Mage With No Mana (Chapter 5)

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Eric opened his closet to store his apron. Inside, on top of the drawer built into the wooden appliance, stood his kitchen knife, washed, cleaned, and dried, alongside a little empty book, a strange pen, and a little note.

“For you. Asfalis,” the note read.

Eric took it as a threat and a gift. A threat because of the knife, implying that Asfalis was always listening and watching. A gift, because it made his job a little easier. Eric appreciated the honesty. He didn’t like men who dressed like saints while harboring the devil inside.

He accepted the pen and book, picking them up from the closet table. The pages were crisp and smooth; however, the paper was a pastel yellow color. He flipped to the first page and wrote his name down with the pen. He then closed the book before opening it again to test the ink to see if it would dry like a modern pen.

“Property of Eric Bateman.”

There were no smudge marks printed on the opposing page. He figured if the residents here could do magic, a quick-drying ink was child's play. After he slid the book and pen into his pants' left pocket, he took off the apron, folded into a nice square, and then placed it on top of his kitchen knife. He didn't need the knife for now. He wasn't in any danger.

Eric then walked out of his room and visited the cauldron to replenish his potion before heading upstairs. Since Echthra and Asfalis had left the home, there was only one person left to help him out with his magic studies. To find her, he went from door to door, knocking before calling out her name, hoping to get a response.

“Syndeci?”

“Yes? Who is this?” he heard her muffled voice from the other side. However, her voice was more timid and tired than last time, as if all that energy and confidence had washed away the moment she had stepped back into her room.

“It’s Eric. Can I come in?”

Syndeci hesitated for a second before relenting.

“…Sure.”

When he ventured into her room, he discovered that the walls were adorned with paintings. Some were drawn on canvases, while others were framed. Some looked terrible, as if they were a child's first attempt at art, while others were decent, clearly the work of an artist honing their skills.

Every painting depicted the same subject. A beautiful blonde woman standing in a field of red, picking up the one flower with violet petals and a green stem. Eric presumed the flower was Syndeci and the blonde woman Echthra.

Syndeci herself lay on top of her bed; her eyes fixed on the novel she held open with her hands. Eric walked up to her while looking around the room, pretending to care how it looked.

“Nice place,” Eric commented. He felt that offering such pleasantries would help convince her to assist him.

“Thanks. What do you want?” she replied, her voice still dry.

“I came to you for a favor. I need to learn how to make some spells so I can go to the forest with your father tomorrow.”

“What?” Syndeci looked at Eric as he was talking crazy, asking with such intensity that she looked like she forgot she was even sad to begin with. It was then that he realized she had no idea what had happened over the past minutes.

“I learned how to cast magic after they sent you here. It turns out, I need to cast the spell myself. Your father told me he would bring me to some forest tomorrow if I learned to defend myself,” he summarized, filling her in.

“And you want my help?”

“Yeah. I thought maybe you could pick out some books for me. To learn?”

“Why don’t you ask my mother?”

“She went out with your father. Crime scene.”

“Oh. I see. Sorry. I don’t think I can help. I’m still grounded.”

Eric couldn’t take that no for an answer. He needed her help, and he had no time to waste reading every book Echthra had got in her study. He tried to persuade her to come with him upstairs. He was getting those books no matter what.

“Aw, come on! They both went out. They wouldn’t know.”

“I am sorry, but no. I want to, but I can’t. I’ve already gone behind their backs and caused so much trouble, so no. I don’t want to make things worse. I am sorry,” she affirmed.

“Alright. You know what? How about this?” Eric took out the pen and book from his pocket and handed them over to Syndeci. “Can you write down a list of books I should pick up? I’ll bring them here and ask you if I have any questions.”

She took the book and looked inside. She then looked back up at Eric, now more puzzled than reluctant.

“Are you sure?” she asked him. “I am not as good as my mother. Are you sure you want my help?”

“Of course I do. We are both alone in this house, and I have no one else to ask but you.”

“Fair enough. Can you tell me what you have learned so far? I think it will help.”

Eric recited the activities he’d engaged in, giving her basic ideas of what he had learned. After listening and confirming the specifics of Eric’s knowledge, she crafted a nice 6-book list to pick up. He took the list, thanked her, and then left the room. He soon came back, carrying with him a stack of books one foot tall.

