ESIL
It's been four years (and some) since the Young Lord has been born.
And each day I learn something new about him.
Very clever that one is.
He was but a few months old when I began reading him stories and taking him out to town with me, in hopes of getting him further accustomed to the people and the history of his kingdom.
The kingdom and people that he would inevitably lead one day.
Much to my surprise, the Young Lord had caught on rather quickly.
I admit, although His Majesty requested of me specifically to do such things, I would've never expected even in my wildest dreams that it would go off so smoothly. Without a hitch, whatsoever, so to speak.
I should've expected no less from the heir to the Verlice ring. I do apologize, Young Lord.
If the Young Master is so skilled already, then there's no doubt in my mind that he'll inherit the technique of the Verlice family when the time comes.
A gift inherited, rather than willingly passed down through generations of heirs, that can be awakened through a sequence of trials, from my knowledge.
Since old times, the four major kingdoms that exist now have been favored by the gods, as the story goes.
Before life was present in the world, when the world as we now know was but a barren landscape of ash and darkness; death itself not even present as nothing had ever the fortune to have lived, a certain deity, shining with all of her radiance, descended from her throne in Celestia and brought life and mana to the land, along with a certain taciturn prophecy…
Her Majesty has only hinted at it once in my time serving Verlice.
The Mother Star, High-Lady Asteria, traded her life in order to give birth to life, mana, and the four rings that the major kingdoms now possess.
The rings were imbued with special techniques that Lady Asteria herself were presumed to be in possession of, which have allowed their inheritors to pass their technique down via their lineage. Ever since then, humanity has thrived.
The Young Master's potential is already high considering his lineage, so it'll truly be a delight to see his future endeavors, and how he will reign as King.
As his caretaker, I once again pledge to oversee the Young Lord and support his cause no matter the circumstances.
I removed my pen—that which was embedded with the Verlice emblem—from the paper and coated it once more with the jet-black ink encased within the inkwell, sucking in a deep breath and releasing it with almost anticipatory energy.
Then, my wrist falls into another rhythm.
Also….
Sera had to be the most adorable baby in the world!
I loved his neat set of lavender hair, which grew at an exponential rate, now reaching just below his temples—his striking, almost cleverly intelligent aureate eyes that look at me with an unshackled curiosity, agh!
He's seriously just the cutest! I still have his first ever word ingrained within my memory.
It happened shortly after he started to learn how to walk. I was watching him try to stand up, but due to the imbalance in his small body, he had trouble with barely even mustering the strength to push himself up. So, I helped him. His bright eyes shimmered in joy, and he managed to mumble, "Tank 'u, 'Sil."
It was so adorable!
No no, although I say this, I am not besotted! I plan to be a fair and responsible overseer!
Especially now, since he's learned to walk recently.
He has a tendency to slip out of view the second he notices that you aren't looking, a true problem, I'll say.
That little rascal! Since when did he learn how to read?
He must be a genius, I thought, pride intermingling with worry.
Wait, no!
He has to be disciplined, and to learn that sneaking away to the library whenever he wants isn't good.
What if he develops bad habits??
That'd be no good. As his overseer, it's my duty to see to it that the Young Master grows up well mannered and dignified, worthy of his title as Prince.
But… he's still a child, so maybe it's okay to allow him to have his fun?
"Hah…" I let out a deep sigh.
"What to do? Should I ask Her Majesty when she arrives? She mentioned in her letter that she was on her way soon, so… No, that'd be unbecoming of a Verlice servant. I should be able to figure out a solution myself." Internally, I mulled over my circumstances, coming face-to-face with my dilemma.
Either allow Sera to do as he pleases, or put my foot down.
Is it even my place to stop him? I'm just an overseer, after all.
…Am I even fit for this job?
I was working as a simple maid when His Majesty suddenly appointed me as the Young Lord's caretaker, so I don't have much experience in this specific field.
The only things I can really do are basic house chores…
With the exception of my skills as an emitter.
Before I was appointed as a maid, I had the occupation of an adventurer—someone who takes on a variety of quests ranging from exploring monster-ridden labyrinths in search of treasure, to simply escorting a noble to a nearby city.
I had become a B-class enhancer, one of the highest rankings in the Adventurer's Guild, on the verge of a breakthrough to becoming an A-class.
The difference in strength between a B-class and an A-class was insurmountable, and much larger than the jump between any previous rankings.
As a general consensus, being an A-class adventurer meant you had the strength to potentially take on a smaller country's military, and so those people were typically hired by various guilds to join their forces.
