“For now I’ll be teaching you both the theory behind defined and fluid magic. We’ll get to the actual practice part later.”

“Any questions?”

“Nope.” “None.” Both of them replied.

“All right then, tell me what you think of defined magic and fluid magic.”

Masashi is the one who replies to her, “Defined magic is simple and easy to use. Anyone can cast it as long as one has the correct chants and imagination for that spell. It follows a certain path and doesn’t deviate from it. It is convenient and stable but it is very limited in the flexibility that it offers the user. If it’s a fireball spell that requires a 2 verse chant, it will have definite blast damage and radius. It also doesn’t allow much deviation when using the spells. Since the spells have a pre-set pattern, it allows less combat versatility for the caster.”

“Fluid magic on the other hand is much more versatile and adaptable. It’s easy to be unpredictable in your attacks. One can cast it instantly since there’s no channeling of mana required. As long as the user has the correct control over the surrounding mana and the knowledge about the spell, they can cast it without any cooldown.

“Though it has its difficulties too. One needs to have strong enough mental faculties to be able to control the surrounding mana and mold it to their requirements. They also need a lot of knowledge about how the spell world and how the mana needs to act to cast that spell. Lastly, the atmosphere should be able to sustain the casting of that spell, or else the user needs to supply the mana on their own.”

“Good answer.”

Yue looks at Masashi admiringly due to him understanding so much after a single explanation.

“Mai, do you have any questions? Or anything to add to Masashi’s explanation?”

“Can we double cast or triple cast with fluid magic? We can’t do that with defined magic since it requires chants and chanting for two different spells simultaneously isn’t possible..”

“That’s a good question, And to answer that question…”

Yue just instantly summons tens of different spells around herself to show the capacity for that. They were all simple spells but were enough to make her point.

“We can instantly cast whatever we want however many times we want using fluid magic. The only limitation is knowledge and control. The more you know about the composition of the element, and the better you are at controlling the mana, the more spells you can cast simultaneously.”

“It all depends on how strong your mental prowess is.” Yue points to her head.

“The next thing we’ll focus on is what a spell is. What do you think makes a spell, a spell?”

Yue asks both of them and this time Mai is the one to answer.

“A spell is projecting your will on mana to make it act a certain way.”

“Good answer. This is how all spells work. Defined and Fluid magic both also work on the same principle. It’s just that their method of working is completely different.

“You can think of casting a Defined spell as requesting the mana that’s inside your body to follow a certain pattern of action. People do this using chants. They use their mana since it’s easier to make it listen to the request. This is the reason that when casting extremely complex spells, defined magic fails.

“Fluid magic on the other hand works on the principle of taking control of the mana and making it act in a certain way. This is the reason so much knowledge is required. You need to make the mana act yourself, instead of making it do those things on its own. This is the reason that the surrounding mana can be used to cast this magic, you are taking control of the mana, so you might as well use the mana in your surroundings.

“This technique is not something exclusive to people like us, those who don’t have the innate ability of mana manipulation are also able to do this but they can only affect the mana that they have inside themselves. So it’s inherently limited when compared to using the atmospheric mana to charge spells. 

“Mana manipulation acts like a crutch that allows us to impose our will on the atmospheric mana. After we’re used to doing this, we’ll be able to affect the mana in the environment without the need for this skill at all. It’s just that it’s nigh impossible to learn this without the ability to directly manipulate mana. Many have tried before only to fail.

“Anyway, back to the main stuff. You’re imposing your will on the mana around you to follow the things that you want to be done.

“Try to control the mana in the atmosphere to converge within your hand, like this.” Yue shows them the mana converging from the surroundings to form a ball above her hand.

“Like this?” Masashi did the same thing and seemed to need a lot less effort to do it?”

“The fuck? This was supposed to be difficult, like very difficult.” Yue is flabbergasted at how Masashi did the same thing as her without any effort.

Suddenly Mai bonks his head and says, “Stop cheating, this world belongs to you, of course, the mana will also listen to you.”

