Waking up once more, he got his fill of breakfast and got to work practicing magic again. Now that he could sense and manipulate mana, it was time to form a Dantian. It might seem strange for an Eastern term to appear in a western fantasy setting, but that was the name for the core of mana he was about to form in his body. As for why it’s not called a mana core?That’s because a mana core is the name for a physical orb of mana formed in the bodies of most magical monsters.

 

So to explain, a Dantian is a ball of ethereal mana that spellcasters form in their bodies, to more easily access their mana when casting spells, and while not strictly needed for magic, it’s way too convenient to truly be considered ‘optional’.

 

So he began to gather a bit of his mana in his small stubby horn on his head. While most spellcasters form their Dantian in their hearts or heads because if the area with your Dantian is destroyed then you have to form a new one, and your mana would instantly fall to 0. As for why he was forming it in his horn? Well to explain that he needs to explain one more thing he hadn’t mentioned earlier about horned rabbits.

 

They are incredibly adaptive to mana, and when a horned rabbit lives in an area with lots of one type of mana or learns to cast a type of magic, they can evolve into an elemental counterpart of their race. And while that's not directly relevant to why he’s forming his Dantian in his horn, he thought it was a good time to mention it.

 

The real reason he’s forming it in his horn is because of what the nine horned king said. When talking with the nine horned king, the subject of how he got his power emerged. Other than just leveling up or practicing, he mentioned the main reason was because of his ‘elemental horns’, to put it simply each of his horns was a mana core of a different element, giving him a large boost to the power of his spells.

And while it’s too early to make his horn into a mana horn, forming his Dantian in there would probably make it easier than if he hadn’t, So he pulled mana into his horn. However, he ran into a problem, he had too much mana! To form a Dantian, you need to gather all the mana in your body. Consequently, the more mana you have, the more you need to gather to form your Dantian. To make matters worse, the difficulty of controlling mana scales the more you try to control, rather than it becoming harder just because you’re controlling more.

 

This was probably the reason it was so hard for him to try and manipulate his mana. however, there’s a simple fix to the problem. Time, he didn’t have anything else to do, so even if he spent a while doing it, taking the time to do so wasn’t really a big problem.

 

By the time ‘dinner’ came around, he was able to form his Dantian. And for his troubles, he gained these notifications

 

Your skill ‘Mana Manipulation’ has leveled up to LV.4

For forming a Dantian, you have gained the title ‘Spellcaster’

 

And he quickly checked the title 'Spellcaster’.

Title Grade: Uncommon You are skilled in the use of Magic Effects: your base MP is Int*10 rather than Int*1

 

Ya powerful right? With that kind of effect, it should have a much higher grade. But due to its ease to get, it’s one of the few titles that doesn’t have its effects scale with its grade. Just to clarify, you can also get this title from learning any school of magic as well.

 

As for the effects of a *10 increase in my mana? Well, all my mana was already contained to a Dantian, so nothing. Not even the Dantian changed, as it’s size doesn’t scale with the amount of mana within.

 

The next ‘day’ after ‘breakfast’, he could finally finally begin to learn a school of magic. The first was a school of magic 99% of spell casters would learn ‘Mana Magic’. Mana magic is essentially the neutral school of magic and has very few spells. However, it would increase the power of all spells you cast, so most at least learn it, even if it levels slowly without practice.

 

Because he didn’t want to affect his siblings or mother, he decided to use the most garbage spell of the ‘mana magic’ school, as unlike all other magic schools, you couldn’t learn it by tuning yourself to the element, which is how you learn all the elemental schools.

 

The spell was ‘Body Enhancement’, at first glance it seems like a good spell. A continuous spell that gives you an enhancement to your body, but the cost is abysmal. You know what! I’ll just use it, then let you decide how good it is!

 

*Ding*

You have gained the Spell ‘Body Enhancement’

 

You have learned the ‘Mana’ school of magic

Your level has increased to level 2

 

Oh? He didn’t keep track of his XP so he didn’t expect to level up so soon, but it made sense. The skills he had been learning were core skills for casting magic, so he probably got a few XP, and learning the ‘Mana’ school of magic pushed him over the edge, but he could check that out later. For now, he brought up the description of ‘Body Enhancement’

Spell Body Enhancement (LV.1) School: Mana Using this spell you enhance your body Effect: gain +X% Str, Def, Agi Cost: [X%/per sec.] Mana

 

In case the description didn’t clarify, that meant if you wanted to increase your stats by +1% then you could use up all your mana to keep it up for 100 seconds or if you wanted an enhancement of +10% then you could keep it up for 10 seconds.

 

Ok, it wasn’t as bad as he made it sound. For a mage, it could be a last resort to dodge or block an attack however, another ‘Mana’ spell, ‘Shield’ would be much better at protecting you. Moreover, the biggest reason that this is a bad spell is because for any class that might benefit from this spell they probably had some way to use their mana better or a better version of this spell as a skill. The only real benefit was that it didn’t show any trace of being used, thus why he chose it.