This was merely finite in the eyes of those skilled enough to acquire the title of an S-rank, however. Achieving S-class was the highest form of recognition for a mage, and represented absolute mastery of magic.
The very pinnacle itself of strength.
Those sorts of people were the ones who had absolute power across the continent, deserving respect even from the kingdom rulers themselves.
There were only a few of those in existence, however, and they, for the most part, didn't make frequent
appearances.
My life as an adventurer had been going relatively well until that incident…
Soon after, I met the former Prince Regius, whom I was offered a job as a servant by.
With my career as an adventurer coming to an unfortunate end, and with nothing left to do but wander the continent, I decided I'd take on a different profession.
And thus began my life as a maid to one of the most influential royal families in the continent.
In the beginning, I made a heapton of mistakes; ranging from broken glasses, to the tearing of the many paintings that decorated the palace's interior, and finally, to improper manners regarding the service of guests.
Yet here I was, trying to manage a small prince on my own.
"Hah…" I let out yet another deep sigh, pressing my fingers against my temples gently.
I'm so useless… The Young Master will grow up hating me, I thought absently.
I don't know anymore—it feels like the only thing I'm decent at is fighting. Though I was an emitter, I learned a bit of swordsmanship as a precaution.
And recently, I've been sensing more and more magical energy in the Young Master, which is normal… for a mage.
A well known characteristic of a Vaella—a furry demi-human—are our naturally enhanced senses, which makes me far more susceptible to magical energy (a reason why I can always find where the Young Lord scurries off to.)
With that being said, however, it isn't normal for me to be sensing such enormous amounts of magical energy from the Young Lord—a child.
It also doesn't help that it's inconsistent. It comes in small bursts, leaving and going before I have the chance to truly examine it. Explaining it is troublesome…
I've notified His and Her Majesty around the time when it first began, fearing that it was some sort of imbalance in his body with his forming mana core. Her Majesty mentioned in her letter that she'd be back soon, and so with me being helpless, all I could do was continue to monitor the situation.
And he hadn't even awakened as a mage yet, so just why was I sensing random outbursts of mana from him, or the areas he usually found himself in.
Out of all of the humanoid races and lifeforms, the only ones capable of using magic at an early age are vampires—except they've all gone extinct—and the various kinds of spirits, if I recall correctly.
It's impossible for a human baby to awaken at four years old. Meaning there's no need to mull over it.
…That concludes my diary entry.
SERAPHIS
Two years have quickly passed since I began studying mana theory.
Since then, I've had surprising results.
Mana was a lot more complicated than I originally gave it credit for, as I came to find out. For the past four months or so, I've been learning about the steps preceding spellcasting.
The sort of things that go unnoticed, that way I can get a better grasp and understanding of casting, which gave me a head start with magic. I've deduced the three major sequences, or points, that are involved in spellcasting—things that are necessary.
The steps goes as follows:
A: Gathering mana.
B: Converting that mana into the desired element through a minute series of "coding", which includes but isn't limited to: the forming of the shape, size, and the travel rate/desired location of the spell. And finally: C: The actual product; the spell itself.
The way I memorized it was by comparing it to a basic English syntax: subject -> verb -> object.
Through use of this specific set of fundamentals, I've come to realize a few things regarding magic.
Namely, that the primary use of incantations wasn't strictly limited to helping with the visualization of the spell—rather that it took care of the additional coding required for spellcasting with an efficiency relative to the caster.
Unless you had an affinity for a specific element, or if you were just simply a genius, the process of transmuting abundant mana particles and converting them into the desired element was extremely tedious—the singular reason as to why most mages couldn't use more than the two elements they originally awakened with.
However, incantations helped to bridge this gap, I found out.
They did the additional coding required to convert mana particles into elemental ones, regardless of your affinity.
With efficiency relative to the user, as I just mentioned.
What this meant was that through the use of incantations, anyone could become a tri-elemental or even a quadra-elemental mage. The reason why everyone wasn't running around as a quadra-elemental despite this, however, was because it wasn't quite as simple as that.
Trying to expand your elemental versatility was like trying to grow a whole new limb, which as you could guess, was unbelievably harder than just using the ones you were already born with.
My theory is that this leads to most people simply giving up on it; opting to instead master the metaphorical limbs they had been given already.
Additionally, the fact that incantations worked with efficiency relative to the user meant that there was a certain skill level you had to meet before you were actually able to put this into practice, which made the process all the more strenuous. It was possible, but very hard.
…Or at least that's what I originally thought.
