Chapter 3: Taste of Magic

It's been roughly 2 years since I have been reincarnated, did yall miss me? My legs have finally developed to the point where I can move on two legs although stumbling around was still a common occurrence.

My language has also gotten better, I can now understand most words in this language and can also speak a little bit, but still can't do it in complete sentences though.

I have decided this time I'm not going to be stuck in a hole again, I'm going to try my best in life this time, but first I gotta know what is happening right now…

"Grahhh!" Mother made a funny face, with her nose flared and her mouth snaring. To be completely honest, Mom was pretty stupid, she would just do whatever that comes into her mind, even if there was no logical reason to do it. 

Mom always plays around like this, she's like a child, although if I didn't remember incorrectly this year she's 43 years old. Elves in this world really don't age do they, compared to the first time I met her, mother probably aged like a month in human years. Would that mean in like 20 or so years I would look older than my own mother, although adoptive.

Just the thought of that sent shivers down my spine.

Book of Magic

Let me re-introduce myself first, I don't think I have given a proper introduction yet: My name is Gryne Notros-Farion, the third son of the Notros branch of the Farion house, which is a high class noble family, at least I think they are, or else how might have father been able to buy this mansion.

Because of it being a mansion, why don't put a full on freaking library in it? That's probably what father thought when he was designing the mansion. And yes, I'm not joking, the mansion has a library inside on top of 20 bedrooms.

Lily was one of the maids of the mansion, I think she's been here for a while now, at least 2 years now, since I saw her on the second day after I've reincarnated. Also… She's the maid in charge of handling me since mother had to deal with Claire.

I told myself I was going to live the right way this time, right? I mean it's a chance at redemption which I didn't deserve at all. Now that I can walk around and speak the language a little bit, I should get started with my so-called plan, but what can I do? I can't really train my body now, what should I do now—

I tapped my finger on the desk, as I thought of all the things I could try and do, exercise could wait when my body gets a little more developed. If I remember health class correctly I heard that training your body too early causes you to be short— and I don't want that. So maybe I could do some geography. I figured that I would need that sooner or later, maybe I could learn another one of this world's languages. I know mother's native language isn't this, whatever this one is called. Or maybe— I could learn— magic.

No, no, that would be too hard, wouldn't it?

Wouldn't it? 

"Young master Gryne, you can learn magic at your age." Lily said, bowing her head slightly.

I think I forgot to mention… Lily is clairvoyant, at least she seems like she is… She kind of answers whatever question I think in my mind. I hope she didn't hear my comments about her body… Lily was quite a beautiful girl, she wasn't like mother or anything close to her, but she had her own innate charm… I mean could you blame me for those thoughts? She is at least an E cup.

//

I followed Lily into the library, where there were stacks upon stacks, shelves upon shelves of books. If you were a bookworm, this would be heaven. This was probably my second time being here, first time was when mother dragged me in for a 'bedtime story'. Last time when mother dragged me in was a weird experience, I mean, who drags their 2 year old child down to the library for a bedtime story. Like I enjoyed the session, I got a few new words to add to my vocabulary from it. 

Last time I was in here, I was drowsy, I didn't know how massive this actually was… Now I understand— Even saying massive seems like an understatement, it should be called ginormous.

We walked past a few rows of shelves packed with books, both thick and thin, finally stopping and walking into one of the rows. Lily scanned the shelves, then moved deeper into the row of shelves. I followed Lily in as I looked around the shelves in amazement. Reaching the second last shelf in the row, Lily climbed up the wooden ladder placed there. 

Almost there, almost there, I would be able to see her underwear if she climbs a little higher. One more step— Lily stops and reaches over for an incredibly thick book, it was like an encyclopedia, in comparison it's almost double the size of all the other books which are not in all right thin.

Lily came back down, holding the book in her arms. She bowed and handed me the book, placing it on my outreached arms. Damn this thing is heavy.

I went back to my room, I opened the book— Shit I forgot I can't read… I mean I can with some words, I understand some of the characters in this language but still reading wasn't coming as easy as I thought. I mostly needed a bigger vocabulary, I wasn't exposed to a lot. Most of my vocabulary is just commonly used simple words from the picture books mother or Lily reads to me before bedtime, it wasn't much but it's something at least.

