Chapter 2:
A Guidebook To Magic

 

It’s now been two whole years since I was reborn into this world. 

I was developing more or less the way you’d expect a baby to grow. At first, trying to balance this tiny body was much harder than I had anticipated. For whatever reason, I was top-heavy, and my arms didn’t give me much balance either. But, I eventually triumphed and learned how to walk. For the second time. 

Although, I did find it weird how truly sentient and self-aware I was. I figured that was just because I had my memories, but I knew that there had to be something more to it. From what I knew, infant brains can’t usually have the capacity to have this level of thought. I could be completely wrong, though. I tried to stay away from the intricacies of the brain when I was still studying–it was too difficult for me to understand.

In other news, I’ve become fluent in this land’s language. It took me all of two years, but it seemed my kid brain was adept at this sort of stuff. I’d heard somewhere that this phenomenon happened to adults too. When one is exposed constantly to a foreign language via conversation and the like, they tend to pick it up faster than they would have by simply studying it.

From what I could gather, my parents' names were Zenith and Paul Greyrat. The only reason it took this long was because my parent tended to call themselves affectionate nicknames, like Sugar or Sweetie. Or whatever this language’s equivalent of that was. Either way, Zenith is such a beautiful name. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? 

Paul was just Paul. There’s more than enough Pauls out there to go around. 

Our maid’s name was Lilia. I didn’t have any clue as to why she had no family name, in all honesty. I didn’t know if there was any sort of naming convention here or if I was just overlooking something simple. 

My name was Lumina Greyrat. It had a nice ring to it, so I wasn’t complaining. 

---

Now that I had access to speaking and walking, I wanted to try to figure out a few other things. Namely, I wanted to gather up as much information about this new world as possible. Learning more about what is essentially a fantasy world would be like sinking my teeth into a delicious treat.

Though as an infant my ways of going about doing that were limited. As it stood, the only feasible thing for me to do was to ask my family things to get an idea of the outside world. 

Also, one thing of note–Lilia seemed to be taking a liking to me. She would talk to me, carry me around, and generally just pamper me. I guess I’m starting to like her too. She was my main source of information, like a helpful guide in an RPG. Sadly, the tidbits of knowledge she told me were extremely vague. I couldn’t blame her, though. I would dumb down my words too if I were talking to an infant. 

That made me consider other options that might help me in that endeavor. What does one think about when they picture learning? Written books, I’d hope. And so began my long and winded journey to find books that just so happened to last three hours. After I finished scouring the house, I discovered five in total. 

Huh. You’d think that a married couple in the sticks would want some sort of entertainment here. Well, maybe not. They get plenty of satisfaction at nighttime.

I wasn’t too surprised that there were only five, but I was expecting something like a bookshelf in a house like this. Anyway, with those five books, I began teaching myself to read. If it weren’t for my parents regularly reading me bedtime stories, I would’ve been stumbling around in the dark with no flashlight. It seemed the tradition of telling stories to your children to lull them to sleep transcended worlds. Thanks to that, I had a base-level understanding of a few keywords.  

Overall, it wasn’t too hard to figure out. The grammar, oddly enough, was similar to my native tongue. The vocabulary was more Western, with the words being constructed from different letters of a simple alphabet. Once I had internalized the basics, it was smooth sailing from there.

Endowed with the power of literacy, I began using the intended use of the books instead of using them like a study guide. After I began, I found that I couldn’t put them down.

A book in particular stood out to me. A Textbook of Magic was filled to the brim with information that was completely fascinating to an otherworlder like me. There were three main types of magic: Recovery, Summoning, and Offensive Magic.

Recovery was split between defensive spells like physical or magical barriers and healing spells that could treat sickness and injuries.

Summoning spells had a large variety to them, but to simplify it, it was a collection of spells that could call forth either helpful sprites such as Light Spirits, or summon sentient creatures that would be at your beck and call. There were exceptions, of course, like the basic law that was this world’s equivalent of E=mc²—that you couldn’t summon humans. 

Then, there was Offensive Magic. This branch was by far the most expansive in terms of sheer spell count. Even then, it was broken down into the four basic (And stereotypical) elements of life: Water, Wind, Earth, and Fire. To someone who played RPGs, that was incredibly alluring. However, I was drawn to Recovery Magic more, solely because of how interesting it sounded to pull off.

Before I became shut-in, I dabbled into many online biology courses. I wasn’t obsessed or anything, but I had a passion for it. I knew most of the principles behind traditional medicine and how bodies worked in general after a while. While I do admit some of that stemmed from hours of Wikipedia diving, I thought myself to be fairly knowledgeable about the subject. 

In the end, only god knows why I never got off my ass and tried to put that to use. 