Here's a new analogy:
Think of magic as a new language, and a mage, someone who's trying to learn the new language.
A more skilled mage would simply be someone who's fluent in the language of mana.
Let's say the person trying to learn a new language is well above their prime.
They've spent their entire lives learning how to speak that one language, mastering the in's and out's, correct tone of voice for certain phrases, timbre, spelling, etc, and they've become so accustomed to using that language that it's now second nature for them, like breathing.
Now, imagine telling that person to simply forget everything they learned—throw it all out the window, and focus the rest of their life mastering a language they've never seen before in their lives, despite their brain having picked up on all sorts of habits and the like from the previous one.
That person either has to try significantly harder to the point of potential diminishing return, or they can try to learn that new language, but since everything is fundamentally different, along with them adopting the linguistic rules from their previous language as a basis, everything will only contradict itself.
Now, let's compare that person to a mere child.
My explanation of it was a bit sloppy, but what I was implying was (sorta) obvious.
With me still being a child and all, learning a new "language" would be easier now than ever, since my body and magic was still impressionable—as I see it.
Which meant that now was the absolute best time for me to be trying to learn a new element, when everything was still barely coming in for me. It wasn't just a biological thing, either, it had something to do with your mindset more than anything.
How much more of a fool could a fool be? If I was going to be confused all the same, since I was starting out, I might as well take the time to mesh everything together and just sort through it all.
I speculated that the reason there wasn't an outbreak of tri or quadra-elemental children was because of the incommunicable nature of the analogy—along with how long it took for a normal mage to awaken, without any A.M.M—atmospheric mana mitigation (as I learned it was called)—simply weren't compatible with children.
I could practically feel the headache that would come with trying to explain how to convert your mana particles to another element to someone not even of adolescent age yet…
It didn't help that although technically a child would have an easier time manipulating the elements, they'd only awaken once that ease began to wear off, making it already a bit too late.
I'd heard that some people attempted to instill this upon their children at a young age, but it only worked in a handful of cases. Nobles tended to be the only people capable of spending such large amounts of money for magic tutors and educational facilities. In truth, there were a lot of reasons why not everyone was a quadra-elemental mage, including beliefs, but those ones stood out to me the most.
That concluded my research results.
Further experimentation would, of course, help to verify if everything I stated was one-hundred percent accurate, but for the most part it was. How did I know? Well, I'd tested it myself, after all.
As of now, I was only able to use wind, water, and fire-attribute spells, and I wasn't particularly adept in any of them, unfortunately, though I was keenly interested in learning ice and lightning magic—for obvious reasons.
Those are, like, the most main character-like elements for any mage. But then again, for my age, I guess I'm still pretty impressive, hehe!
My mana core finished quite recently, and after meditating for a bit to fill my core, I've been practicing non-stop.
It was a few weeks ago, to be exact. In the days leading up to my awakening, I underwent a strange process of sudden outbursts of mana from my core, despite me not being able to use it myself.
I figured it was some sort of notification that I was going to awaken soon, and so I was preparing myself for some destructive explosion from my body that would destroy half of the palace. That never came, however, and I didn't realize I awakened until much later.
Thankfully, it seemed like there wasn't any sort of sixth-sense-mana thing that allowed people to tell if you awakened your core or not, so nobody in the palace knew I had awakened. Good, I thought. I planned to keep it that way, so that I could surprise them all with some amazing magic one day in a casual manner.
I kinda figured that if anyone could tell I could use magic, it'd definitely be Esil, but I guess not.
It was a major surprise that she hadn't, but I quickly passed it off as something that emphasized my destiny as a Hero.
I had to say though: mana was certainly something.
I'd read about it giving mages a sense of surreality to use, but words couldn't express just how surreal it was.
A sense of divinity overcame me whenever I watched how the tiny motes of mana in the atmosphere seemed to jump in order to carry out any of my commands.
It was wholly intoxicating, to say the least.
I figured out later that I awakened as a conjurer, meaning that my focus was to be on long-range spellcasting. Disappointment washed over me when I found this out, but I wasn't going to allow that to ruin my new life as an aspiring Hero.
Whoever said conjurers couldn't fight close range, anyways?
I was only going to be at a fewmajor disadvantages in fights against enhancers…
This world was practically made for me, and so it was time I revolutionized it with a fighting style nobody has ever seen before—a close quarters conjurer!
(Although it's not like there aren't any that exist.)
I just really wanted to use a sword…
Not using a sword in a world of fantasy and magic would be a total side character move.
My own fighting style was still in its beginning stages, as I hadn't even picked up a sword in my entire life, but that didn't discourage me.