“Oww!” Masashi just holds his head even though it didn’t hurt. He likes to be dramatic sometimes.

Yue seems enlightened at Mai’s words and says, “Is that the case? I didn’t realize, I guess that we must do this training outside then.”

Yue then looks at Mai, waiting for her to teleport the three of them outside.

Mai does exactly that and in the next moment, the three of them appear on the 50th floor of The Orcus Labyrinth.

“Now try again. Impose your will on the world, make it bend to your whims.” Yue encouraged the two excitedly.

“That doesn’t sound right-“

“Get to it!” 

“All right. Geez,” Masashi tried to impose his will on the world, trying to get the mana to gather into a ball before him.

[Mana Manipulation] was an overpowered skill but even it worked on the same principle of allowing the user to directly communicate with mana to request it to act a certain way.

To use Fluid magic one needed to impose their will on the mana and truly control it.

After about a minute or two be began to sweat. This practice was using his soul to control the mana. It was easy when Masashi did this to people but trying to do this with mana was infinitely more difficult due to him directly affecting the world in a way. He got tired after another minute of trying and panted while trying to get back his stamina.

It was going to resist the influence. Masashi had to get good enough to overcome the restriction of the world and control the mana in the air.

Mai was the same, she didn’t use her soul to pressure people since she was a gentle girl, she may have some freaky fetishes when she was alone with Masashi. 

But she wasn’t like this brute Masashi who went around swinging his soul pressure in people’s faces just because he got a kick out of it.

So her soul wasn’t as refined at influencing things when compared to Masashi. She got tired earlier and sat down to rest.

Yue just cast a stamina spell on them that she developed for the sole purpose of rejuvenating her soul after she got tired while practicing this kind of will imposing on the world. It was one of the only support spells that she developed.

A blue light enveloped both Mai and Masashi as they felt completely rejuvenated while their fatigue completely disappeared.

“Try again.”

They both tried again and again as Yue cast restoration spell after restoration spell.

This process lasted for about 6 hours. Masashi had tons of expensive watches and he had already set a specific amount of time that they would be spending on training the imposing of their will on the mana.

He was especially excited about this technique because it will completely remove his reliance on the [Mana Manipulation] skill to cast the magic down the line. This is useful since he doesn’t have to rely on the system to keep using magic.

They’d both been trying to manipulate the world for 10 hours. They weren’t showing any visible progress but they knew that their progress was very good.

For now, they were able to gently influence the mana and shake its natural flow in the environment. They still had a long way to progress for now so they just decided to pick it back up the next day.

Then they got back to clearing the dungeon floor by floor with Yue’s presence, things got much easier and quicker, but they would be spending much less time clearing the dungeons so their dungeon progress would be slowing down.

After clearing 2 floors, they went back to the floating island to rest. 

This time Masashi and Mai both infused half 90% of both of their Mana’s into the floating island, it had similar effects to [Tantric Energy] but much weaker. 90% of both of their total mana and they could only increase the boundaries of the place by 2.5 meters which is half the increase from the wasted [Tantric Energy]. 

They didn’t do anything relating to [Tantric Energy] due to Yue’s presence and just went to sleep.

The next few days were the same. They woke up in the morning with Yue in their bed, they didn’t mind since she was lonely and looking for some comfort in them both.

They spent 6 hours each day training their will, trying to impose it on the mana in the atmosphere.

Although the growth was slow, both Mai’s and Masashi’s minds and will got many times stronger due to the extreme tempering it was going through.

They were going from exhausting their willpower completely to getting it back to full with Yue’s help.

This increased the power of their will at a very rapid pace.

After the willpower training, they cleared the dungeon for the rest of the day, with some breaks in between.

After a few days of tempering their minds and wills, they could already affect the monsters in the dungeon with it. It was previously impossible to do anything to pressure the dungeon monsters using [Intimidation]. Now when Masashi directly used his will to pressure them it worked well to freeze them in place momentarily which was already more than enough.