Chp.11: A lesson about how life changes

"As we have seen in previous lessons, mana is essential for using magic, in the case of mages, and for fortifying our bodies, in the case of warriors. We have also seen where it comes from, at least according to our current understanding of the laws that regulate the world. But now we must ask ourselves a question: how much does mana really manage to influence life? Not only ours, that of every living being"

Maldor started writing a few things on the blackboard, making a small pattern. "As you well know, all living creatures are able to use mana, albeit in very different ways. Some use it to create poisons, others to generate heat, others to unleash shockwaves, others to lighten their bodies. Each species has its own unique way of using mana, but all of them do. But here, we can see a strange and seemingly inexplicable difference between the creatures that exist today and those that existed before the Great Death. While modern creatures can use mana from a young age, albeit in a very crude and partial way, older ones only unlock this ability once they reach a certain age, but once they do so their control of mana is so complete that can be defined as practically perfect"

Maldor waved her hand, and an image of a huge winged reptile appeared in front of the students. "In all of the known world, only dragons today retain this characteristic. All other dracomorphs, such as wyverns, hydras, basilisks and so on, however, have the ability to use mana from a young age. For a long time philosophers have wondered why this difference, since it made no sense for a single species to possess a characteristic so different from all the others.To better understand how this mechanism works, the elf Endriuw Taters, in the year 4108 of the Fifth Age, did kill some dragons and inspected their bodies, comparing them with those of other animal species. What he discovered was quite interesting. As I explained in previous lessons, mana is collected in our bodies through an organ inside the heart, called mana But while in modern creatures the mana core is directly connected to the brain, thus allowing it to be used freely, in dragons it is disconnected for the duration of their youth. However, this is not a handicap, because the mana core of dragons can absorb mana very quickly and by never using it it accumulates it in extraordinary quantities, continuously fortifying itself and becoming more and more powerful, and so when dragons come of age and brain finally connects to their mana core, the amount of mana accumulated is such that it generates what is called 'domain'. The domain not only allows you to obtain an unparalleled power, but since the mana contained in the mana core is so much that once connected to the brain it activates a process called 'assimilation', in which all the uses of a certain element (which they are spells, sorceries, curses and so on) are instantly transmitted into the dragon's mind, giving him total mastery over that element. It is unknown whether dragons can choose their element or if it just happens randomly, but the common thought is that this is due to which element the dragon has the greatest affinity with; for this dragons generally unlock the fire or air element, while the cases of earth or water are rarer. Exactly how assimilation works is not yet clear, but in any case this feature gives dragons their deadly power, which is unrivaled in the mortal world. For a long time, dragons were thought to be unique… but after we started finding the bones and remains of ancient dracomorphs that existed before the Great Death, we realized that this is not the case. It's hard to tell based on the few remains we have, but many scholars believe that all ancient dracomorphs possessed the same characteristic of dragons. But then, why this difference? Why were creatures of the ancient world made one way, while those of the modern world are made another? What caused this change?"

The students seemed extremely interested. Indeed, it all seemed so strange... why had the gods decided to make the world in two such different ways? Maybe after the Great Death they had thought that the previous one was fallacious? After all, it hadn't protected living beings from the catastrophe... "The discovery of the remains of the ancient creatures has also generated new questions" Maldor continued. "For a long time, philosophers believed that living beings were created by the gods, and as such were unchanged over time. But thanks to the bones we have found, we know that this was not always the case. We know, for example, that originally wyverns had legs, and it was only around 23,000 years ago that they turned into wings And we know that lions and tigers were once one creature, much smaller and faster, which then changed and diversified into what know today. This gave rise to the idea in philosophers that living beings can change, albeit over a long time. Yet, as we study history, we can notice a curious gap in scale. We can admire an explosion of changes between the 30,000 to 20,000 years ago, and then there is nothing for a long time.Philosophers have long believed that such changes were willed by the gods, since they coincide with the Age of the Gods, but many have argued that it would be absurd for the gods not to simply create the shapes they wanted and just change the creatures over time. The discovery of the bones of the ancient dracomorphs has finally confirmed that the change is a natural process, since we can find older bones that exhibit different characteristics than their more recent counterparts. But such changes in the ancient dracomorphs had occurred over millions and millions of years. The short period of 10,000 years following the Great Death appears to be a contravention of the natural mechanism. But then, what could have triggered it? Why is this mechanism suddenly accelerated? And it is here that, finally, we come to talk about a person who has completely revolutionized previous thinking: Mendol Doranow, an elf that in the year 5432 of the Fifth Age changed our mind forever"