 

But with that out of the way, he still needed to check his status after leveling up

 

Status Name: Daron Race: Horned rabbit Titles: ‘Other planer’ ‘prodigy' + ‘Spellcaster’ LV: 1 > 2/10 XP: 0/10 > 12/10 > 2/20 HP: 1/1 > 2/2 MP:10/10 > 119/120 Def:1 > 2 SP:0 > 2 Str:1 > 2 Vit:1 > 2 Agi:1 > 3 Int:10 > 12

 

So to sum up what changed he gained the Spellcaster title, making his MP much larger than before, and his everything went up a bit, but it was a bit of a let down that Horned Rabbits only gained 2 SP. However, that would probably not be a big problem, as he would evolve at level 10.

But now with 2 stat points to invest in his stats, this brought up the question. How should he assign his stats? To answer that question he had to decide what his ‘build’ is going to be. A pure spell caster? Or a pure front liner? Well, the answer is neither. The obvious answer was a hybrid of them, but the real question is what kind?

How would he use his magic, defensively or offensively? How would he deal with damage blocking, or dodging? He had already decided. For now, the stat he would invest most in was Str and Int, then Agi, with Vit getting the least attention. This was because the horned rabbit had higher agility, so dodging would be easier than blocking. And he would go for a more ‘magic swordsman’ type build so both Str and Int would be important. Acting on my thoughts I invested 1 in Str and Int, with my stats now being.

Status Name: Daron Race: Horned rabbit Titles: ‘Other planer’ ‘prodigy’ + ‘Spellcaster’ LV: 2/10 XP: 2/20 HP: 2/2 MP: 120/120 > 130/130 Def: 2 SP: 2 > 0 Str: 2 > 3 Vit: 2 Agi: 3 Int: 12 > 13

 

And now to look at his updated abilities.

Abilities Skills [Passive] +Mana Detection (LV.1) +Mana Manipulation (LV.4) [Active] Horn attack (LV.1) Magic +Mana (LV.1) Resistances N/A

 

Finally, having gained a spell, he gained the ability to pull up his spells

 

Spells [Mana] +Body enhancement (LV.1)

 

Now he could finally finally for real, learn useful magic. As for what schools of magic he planned to learn. Long term? All of them (Probably). But to try and master all schools of magic at once was foolhardy, he would need to spend his time cultivating 1-2 maybe 3 at most if he wanted to keep proficient in them enough for them to be useful in fights with others at his level. And the first one he chose to learn was a pretty common magic, Fire.

 

But the reason it’s so common is because of its destructive power. And come on, who hasn’t dreamed of creating magical fireballs and chucking them at monsters? Not to mention, it was also one of the components for a fusion magic he wanted to make... oh yea, he almost forgot, fusion magics are schools of magic formed from fusing 2 or more schools of magic, on a related note, advanced magic is schools of magic that are derived from another school of magic.

 

To learn the magic, he had to first sense the element, and there are many ways to do so. But considering his circumstances, the one most suited for it would be the way he learned from the druids. As it turns out druids aren’t opposed to fire, just stupid humans who needlessly burn down forests. But to get back on track, he began sinking into himself, not unlike when he tried to sense own his mana. However this time, he wasn’t looking for his own mana. He was trying to feel his body heat, but an unexpected variable came up.

 

The heat from his siblings and mother clouded his own, mixing them all together with their own. But this wasn’t a bad thing, as a stronger source made the process easier. Slowly he began to feel it, like a wave of heat traveling along their bodies, originating from all of the organs working and moving, especially the stomach. It traveled with the blood throughout their bodies, diffusing evenly to the rest of their bodies, and into each other. The way it pulsated was reminiscent of a flickering flame, he had felt it... the fire mana within himself, and his family, then...

 

*Ding*

 

But before getting to the notification, to quickly explain, the mana he felt was what’s known as ‘static mana’. Unlike the world he first lived in, this life and the one before, the world was made up of mana, not atoms. To give an example, instead of carbon, his flesh is made of an advanced version of earth mana, that’s called ‘flesh mana’. Furthermore said ‘static mana’ can’t be used for spellcasting without being processed. But anyway the notification and description he received were.

You have learned the ‘Fire’ school of magic

Magic Fire (Lv.1) Tier: 1 Fire magic is the school of magic that wields fire and fire mana Effects: +1% damage from fire spells, -1% cost of fire spells

 

Man, He felt like an idiot, as he kept forgetting things! Magic is split into Tiers, the higher the Tier the stronger, and most ‘basic’ magic will start at 1, advancing into higher ones later, such as fire to flame magic or earth to stone magic and so on. I’ll also pull up ‘mana magic’'s description as, in my disappointment of ‘body enhancement’, I forgot to put it there.

 

Magic Mana (Lv.1) Tier: N/A Mana magic is the school of magic that wields mana Effects: +1% damage from mana spells, -1% cost of mana Spells

 

Yeah, mana spells are all spells, so it also levels whenever you cast a spell. But even if it affects other spells, it gathers XP much slower when it’s a spell that uses another school of magic. And with this, he had finally learned a real school of magic, not that he’ll learn any spells for it for now.