Yeah, fuck this. I had been sitting here for over an hour trying to get my mana to go where I wanted it and getting nowhere. Could I move my mana around, sure. The problem had to do with the fact that it wouldn’t hold the shape I told it to. Well, that and it was taking way too much effort to even do so much as bend the mana in one direction, let alone twist it into a U shape.

  Finally, I had to give up. With a bit of grumbling and a soft growl, I spoke up. “How in the hell do I get the mana to go where I want it?”

  Mindi opened her eyes. They met mine as the rune made of water disappeared. Likely whatever she had been doing was canceled as she prepared to lecture me on what I was doing wrong. “And here I was hoping that you were some sort of genius with magic. Ah well.”

  Her response caught me off guard. “What?”

  “Well, you seemed moderately proficient at everything else that I figured you might be a natural magic user.” She held her hands up defensively, “Now, don’t get me wrong, you are learning pretty fast but nowhere near what a normal traveler would have. You are nearly as slow as a typical person born to this world.”

  Was she calling me dumb? I mean it was round about but it sure sounded like it. “I’m sorry?” I said. While my tone had a fair bit of sarcasm laced through it, the words came out as more of a question as I tried to figure out why I should be apologizing.

  She waved a hand as she either ignored my sarcasm or didn’t hear it. “Not your fault. Just means this will take longer than I wanted. How were you trying to craft the spell?”

  “I never even got that far.” I started. Her brows furrowed in confusion. “My issue was with how to manipulate the mana to even form the rune.”

  Her head dropped into one of her hands. It hit with enough force to create an audible thump as her palm smacked against her forehead. “Tell me what you were doing.”

  “I reached for the mana floating through my body and tried to twist it into the shape. It fell apart as soon as I moved on to the second bend.”

  She nodded. “You were trying to manipulate the mana inside of your body. While this is your mana, it is not your mana. As I told you earlier, mana is everywhere. It is a part of everything. That includes your body. Hence why there is mana floating around your body. While you can control that mana, you don’t have the skill or knowledge to do so yet. For now, you need to focus on the mana that you have full control of.”

  “Where would I find said mana?” I asked, annoyed that I had missed something that sounded so simple.

  “Your center. The well that holds all of your mana.” Her finger pointed directly at my heart. At first, I thought she meant just that, my heart. Given that there was nothing there, I mentally glanced around. I nearly smacked my head as I rediscovered the sphere of mana behind the damn organ. “Pull a thin strand of mana out. This strand is what you will manipulate to form the spell form needed to cast your spells.”

  Great, I was going to be doing knot work with my mana, or would this be considered embroidery? Not that I honestly cared which it was. It didn’t matter. What mattered was the end result. With that in mind, I focused my mind on the task. Mentally looking over the golden orb containing all my mana. The energy inside pulsed in time with my heart. As it pulsed, it sent out a tiny wave of something through the mana floating around.

  Mentally, I reached forward and touched the orb. As if in response to my touch, the energy reached back. It felt almost alive. If I didn’t know better, I would think that it was asking me what I wanted, no, needed it to do.

  Whatever the feeling was, it was probably something I was imagining based on the odd sensations going through my head. After all, I was working with a force that humans didn’t have. It was something being simulated and projected into my mind by a game. So, I ignored all of it as I pushed forward. Shoving my way through the shell and to mana below. I felt resistance and pressure.

  Not just in my mental image but in my physical chest. It was like something was pressing down on my heart. Since it didn’t hurt, I took it as a sign that I was on the right track. I pushed harder until both abruptly vanished as my hand reached the other side.

  Liquid heat licked at my hand. The feeling was so vivid that I felt that I could drink whatever this mana really was. Not that I thought that was truly possible nor was it a good idea.

  With a bit more concentration, I visualized a rope made of mana. Within moments, my mental fingers felt as though they were holding onto a piece of rope. With this in hand, I worked my way back through the shell. The rope didn’t fall apart as I pulled it further and further out. Still, given that it was as thick as my wrist, I doubted this was what Mindi had in mind. I dipped my head and let out a sigh as I pushed the rope back into the sphere. It melted away. Vanishing as if it had never formed in the first place.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Trying again, I focused on making a thinner rope. While I pulled out one that was indeed thinner as it sat at the thickness of a pen. But, I felt like I could do better. Repeating the process again and again. Each time my image shrank as I tested how small I could get the thing.

  One such thread was as thin as my hair. It was thin enough that I could barely see it. The moment it left the sphere, it snapped. Every bit of the thread that was outside the sphere exploded into smoke. I mentally stood there, watching as the smoke dissipated. Not able to do anything to stop it.