Maldor waved her hand and an image of an elf statue appeared in the classroom. He was a rather short elf, with long pointed ears and a blank stare, and in his right hand he held a book while in his left he held a cicada. "Mendol believed that we shouldn't seek the explanation for the changes in the gods, but in our own world. According to Mendol, it was the mana that fueled this change in living creatures, which adapted according to the conditions in which they lived. Mendol performed various experiments to prove his thesis. First, to prove that the gods had nothing to do with it, he took a large number of cicadas and placed them in a terrarium. Among these cicadas, however, half of them had smooth wings, and so they couldn't buzz. After that he also placed a predator in the terrarium, a large spider capable of following sounds. Mendol observed that the spider's presence made the smooth-winged cicadas, which could not make sounds, reproduce more and faster than those capable of buzzing, until only they were left; similarly, while the spider initially chased the cicadas based on their buzz, over the years its offspring changed, and while the spiders that continued to following the buzz disappeared due to food shortages, those that had developed other abilities to locate prey survived. Over several generations, the gap grew so great that when Mendol tried to breed the new cicadas and spiders with some members of their old species, they were unable to produce fertile offspring, proving that they had become a fully new species. This demonstrated that the change of living creatures was natural, and that it was not due to the intervention of the gods. The species adapt according to the circumstances in which they live, and the individuals best suited to that environment will produce more offspring than those less fit, fostering change over generations. Mendol called this mechanism 'universal specification', because it applied to all living creatures"

New images appeared as Maldor spoke, showing cicadas and spiders interacting and continually changing until they were almost unrecognizable from the originals. "However, Mendol did not stop there. The question remained: if they weren't the gods, what was it that caused the specification? Initially, he believed that it was random: every creature in fact inherits the characteristics of the parents and therefore has new characteristics, and according to these characteristics it is suitable or not suitable for the environment. That, in fact, was what had allowed spiders and cicadas to adapt. Doing some calculations, however, Mendol found that in fact this process was long enough to match with specification of the ancient dracomorphs, but not long enough to account for the sudden explosion of diversity that occurred between 30,000 and 20,000 years ago.This period was simply not long enough for specification to have occurred solely through characteristics inherited from parents over thousands of generations; something different must have happened. And Mendol spotted this something in the engine that runs our whole world: mana. By subjecting spiders and cicadas to the same experiment, but with more mana than normal, Mendol noticed that this greatly accelerated the specification process. The high levels of mana caused disease, tumors and cancers, but at the same time favored the emergence of increasingly complex mutations which, if beneficial, were immediately passed on to the next generation. Thanks to this, Mendol was able to create a new species with the same experiment in a time fifty times less than the previous one. Therefore, Mendol hypothesized that between 30,000 and 20,000 years ago the world experienced a drastic increase in the amount of mana in the environment, causing a rapid explosion of plant and animal life that allowed the world to recover after the Great Death. But what could have caused this sudden increase? Mendol identified this culprit in the so-called 'mana veins'. The mana veins are an environment that no longer exists today, and of which only cracks in the ground remain. Mendol's theory was that there was a great worldwide volcanic upheaval in the past, possibly caused by the Great Death or some other reason, that created enormous fractures in the ground where gigantic amounts of mana could emerged. In this unique environment, which no longer existed after that moment, the progenitors of the current creatures that inhabit our world gathered after the Great Death and began a fierce competition, developing new mutations and diversifying into numerous living species. According to Mendol, this would be the reason why the mana core of the current living species and ancient dracomorphs is so different: while previously the environment was calmer and more stable, favoring a slow and controlled specification, in the mana veins, due to the mana abundance and limited resources favored creatures that acquired the ability to use their mana core before others, thus developing the trait that distinguishes them so much from the ancient dracomorphs. After 10,000 years, all the actual living species where created, and 20,000 years ago the last mana vein ran out, marking the end of the period of rapid specification and bringing the world into a kind of long-lasting equilibrium"