A few months have passed since I have found the book which I now know the title of, it's called "A beginner's guide to magic" if I'm translating it correctly. I was able to steadily increase my vocabulary now, sometimes I still have to guess the character's meaning. This country's language overall wasn't actually hard to learn, it was a lot like Japanese, so I picked it up pretty quickly.

Now that I can read I actually found the books pretty interesting. I loved reading in my past life also— but it's mostly just light novels… Oh well, it's still reading. 

I wonder if the maids and mother thinks it's weird seeing a child walk around with a huge encyclopaedia like book almost the same size as the child itself. What would be their reaction if they found out I understand what I'm reading? Heh, I would laugh just thinking about their reactions. 

I carried the book around the mansion and whenever I had free time I would review the book going through it from the beginning. I read through the whole book almost 3 times now. The book was actually really well written, it pretty much guides you through the whole process of learning spells. I haven't tried to follow the instructions and do it myself but it seems easy enough, at least the beginner level spells seem easy enough. 

Let me go through the contents of the book before I continue on. The book taught me the basic fundamentals of magic, after reading it 3 times now I think I have gotten a good grasp on how to explain the contents.

Firstly, magic isn't what you see in anime or manga, it isn't the end all be all, there are a lot of things magic can't do, at least in theory they can't do. Magic comes in 4 main types, Attacking magic, your average offensive combat used spells; Healing magic, to treat wounds, injuries or even sicknesses on higher level; Supporting magic, it's also mainly used in combat scenarios but it's not used for attacking, examples like barriers, shields… are put into this category; and lastly Utility magic, there aren't much in this category but it's basically just all the remaining spells and casts that can't be placed in the other categories. According to the textbook, magic was originally created for combat, hence the main focus on the three categories.

Secondly, there is something known as magic power or mana which is the basic requirement to use any magic, if you don't have any magic power flowing in your body you can't use magic. It's simple isn't it. People mostly used mana within their own body, which would drain the magic reserves quickly, as magic developed over the years and in later years people would draw mana from the surrounding area or objects to cast spells, which largely decreased the toll on the body.

Thirdly, in general there are two ways of using magic, incantations and magic circles, these aren't the only ways, but these are the ways in which most people find to be the most successful. They don't need much explanation right? We have all read this somewhere or saw this somewhere. Incantations are simply reciting a long chain of words, and magic circles are just drawing a pattern which casts a spell. For each spell there are different incantations and magic circles, the textbook goes through both detailedly. There seems to be a lot more history behind the spells and the development of magic over the years but I'll leave that till when I need it.

Lastly, mana reserves are basically determined at birth, so some lucky bloodlines would have the crazy mana pools while unlucky ones can't even use magic if they tried. It isn't like your normal rpg mmo games where when you level up you get more magic power, it seems things don't work the same here. It's kind of unfair but I guess the world has its own laws and rules. 

Hopefully I have at least a decent mana reserve, I can only guess how much I have as I don't know my real parents. What if I was the kind of person without any mana, I was uneasy not knowing if I was up to the task of learning magic.

For now, I should start from the easiest first, magic isn't as easily said than done. The book teaches every spell decently in depth, although it lacks the theory behind it, I could work with just the explanation and incantation. Since incantations seem to be the one more commonly used now I should start with that first, and plus how would I find monster blood to ink up my pen, not like you can buy those things in town, maybe you can? I don't know… I have never checked. If I remember correctly the incantations get longer and harder as the spells power progresses, I am starting off with the beginner spells so I should be fine as long as I don't get too ahead of myself.

There is no leveling up to get more mana in this world right? Let's just hope I don't faint after a single cast. Well anyways, whatever is the case, I would give this shot. I mean I had to right? It's a staple for any isekai.

I placed the book on the floor of my room, and I held out my right hand, my left hand firmly placed on top of my right bicep. I began reciting the words.

"Heave crackling flames, ignite this place and flicker in the dimming darkness, show thy the way forward with your light. Fire— Torch."

It was a weird feeling, there seemed to be something pushing against the tip of my finger and palm, the blood in my body seemingly concentrated on my fingertips, it's flowing like a spiral rotating around the palm of my right hand. Once the blood finally reached the center, something pushed through and exited my body. A small flame flicked in the center of my palm, luke warm, it wasn't the type of flame to burn anyone. 