  But what exactly was the smoke? Why did it dissipate instead of returning to that orb? With a glance up I found that my mana pool had dropped a tiny fraction but we are talking about a sliver of the whole being missing.

  With a command, I grabbed the information from my character sheet.158/160 MP. Sure enough, my mana pool had dropped. That little thread had cost me two points of mana to form.

  While it was annoying to lose mana with nothing to show for it, the loss did tell me two things. One, the orb was my mana pool. And two, if I let it go while it is outside said pool, it will quickly vaporize and vanish into the ether.

  “That was a bit thin. Try a little thicker this time.” Mindi’s voice nearly broke me out of my meditative state. Gritting my mental teeth, I focused on my task and ignored the world outside. As I moved to form the next thread, a thought occurred to me. Whoever said that the threads had to be one solid piece. Why not wrap multiple threads together like they do for clothing and even bridges?

  How did they do that again? Wasn’t there a core with various threads wrapped around it? Did the outer threads rotate in the same direction or the opposite? It had to be in the opposite direction otherwise the layers would more easily fall apart at the same time. With a bit of effort, I visualized three of the thin threads spinning around a slightly thicker thread.

  The thread that formed worked, mostly. As I pulled more and more of the thread out of the sphere, a dull throb started at the back of my head. Apparently holding such a complex visual was taxing. It felt like I was trying to draw while holding a conversation with someone. While I could do it, I would lose all the work if I got distracted for even a fraction of a second.

  With a mental death grip on the thread, I started to open my eyes. I didn’t even get them halfway open before I lost the damn thing. Not only did I feel the thread as it vanished, I saw it as a tiny wave of mana burst out of me. “Damn it. I thought I had it that time.” I cursed.

  As I took a deep breath to force myself to calm down, Mindi spoke up. “Good. This time, take that thread and loop it around to your back before returning it to your pool.”

  Wait, what happened to trying to form a spell first? She was changing the lesson plan yet again for no reason. “Are you sure you don’t want me to form the rune for fire first? Hell, I still need to work on stabilizing the thread before moving on to manipulating it into any shape.”

  “Sure, but the thread is mana being held to the shape you want with your mind and nothing else.” She said as she tossed a small ball of water between her hands. “If you could hold it without a spell for any length of time you would be capable of things beyond me. Though maybe not Barti. That elf’s ability with magic scares me sometimes. Feel free to practice holding a thread without help later. For now, focus on looping the thread through your back and back into the sphere.”

  Huffing at the oddity of the order, I fell back into my meditative state. It took only a moment to locate the sphere and pull out a thread of mana. I took my time as I wrapped the thread around to my back before returning it to the starting point. The moment the thread touched the sphere, it merged with it. Stabilizing and thickening as mana started to pump down it.

  “Good,” she said while giving me a good, hard slap on my back. The thread seemed to distort a little before stabilizing. “That is the most basic form of body strengthening spells. This one is specifically for your back muscles.”

  Slowly, I opened my eyes while my mind mentally grappled with the thread. “But how is that different from something like cultivation?” Her face filled with confusion. It was as if she had never heard of the term. Then again, maybe she hadn’t. “It’s when someone uses inner power and intent to control their body and power various abilities. Practitioners typically sit around and gather as much of the energy of the world as they can. Typically with the goal of becoming effectively immortal.”

  “First off, while there are spells to slow aging and help you live after death,” She visibly shivered at some image. “No amount of mana will make you immortal. Everything dies, even gods. Second, there are many ways to use mana. Some spells will use mana to gather yet more mana until it has enough to cast the main spell without the help of someone triggering it. Most enchantments are like this but as I told you earlier, there are spells you can cast that would do something similar to the mana around you. There are also those that can just use mana to force an element to bend to their will.”

  “There are?” An image of someone performing some avatar-like moves to manipulate the area around them. “How does one go about getting such skills?”

  “Before we get into that, how are you for mana?”

  I had to do a double-take at my mana bar. It was dropping even though I wasn’t doing anything. Rapidly checking the rate, I found that it was dropping by about a point a minute. While that might not seem like much compared to the stove or such, it was still faster than my mana regeneration. I relayed my findings to Mindi and watched as the grin on her face became a bit sinister. “Now onto the fun part. Don’t worry, I will answer all your questions as we go.” I didn’t know whether to groan or cheer upon hearing that. Not with that smile. And here I was starting to think she was a nicer teacher than Barti.