Time passed. To be exact, a week. After gathering up my courage again, I snuck back into the storage room to take a look at the magic textbook again and do some more experiments.

I would not let fear keep me down! I would not! Not when the promise of cool magic was in the future!

...Yeah, needed to work on those self-affirmations still. Definitely helped me to keep my mind off of other things though.

Anyway, I got busy trying a lot of different things and testing various hypotheses.

To sum things up... the magic textbook was bullcrap.

I was sure of it. Some magical genius or prodigy definitely wrote the damned thing. There were steps missing, explanations completely unexplored other than a single line... it was like the author expected you to just figure things out rather than explain things. Not only that, but he seemed to be just parroting information too!

Like that bit about mana being set at birth. Yeah right! If that was the case, then why was my mana continuing to grow, huh? And why did Dad's silver mana get more dense and increase a bit when he trained, huh?

A bunch of baloney. Hogwash.

...Though I guess I couldn't blame them too much. I was pretty sure that there weren't many people out there who could directly see mana like I could. And I could only do that because I managed to somehow develop a sort of mana synesthesia due to messing around with my mana shortly after I was born.

If someone else had my 'eyes' I was pretty sure they'd realize why that 'law' was messed up too.

Anyway... back to research notes.

First of all, summing up what I got from last time.

Incantations were dangerous. They were definitely meant for combat use since they pulled out the max mana you had in you when you chanted it. If you let the spell go the way it wanted to go, it was easy to overload the thing and cause an explosion.

...Well, that might be due to my mana being abnormal because of my constant training in manipulating it, but I didn't have any metrics on that. Either way though, if it could happen to me, it could definitely happen to someone else.

I had a feeling that was why my mom wasn't teaching me mana right now. After all, if magic was that convenient, there'd be no reason not to start training as soon as a kid could read. There was probably a real danger that the spell would overdraft on the kid's mana and drain them dry. And considering that mana seemed to be linked to blood in some way or another, that might actually cause them to drop dead.

So, incantations dangerous. It was helpful if you knew how to regulate it, but letting it go the way it wanted? Bad idea.

Next off, magic circles.

I still had my doubts about whether the ones in the book were optimal, but I had to admit that they were really useful. Even with the rampaging incanted spell, a tiny magic circle spun from my mana was enough to not only calm the spell down, but even draw back the excess mana for me to put back in my reserves.

Not only that, but for me in particular, magic circles were probably better to use. I didn't know for sure yet, but since I could make them with my mana, I had a feeling that I could offload the energy cost to ambient mana as well as chain a bunch of them together. And at the far end, it was probably possible to do some pseudo programming with magic circles too and make complicated spells by finding out the individual elements...

But that was for another time.

The main takeaway behind that whole disaster was that magic was complicated and that mana was very malleable.

I still wasn't too sure *exactly* what mana was. But from what I saw, it could adopt some properties of basic elements... at least, the traditional elements in magic, and attract that to itself.

In other words, you could take a piece of mana, change it to an element, and then use it like a magnet to draw that element to the mana. And then you could go on to shape that mana to manipulate the element.

Kind of like that element bending in... What was that show called again? Avatar? Some show where there was a monk guy who could control all the elements.

It was like that. But that wasn't the only way to use mana. From that disastrous conclusion, it looked like mana could be directly converted into elements too. But doing that seemed really inefficient for some reason.

Maybe since the law of conservation of energy was still a thing? I wasn't sure if it dissipated into heat like most chemical reactions, but maybe mana turned into some other sort of energy in the process of creating whatever the spell called for.

Anyway, that was what I learned from my first mess. Incantation, bad. Magic circles, useful. Mana... weird.

So it was time to try some more experiments.

I sat back down and grabbed the book again before rereading the description about water ball.

I had the incantation and magic circle memorized, but I wanted to be extra sure I wasn't forgetting anything.

Let's see...

A spell to turn mana into a ball of water. It was possible to use it to attack by sending the water ball flying... And that was pretty much it.

Oh, the book mentioned something about the spell being elementary water magic too, but that was about it.

But sending the ball flying, huh?

I frowned and held up my right hand.

Forget the incantation. Instead...

