Chương 28: The Truth Behind 'Mana'

"Ha, this might be a problem, anyway let's go," I sighed, drained from my the fight with the wolf. While I was walking my foot hit something hard, shooting pain up my entire leg. I grabbed my leg and winced with tears in my eyes, looking hatefully at the ground. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a yellow light, I tilted my head in confusion and looked at the strange light again.

There was a small stone protruding from the brown dirt, it glistened in an unusually bright light. I squatted down and curiously gave it a slight poke.

'Take them back with you' Once Al said that I became more curious about the strange stone, but what confused me was that he said 'them', wasn't there only one stone?

"Why Al?" I ran my finger along the stone, having gotten to know Al a little I learned he wouldn't make me do something that wasn't beneficial to him or me.

'Practice magic,'

"Huh? Why do I need a stone to practice magic, don't you just gather the mana in the surroundings?"

'That's true, but have you ever wondered why even it takes magic users so long to gather mana into their mana core?'

"Isn't that because the mana isn't pure so you need to process it and let your body become accustomed to the new mana," I tapped my chin in confusion.

'Partly, the actual reason is because the so-called mana in the surrounding is just in fact a collection of different elements of magic. What humans call 'processing the mana' is just them stripping the elements from it to create elementless magic called mana which is turned into the elements of their choice.'

"Ah? If that's so isn't that just inefficient way of going about things, why don't you just take in the elements on its own?" I really wondered just who Al was to know all of this and he doesn't seem to be lying.

'They can't because the outside world has too many elements and your mana core will become disordered from in-taking many random conflicting types. To fix this problem a magic stone is needed of each element, once absorbed and placed in the mana core, your mana core will take in that element easily because it will accustomed to that specific element and thus know how to differentiate it from others, it won't just randomly intake all elements and there will be no need to process it and you will absorb it at a much faster rate'

"What? How could you just place it in your mana core?" The more he talked, the more confusing everything became.

'Your mana core is the same place I met you, your mana core is just a space capable of growing, the two stones there are light and dark stones, if you put them in your mana core you can absorb light and dark elements. With enough light magic your mana core will have light naturally, if you collect stones of all the elements your mana core will grow into its own little world, the size depends on how much you train. In addition, a place with more heat for example a volcano will have more fire elements and the sunlight will have rich light elements and at night there will be a lot of dark elements'

"Wait so, Al.... does that mean you're in my mana core?" I went into a daze, his words ringing in my head and I realized.

'..... yes'

"Does that mean once I practice light magic and there is enough light in my mana core I will see you?"

'..... Just take the stones' I didn't need to hear his reply to know the answer. It seems like the future held many interesting things. I giggled in my heart, not pursuing the topic anymore.

I dug out the yellow stone and just like Al said next to it lay a pure black stone that didn't reflect light, nor did it let light pass through it, it was pitch black. I wondered what these two stones were doing just laying there, but didn't think too hard on it.

"Oh Al, what does that make spirits who use outside elements?"

'They're just like living, breathing magic stones' I grunted in response, so does that mean I can just shove a spirit in my mana core and use it to practice magic? I left that question unsaid.