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Of Arms and Arcane: Chapter 4
🕑 Added 2023-09-21 11:42:05 +0000 UTCAN: Boom! Another chapter! It was a slow day at work today.
Mum narrated the book and traced out the mana flow on the simple diagram of a human body, and because she thought I didn't understand anything yet, she added a few more detailed comments on how the process is done and lamented the details that were missed out.
“But don't worry sweety, the current 5th edition corrected most of this. This 3rd edition is from your Grandpa’s time, we just forgot to dispose of this old edition, if someone follows this, they may get an internal injury if they are really unlucky. And besides, Mommy will be the one who will help you with your first steps to magic.” Mum said as she kissed my forehead and continued.
After she finished the rather short book, Mum looked at the grandfather clock and said, “Looks like it's feeding time.” and whipped out a tit for me to suck.
While I was having my regular dose of boob juice, I took the time to digest not only the milk I was drinking but what I just learned. If I boiled it down to its basic contents, mana is already in and around my body, I just need to different shade the difference between my internal mana and environmental mana.
Once I am able to do that, I should be able to use my internal mana to enact my will upon environmental mana.
Currently, as things stand with me sensing mana, my situation would be analogous to my body being submerged in water that constantly maintains the same temperature as my own body. My brain knows it is submerged in water, but my body is having a hard time feeling the sensation of wetness due to everything being the same temperature.
The same thing applies to my mana, the instruction book tells me that mana is everywhere, and my mum has shown me proof that magic is possible through the power of mana.
Now I would need to create a situation where my mana surges fluctuate more than the environmental mana before I start feeling the difference.
But that's where the danger comes in. For a person who has never had his mana fluctuate before, if done too roughly, it could rupture one’s mana pathways, and if not attended to immediately, could lead to being magically crippled or death.
There was an excerpt in the book that says areas that suffer repeated environmental mana fluctuations, have a higher percentage of mages being produced, but that same percentage increase also applies to the child mortality rate. Grim stuff.
While explaining that excerpt, my mum also said that the Royals, higher nobility, and the extremely rich send their children to the capital to enter what is known as a Mana Depravation Chamber. If there is no more mana around, it is easy to find your own mana, because within the chamber that person would be the only one with mana. But using the Mana Depravation Chamber is stupidly expensive, apparently, it is hard to totally extract mana from an area.
But back to my situation of sensing my own mana. From what the text says, there is a breathing technique and an element of imagination in order to fluctuate my mana.
It says I need to apply the breathing technique and while doing so, imagine a ball of power in the middle of my chest. After breathing in and out ten times, take one last deep breath, hold my breath as long as I can, then finally exhale and release the image of the ball of power. The text says to repeat this exercise until I start feeling a tingling or jarring sensation all over my body, and if I start getting an aching sensation in my chest, I am to stop and rest for at least a week.
But all that is for later, my belly is full and it is nappy time.
***
When I woke up, I was in my cot with Alice sitting beside me reading a book. But now that I am awake I have an important decision to make.
Do I attempt to take the path to magic on my own, or do I be a good boy and wait until I am old enough? From what has been read to me, the age range most kids take their first step to magic is between the ages of 5 to 10 years old.
But that is for snot-nosed kids who don't have the mind of a fully grown man, I sure as hell am not going to entertain myself by stacking toy blocks… I mean nothing wrong with stacking blocks, it would be pretty dope if I could build it super high and-. NO, Focus Luke! Magic awaits!
The main question is, do I go through with this? To be honest, I isekai'd into a noble family, from what the servants say, my father is an accomplished fighter that did the King a huge solid during a battle, and my mum is a 4th circle mage, most mages linger between 1st to 3rd circle all their lives, apparently low-level mages can still make a decent living in this world. From the novels, manga, and anime I consumed, it could have been a lot worse.
But no, I don't think I can stand the boredom of babyhood. I got the instructions, I just have to go through with it, the only downside is the chance of dying.
Wait a minute, I have a 4th circle mage as a mother, which means she is a pretty talented mage, and if what was read to me is to be believed, she would be able to sense if shit goes sideways right?
The text did say "if not attended to immediately, could lead to being magically crippled or death.", what's more immediate than Mum being beside me, basically a safety net.
And if she notices and freaks out, I will just play dumb and make baby noises at her.
Hey, I never said my plan was good, but it is a plan nonetheless. I hope there is no superstition about magical babies being the devil or something like that, that would suck major ass.
