Mana
I received word that Ren wanted to see me, packed my things, and left the inn.
The reason he was calling was obvious enough. He needed something from me. Of course, it was less a favor and more a transaction.
What Ren asked for was my help with the disaster-class dungeon they planned to clear this time.
I had half-expected it already, and truthfully I wanted the same thing. There was no reason to hesitate, so I agreed at once.
I joined Ren and we left the city where we had been staying.
The city where Ren’s clan had settled was a remote place far to the north of the central regions. Ren said dungeons of taboo-class and higher usually appeared more often in the north. The place where Arnen had lived—where the forbidden zone lay—was also in the northeast, so his words lined up well enough.
We set out along the trade roads by carriage. The farther north we went, the greater the distances between cities grew, and nights spent camping under the open sky became more and more frequent.
That evening was no different. We pulled the carriage off onto a deserted roadside and lit a fire. I sat at the edge of the firelight with some simple food and looked across the flames at Ren’s face. Ren sat opposite me on the other side of the campfire. Pria sat beside him… no, she was sitting next to me.
We had already spent plenty of time inside the carriage with nothing else to do but talk and learn about one another. The one small mercy was that Ren no longer peppered me with questions about martial arts the way he used to. If anything, he seemed to be holding his tongue and had grown even more taciturn. Instead it was Pria who showed curiosity toward me.
She had already asked what I had been doing before I arrived. I kept my origins hidden. After a few conversations it became clear that even top-tier adventurers had no idea another kingdom existed beyond the forbidden zone. I had come to understand, vaguely, that the place was shrouded in a certain veil of secrecy. So I simply claimed to be from an ordinary rural village. She did not look entirely convinced, but the talk of origins was left there.
And now, while we shared dinner, Pria spoke up again.
“But no matter how much I think about it, I still don’t get it. How can you be that strong without using mana?”
Her tone said she had been turning the problem over alone for days.
“Oh, was that too out of nowhere? Want to try this first?”
She held out the stick in her hand. A well-cooked piece of meat was skewered on the end. It was fresh meat we had picked up in the last city we passed through, grilled with a fair amount of care; the scent of spices drifted gently to my nose.
What surprised me was that her cooking was better than expected. Just stew or grilled meat sprinkled with herbs, but even that was something. Of course the bigger surprise was that the behavior itself clashed so sharply with my first impression of her.
Still… isn’t almost all the meat on one skewer?
From the moment she started grilling she had piled most of the meat onto a single stick, and now she was offering it to me with a completely straight face. Was no one else going to eat? Especially her clan leader over there.
I glanced at Ren. He watched her hand nearly the entire portion of meat to me without a word, simply and silently spooning up the stew in front of him.
Feeling oddly off-balance, I took the skewer. Pria spoke again.
“I’m a mage. Not knowing something drives me crazy. I’ve been thinking about it for days and it still doesn’t make logical sense. The human body has limits. Becoming as strong as you are through pure natural means shouldn’t be possible. Mana refinement techniques exist precisely to push past those human limits.”
“Well, here I am.”
“That’s exactly why I’m even more curious. If the people at the Magic Tower ever learned about a special case like you, they’d go out of their minds wanting to haul you off for research.”
“You’re a mage too, right? You must want to research me yourself.”
When I prodded her like that, her expression turned distinctly meaningful.
“Yeah. But the method of research depends on the person. I could even do it tonight.”
“…”
This kind of half-joking banter was not new. Everything she said always felt half-serious and half-teasing, making it hard to tell where the truth ended. So I changed the subject as naturally as I could.
“I actually find learning mana a lot harder.”
“Really?”
Whether she caught my intent or not, Pria’s eyes lit up. Something had clearly sparked her curiosity.
“Nothing’s easier to handle than mana. Especially for someone like you who’s already broken past the limits of the body—struggling to learn mana is unusual.”
She set down the bowl of stew she had been holding, turned her palm upward, and slowly extended it. Blue flames bloomed on her hand without the slightest warning.
“People say the mana mages use and the mana warriors use are different, but the essence is the same. We carve circles into our bodies; you create cores. In the end, accumulating mana to add more circles or to make the core bigger and denser is identical.”
“I know that much. Estelle gave me the Eldirian Grand Refinement Technique.”
“What? She handed you something good. That’s a solid refinement method for a warrior. So what’s the problem, then?”
She dismissed the flame on her palm as if tossing it into the air, then blinked at me with a look of pure innocence. The face was pure, but the words that followed were anything but.
