a puzzled look, as if trying to understand what I've just said.

"Because… they are? He answered, still confused.

"They… are?" I asked, confused as well.

Staash looked at Kora and Amity, who both shook their heads, then looked back at me.

“Humm, you see… Mana and magicules…” He began to speak, clearly not sure of how to explain when Jana interrupted him.

“Oh, I know how to explain the difference… if…that’s what you’re trying to say, sir… dragon sir” Jana began excited but turned sheeply as she noted both dragons were looking directly at her.

“Great! now, if you could” Staash told her and nodded energetically.

“Oh, okay… So, mana and magicules, they are a little hard to differentiate after they are injected in any kind of magic, but you can think of the magic as a fire where the magicules are the combustible for the flame and the spark is mana, both are connected, but they aren’t the same thing. this is the easiest explanation I can give'' Jana explained.

“I think I understood” I lied, but nodded while I activated my skill [Knowledge Library].

[ Magicules have the energy potential that any magic or ritual needs while mana have the elemental charge needed to give purpose to the energy the magicules possess. Under normal circumstances mana and magicules behave like the magnetic field of a magnet, but those conditions can change based on circumstances, like the bodies of a few magical creatures such as monster, who can keep a mana charge inside of a crystal that their bodies naturally produce ]

I didn’t have the mind to tell Jana that her explanation wasn’t that good, but at least now I had a good enough understanding of how mana and magicules were different things.

“Well, I think that’s the best explanation you’ll have from us” Kora said, her ice shield melting away at a rapid pace.

“True, but anyway, I say we go back and…-” Staash stopped mid sentence and looked somewhere behind me.

“They’re already coming back? didn’t we beat them like last week?” Staash said to kora.

“If I’m not mistaken, it has already been twenty days since they showed themselves” Kora answered.

“Hummm, what… What are you guys talking about?” I asked them.

“Just some magicians who we’ll beat until they learn their place and accept we are better” Staash said.

I looked at him confused, but Kora answered and clarified.

“It’s a group of magicians from a town near here. They come here somewhat regularly to play Manaball against us… Hm, isn’t that quite a coincidence we were talking about mana right now? Must have been a laugh from Zwriniz” She said.

“A… Laugh?” I asked, but they ignored me to look at the yet to be seen by me group of magicians.