The feeling wasn't uncomfortable, actually it was a pretty cool feeling. Hmmm… How do I describe this, it's like the feeling when you hold in piss for a long time and finally go to the toilet. That relaxing feeling was the best way to describe it although it's kind of disgusting, hope you weren't eating just now cuz I know that you just lost your appetite. 

I was excited knowing I could cast magic, it was a surprise, I guess it really would for anyone in the other world. The flame became hotter and hotter. "Blah!" I yelped as the flame burned my hand slightly, the flame flickered for a few more seconds then extinguished.

Looks like I have to concentrate to maintain the spell.

Let's try that again— Concentrate… The feeling of the spiraling blood boiled up inside me once more. Yep that's the feeling. I closed my eyes… I formed the image of the flickering flame inside my head, did I do this last time? Now that I know how the spell looks I should be able to cast it easier right?

What's this warmth I'm feeling? It's pushing against my palm?

I'm pretty sure I didn't chant yet… I opened a slit in my left eye.

Huh? The flame is already there?

In my moment of shock, the flame quickly extinguished. 

Was that normal? I thought looking down at my hands in awe. I was pretty sure the book said using magic with chants is basically impossible for your average mage. Was it really that easy? All I have done is focus on the image of the cast I tried to create. If it was really that easy why don't all mage's do that.

I was a complete beginner, I had never even tried to use magic before now, and I of all the people in the world had just pulled off a feat where even the textbook says is an extremely rare ability, casting a spell without the use of words. 

It really wasn't hard at all, I simply just focused my mind onto creating an image of the cast, then I guess the mana just did it's job and formed the image into existence. It was basically all I did. Everyone can do that right?

A bunch of different theories behind it formed in the back of my head, it wasn't like… No. Hmm, maybe incantations are used to push the spells out? Uttering the words out loud before, I don't think I had to focus on the imagery at all. Maybe the incantations are used as an activation. Kind of like a car where you can use auto to skip the process of cracking the gears manually.

The final outcome of my theory was that incantations can trigger the image without having to put your mind to it, kind of like when you play auto in a gacha game.

There are advantages with using incantations if you think about it more. First it would be way easier to use and to explain, instead of chucking in a whole lecture on how to create the image you can just teach the chants and the spell would just form by itself. 

Second, magic was mainly used for combat, at least that was what the book said. If it was really mainly used in combat, incantations are much simply put easier, not having to create an image in your head while thinking about all the other things needed to do to dodge the enemy's attacks. It's much faster to yap a chant in a chain than close your eyes and concentrate fully.

I flipped through the pages of the textbook again. I have read through the book multiple times, I never found anything teaching you how to use spells without incantations. It really wasn't a surprise, in the first few pages it already gave us an answer, casting without incantations is basically impossible, it's one of the rarest skills a mage could get. 

Maybe I had some innate talent for this sort of stuff. I really doubt it, after all it was something even the creator of the textbook probably can't do. I tried to be reasonable with myself, but in the end I could only come up with one possible answer… And it was that I have gotten used to creating images inside my head from all the LNs I read in my past life and I could also create other 'images' in my head... Sigh— I'm not proud of this 'achievement'.

"Hahaha. Makes sense if that was why I could do it." I mumbled to myself out loud. Afterall I wasn't someone who can be viewed as a normal person after all.

Let's lock in now, it's really not time to get ahead of myself, if I just live in the past and think I'm all high and powerful just because I can cast without chanting, I would be no better than my past self. I have learned a lesson right? There's always someone stronger than you no matter how strong you are, nobody has truly reached the peak. If I get cocky again, I'll probably get beat up again.

"Gryne, time to restrain yourself." I murmured to myself before taking a deep breath and slapping myself on the cheeks to clear myself. Yep, let's start over again, I'm still just a beginner, no more than a noob. I was just lucky in getting some rare skill from my genetics, nothing more nothing less. This is what they call Beginner's luck isn't it? I gotta keep a level head and focus on learning magic better, instead of thinking I'm some type of genius or something.

"Okay, one more time now." I said out loud, getting my body into the same position as last time, I was feeling slightly more sluggish than before, it wasn't like I couldn't move my body at all, but it just feels heavier. 

Am I tired, I thought as I continued to try to focus on the task at hand. 

No, that can't be right, can it? Does two casts of a beginner level spell really drain me up that much? 