“Maybe there’s something different about you. If I checked directly, I might be able to tell you…”
It was Ren who cut her off. He looked like he could not stand to watch any longer.
“Pria. Do not be rude to our benefactor.”
Pria narrowed her eyes and turned her head.
“Leader, can’t you just keep quiet like before? The atmosphere was nice.”
“I stepped in because I’m worried your behavior will drag down our clan’s reputation. And how long are you planning to cling to his side? He’s a warrior like me. A mage like you shouldn’t have that much to talk about.”
“It’s not about warriors and mages. There’s plenty a woman and a man can talk about.”
“If you’re going to say something that low-class—”
While the two of them bickered, I quickly finished the meat and stood up first. Pria looked up at me with open disappointment, but the meal was already over.
After we finished eating, each of us found a place and settled down for the night.
When I opened my eyes at the first faint light of dawn, Pria was crouching right in front of my spot.
“You’re awake.”
“…Is something wrong?”
Still half-asleep, I looked up at her face.
“I thought about it all night. It’s not that your progress accumulating mana is slow. You’re just stuck at the stage of sensing it in the first place.”
“That’s right.”
“Then it might not be a simple matter of talent. I have a way that might help. Want to try it?”
“What kind of way?”
And so, the moment I opened my eyes, Pria led me into the forest still wet with dew. In the quiet woods only a thin white mist hung in the air.
“There’s a method that can force someone to sense mana. It’s nothing grand—noble children get this procedure all the time. I need to prepare a few things, so strip and wait for me, okay?”
“Strip?”
Given everything she had said so far, a suspicious look rose to my eyes on its own. Pria seemed to catch it and gave a short laugh.
“Yeah. No need to think anything weird. It’s required for the ritual.”
“Everything?”
“If you’re embarrassed you can keep the bottom covered. Just the upper body needs to be bare.”
While I pulled off my upper clothes as she instructed, Pria had already sat down on the ground and begun drawing something. The blue light flickering only on her index finger was a curious sight. I leaned against a nearby tree and watched in silence.
She joined precise curves and patterns as if painting, forming a circular diagram. It looked like the magic circles people always talked about. After finishing the last stroke she glanced at me and spoke in a small, almost admiring voice.
“Oh…”
“What?”
“No… your body is really nice. But the scars are so… no, never mind.”
She turned her head and looked off somewhere beyond the trees. An unfamiliar expression colored her face. She grew quieter, and a faint flush even rose to her cheeks.
…Is she embarrassed?
Nah.
That was far too different from every image of her I had seen so far; I could not quite believe it.
“What do I need to do?”
I asked, trying to brush away the sudden awkwardness. She answered in a low voice.
“…Come sit in the middle here.”
What is this, really?
It felt strange, but I sat in the center of the magic circle as she told me. Pria stood behind me. When she murmured something under her breath the circle began to glow. At first it was only a faint haze of light, but soon intricate patterns shone as though woven from gold thread. The magic circle pulsed like a living thing, like a heartbeat.
Then a strange change began to overtake my senses. At first it was only the lightest stimulation brushing my skin. A sensation like static electricity crept slowly across my body, and little by little every sense grew razor-sharp. Even the movement of air entering my lungs when I breathed became crystal clear; the sound of my own heartbeat thudded through my chest like a vibration.
It was a power beyond my will. That loss of control brought a deeply alien sense of wrongness. Unconsciously I seized those senses and forced them down.
Pria’s startled voice came from behind me.
“This isn’t something you can force yourself to reject—how… no. Don’t. Don’t reject it. This is part of the ritual, so just let your body go with it.”
I tried to relax as she said. But the moment I did, something I could not name slipped in between the senses I had been holding down. It was too subtle even to call a touch. Whether she failed to notice the strangeness or simply moved on to the next stage, Pria warned me in a low voice.
“Now it’s going to hurt a little.”
With those words the something that had been seeping in began to crackle and jump. An awkward, unidentifiable sensation. But it did not hurt the way she had said. Instead it was overwhelmingly itchy. The wriggling feeling grew clearer by degrees, then settled somewhere between itch and pain.
Then, all at once, I realized the sensation was cool and clean. It felt like pure, clear air.
Is this… mana?
It truly was like air. What I was feeling was not a mere sensation, but some kind of grain of this world itself—something I had never known, yet that had always been right beside me. And now that presence was drawing near, as if it wished to be caught in my fingertips.