My past aside, there were a few things that you had to know before you tried casting spells. For one, you had to have magical power, or mana as they called it here. I assumed it worked similarly to my world’s interpretation of it, but I was prepared to be proven wrong. From what I read, everyone in the world was born with an innate sense of mana. No one was ever excluded from it—it was like a fundamental sixth sense. 

One thing I mentally jotted down was that you supposedly were born with a set amount of mana. That bit of information surprised me. I imagined several scenarios that could arise as a result of that in my head, like a potential societal gap between those with more luck with their mana and those who were left with little.

Reading further quelled my thoughts. I read that a certain group of people did improve over time, so I wondered exactly how that worked. Magical power was also supposed to be up to genetics, with strong mages having offspring that were equally or less talented than their parents. My mother worked as the village healer, maybe I could inherit some good genes from my mother?

Back to the whole mana thing, there was a little more to it than I had originally thought. You didn’t necessarily have to use your mana to cast a spell. There were these handy items known as magical implements that were imbued with mana, allowing people who weren’t as blessed with their magical reserves to cast on par with others. 

There was one last bit of crucial information. There were two manners to go about conjuring a spell. One was the conventional, commonly used way–which was to utter an incantation. The other was the much more complicated albeit more efficient way, drawing up a magic circle. The words “Magic Circle” caught my eye, making me curious. It referred to inscribing patterns of mana-infused ink onto parchment or carving it into other materials to give the circle magical properties. 

I flipped through the pages hoping to find a guide on how to practice doing it, but sadly, there wasn’t much more material on it. 

If I ever get the chance to learn more about them, I’ll snatch it up. 

---

If I wanted to start practicing magic, there was no better time than the present. After memorizing a selection of basic spells, I got up to give it a shot.

I had since decided to start with Recovery Magic first. Maybe I was inspired by the way my mother cast a spell on me, but I was drawn to it. It wasn’t the easiest thing for a beginner to do, sure, but where’s the fun in doing the easy stuff first? I walked over to the wall and took a deep breath. 

WHAM! I kicked the wall, eliciting a sharp wave of pain to cover my foot. 

“...!” It took a lot out of me to hold in a yelp, but it had to have done the trick. I took off my shoes and held my hand over my foot. I began to recite. 

“ Let this… divine power be as satisfying nourishment… giving one who has lost their strength the strength to rise again, Healing!”

Sure enough, a dim glow appeared from my palm. Like blood pooling in my arm, I felt what I assumed to be mana to be coursing through my veins. It was an uncomfortable sensation that made me shiver in response. 

I breathed a sigh of relief as the pain in my foot softened. It wasn’t completely gone, but it certainly hurt less. My very first magic spell. How touching. 

It wasn’t complete, though. When Zenith treated my head wound, all of my pain was gone instantly. As for my spell, I could still feel the throbbing of my foot. So I decided, Let’s try it again. 

WHAM! Jeez… I seriously need to find a better way of doing this. I pressed my hand to my foot. 

Concentrate, Concentrate… That sensation again, like getting blood drawn. I shut my eyes and tried to focus on how exactly it felt–Mana coursing through my arm, like a flow of water. Yeah, This is probably it. I set my mind to it.

Heal, Heal, Heal, Heal, Heal, Heal… “Hah!” I exclaimed, opening my eyes. All the pain in my foot was gone. 

“Eh? Wait.” I hadn’t said the chant? I’d gotten so caught up in my thoughts that I hadn’t even noticed that I missed a crucial step. Or, supposedly a crucial step. I seemed to manage just fine without it. But… why?

Well, in all fairness, the book didn’t say anything about incantationless magic. But if it was so easy to pull off, surely it would’ve been written in there somewhere. I tried to make heads or tails of it. Maybe saying incantations just made the spell fire automatically? That would make teaching and practical use a lot easier. For one thing, you wouldn’t have to concentrate every single time you wanted to fire a spell. I’d imagine it would be a pain to do all of that during a battle. 

But the fact that it exists means it has to have some use. Maybe some people do find it easier. Perhaps you could be more precise with the magic if you did it solely in your head. I hadn’t done enough testing to confirm this, but I felt like that was in the realm of possibility. But it might have something to do with how I discovered magic so early on. Maybe it was a skill only obtained by those who learned magic at a young age.

Or, even, I could be harboring a secret skill that no one else but me could use. Was this my cheat skill? If so, I’d be a total badass. But I’m probably getting ahead of myself. I decided to leave it at that for a while. Back to magic casting.

I reluctantly went to slam my foot into the wall again. 

WHAM! Geez, I’ll start working on offensive magic starting tomorrow. 

As I started to fix my hurt foot, I began feeling super tired. Was this from using magic? If what the book said was true about magical power, I was screwed if this was all I had. I decided to try one more time to satisfy my curiosity, and I promptly flopped to the floor and passed out.

---

“Seriously, Lumi. When you get tired you have to go to bed before you fall asleep.”