Did I run out of mana— 

Thump. 

//

That can't be right… The book says mana reserves are basically set at birth, so does that mean… No, no, that doesn't make any sense. If my limit was two casts of a beginner spell, does that mean I don't have any talent at all?

It seemed like my mana reserves had been too small after all. That really deflated my mood. 

Ugh. I moaned on the edge of my bed, still completely drained from using up all my mana.

Sigh… I guess I was delusional to think that I was some type of genius who appears every once in a thousand years. Who was I to blame, of course I would think I'm one main character from the isekai manga.

//

The next day, I decided I would continue practicing magic, my train of thought was that I was in another world, why not take the opportunity to do something that back there I couldn't do. It was kind of 'bum' thinking.

I went upstairs into my room after lunch, locked the door, and began reading the textbook again. This reminds me of my past life where this would happen almost exactly the same, I go up to my room, I lock the door, but instead of reading a magic textbook, I would be reading some sexual manga or novel with one hand. 

I went through the page on the torch spell again. I stand back up from my laid down position. Now then let's try that again… Repeating the process from the previous day I held my right hand in front before focusing my mana. 

Pop.

A flickering flame pops out again. No surprise there, it was my third time after all, I have gotten used to how it feels. My bad. That sounded a little dirty.

How many casts have it been now? Like 8? 

What the shit? 

Given the experience from yesterday I thought I would pass out and drop to the floor after 2 or 3 casts. No. I knew that I would pass out from the feeling of tiredness. 

Hmm. Interesting. Maybe the book is wrong? No way right? It's a textbook. Was it because it was my second time casting? Had it drained more mana because it was my first cast? It's an entirely possible explanation, I mean I would believe it if someone told me if that was the case.

Finally after around 13 casts of 'Torch' I blacked out again. 

I was really satisfied with the result, it was over 6 times what I could do yesterday.

//

The following days I continued to follow the schedule of practicing daily. It hit me that I have been able to use the 'Torch' spell more and more. It wasn't the one time thing that I thought happened on the second day. What is happening? I felt like I could use the spell 50 times today. 

Everyday I seem to be less tired after one cast, I was playing it safe, I was only doing around 10 casts per day. Looks like the book really is lying again, first they talked about how 'hard' it was to cast without incantations and now they are talking about how a person's mana reserves are set at birth. A bunch of bullshit. 

Why are they putting caps and limitations on talent when there aren't any in the first place. There could be two reasons, one was that they didn't know about this at all, and second was that they were deliberately hiding this from the world. But I guess the first theory is more logical. 

Now that the textbook has already been wrong about two things, I guess I shouldn't take all its information as fact. I thought as I flipped through onto the next few pages of the textbook.

"Beginner spell: Waterball…" 

I re-read the contents of the next beginner spell, it was the spell 'Waterball'. I follow the book's instructions once again, placing my left hand atop my right arm. I hold out my right hand in front of my body.

Deep breath in, I begin chanting, "May the blessing of the great seas grant thy's wishes, moisturise the land with thee's power, Water— Waterball."

The orb of water hovered in the air for a few seconds before dropping onto the floor with a splash.

The spells did exactly what I expected it to do, it formed a small fist sized orb of water, not gonna lie I expected it to be a little more epic. Maybe it's just me but I always imagined when a character casts a magic spell, it would have this epic camera panning.

I might just be a genius. No. I shouldn't be thinking like this, I told myself from day one I wouldn't be an arrogant cocky kid. This is just a hypothesis but maybe if I continue to use magic everyday like this I would be able to get a pretty decent mana pool, I'm still only two years old afterall, If I do this everyday I could get quite the significant growth. I still don't know if there's an upper limit to expand your mana pool, I guess I could ask Lily or Mother, they seem like they have a decent understanding on magic, their aura is much fiercer than anyone else around. 

Nah I won't do that, that would ticker a suspicion, I'll keep this to myself for now. At the end of the day I don't want to end up homeless again.

In my old world they said that practice while you are young and growing lets your abilities develop much more rapidly, of course after you stop growing you could still improve but just not as much. There might be elves and magic in this world but the human body worked basically the same, the principles wouldn't be much different even here in a world of people's dreams.

There was only one thing to do now, grinding my ass out to hone my skills to the absolute perfection and become the strongest mage in the whole world. Maybe that's reaching a little too far but I guess it's entirely possible. 

