Chapter 12 - An old guy babbling on (past) 

"so, life energy, or life magic." 

Emin went on and walked back and forth.

"it's a method to drag out magical power using, well, your surroundings." he said, then he stopped. 

He kneeled down and put his hand on the arena floor. 

"feel the floor, focus and draw out magical force, I saw you shoot life energy in that Ray of yours. I just wanna make sure you understand how you did it." He said.

 

I looked at him funny, he just gazed at me smiling like a fool. 

Oh well, let's give it a shot I thought. 

 

I took my hand on the floor. 

I felt magical energy spread out. 

I didn't think of how I did it much. 

But now when I focused it was easier, I felt it and drew it out. Its like a never ending tap of magic, the ground.

I saw the pool open up, of magical life energy. 

It was like its gatekeeper welcomed me and just helped me by drenching me in his pool. 

 

"Nana, it's good there, you can stop." he said and laughed.

 

I'd gathered an orb bigger than the 3 of us combined while I was thinking there and focusing, a huge green blob, rotating and shining. 

 

"woa. Ops… I… I just focused" I stuttered. 

"Should I dissipate it?" I asked, a bit embarrassed. 

"It's perfect, don't worry. Now focus on turning that energy into light if you can. 

Converting it. 

Your specialisation was light magic so I'd like to see if you can learn to-" He said then stopped as he saw what I did during his explaining. 

He looked amazed. 

 

I thought of it. 

Life changes to light. Like I sort of asked the magical force kindly to change over if that makes sense. I thought I heard a voice.. 

"anything for you Nana" 

Happy and a very bright tone… 

And the orb slowly just changed from a green glowing orb into a light blue, yellow and pink coloured orb, sparkling in those 3 colours. 

It felt like I had company or something during the conversion… 

Hard to explain...

 

"Woaoow, you just pick up fast. And you don't even chant." he said. 

He looked really impressed and stroked his beard. 

"Sure you're not an elf?" he said, raising his brow at me for a moment. But he was just trying to mess with me a bit and laughed. He had some tears that came during his laugh, he laughed way too much at that comment or joke...
He dried them off with his sleeve. 

 

He noticed we were just standing there confused. 

Then he coughed a bit and looked serious again. 

 

"Normally, most people have to chant to bring forth magical energy. 

Otherwise it's like the gatekeeper of the magical pool won't give them access.. 

Or maybe like the pool doesn't know you want it, you have to tell it." he explained as he looked deep in thought again. “See it as if magic isn’t just.. Something that’s within us. Its stored somewhere else, and you have to tell the gatekeeper of the pool of magic you want to use to let you fetch some from its pool.” He smiled at us. “Well, demons and some other races do have it within them, but that's another story.” He said that pretty quickly, then coughed and moved on.

"Some people also have to draw the symbol for the magical pool they want to draw out power from, and they have to do it no matter how high they climb in rank for the rest of their lives. Some can overcome it by practice of course." he kept explaining. 

"It's very rare to just be able to cast. A few can access it by training, but it’s not a lot of people at all who are able to reach it. Some may learn to chant quicker, or shorten it. Some may learn to skip the drawing of runes as I said. But to just cast silently at your age.. " he said as he'd started to stroke his beard yet again. 

Then he just stood still for a moment gazing at the roof, which to be fair was quite a beautiful shiny dome of magic.

 

"Well, compress the orb." he then said. I had been standing there holding it as he explained. Sort of thought he forgot me.

 

"okay" I replied. 

I did, I just focused on it getting smaller. Sort of, asking it to gently shrink for me. 

Kinda like I do with Kiwi. 

And it did. 

 

"good, now store it, within you." he said. 

"huh?" I made a confused sound and looked at him.

"like, just, put it in myself?" I said, sounding really confused, leaning my head to the side making a confused face.

"Yes, exactly" he exclaimed and gestured with his hands wildly towards his stomach as he did. I think I like this guy.. 

