Chapter 9
#09. Initiation (3)
Immediately after deciding to learn magic, I found a spot atop a small pile of stones and sat down.
Thud-
While I waited for the lesson with a slight nervousness, Iris brought over a large, thin stone tablet from somewhere.
Its surface was so smooth and polished that, at a glance, one might think it had been cut with a water jet.
There was no way something like that could be lying around in a mess like this, so it was probably made by Iris.
I had no idea how she had made something like that with those thin, slender arms, but I chalked it up to the power of magic and moved on.
Because the more I thought about it, the more my respect for my teacher seemed to rise.
Of course, it wasn't fear.
-Oh? Mr. Hyunwoo, you didn't do your homework?
-W-well... I'm sorry...
-Mr. Hyunwoo, don't you want to know what kind of force water can exert when sprayed at high pressure?
...Probably.
“Then, Mr. Hyunwoo? We'll begin the lesson now.”
“I'm always prepared.”
“Hehe, you're overflowing with confidence. It's nice to see.”
The lesson began with Iris's fresh smile.
Though it came with the pathetic touch of using my phone's flashlight as indirect lighting because it was so dark, I had no doubt that this would be the happiest lesson of my twenty-one years of life.
“First, I'll explain the basics. You said you knew that what's in the atmosphere is called mana, while what enters living creatures and gets refined is called magical power, right?”
“Yes.”
Even if knowledge about magic was precious, this was the absolute fucking basics, something one could find even on the internet.
“Then do you also know that knights and mages are divided according to how they use magical power?"
"I haven't been interested in knights..."
As befits a fantasy world, apparently there's a profession called a knight.
Of course, Earth has them too.
In most European countries, the term knight was a little more familiar than hunter.
"That makes sense. To explain simply, knights gather magical power in the lower abdomen, while mages gather it around the heart. The place where knights gather magical power is called the Lower, while we call ours the Heart.”
Although both gather magical power in one place in the body, the decisive difference between knights and mages lies in how they wield it.
“Through training and enlightenment, a knight can release the magical power accumulated in the Lower outside the body, and that's called aura. Aura takes various forms depending on the weapon. A sword's is called sword aura, a spear's spear aura, and so on. It's all powerful and sharp use of magical power, but they're merely taking out and using magical power in its raw form. We mages are different.”
A green haze rose above Iris's palm after she finished explaining, and formed into a beautiful rose.
It wasn't difficult to realize that it was magical power.
The magical power became a rose, then a bird, then a jewel.
“A mage's use of magical power is unrestricted. Far more so than a knight's. Its variety has no end. However.”
Iris began writing something on the stone tablet.
Of course, there was no chalk here.
Grrrk-
She was using the magical power welling from her fingertip to write. No—to carve into the stone tablet.
“...”
Was that what it looked like when she was suppressing magical power?
“Mr. Hyunwoo? Do you know what I wrote?”
It was a collection of countless equations and shapes within a neat circle, and with my knowledge, I had no idea what it meant.
Still, anyone who had lived in the modern age and had even a little exposure to the internet couldn't fail to recognize the shape.
“It's a magic circle.”
“Correct. More precisely, it's the magic circle for Fireball, a fire-element projectile spell.”
Iris said with a smile.
“Magic uses magical power and magic circles to cause phenomena that would not normally occur. Knights use magical power to increase a sword's cutting power to its utmost limit, while mages can use it to call forth enormous storms. There's no need to decide which is superior. The paths knights and mages seek to pursue are different.”
Of course, a knight who reached the extreme could also cause impossible phenomena. They could even create a sword without mass and kill their enemies with it.
Even so, mages were different from knights.
“One of the prerequisites for using the basic spell Fireball is creating a mana circle, the alpha and omega of a mage. A mage without a circle is nothing more than a scholar, not a mage.”
Both an academic approach to magic and the training required to create a mana circle were equally important, impossible to rank above the other.
However, no matter how well one studied, one couldn't become a mage without being able to create a mana circle.
“Mr. Hyunwoo, could I see your wrist for a moment?”
“Yes?”
“Excuse me.”
Iris's slender fingers wrapped around my wrist.
I've even touched her breasts and held her hand before, so why did my face redden and my heart race whenever our skin made contact?
“Now, would you close both eyes and concentrate?”
I didn't know what I was supposed to concentrate on, but I closed both eyes for the moment.
