I reached for one of the uncolored mana from the nearest group, and almost immediately it felt like centipedes were crawling all over the inside of my head. It wasn’t necessarily painful or anything, just slightly uncomfortable. I decided to name this type as mind mana. Why? Because it was as if it was unapologetically perusing my brain. Just straight up looking through every thought and memory locked away in there. More of the mana together just led to that feeling becoming more amplified, like the onset of a bad headache. 

The next mana was like the mind mana, but all over my body instead of localizing to the top floor. This was dubbed as the soul mana. 

Hear me out. If there was a type of mana that just specifically affected my head, then sure it would be mind mana, so if another type would affect the whole body, then it should be body mana, right? Wrong! I don’t have a body, at least, I don’t think that what I have right now is a proper physical body. If this isn’t a regular body, then it should be the soul. Who knew religion wasn’t actually too far off about the afterlife. 

Then I grabbed the barren one, the one that didn’t have any notable characteristics and reactions. This one had the best name yet. Want to know what I named it? I called it neutral mana. Real original, I know. Here’s the thing though, even if it didn't have anything unique about it, it was still able to interact with the other mana types. When I held it close to the lightning produced from the lightning mana, the lightning would arc and deviate away from it. For the earth mana, it would leave gaps when the dirt spawned and formed. It was almost as if the neutral mana could interfere with how the other mana types did their magical formation stuff. 

I almost took this neutral mana for granted, but it turned out to be pretty fascinating. Guess it goes to show that showmanship isn’t everything. 

Next one. It was the mana that would make the fabric of reality around it ripple. This one was dubbed as space mana. See, here’s my train of thought. What if this void was actually just somewhere in the universe, my soul drifting to God knows where, and if this mana were able to affect space itself, then it should be space mana. 

I tried to smash two of the mana together, and reality seemed to collapse into itself at the point of collision for a split second before they violently rebounded. Spacetime rippled outwards until it eventually stabilized. 

And finally, last but certainly not the least. My favorite of the colorless mana, time mana!

I can practically hear you asking, “how in the everloving gooseberries did you even arrive at that conclusion?” Well of course it’s because of my world class observation skills. Not even the unstoppable march of time in an unchanging void is enough to erode the precision of my spectacular mental faculties. 

HAHAHAHAHAha…haha…

Alright fine, I found out by complete accident. 

Remember when I smashed together two of the space mana? Well, what I didn’t tell you was that as spacetime rippled, it had obviously affected the void and the mana therein, distorting reality as if it was the surface of water. However, three certain groups of mana were not affected by the ripple. They were static even when their surroundings were bent and warped. 

The two groups of mana were the mind and soul manas, which kinda makes sense I guess. Aspects of mind and soul should probably not respond to spatial distortions. However, it leaves this last group of mana.

What kind of mana is this to not be affected by space mana? Obviously it would either be something related to space or outside of its scope, but I can’t make any assumptions yet. Further testing is required.

And so I held one of the mana and struck it against another. What came after was something that I could not even begin to process. It felt like there was a localized twisting of something. I felt that there was a change, but I could not figure out what changed. 

Seeing that I had somewhat progressed, I continued to pound the mana together. Each time, that localization would occur once more, lasting for no more than a few seconds. I scrutinized every detail of my surroundings to try and figure out what was affected. 

Okay, think, what could it be? Area distortion, related to space, hmmm…too abstract. I need to have some variables first, and the only thing here that could be used is mana.

So, I gathered some lightning mana and arranged them into a rather large square grid. Several bolts of lightning would arc to the mana closest to it, hopping from node to node like a lightning rod during a particularly active thunderstorm. I made sure to take in the scene in front of me to be able to check for any inconsistencies.

Apprehension filling me, I moved to smash the unknown mana together again. The localization began once more. This time, however, I was able to plainly see something different. The lightning sparking from the mana slowed considerably. 

Yes! This is it!

I strike the mana several times more while observing the lightning mana. The outside would either quicken or slow down by varying degrees of magnitude everytime the mana collided. 

Well, that does it. This mana is henceforth to be known as time mana!