He set them on her study desk, temporarily borrowing the space for his own use. He then spent the next hour reading. The first few books were about the system, specifically focused on the parts he had missed. Apparently, different classes had special tabs associated with them.

Eric, as a mage, got the spell encyclopedia tab. It worked and acted as it sounded. To register a spell, Eric had to keep the tab open as he imagined it. He could assign the spell he registered with an incantation. If Eric ever had a complex spell, he could store it here and cast it quickly if he liked. It was much faster than imagining it all in the heat of battle.

As for the skills, they were more of a passive stat screen that measured the current level of proficiency a mage had in a certain type of magic, as well as any other talents he might have. Kind of like the attribute tab, except the only way to level up the stats was to cast the same type of spell.

Once he covered the basics of how his system worked, he delved into learning what he came for, which was to cast an effective spell. After reading the books, he learned that to do so, all he had to do was make sure the mana worked as little as possible.

Before a spell could be cast, the mana had to scan the caster’s instructions. It first determined whether the caster had given a specific set of instructions on how to perform the spell. If the caster had not given any instructions, as Eric had, the mana had to expend itself to learn how to achieve the desired result before moving on.

It then checked to see if the instructions acquired had any missing gaps or errors that had to be corrected. If yes, the mana had to expend itself to learn, and if not, the instructions moved on to the final step.

The final step was to check if the user had enough mana available to cast the spell in the first place. If yes, the spell is cast. If not, the user would be informed and told to cast a less intensive spell.

The final base cost would be multiplied by the intensity of the work required. This multiplier was determined by the caster’s specific proficiency in the type of magic being cast, as well as their efficiency stat.

With all this in mind, Eric took out the glass vial filled with his mana pool from his inventory. He then set it on the table and began experimenting. He first thought of the ember spell and how to make it more efficient.

However, that was easier said than done. Eric, as a chemist, knew of a million ways to start a flame, and his magic system would allow him to start it in any way he liked. However, given he was weak, there were definitely some spells that were too complex for him. He only had limited mana, and he’d rather not waste it.

He figured he could start by adding in the instructions to the ember spell he had been using. Eric knew a fire needed a source of oxygen, fuel, and a heat source to combust. He just had to figure out which path the mana took.

After some pondering, Eric got a theory. Given the abundance of oxygen in the air, the mana should’ve focused on procuring a fuel and heat source. This meant the mana had two options to choose from.

It either transformed itself at the atomic level to generate the fuel and heat source the flame needed, or it just emulated these two components. To figure out which path it took, Eric cast the original ember spell and observed the after-effects.

If the mana were really transforming itself, it should leave some residue floating on top of the still solution. However, as he looked on, he found no such thing, confirming that the spell was just emulating the source.

He then took out his book and began writing down the instructions. All Eric had to do afterwards was to cast the spell using these instructions and see the results. However, before he did so, he drew a table in the book. On one side, it featured the mana consumed by Echthra’s original spell. On the other side, he utilized his new spell, one which he constructed after having read all these books.

Once the table was constructed, he cast Echthra’s spell. He then looked at the system to record how much mana had been used before moving on to the new spell. When he first did so, his skill tab updated, informing him the type of magic was called “Particle Manipulation” instead of just fire.

He did so until Syndeci interrupted him in the middle of the experiment. She had grown curious to Eric’s unique way of casting magic and had grown bored of reading her novel. It only struck Eric how odd he was when he turned around and saw Syndeci looking at him and the bottle with awe.

“I’ve never seen someone cast a spell like that. How are you doing that?” she asked. Eric, in his explanation, had given the idea of what he had learned. Not a description of it, so it must have come as a surprise.

“Simple. It’s my mana pool. Since I am not from here, I can’t digest the mana, so I have to make the spell happen inside there.”

“Why don’t you start casting a fireball on your hand? Aren’t you doing this so you could defend yourself?”

“I tried, but when I did, I was told that I didn’t have enough mana. Apparently, it cost too much mana to spawn on my hand instead of right above the mana pool.”

“Oh. Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why would it cost mana for the mana to move? Don't you have a mover?”

“A mover? What's a mover?”

“It’s a muscle we have in our bodies. We need it to control where the mana flows so we can make fireballs several feet away from our hands."