My already dark field of vision became pitch-black.
Once my sight was cut off and I could hear no sound, my sense of touch instead became more vivid.
The feel of Iris's hand and fingers holding my wrist, and even the pounding of my heart beating roughly because of it.
“Read, understand, and memorize. That's the framework of learning. Magic is the same. Read mana, understand it, and accept it. Now, focus on your wrist.”
Along with her gentle voice, I tried to heighten my concentration on my wrist.
Something began to make itself felt in that place where all I had sensed was her body heat and mine.
It was cool. It felt like dipping my hand into a cold river in midsummer.
“Can you feel it?”
“...Yes.”
“Then imagine that a river is flowing now. Mild weather, warm sunlight, singing birds, and a softly burbling river.”
Perhaps Iris stood up, because my arm was raised overhead along with hers, and the energy I could feel at my wrist naturally began descending toward my shoulder.
At first only my wrist had felt cool, but now my entire arm was cool.
And then my collarbone and chest.
By the end, even my heart, which had been pounding hotly, had grown cool. It was such a strange feeling that I almost wondered whether I was still alive.
“How do you feel?”
“Um... I don't know, apart from the area around my heart feeling cool.”
Though the unfamiliar sensation surprised me for a moment, my perception gradually shifted from a sense of coldness toward one of coolness and comfort.
Now I felt the cavern's air, which I had thought slightly chilly, was just right.
It was an ironic phenomenon. My entire body had clearly grown cooler, yet I felt warmer instead.
“What you're feeling right now is mana, Mr. Hyunwoo. It only feels unfamiliar because it hasn't been assimilated yet.”
“This is mana...?”
No wonder I felt strangely full of energy.
“As expected, you had a talent, Mr. Hyunwoo. Even with me directly infusing you with mana, feeling it at once isn't easy.”
“Oh...”
When Iris withdrew her hand, the mana no longer moved as easily as before. But traces of it definitely remained inside my body.
I could especially feel it gradually gathering around my heart.
“Would you close your eyes and concentrate again?”
When I closed my eyes once more, thick darkness came to find me.
And so did the magical power that was giving my entire body a fresh surge of vitality.
I had only closed and opened my eyes for a moment, yet I felt like an entirely different person from the one I had been five minutes earlier.
A sense of omnipotence? Not quite, but this was definitely a power that made me an entirely different person from who I had been until now.
“Can you feel where the mana I infused you with is now?”
“...My heart.”
“Mr. Hyunwoo, I told you earlier, didn't I? The mana still in your body hasn't undergone the process of assimilation yet.”
“Yes.”
“As I explained earlier, mages undergo a process of assimilating natural mana and making it their own. The more mana there is, the more effort assimilation requires, but the amount currently inside you shouldn't be particularly difficult to assimilate. So concentrate.”
Try to feel as though you are gradually melting the mana swirling around your heart into a part of your body.
Think of it as something that has flowed through your body from the very beginning, like blood flowing through your veins.
Don't push it away as unfamiliar; think of it as something familiar.
Mana is a mage's companion, after all.
Before Kang Hyunwoo had even finished listening to Iris's explanation, he gazed into his own body with frightening concentration.
In this place, where my phone's flashlight was the only light, a clear blue haze began to rise.
Kang Hyunwoo was undergoing the process of assimilating mana into his magical power.
Iris was aghast at the sight. Though she didn't show it, sensing mana and guiding it all the way to his heart in a single attempt was truly an unbelievable talent.
He was even undergoing the process of assimilation now.
For an ordinary mage, this entire sequence of steps would have taken several years at least.
It was the initiation into magic that had taken even her, praised as a genius, two months.
‘What in the world is Mr. Hyunwoo...’
She had intended to end the day after a theoretical lesson alone. She had infused him with mana because he needed to become as familiar with mana as possible, and had planned to do so at regular intervals every day.
A little while later, when Kang Hyunwoo opened his eyes, Iris was certain.
“...Congratulations, Mr. Hyunwoo.”
A new mage had been born.
Ding-
[Thank you sincerely for participating in the dating consulting curriculum.]
[Congratulations on achieving the initial goal of the Become an Attractive Member of the Opposite Sex! Project.]
[☆1-Circle Mage Achieved☆]
[Check the reward prepared as a dating incentive in your mailbox.]