Teacher Tristan

...Different branches of what we call 'Magic' have been developed across the great length of time by us humans. But one thing had remained the same shackle as it had always been: our dependence on magical beasts.

All of the Gods agree on the fact that we need beasts to perform any Magic, and condemn any efforts to go against their decree. Many a great minds have suffered the fate of not being able to pursue the branch of Magic they wanted to, simply because of the absurd limitation of not having the choice.

Regardless, many liberators have appeared across the history. Trying to deny the Gods their meager authority. The greatest among them, King Kahrum...

——An excerpt from the secret diary of an unknown Heretic.

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[Analysis is complete. How are you feeling?] Codex asked the groggy Ryan, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

It was already morning of the day after Tristan had made his choice for his first Beast Soul companion. Ryan had slept through the whole day and night, waking up the day after.

'My headache is gone now. Just, remind me not to focus too deeply into a Soul Core with mana sense, okay?' Ryan thought back to the experience and grimaced, 'Remembering the sensation is still unpleasant.'

Yesterday, after almost an hour of examining the magical orbs with light meditation, Ryan and Codex had gotten more interested and attempted to deep dive by concentrating all of their focus on just one Soul Core, trying to understand its secrets.

At first, it was going well.

Ryan was able to focus solely on his target, able to magnify the nearest blob of green light in head till he could vaguely make out individual streams of mana.

To him, differently sized streams of mana seemed to flow in different directions unpredictably.

Feeling confident, he further immersed himself into the feeling. Leaning into the vibrant green mana while ignoring everything else.

In his mind's eye, everything else faded to black as the green blob of mixing streams grew bigger and brighter.

Yet, he couldn't find the anomaly that Codex had reported.

Exploring the verdant giant in his head and feeling some difficulty in managing such a level of focus, Ryan decided to go deeper.

'Yeah, I see it.' Ryan thought with some difficulty, not being able to spare much energy to generate thoughts.

Although barely a smudge in the grand and intricate tapestry of magic, he noticed it. For just a brief second, but he caught it.

And is hurt him to do so.

There was something transparent at the center of the whole thing, something like an unseen, inextinguishable fire. Just barely catching a glimpse of it felt like he had seen something he shouldn't have, something that wasn't meant to be seen.

Immediately, a surge of pain shot through his head, violently throwing him out of his zen and back into the room with Tristan declaring his choice.

Just thinking about that feeling made him shudder.

'Just what was that thing?' He asked Codex.

[I might be wrong, but it seemed to me something that would give the Soul Cores their name.] Codex replied.

'You mean to say that, what we saw was a soul?' Ryan thought, stretching his body and doing basic exercises in the lobby.

[Exactly. It wouldn't make sense to name these things 'Soul' Cores if there were no souls involved.]

'True... But, it also doesn't make sense for it to have such an extreme effect just by looking at it. It wasn't even a visual sense. I just imagined the damn thing in my head!' Ryan frowned, punching the air.

True to its name, his meditation just allowed him to ignore his basic five senses and focus on his sense that forced him to feel the surrounding magic. By leaning into it, he could take those feelings and create an image in his head as to what it might look like to his eyes.

[It may be because of perception, not sight. Lacking the bodily perks, souls likely don't have the basic senses such as sight or hearing. They probably rely on mana sense primarily. You perceived it using your mana sense, hence the reaction. Your own mana sense might be because of the foreignness of your soul.] Codex speculated.

'That... makes sense,' Ryan sighed as he greeted Oliver a great morning and looked for something to eat, 'In any case, it's irrelevant for now. I don't think it helps us to know that looking at a soul hurts my brain.'

Getting over the mental pain and silencing the growling beast in his stomach, Ryan found Tristan in the eatery, drawing something on his notebook at a table near the far corner.

Smirking to himself, Ryan silently snuck behind Tristan and...

"Boo!" "Ah!"

"Hehe, what are you drawing?" Ryan asked, standing on the tip of his toes to lean closer to the notebook on the table.

"Ah, I was practicing the structure of my heart engine by drawing it out." Tristan explained, looking at the scribbles on his notebook as he scratching the back of his head, embarrassed. His right hand was covered in a grey, sooty substance, holding the charcoal writing stick for long.

"Ouh," Ryan exclaimed as he looked at the jumbled up lines that, upon closer inspection, revealed a complex structure of shapes, "Why don't you explain it to me? I heard teaching someone makes remembering something easier."

'A win-win for both of us.' He thought.

"Huh? Well, I guess it doesn't hurt to try," Tristan thought out loud, "Get Ollie too, then. He's only got another year to shore up his basics."

After a while, the three brothers were sitting on a table by the window, with Tristan sitting on one side of the table, and the other two on he opposite side.

"So, first of all..." He began.

As known before, a person needs three things to walk on the path of magic, namely: a Beast Soul, a Heart Engine, and Runes.

As taught to Tristan and Oliver in the village, a person can bond with a maximum of four Beast Souls, each an irreversible endeavor. And for each bond, there is a separate section in the heart engine dedicated to that Beast Soul.

This is done so because no element of magic reacts favorably enough to another to keep their respective Runes right next to each other.

Hence, the different compartments.

The repulsion between some elements was so strong that the separate compartments might as well be separate heart engines, with how detached they were from each other. In fact, people preferred to bond even fewer Souls, than the maximum of four, to not deal with the high repulsion between the Runes.

In our village, the number of people with more than one Beast Souls was countable on one hand.

Both Tristan and Oliver were adamant to drill that fact into Ryan's head.

'Oi, Triss was supposed to teach me and Ollie. Why are the two of them ganging up on me?' Ryan thought in mock distress, continuing to listen and ask questions when necessary.

In short, out of the three heart engine designs available in the miniature library at the headman's house, Oliver and Tristan had chosen the same one.

The three designs were hugely the same, providing stable anchors for Runes till the 4rd Rank and capable of supporting two different Beast Souls.

Tristan explained that most of the Heart Engines differed in only three aspects: The way they processed mana, the way they managed the Heart Space — the intangible organ in which the Heart Engine resides — and finally, how they were operated.

As for their own choice... They didn't even need to check these parameters. The one they chose was basically the only reasonable option.

As the other two designs were either even further limited to only 2nd or 3rd Rank, or only supported one Beast Soul. Those too, with much less stability.

Their choice was also influenced by the fact that this was the design of the headman's personal Heart Engine.