But for real now, I would continue to hone my skill in magic and other crafts while I'm still young and growing, after all this is the second chance the world gave me.

//

That same night I decided two things, one, that I would push my magic reserves to its limit everyday to maximise my growth. It's something which could speed up the process after all, better use it as much as possible. The second thing I decided that night was throughout the time I pushed the limit on my mana pool I would steadily learn and use new spells, hopefully I can do 1 spell per day. It's an effective strategy, I would be basically multi-tasking without much extra effort… It's the perfect plan.

I have mentioned this term a few times before, 'Beginner level spells', it's a term used a lot in the textbook, throughout the first 70 or so pages at least. To clarify the term 'Beginner level spell' I meant basic spells, the easiest to learn, the basics. These spells are mostly attacking spells and there's also a tiny bit of supporting spells mixed in, it's not until the next tier or level of spell we see healing and utility. Some spells in the beginner category include: 'Torch', 'Waterball', 'Fireball' and all that sorta stuff, the entry level magic if I had not explained myself well enough.

On the surface level of understanding there are two majorly used power systems, the Barista system and the Aether system. The textbook only explains the Barista system so I don't really have enough understanding to explain the Aether system, but apparently it's used the most by adventurers and mercenaries.

In the Barista system, there are a basic seven levels to magic: Beginner, Elementary, Intermediate, Advanced, Imperial, Calamity, and Divine. If you were to dive in deeper there are a bunch of sub-categories in each one of the tiers, but for now that is really not important at all.

Calamity class magic seems so cool to me, I wished I could one day become a calamity class mage, it just sounds cool as fuck. But how am I supposed to get there? I know I'm getting a little ahead of myself but this textbook here only teaches till Advanced level magic. If I was actually to become a competent mage I would need to learn some of the higher class magic right?

I shouldn't think that far now, I should just focus on the task at hand. In my gaming and anime watching experience, I know that if the mc goes after the strongest monsters they would get absolutely destroyed, burnt to a crisp, it's just going to be annoying when your attacks don't do a single bit of damage while the enemy can just one-shot you. The more realistic approach was to start off from the weak ones first, like goblins and slimes.

Fire seemed like the best affinity so I'll start with it I suppose.

The beginner level fire spells are listed here on the catalogue as follows: 

Torch: tiny flickering flame for lighting candles and for a dim light.

Fireball: a fist sized orb of flame which hurls at the target.

Flare shot: small but fast bullet of flame that goes in a straight line.

Scorch: allows your hands to have flames on them and can burn targets.

These are all classified as beginner level spells, but the mana needed to cast each one is night and day, for example 'Torch' takes about 0.1% of my total mana to cast while 'Flare shot' takes around 0.4-1% determined by size. The range isn't really large but the difference can be felt.

There was also another factor that impacts the mana consumption, this only applies to fire spells but when using a fire spell the temperature fully determines on how much mana is put in, it could range from lukewarm to a 300 degree oven. The basic linear equation looks like: more mana= higher temperature, it's really simple if you learn basic maths in primary school. 

There is one problem though, all my spells just fall to the floor and extinguish instead of hurling forward like the textbook said. It's like there wasn't any force pushing my spells forward. I couldn't get the spells flying both with and without incantations, was I doing something wrong? I couldn't really tell because I was still pretty new to this.

Maybe I had to put more mana in there, I held out my hand and stood in position to cast 'Fireball'. Let's try that, I begin imaging the spell in my head, I apply a little more condensed mana into the spell. I opened my left eye to check on the spell, "Huh?"

I saw the fireball hovering in the air, it wasn't flying forward like I had hoped it would. Is it a little bigger than normal? I thought as I went through the possibilities of what's happening. It seems like putting more mana into the spell doesn't automatically make it fly forward, instead it just makes the size of the spell bigger.

I continued to experiments of different methods to make the spells fly forward, it wasn't an easy task, I could increase the temperature, make the fireball bigger or smaller, pressure the flames so that they'll create a mini explosion, but still I can't get it to hurl forward like how the textbook says it can.

I tried to cast fireball again, this should be my 129th attempt today. I got in position… "Damn… I ran out of mana aga—" 

Thump.

I fall to the floor, blacking out once again.