I woke up to see that I had fallen asleep with the book in hand. Man, I needed to piss.

I rushed to the bathroom. So, my magical power really does suck. That doesn’t make me feel very confident going forward. 

What can I do to improve? Can I even improve at all? Jeez.

The next day, I tried out offensive magic. I decided on wind magic for my initial school of magic. I successfully cast the elementary wind spell “Gust,” which just shot out room-temperature air in the way a blow dryer would but with less force. It was short-lived, however. It only lasted around a second. I tried to cast it without incantations and managed to do it after a few tries. 

I held it for six or so seconds at maximum before it fizzled out. After that, I began to become tired. If I went off of what happened yesterday, I would probably pass out again if I pushed it. I noticed it took a lot more time for me to get tired than it did yesterday. Likely because it was my first time casting. In the end, I left it at that for the day.

---

The following day, I went back to practicing healing magic. I tried experimenting with it, and one such example was with my fingernails. I chipped off a bit of my fingernail with another and tried to see what would happen if I were to cast healing magic on it. 

Nothing happened. I wonder, was stuff like fingernails not in the criteria to be healed? I decided to take a big risk in the name of science to try to dig deeper. I would probably regret this. 

I took a candle holder, placed my finger on the table, and slammed it down. 

“YEOOWCHH!” I exclaimed. 

Why did I ever think this was a good idea?! My mother burst into the room with a worried expression. How was I going to explain this?  

“Aw, you poor thing! You have to be more careful when playing. Come here.” 

I brought my finger with the fingernail cracked to her, and she held it in her hand. 

“ Let this divine power be as satisfying nourishment, giving one who has lost their strength the strength to rise again .” She spoke softly and in a reassuring tone.

The small wound under my fingernail stopped bleeding and closed up, but the nail was still cracked. Hmm. It's likely that recovery magic only works on injuries that directly affect the body, not things like hair or nails.

I probably should have found an easier way to figure that out, but it’s no use crying over spilled milk. I thanked my mother with a smile and she stepped out of the room. 

I went back to casting Gust and after a bit of trial and error, I could hold the air current for eleven seconds. That’s certainly unexpected. What happened to the MP being fixed at birth? This could mean several things, but I decided to give it a week until I drew any conclusions.

---

And so that week passed. With each passing day, my limit doubled. By the end of it, I could cast a gust spell for twenty minutes. I’d been deceived! That book lied through its teeth, seriously. Maybe this was a way of adults putting kids down by saying that they would never improve no matter what. Pfft. What a joke.

Maybe I should cut the author some slack. I entertained the idea of me being a badass. I could see it now. This version of myself is kind of a looker, so me all grown up and with secret skills and unlimited growth? I’d woo men and women alike. 

Back to reality, the more logical conclusion would be that practicing over time, like a muscle, would improve it as long as you practiced enough. 

I’d heard that exercising during adolescence would make your progress skyrocket, so maybe it was something like that. But I would prefer being a badass over something like that. Well, either way, it looked like the only thing I could do was train. 

---

The day after, I decided to take my MP to the limit. I screwed around with the other schools of magic. 

For Fire magic, I cast “Heat Hand” since it was the only thing I could do indoors without burning the house down. The spell was akin to having a shabby heater with your hand as the output.

I used Water magic to cast “Waterball.” You’d have to be pretty dense to not be able to figure out what that one did. I also fiddled around with “Ice Blade,” which created a crude replication of the sword I had seen my father swing around. 

As for Earth, I cast “Rock Bullet” and played target practice with a few candles. It was a really fun way to pass the time.

Additionally, I learned that there are different levels for magic spells. The spells I've been using so far were called "Elementary Tier." There were six more powerful tiers, those being the Intermediate, Advanced, Saint, King, Imperial, and Divine ranks. The highest tier can even affect entire continents. Anyway, the average person hardly got past intermediate their whole lives, so I was on a good pace.

There were titles to be gained as a magician as well. If you managed to proficiently execute say a King-ranked fire spell, you would be known as a King-class Fire mage. That system was easy enough to follow, honestly.

If I had to pick one goal, it would be to one day become a King-class mage. That sounds genuinely awesome. 

Anyways, back to my experiments. I made a discovery with the Water Ball spell–it was a lot more malleable than I thought. I could control the size to a point. However, when I tried casting with both hands, I could only manage two droplets. After a few hours of trial and error, I managed to get them both to equal size. 

And that was when I had a thought. What if I could make these fly?

---

I managed it in just under two months. That might sound like a bit of a waste, but I felt like I made a great discovery in the process of it. I found out that spells have a specific order you can change. First, you decide on the shape. Next, the size. Finally, the speed. After that, the spell is cast.

Maybe magic isn't that crazy after all? Now I have a clear goal. I want to practice doing magic without using incantations until I can do it without breaking a sweat, and I want to increase my magical power as much as possible.

---