The Radiance of Mana and Magic's Personal Truth
The brilliant hues of mana adorned the Grand Auditorium.
Some in the audience unconsciously reached out into the empty air, caressing its flow.
This wasn't just for magic department students or professors who had trained in the art.
Knight trainees, sculptors, even the academy's hired staff.
Everyone who had set foot in the hall was utterly captivated by the sight.
Magic—mana—was a mystery granted only to those chosen by it.
Yet in this moment, that radiant light was visible to all.
“Whoa…”
In the brief span as Ruen stepped forward and snapped her fingers.
The buzzing Grand Auditorium filled only with the sound of sharp intakes of breath.
Thud.
Footsteps echoed from the podium, cutting through the gasps. The soft rustle of fabric accompanied them.
“Understanding of Magic.”
Ruen spoke in her leisurely drawl.
With every step she took, the glow filling the space rippled outward like waves.
Naturally, every eye in the crowd locked onto her.
“What do you think magic is?”
A simple question. One so profound it defied any certain answer.
The talent to sense mana was innate.
The types of mana one could absorb varied by constitution.
And to ordinary folk, it was simply an unknowable enigma.
So those present each conjured their own responses.
Magic.
A sacred power bestowed by the gods upon the mortal realm. A profound truth. A noble art.
All vague, nebulous replies.
Yet the mages who thought them were utterly convinced. Mine is right.
In the heavy silence of contemplation, Ruen extended her hand.
A gesture toward a single stream of mana.
“Magic is…”
The audience held their breath, eyes fixed on her motion, hanging on her next words.
An elegant gesture.
A movement that seemed one with the flow of mana itself.
The mana touching her fingertip soon soared skyward.
It rose, then cascaded down in a shower—right over the heads of the crowd.
“Ah.”
Gasps erupted from seats throughout. Beauty needed no understanding; it simply drew you in.
Like every star in the heavens plummeting to earth at once.
After the gasps came the gulps, throats working.
Mages saw it as a masterclass in mana control.
To artists, it was inspiration for their next creation.
At last, their gazes shifted from overhead back to the podium.
Ruen waited patiently for those eyes, then parted her lips.
“What is magic?”
The question repeated for the second time. A pang of longing stirred in the audience.
Especially among the mages.
They craved the answer. To turn the unknown into certainty.
This girl could do it for them.
“…Of course, I don’t know either.”
Yet Ruen dashed those hopes with calm indifference, as if mocking them.
Expectation evaporated, replaced by chill disappointment.
The public lecture’s theme was Understanding of Magic.
And yet.
She’d teach something she didn’t understand herself?
Waste all that mana just to say “I don’t know”?
Some still held their silence, watching her. The academy professors.
Veterans who’d devoted decades to scholarship knew that answer was utterly obvious.
But the Grand Auditorium was packed mostly with students.
Most had come expecting ultimate truths, drawn by the lecture’s title.
Ruen, bathed in their sharp glares, paced the podium once more with soft footsteps.
“But.”
She swept her gaze over the seats—a drowsy tilt of the head, but eyes brimming with conviction.
“Do we really need to understand it?”
The glares intensified at yet another question.
Magic was an unfathomably complex discipline.
Even with the innate talent to sense mana, taking the first step without a proper teacher was near impossible.
Thus, nearly all students in the academy’s magic department were nobles or heirs to wealthy merchant houses.
Folk whose success was all but guaranteed just by breathing.
So why had they braved the academy’s brutal entrance competition?
Why study magic?
To sate their instinctive cravings.
They knew the thrill of manifesting phenomena with a mere gesture.
They hungered to learn more, grow stronger.
And above all, to grasp the truth.
But Ruen’s question struck directly at that ultimate drive.
What the hell?
Irritation rippled through them.
Ruen, under all those stares, sensed it plainly.
Yet she showed no mercy.
“For me, magic is a ‘personal understanding’.”
A vague answer.
Then Ruen snapped her fingers into the air once more.
Snap.
At the gesture, the drifting mana converged to a single point.
It hummed—whoooong—and shifted form.
In an instant, geometric lines; the next, a magic circle.
Like a blueprint, or a formula.
“I rearrange mana, forcibly twist and sever it to create the flow I desire.”
The intricate magic circles rotated in unison. Neither slow nor fast.
Everyone in the hall drank in the process.
How the manifested mana flow transformed. Which rings it severed next, which it reconnected.
The gathered mages fell silent, observing this sequence so alien to their own methods.
At last, the fiercely spinning blueprint erupted in light.
After the flash came heat.
Scorching heat. Magic manifested.
As the light faded, what hung in the air was a basic spell: a Mana Sphere.
A foundational magic every mage present had cast at least once.
But its size and intensity were on another level entirely.
“Fireball…”
A student murmured unconsciously.
Fire magic. So the lecturer Ruen wielded the element of flame.
That’s what they thought—until.
“I understand the world on my own terms, then overlay that understanding upon it.”
The blazing red Fireball shuddered violently, reshaping itself.
What emerged was a blade of razor-sharp ice.
“To do that, I use natural mana as it is, without a Mana Core.”
Snap.
Another gesture.
This time, no accommodating blueprint.
Dozens of spells erupted simultaneously, instantaneously.
Fireballs, Icicles, water droplets, wind, gravity blasts, illusions.
Counting them was impossible.
“Ah……”
Sighs poured from the crowd in waves.
Magic’s history stretched back eons.
To trace its origins meant delving into pre-civilization eras.
It had existed before the empire’s birth—and likely would forever.
In that vast history of magic, countless mages had etched their names.
Among them, a rare few wielded two or three elements.
But even so…
What was this before their eyes?
Multihued spells forged from raw, natural mana.
The mages in the hall gaped, staring endlessly.
Freshmen, near-graduates, professors.
Grades, ages, experience differed, but their emotion was one: reverence.
They all burned the chaotic spectacle into their minds.
“It’s of course different from the standard methods you use. But even so.”
Amid it all, Ruen simply continued.
“Magic itself is the same.”
Different methods, different mana, different people.
One person’s magic could never perfectly match another’s.
That was Ruen’s point.
“Magic is profoundly personal. Fully understanding another individual is nearly impossible. So we can’t force understanding.”
Ruen thought of Kian. Her disciple, yet he used a different way—storing mana in his own Mana Core, not raw natural mana.
A method she’d taught him before leaving the North, one he’d mastered through dozens of faints and awakenings.
At her words, Belias’s eyebrow twitched in the professors’ seats.
A Magic Tower elder.
His very purpose was passing his researched magic to the next generation—offensive words indeed.
He felt anger.
Yet his gaze lingered solely on the magics Ruen had unleashed.
And he sighed.
Words that seemed to betray his lifetime of knowledge—yet somehow irrefutable.
“That’s why this is a lecture, not a class. …Probably.”
Ruen’s quiet afterthought didn’t reach the seats.
Public lecture.
The name Oswald had changed it to after seeing her submitted plan.
Outside the standard curriculum—a new paradigm.
“Ahem. Anyway! So today… uh……”
The audience waited for the girl pondering her next words amid the arrayed spells.
Not a long pause, but it weighed heavy.
“Ah. I’ll give a talk on how to understand magic personally.”
Ruen glanced up at the clock.
The lecture was scheduled for one hour.
Barely fifteen minutes had passed.