It was inevitable that I, as a prince, would be trained in the way of swordsmanship, anyways, so all I had to do was be patient. I'd gotten much more used to my untrained and unresponsive form over the years, so I was sure I could handle it.
All I could do as of now, however, was to focus on getting beyond the beginner level in spellcasting.
A mage's adeptness in magic could be divided into multiple skill tiers:
Beginner, Beginner-Intermediate, Intermediate, Intermediate-Saint, Saint, Saint-Emperor, and finally, Emperor level magic.
I made it through the first and second half of the beginner stage relatively easily; incantations made quick work of the additional coding required for the spells, although even those weren't necessary. It was around the third stage that things had started to slow down.
Most of the beginner spells focused on things pertaining to the most simple spell to cast for mages, both enhancers and conjurers, which was any kind of ball made from a certain element—followed by the reshaping of the ball by changing details such as its shape or density.
The third stage of the book focused on the projecting of your spell. Be that as it may, that isn't what slowed me down.
At least not in the regular sense.
The reason I'd felt bottlenecked is due to the lack of space I had to spellcast while also trying to keep it a secret from Esil and the other maids. Magic wasn't exactly the most covert thing, you see.
I was barely able to keep Esil and the others from finding out about my status as a mage as it was, so the last thing I needed was to be chanting destructive spells out loud while holding a magic grimoire. It didn't exactly fit into my plans, at least as of now.
Reaching for a certain hardcover book on the shelf in front of me—my small fingers briefly struggling to find purchase—I eased the light gray and blue book into my small arms, carrying it up the rich set of golden-bronze stairs.
There, I plopped the book on the ground just in front of the singular window that reflected the crisp light from outside, shining directly on the book. "The Beginner Mage's Guide to Spellcasting (Conjurer's Edition)."
Ever since I learned that I could use magic, I'd spent all of my time researching and practicing all the spells that I could from this book, intent on learning to master my newfound powers.
It wasn't easy, but I wasn't going to let myself fall back to my old ways of simply giving up at the slightest sign of difficulty. I'd made surprising progress with this, however, despite my initial thoughts.
I started to think I had a gift for spellcasting.
My abnormally large reserves of mana also helped to speed up this process—it felt like no matter how much I cast I would never run out of mana. Letting out a deep exhale, I began flipping through the pages. It didn't take very long to find the section I left off on.
Beginner spell: Aqua Cannon.
Element: Water. Type: Nonlethal.
Safe to use indoors.
The process of casting goes as follows…
"Aqua Cannon… Despite the name, it says it's safe to use indoors…" I murmured to myself in disbelief.
After a few seconds of pondering, I decided.
"I'll learn this one then. Let's see how to cast it…"
I usually avoided destructive sounding spells such as this—for obvious reasons—but this one caught my eye, since it's listed as safe to use indoors.
And if the book itself was saying it was okay to use indoors, who was I to argue? I was just happy to be able to actually find a non-destructive spell I could cast. Most of the beginner spells were, for some reason, filled with destructive spells.
I guess people in this world tend to leave the supportive role to the emitters…
I spent the next few minutes intent on learning how to cast the very devious sounding Aqua Cannon spell that belied its apparent nature. Also, I decided to ignore the implications in the incantation.
After a while, I got the hang of forming it.
The dancing motes of water-attribute mana jumped to my command, bending to my will and gathering at the very center of my right palm, as a simple circle of magic forming—one with no more than three spell runes inscribed—which I was wholly incapable of reading.
Suddenly, I began to notice just how long it took for me to actually cast a spell itself, what with me trying not to alert everyone in the castle. It felt like ages passed before I noticed any difference, and briefly, an idea clouded my mind.
One I'd been struggling to hold back recently…
Maybe just a little bit more mana won't hurt. It says it's safe to use indoors, and besides, I'm itching to find the extent of my new powers…!
"O divine ones of the sea, hear my voice. I call upon the great waves of your power—
Drive forth the water, a fierce torrent, and wash away my foes!"
I waited, gathering mana for a minute or so, before casting a quick glance to my left, unsure if the amount of mana I'd gathered was excessive. The bubble of water magic had grown to be about half the size of my palm, swirling with a torrent of intensity, and then I broke into a cold sweat, suddenly unsure about this spell.
This was safe to use indoors, right…?
Before I could reconsider whether or not I should cancel it, I felt my restraint over the mana snap, and before I knew it, the spell was launching from my palm, crashing into the wall with a thunderous blow.
"Oh crap!"
*BOOM*