Chapter 2 Rules And Info Dumps
I woke up at 5 am, stretched my limbs wore some comfortable clothes and went to the training room of the house.
Yesterday i took [C] rank dagger art called [Swift dagger art] from the library. This dagger art focuses on quickly killing a human opponent. Fighting humans with magic is harder than mana fiends. I wanted to learn a technique that will help me kill humans and i found this dagger art. Thus i tried to imitate the moves of the manual and trained for 2 hours.
After my training was over, i went back to my room and found that Lucy was sleeping. According to original Kayle's memories, Lucy was always awake at 7 am. So that was strange but normal occurrence, she is a child after all.
I went to the bathroom and took a bath. While i was walking to the exit, my eyes went to the mirror. When i saw the mirror, i remembered the fact that i didn't even look at my face properly. Which was normal because i didn't curious about my face.
Anyway, i looked over my face. I had healthy pale skin, white wavy shoulder length hair, crystal blue sharp eyes, straight eyebrows and a pointy nose. I looked at every crook of my face but i couldn't even find one mistake. If i didn't know the original Kayle's curse, i would be envious of him. I didn't know how original Kayle bore this curse, because i was already bored as hell in 2 days.
Now that i saw my eyes, i remembered the fact that crystal eyes were special, they have special powers. There were crystal eyes that can turn someone stone or negate magic etc. Though I didn't know what is original Kayle's crystal eyes.
Anyway, with that i exited the bathroom.
I found that Lucy was still sleeping, so i decided to tease her a little.
I walked near her ear and bit her earlobe with my canine teeths
Lucy woke up with a small shriek and i put my hand on her mouth to shut her up and whispered in her ear.
"Good morning my precious Lucy, prepare yourself, if we are late to breakfast father will be angry." I said with a mischievous smile
She went red like that of a tomato and nodded.
Afterwards, we went to the dining room, greeted the Count and sat down.
While i was eating Count Ceurie asked me:
"Kayle, did you practice a weapon art?" Count Ceurie asked me as if he didn't know already, but i was 99% sure that he knew already when his eyes landed on me.
"Yes, father." I nodded.
Count Ceurie nodded back and we continued our breakfast.
After breakfast, i went to the library to find some information about my affinities.
Original Kayle was overpowered as hell, as if gods or devils make this character with their own hands.
My affinities are:
Superior grade Ice, Grand grade Revelation, Grand grade Illusion, High grade Blood, Medium grade Sound, Low grade Time, Low grade Space
I knew more or less about Ice, illusion, sound and space, so i didn't search books for them.
But i didn't know anything about Revelation, Blood and Time magic. So, i searched the library and found some books about Blood magic and one Revelation magic, but i couldn't find a book about Time magic.
With blood magic, you can make weapons with blood, attack with blood and heal yourself. If you have enough control over blood magic you can even stop your opponent's blood or absorb their life essence via blood for more potent healing.
I couldn't find much about Revelation magic. In the book says that with this element you can reveal abstract information like luck, fate, and destiny and the caster can communicate with gods or devils.
After that my reading over, i went back to my room.
I sat in a lotus position on the bed and began my mana poisoning session. After 4 hours i relaxed my muscles which were tensed because of continuous pain.
I thought about my lack of feelings. Even if i massacre an entire race i wouldn't die from dulled guilty feelings but my purpose in this life is to get my emotions back, not kill everything that is on my way. If i got my emotions back after killing everything, i would be overwhelmed by guilt. I wasn't a normal person back then but i wasn't a murderer or genocider either.
I have two options to regarding this problem, first one is to make rules and follow them faithfully so that i would have fewer 'evil' actions. The second option is brainwashing myself to forget every 'evil' action.
Two options were equally best options for me, but in the second option there were so many variables that would be the end of my mental health.
So i picked the first option and made some rules.
•Act like a normal guy.
•Treat Lucy well.
•Kill arrogant nobles that bring trouble
•When your life and identity are threatened and if they are important figure, first try to make a contract, if not kill them.
•Don't kill the protagonist and some important figures in the novel.
•Torture is allowed but don't do anything too disgusting.
These are the main rules that i thought. In the future, i can add some extra rules, but that's enough for now.
***
Days passed my schedule was the same. Wake up, exercise, train with a dagger, breakfast with father, read books in the library to evening, mana poisoning and sleep with Lucy.
I began to understand why this is called dagger art. When i was training the moves of the [Swift dagger art] i felt that ambient mana moved to me. As if my moves interacted with ambient mana.
Though i read the novel, i didn't know anything about fighting and mana creatures. I didn't like fight scenes, so i just glanced over or skipped them altogether. But this decision turned out to be bad because as it, i was a complete newbie in fighting.
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Mana creatures are divided into 2 classes.
Mana races and Mana fiends.
Mana races are usually human-like creatures that are made of a minimum of 70% mana. Elves, dragons, spirits etc.
Mana fiends are divided into 3 and they are:
Mana beast: Normal beast that is touched by mana and became bigger, tougher and stronger.
Mana monster: Mutated mana beast. intelligence comparable to the 5 years old but have a more perverted way of thinking. They love to toy with their prey and torture them. Monsters are tougher and stronger than humans of the same rank
Mana titan: Intelligence comparable to humans. They are extremely huge and strong. The smallest mana titan was 20 meters but the biggest is unknown.
******
Right now i am reminding myself [Mana body] technique's properties.
Dissolve mana circles in the body and pour the dissolved mana into your blood equally, but don't mix them fully, just partially so that blood will carry the mana to your whole body.