Pulling out a thread of mana, tracing out the magic circle...

In an instant, a tiny water ball floated above the palm of my hand, shining a pure blue.

Not only that, but the mana I used to make the magic circle wasn't dissolving or disintegrating like when I tried to control it directly.

"Interesting..." I held the water ball up, staring at the magic circle. After that, I imagined the ball bouncing up and down.

The magic circle flared and the ball did just as I imagined.

"Huh."

Was I right? Were magic circles and incantations really just memory aids?

...No. It couldn't be 'just' memory aids. If that was the case, then my water ball wouldn't have started going out of control. Not only that, but the magic circle also wouldn't have stabilized the crazy spell.

But I wondered...

I dissolved the magic circle and drew my mana back.

The water ball immediately fell down, turning into a puddle of water.

Seeing that, I held out my hand to it.

This time, I didn't pull out any mana. I didn't recite the incantation or imagine the magic circle either. Instead, I simply envisioned it. Closing my eyes, I imagined the water flying back up to form a floating water ball.

...Nothing.

I blinked and then imagined it again. But this time, I tried circulating my mana. Not outside my body, but just moving it around my body. Because if mana could attract elements-

A small splash. Water droplets slowly rising from the ground and floating in mid-air.

But it wasn't a single water ball. Instead, it was a bunch of tiny ones. Like I froze time during rainfall.

I lowered my hand and stood up, looking around at the suspended water droplets. "...Huh." I frowned and placed my hand on my chin.

Weird. This was really weird.

So it was enough to just 'will' an event to happen? Or rather, having a sufficient mental image was enough to cause things to happen if you focused on your mana at the same time?

...I didn't get it. Was it a sort of imprinting thing? By moving the mana around, you imbued it with your will and intent, therefore you could enact a phenomenon on the world by envisioning it? Maybe through a sort of resonance?

I didn't remember all the details, but I knew that string theory was a thing. Maybe there's an invisible and intangible connection between mana and the world as a whole? And by focusing your will, it was possible to use mana as a bridge to turn the imaginary into real?

But that didn't make any sense! How was that-

Wait.

Assuming that the laws of physics still applied here and that mathematics were an axiomatic truth...

...Wasn't there something that allowed that? A sort of mathematical function that converted a 'real' function into a 'complex' function that included imaginary elements?

What was it called again... Lapless Transform? Le Plause Transform?

I didn't remember it's name or all of the details... but I knew that it existed. In that case... Yes, that would definitely explain a few things.

Assuming that magic was nothing more than a particular 'formula' you used to create a result by inputting mana, there would definitely be multiple ways to go about getting the same answer.

Incantation was like trying to solve a system of equations with pure algebra and substitutions. By crunching in all the numbers (saying all the words) you could get the right answer. But it took up a lot of work and a single misstep could result in a completely wrong answer.

Magic circles were like geometry. By turning that equation into a picture, you could clearly see the answer by finding where all the lines matched up. It was super easy once you knew how it worked, but it also was a one-time deal. After all, you couldn't reuse the same picture to solve multiple equations. That would also explain why it was so rigid.

But you could skip all of that. Like how people could figure out 2+2=4 without actually counting out the numbers, it should be possible to just directly get the result.

That was harder though. It required you to have the natural intuition for numbers and a repository of 'answers' to build up that intuition.

Applying that to magic... If you knew exactly what phenomenon you wanted to occur, it should be possible to just brute force it. To intuitively skip all the steps and arrive at the result.

"...That's dangerous though." I couldn't help but mutter my thoughts about that approach.

Intuition was dangerous. There might be some geniuses out there who could use it unfailingly, or some crazy guys who experienced enough to build up a reliable gut instinct, but for the average person it was a recipe for disaster.

After all, how many people failed physics because their thoughts about how reality and math worked didn't line up with the actual problem?

No. I wouldn't slide into that mindset.

Didn't I experience it before? Trusting your talent and intuition and hoping to ride on it to the end... that was a recipe for disaster. For a lifetime of regrets.

No. It was better to take things piece by piece. To meticulously build things up and take notes on the process to double and triple-check.

And to start with...

"Let's try this again and break things down. Now, were all the words in the incantation necessary...?"