Maldor moved his hands and new images formed in the air, showing different animal species divided into eight large groups. "Based on this precept, Mendol established that all present living creatures are in fact descendants of some certain common ancestors that diversified rapidly in the veins of mana, and for this he created the so-called 'Mendolian classification'. This classification is based on establishing characteristics common to numerous species and thus establish that they, however different, possessed a common ancestor. After years of studies, Mendol grouped all living species into two large supergroups: the boneless, means those animals that don't possess an internal skeleton, and the bonepossessing, which instead have it. These two supergroups are then divided into various groups; it would be really long to list all those of the boneless, so for today we will focus on the bonepossessing, which instead have only eight: fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammal-like reptiles, birds, mammal-like birds, mammals and dracomorphs. These groups can then be further divided into various subgroups; for example, Mendol tended to classify dracomorphs into two main subgroups, the ancient dracomorphs, of which dragons are the only known living species today, which possess a mana core that connects to the brain after a long time, and the new dracomorphs, such as wyverns, basilisks and hydras, which appeared following the Great Death thanks to mana veins and therefore like all other animals they developed the ability to use their mana core very soon after their birth. In the next few lessons, we'll talk more about these various groups and what distinguishes them, and how they've adapted to use mana. Now, does anyone have any questions?"

For a few moments there was only the sound of the students' pencils writing on the papers, as they were still jotting down what he had said. Then, there was silence. Maldor was about to say that if no one had any questions then the lesson was over, but then a girl with black hair in braids raised her hand shyly. "Yes, Barbara?" Maldor asked.

"Here, teacher… I was thinking… if all living creatures that have similar characteristics are descended from a common ancestor… then shouldn't we also be included in these groups?" the girl asked. "I mean… I don't know much about it, but I do know that mammals nurse their cubs… so since we humans also nurse babies, shouldn't we be mammals too? What about lizardmen, who have scales and lay eggs, shouldn't they be considered reptiles? And..."

"Come on! This is ridiculous" a boy, named Tyson, exclaimed with a big laugh. "So my dog ​​would be my cousin? And my aunt's cat would be my uncle? Come on, it's obvious that it doesn't work like this"

"Yes, but... even a cat and a dog are extremely different from each other. No one would say that they are related in any way, yet both are mammals" Barbara replied. "So..."

"So maybe you should shut up" grumbled another girl, named Mia, who was frowning (as did several of the other students). "We were created by the gods, and if you question this you are questioning their work. You should be more careful what..."

"MIA!"

Silence immediately returned to the classroom, and everyone shivered slightly to see Maldor with a somewhat angry expression. But instead of yelling at them, she simply asked: "Mia, who is considered the greatest mage of all time?"

"Uh… it was Fluder Paradyne, from the elven race, who lived between the years 4102 and 4761 of the Fifth Age, in the Thurmalin Empire" Mia answered.

"Very good. Now, what was for him the first rule that a mage had to follow?" Maldor asked again.

Mia swallowed lightly, then she replied: "A mage must never live on absolutes. He must always be ready to dispute everything and to constantly ask himself questions, even the most absurd and silly ones, because the abyss of knowledge is too deep for us to we can claim to have truly discovered everything, and to assume this would only be a foolish act of arrogance. If we are not willing to question everything, then we can no longer call ourselves mages, but only mana users, and we would be no different from a sculptor who copy each step of another without trying to improve his technique"

"Exactly. And since you memorized it, you should follow it too" Maldor said in a reproachful voice. "So apologize to your classmate now, because she did exactly what a mage should do: she asked herself questions"

Mia blushed. "But, teacher... what she said is blasphemous..."

"It is for the gods to judge what is blasphemous and what is not, not for us. It is arrogance to think we can speak for the gods, Mia" Maldor replied. "If the gods will think that what Barbara claims is blasphemy, then they will punish her. But that is the gods' job, not ours. So, now apologise"

Mia bit her lip and seemed to burn with shame, but she obeyed and apologized. As soon as she had done so, Maldor turned to Barbara: "As to your question… well, it's a complicated territory. We know that gods exist and that they look very much like the various intelligent races, and so it is logical to assume that they are somehow connected with their birth. However, we cannot know for sure how strong this connection was. That there is a connection is undeniable, but we don't know how strong that connection is. For what we know, the gods could be similar to us because they chose to have that aspect to better relate to us. Or for completely different reasons. Therefore, never take anything for granted; the answer could be much more fantastic and incredible than we can ever imagine"

Barbara seemed relieved by those words, even if many of the other students didn't seem to agree too much. Maldor clapped her hands. "Ok, if there are no more questions, the lesson ends here! And remember, study because tomorrow we will have more oral tests!"

And at those words all enmity of the students seemed to vanish, and they all uttered a cry of despondency.