 

I pushed it into my belly, and I felt it phasing in me, becoming part of me. 

 

"This is a way to, well, come prepared. Nullify the actual gathering of magical force before a fight and just go.” He said, now sounding serious and looking at me with an intense look while waving his finger at me.

 

“Of course, you seem to gather up magic faster than you can use it anyway now.. But it's good to know!" he said and chuckled.

 

He sat down. 

"sit, both of you". he then said.

We sat down. 

"one last lesson then." he said and sighed as he lit a smoke that smelled of some sort of herb. He just let it sit in his mouth, he seemed to smoke without holding it.

 

"Level.. Your Level is your total power calculated into one number!" he sort of yelled out and gazed at us and held up a finger.

"By leveling from 1 to 100 you earn rank 1 in a skill. Or a magical resource, like Life or Fire." he said in a normal voice now, leaning back.

"then for rank 2 you need to level from 1 to 100 again in said skill, for rank 3 you also need to level from 1 to 100 and so on up to rank 9..." he said, stroking his beard during the speech, taking drags from his smoke a little now and then. 

"then to reach rank 10 from rank 9, you need to level from 1 to 1000. Same goes for reaching 20 from 19. All other ranks seem to be reached by leveling from 1 to 100 though as far as we know right now." he explained. “We know this thanks to extensive research done by our founders.” He smiled then he coughed a bit and took another drag of his smoke.

Now he was fiddling with his beard with both hands.

"It was a team effort from the founders as I said but also from the help of a very skilled magician who helped to figure out how to tell someone's skills. He himself reached rank 50 in quite a lot of different schools of magical power." he was now sort of looking up in the sky. 

"So, you have a total level, telling how powerful you are yourself. Basically just adding together the ranks in all your magical resource schools and dividing it by 2. Anyway. 

You can be rank 10 in fire magical power or fire resource, whatever you call it. 

That doesn't mean you have rank 10 in everything Fire, if you know what I mean.” He explained as he gestured wildly with his hand, I guess trying to show what he said somehow?

He went on..

“That means you've leveled your magical fire resource to rank 10 making it possible to reach rank 10 in for example offensive fire magic. Such as fireballs, fire rain or whatever you train in and want to achieve. But it doesn't mean your fireball technique is rank 10.” He paused for another drag, then gazed at us a moment before he kept going.

“If your technique is at rank 1, you won't get to use it to your full potential and need to practice and level your technique. Otherwise, well, you can draw out way more power than you're able to attack with properly. It might work with dumb luck, but it’s more likely to backfire.

If your technique is rank 10 and your fire resource is rank 1, then you can't use more than a rank 1 fireball power-wise speaking anyway." he said then paused, threw the remains of the smoke and lit another one that sort of smelled different.

"This is where enchanting comes in. 

Since your problem most certainly will be your technique or focus to draw out all your potential and not your magical force in any element, they seem insanely high for your age…” He stared at me for a moment. Then Shook his head as he realised he was staring.

“Right, And your potential.. Is infinite somehow in every magical resource.. " He said, mumbling the last part as he kept on smoking. 

 

"Let's just pretend it's a fireball. Yuna can make an enchant, making it easier for you to cast a fireball matching your max fire magic pool. So if you're at a lower rank with the technique, 

Yuna can enchant something to increase your technique to match your magic force. 

Or well, she enchants an item so you can focus enough to draw out for full potential in a spell you cast. Decreasing the odds of anything backfiring." he explained, then paused, leaned forward and looked at us.

"with me so far?" he asked and looked at us both back and forth.

we nodded and looked at him, eyes wide open. 

"Well, that's enough for today. You keep on being kids the rest of the day" he said as he chuckled.

He got up and slowly walked away. “Sorry for keeping you!” he waved as he walked off.

 

I shook my head. Well, that was sure interesting I guess, but damn. Quite a lot to take in. I looked at Yuna.

"Yuna. Thanks for today. And thanks for trying to take the blame." I said as I awkwardly played with my tail.