Leona got confused, “wait, dragons might kill me for using normal magic? Could you elaborate?”

Vulcania responded, “let's go back to the beginning of magic for a bit. That is the point where it starts to go wrong after all. How many mana types exist?”

Leona answered confused, “six, fire, water, earth, air, light and darkness.”

A mage that was listening in from the table next to them added, “you forgot four, lightning, space, life and death.”

Vulcania got a smile, “the both of you are wrong. Effectively infinite types of mana exist. sunny mana, cloudy mana, forest mana, grassland mana, cloudy forest mana, human mana, animal mana, dragonic mana, kitsune mana, female mana, male mana, heat, mana, cold mana and so on like that. If it exists it has a blend of mana, fire mana is a blend of light and heat mana, heat mana is a blend of fire and temperature mana. The mana that now exists within this city will be different tomorrow, even different in a few hours.”

Leona looked questioning at Vulcania while the mage from the other table looked on with disbelief. Leona interjected, “why is not known?”

Vulcania answered, “no clue, I know of several kitsunes and even heard of a few dragons that tried to spread this information but it just does not catch on.”

The mage asked, “then what is the difference between gamble magic and normal magic from a kitsune point of few?”

Vulcania answered, “gamble magic directly manipulates mana to cause a desired result. The only problem is that you need to know what mana you will work with. So a gamble magic created at a beach will never work if you are in the middle of a forest since the surrounding and your own mana will differ. Although you can make magic circles and enchantments that work with multiple types of mana, those will be much bigger and or longer. Humans can not sense mana so can not change their chants or spells in the moment to what is needed and thus will often fail with gamble magic.”

Leona quickly caught on. “Ah, so gamble magic does not work because we never have the correct mana that was used to create it. But then why does our normal magic work?”

Vulcania responded, “indeed. Your magic works because you begin your chants with ‘Mana obey my words’ but then with more authority and in the magic language. This causes all mana to obey your chant even if it is not supposed to. This seems like the easy solution to all your problems but has devastating problems you humans never deal with.”

The mage asked when Vulcania left a dramatic pause, “What problems? I never noticed any problems with my spells.”

Vulcania solemnly answered, “I can only with if caused that direct of a problem. The problem is that you twist mana into a state called twisted mana. That twisted mana drifts far and wide and spawns abominations that are hyper aggressive beasts that will attack everything near it.”

The mage had a look of understanding, “Ah those beasts that come in existence without reasons. Why should I believe that you speak the truth? How do I know that you are not trying to weaken our people and our countries' defenses in order for us to lose the war?”

Vulcania looked at Leona, “this is one reason it never succeeded, the second is that the magic circles will be twice the size or the chants twice as long to make a magic work all year round.”

Leona thought about it, “I see, money and politics never allowed gamble magic to succeed but our normal magic creates monsters elsewhere so not our problem. I see how it happened.” She stated resolutely, “I want the two of you to teach me gamble magic. I want to be able to use it.”

Vulcania and Glacia answered in sync, ““sure, let us do our best!””

Some small talk later John came to their table, “here I got your cards. here, here, here and here.” He gave us all our cards.

They all thanked John. Flamitar walked up to the twins that were looking at their blue card with at two sides yellow. On it stood fighting B and trust D.

“Congratulations on those ranks. I hope you two are happy with it. Do the three of you already have an inn to sleep at?”

Rickerd answered, “yes, we live in the Blue Flower inn, it is a few streets away, cheap and we can work there to earn some extra coin.”

Flamitar, still in disguise, answered, “That is a good inn indeed. Then will you take care of my friend's daughters? I have other things to do, so it would be much appreciated.”

Glacia turned around, “thank you for your guidance.”

Flamitar walked away to do other things. He had already known that because of his disguise he never could hug his daughters goodbye. Maybe at their next visit to the village.

Kiyoshi suggested, “Shall we leave for dinner and get to bed? or do you want to look at the quests now?”

Glacia answered, “quest, dinner and sleep. They update the quests over the day as they get them. So no early bird gets the good stuff. We as a party have fighting rank C and trust rank E.”

Rickerd was stumped, “where did you see that?”

Glacia answered, “on the card, it is the ‘five people party’ line as we have no official name yet.”

Leona took a look, “I see, that is handy. What is that number after ‘party’ however? Party ID?”

Vulcania stood up, “yes. Now let’s go to the quest board in the room next door.”

After they arrived in the room and looked around they found a D-rank quest to clear an old storage barn of a rat infestation. After receiving the quest and the directions they went to the Blue Flower inn. Nothing special happened. Leona and the twins slept in the same room, it was less expensive, and all went to sleep.

CosmicDragon

The end bit with the inn is rushed. I had two choices, one was to make an extra filler chap with nothing happening or make dinner and go to bed very short in this one. I choose the latter as I could not even come up with a realistic storyline to make a filler chap.