The road stretched endlessly to the east.
Arman walked at a steady pace, boots pressing into the dirt path that cut through open fields and gentle hills. The forest was far behind him now. The world felt wider, quieter.
Rostam Town was still days away.
As he walked, his thoughts refused to settle.
I still can't cast even a basic spell.
He could sense mana clearly now. He could guide it better than before. But whenever he tried to form a spell, it collapsed—either dissolving into nothing or stabbing pain through his head.
"How am I supposed to do this?" he muttered.
A familiar thought surfaced.
The guide.
"Maybe I skipped something important."
Without stopping, Arman opened the guide window while walking. He scrolled through sections more carefully this time, slowing down, reading instead of skimming.
That was when he noticed a tab he hadn't seen before.
Shop.
Curious, he opened it.
The list expanded endlessly—magic weapons, artifacts, scrolls, ancient tomes. The prices were absurd.
"Thousands of gold… tens of thousands…" he said under his breath. "Yeah, no."
He was about to close the window when one item stopped him.
Introduction to Magic
Price: Free
Arman blinked.
"…Free?"
He stared at it, suspicious, then selected it.
The air shimmered.
A moment later, a book appeared in his hands.
He nearly dropped it.
It was heavy. Solid. Real.
The cover was dark leather, smooth beneath his fingers, embossed with faint geometric patterns that shimmered subtly in the sunlight. It felt expensive—far more than something that should cost nothing.
"This doesn't look free at all," he murmured.
He stepped off the road and sat on a flat stone, setting his pack aside. Carefully, he opened the book.
The first sentence made him pause.
Fire is not magic.
Arman frowned and kept reading.
Fire, the book explained, was not an element—it was a reaction. Mana did not create flame from nothing. It merely prepared the conditions for fire to exist.
Fuel. Heat. Oxygen.
Just like his old world.
To ignite flame in open air, the surrounding matter had to be refined. Oxygen needed to be concentrated. Impurities dispersed. Large structures broken down into finer, more reactive forms.
Atomization.
Mana acted as a binding agent, temporarily replacing physical constraints. It forced particles into unstable proximity, holding them together just long enough for reaction to occur.
"…Like a catalyst," Arman whispered.
The book continued.
Heat was not simply warmth. It was mana compressed and vibrated at high frequency. By altering the flow and density of mana, the energy state of matter could be raised or lowered—changing temperature much like energy transitions in chemistry.
Uncompressed heat dispersed harmlessly.
But compressed mana—
That was different.
Energy density increased sharply. Matter destabilized. Ignition became possible.
Direction defined control.
Without direction, mana expanded chaotically, wasting energy and destabilizing the spell. Direction shaped the flow, determining where the reaction occurred and where it did not. The difference between a flash and a projectile.
And finally—
Release.
Mana could not be held indefinitely. At a certain threshold, the binding collapsed. The stored energy was freed, allowing the reaction to complete naturally.
That moment—
That was fire.
Arman closed his eyes.
Heat was compressed mana.
Oxygen was refined through atomization.
Mana bound matter temporarily.
Direction defined shape.
Release triggered reality.
"…This isn't imagination," he breathed.
It was process.
No wonder brute-force visualization failed. He had been skipping steps, forcing outcomes without understanding structure.
Fireball wasn't a picture in the mind.
It was a sequence.
A design.
His old life surfaced—lines of code, logic trees, debugging syntax until dawn.
Characters were variables.
Words were functions.
Spells were compiled logic executed through mana.
If even one part was wrong, the spell failed.
And if that was true—
"If I learn enough words," Arman said quietly, opening his eyes, "I don't need preset spells."
He could build his own.
Change compression to alter intensity. Modify binding duration to create explosions or lingering flames. Adjust direction to reshape form—from sphere to stream to blade.
Magic wasn't rigid.
It was programmable.
Arman closed the book carefully and stood, gripping it to his chest.
"This world uses mana," he said with a small smile.
"But I understand systems."
He stepped back onto the road, the sun hanging high above him.
Rostam Town waited ahead.
And for the first time since his rebirth, Arman wasn't just chasing power.
He was designing it.