“I see.”

Her answer had troubled Eric. Not only did it imply it was going to cost a lot of mana to make the actual spells he needed, since he was missing a function, it also implied it was something that affected his base spell cost.

He turned around and stared at the table he drew. He then split it by drawing a line right in the middle before turning back a page to add some new instructions to his spell. He first cast the old spell, the one he came up with on his own.

[-18 MP]

He then followed it up with the new spell, the one he made just now.

[-17 MP]

He then repeated the test over and over again until the results could not be denied. Not only was his new spell more efficient, Syndeci’s hint had actually helped in reducing the base cost. Although his experiments had been successful, they had uncovered a new problem.

If Eric didn’t have this mover muscle Syndeci had talked about, then he couldn’t create those cool fireballs with just an ordinary spell. To achieve such an effect, according to her, a caster must use the system and the mover in tandem.

He wondered why this information wasn’t in these books. Then again, he was talking about what appeared to be common knowledge. Maybe the author didn’t expect an anomaly like Eric to show up. Who would?

“Are you alright?”

“Yes. I am fine,” Eric replied. It wasn’t a total lie. He was glad he spotted this flaw early on. There had been too many times he found someone, either he or his co-worker, had made a catastrophic mistake. To find such failures early meant he was given the opportunity to mitigate them.

“Maybe you could try to lift the mana with a levitation spell?” Syndeci suggested.

“Good idea.” He followed through with her idea, hoping it would work.

[Spell Failed!]
[You do not have enough mana to cast this spell.]

“It didn’t work,” he responded.

With levitation magic out of the question for now, he would need to physically transport the mana himself. However, aside from physically throwing the glass vial containing the mana, he had very few options left.

Obviously, he couldn’t throw the bottle at his enemy. He would be littering the floor with glass shards, and it would be a waste of mana. He couldn't pour the mana onto his hand either, as it would spill onto the ground.

While his rational mind was baffled, his subconscious was hard at work, trying to crack the case. He looked at the glass vial with the mana. His subconscious realized the mana did act like water. If so, could he somehow freeze the mana and hold it that way so he could throw it like a baseball? Would that work?

When this subconscious thought crossed over to the conscious, it prompted Eric to act. He focused on what remained inside of the glass vial and imagined the mana as a collection of millions of particles, all sliding alongside each other like water.

He then imagined these particles coming together, bonding, and packing together in a hexagonal structure to maintain form. Finally, he imagined the end result. A crystal mana ball, smoother than any sphere known to man. He then cast the spell and watched the mana go to work.

The mana glowed, like it always did when Eric cast a spell. When it finally dimmed, he saw that the mana solution was gone, and in its place stood a white crystal ball.

“Woah. What is that?”

“It’s a crystal ball,” Eric replied. He lifted the glass and held it in his hand. It was cold, yet dry. He opened the system and saw it had 100 mana points ingrained inside. Could this be the solution he was looking for?

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Test it out, I guess. Hey, Syndeci.” Eric turned to face her. “Do you have a spell you can use to make a shield or something?”

“I do.”

“How strong is it?”

“Pretty strong. It can take a hit from a boar. Why?”

“I was thinking you could help me out here. Can you go up to the courtyard? I want to test some things out.”

“I’m sorry, but I told you. I can’t.”

“Because you are grounded?”

“Because I am grounded.”

“Tell me, why are you grounded?” he asked. Syndeci hesitated to answer, wondering if the obvious answer wasn't so obvious.

“Because I brought you here?”

“Yeah, that’s right! She punished you because you trapped me here. How could a mother not get angry at that? She's disappointed, and she doesn't want you to make things worse," he started off. “Now imagine when she comes home, she finds us practicing together. What do you think she’ll think?” Eric asked. Syndeci didn’t respond, so he answered for her. “I think she’d be very proud. It’s a rare chance to right a wrong. To make your mother smile. Are you going to leave that on the table?” he asked her.

Syndeci pondered for a while. She looked up at one of the paintings of her mother. She had drawn her smiling, happy, and proud. Her imagination must be running wild. After a minute had passed, she let out a sigh before closing the book and getting up from her bed. She stuffed the novel back on the shelf before walking up to Eric.

“Fine. You win. I’ll help you.”

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