With time mana in the blood will transform body parts. First partially second fully.
First is blood. When blood is partially transformed, gathering and absorbing mana will be easier and if blood is purified it would be like low quality mana potion.
The second is skin. When skin is partially transformed, the skin will be sensitive to mana. Absorbing and purifying mana will be easier, and skin will be tougher.
The third is muscles. When muscles are partially transformed you can strengthen your muscles with mana, like knights plus muscles will be stronger normally without mana too.
Fourth is bones. Dexterity will improve and bones will be toughen.
Fifth is nerves and the brain. Reflexes will improve and the thought process will be faster.
The Sixth is organs. The heart will pump mana in the blood which will make the full transformation of blood faster. Lungs will be stronger, tougher and more efficient, without air you will be okay as long as you have mana. The rest of the organs will be tougher and stronger.
Seventh is eyes. Eyes will be enchanted and able to see mana.
When partial transformation became full transformation, effects will be enhanced more.
With my thoughts ended, my work finished too.
With that, i didn't have a mana circle anymore, my mana mixed with my blood. Though mana circle was just a way for human mages to gather mana in their body without harming them.
I felt mana flowing in my veins and slowly changing my body. Though it's a minuscule change, i can tell that in 4 months my blood will transform. Thought if my mana quality were higher, it would speed up the process but in 6 months i will reach 3rd stage mage anyways.
In my free time, i studied magic, rune language and chants.
Mages can cast spells without chants with just thought if they practised hard but usually they don't bother to learn chantles magic because chantless magic is more expensive than common magic with chants and runes.
Runes are mana's command center. When a mage draws a rune and pours mana into it. It is commanding mana to do something. If a mage drew a rune that means 'water' and poured mana in, poured mana will turn to water most efficiently but nothing more. Mage must specify every action that mana has to do.
Though that's close to impossible because most runes were lost in time or couldn't decipher the meaning of the newly founded runes.
Chanting is the common way of magic. Chants are speaking in the Rune language to command mana. There are so many different chants and what they did it. Though speaking in rune language is hard, writing down understandably is harder, like 'akkkyhfssy ssssrye' means fireball etc. Being a mage is a hard thing but if that weren't enough, you have to learn chants in mystical language.
Deciphering runes is hard but my intuition tells me that Revelation magic will help me a lot in the future, besides there is Lucy's information magic.
Information magic is said to be the closest magic to the path of omniscient because if you use information magic properly you can know everything i mean EVERYTHING about the target. Their magic, affinities, mana quality and quantity, weaknesses, likes and dislikes even their kinks.
Information magic is one of the most rare magic because in the past every information mage even an information affinity carrier killed on the spot this massacre was called [Enos's massacre], which was caused by [the God of Knowledge, Enos]. The only surviving information clan was the Ceurie family.
Though Lucy has a long way to go. Information magic isn't like some Japanese novel appraisal where you cast appraisal and got all important information freely without working on it.
When a mage cast information magic, alien gibberish would flow through their brain and they have to first decipher this gibberish into proper information, though some eccentric information mages made artifacts that automatically translate known gibberish to show something like that of a holographic status panel. Though there are records about the meaning of some of the common alien gibberish, there are many more that needs deciphering.
After some thought about information magic, i went to the training room of the house.
Chanting in rune language was hard, but not embarrassing like chants in some fantasy novels. Though i can't even feel embarrassed.
When chanting if you spell even 1 syllable wrong, it can bring more trouble than it's worth.
For example, if you wanted to cast a classic [Fireball] spell and spelt a syllable wrong. Fireball can explode in your hand or different magic other than fireball can be cast. Though spells mostly fail if spelt incorrectly.
Anyway, i chanted one of the known ice spells, and i felt mana in my blood decreased slightly after that ice spear formed in the air.
Ice spear stayed still for 10 seconds after that slowly disappeared.
The books that i read, said that 2nd circle High rank mages can cast basic spells like ice spear, 15 to 20 times for high affinity carriers. Though i am 2nd circle middle rank mage, i can cast approximately 250 times.
At first, i didn't understand the gap between affinity grades, i thought casting efficiency would be slightly better than others, but I didn't think that there would be this much difference in mana efficiency.
I tried some illusion and space magic. I couldn't try others because i couldn't find chants of the others.
With Grand grade affinity, i can cast a basic spell of illusion magic 50 to 75 times, though illusion magic's spells are more expensive than the others, i can tell the difference between Grand grade and Superior grade affinity, approximately 2 times.
With my low grade space affinity, i can only pull something small for 10 meters anymore than that i would exhaust my mana. My mana mixed with my blood, if i exhausted before fully fused it could bring more trouble than it's worth.
Affinity grades are more important than i thought. So i began to search my memories of the novel to find some affinity enchant treasure or something like that.
There are a few of them that i remembered.
In the academy every 1st year have to pass a man-made [E] rank dungeon, there is a secret place that holds more than 1 affinity potion.
There is one natural treasure that within 90 days reach a horse. Though i can't go there right now there's no need to rush because the protagonist won't get that treasure for 11 years.
In the Ceurie family there's a tradition that when Ceurie family's branch of the Ceurie family's children reached the age of twelve, they would go out of their home with some defensive artifacts to learn the dark side of the world.
Ceurie family survived from [Enos's Massacre] with great difficulty, so they wanted their children to know the difficulties of the world and always be cautious. With this purpose, they would let 12 years old children to the outside world for 1.5 years to know the dark side of the world.
There are about 1,5 years until my 12th birthday, so, in the meantime, i will practise my magic, and dagger art and increase my rank.