After Yaku rested in his room, he was taken by Sunder to the main studying library, where magic students sat in silence, reading books.
The first book Yaku picked up was about mana control. After hours of searching for books about the Pillars, he finally found an old, dusty one about light magic. When he opened it, a bunch of papers fell out — the diary of the great mage Rul, one of the only mages in history to fight the First Pillar and survive. His legend was known everywhere.
The Letter
If you are reading my diary in hopes of understanding the power of the First Pillar, then I suggest you stop right now. My fight with him was nothing but humiliating. I thought I had reached the peak of light magic.
Once I reached the utmost north, I saw the beginning of the true north — the domain of the Pillars. We believed that the First Pillar was the weakest. But if he's the weakest, then God help us all.
My fight with him lasted a mere five minutes. In those five minutes, I spent almost 40% of my mana without hurting him once.
Before I speak of his powers, let me describe his appearance. The First Pillar was a humanoid monkey with four arms. He wore humanoid clothes — just a simple brown top and pants.
His powers were unnatural. He didn't just cast his mana — he commanded it, as if it understood his will. He commanded lightning to fall from the sky. He did not summon it; as I said, he commanded it.
That was all I could see — his lightning magic.
When he hit me, he damaged me, but not physically. He damaged something within me. I saw it — my mana core. It was beautiful. He left a mark on my mana core, and for the first time, I saw what my mana was truly made of.
Through research, I discovered that everything in this world has a mana core — even the smallest grain of sand. He who can see and understand mana cores may inherit the world.
Letter Ends
Yaku sat down, reading the letter over and over in disbelief at how powerful the weakest Pillar was. But it didn't break his determination — it only fueled him more to improve and one day challenge the Pillars.
He returned to reading his book about mana and gathered a lot of information.
Mana Information
- The lowest mana capacity users are low class.
- Medium-class mages have three times the mana capacity of low class.
- Advanced-class mages have ten times the mana capacity of medium class.
- High-class mages have five times the mana capacity of advanced class.
- First-class mages have ten times the mana capacity of high class.
- Finally, special-class mages are unknown.
He also found a better — though extremely dangerous — way to increase mana capacity.
The technique involved depleting his mana close to 0%, just before death, then meditating until his mana capacity was full, and repeating the process over and over again. This method was banned from academic practice because it was so dangerous. Most mages lacked the control to stop just before dying.
The technique forced the body to evolve its mana reserve to avoid death the next time, much like how the body adapts to illness. Most mages couldn't cast spells at mana levels as low as 5%, so reaching a level close to 0% was practically impossible without insane mana control.
After finishing the book, Yaku immediately headed to his study room to put these techniques to the test.