Published at 24th of February 2024 10:32 am

Chapter 29

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“I don’t understand,” Father said.

“Which part?” I asked.

“The why of it, mostly. Why does this ignite a core?”

We were sitting outside our temporary home after our family nap. It was late afternoon, and I was busy lecturing my father on how best to ignite his mana core while staring out at the rolling hills of scrub grass to see if I could catch sight of so much as a single monster. If there were any out there, they were well hidden. I wasn’t willing to expend the mana to really seek them out.

“Your core isn’t a physical organ in your body like your heart or your lungs,” I said. “It’s metaphysical, meaning it exists in the mana itself. Everyone’s does, to a point. There are some exceptions, but we’re a long way from those mattering for the purposes of this discussion.

“Right now, the only part of your core that makes mana is the part where it connects to your physical body. That’s a small part of the total core, right? Think of it like a ball that you set on the ground. Only one part of the ball makes contact. But if you were to slice the ball open, you could unfold it so that the entire thing touches the ground.

“You are the ground. Your core is the ball. The more your core connects to you, the more mana it will generate. What this technique does is forges that connection by pushing mana into the wall of your core. Push it enough, and your core will start generating mana on its own.”

“That makes sense, I guess,” Father said. “But why do you need to spin the mana? That’s the hard part.”

“Two reasons. First: to guarantee total coverage. It’s very possible to miss parts of your core and have a… I wouldn’t call it a botched ignition, but a subpar one. Would you rather your core produce five times as much mana as it currently does, or ten? How about twenty? The better you do in this step, the more production you’re going to have.”

Father considered that for a second, then asked, “And the second reason?”

“It pushes the mana in deeper. As you advance your core, it’ll grow bigger, and that process is kind of like stretching it out. The deeper the mana goes into the wall of your core, the better the chances that you’ll still be producing mana throughout the entire core as it grows bigger.”

Truthfully, that second reason probably wasn’t a priority for Father. He was already an adult, so his core was as big as it was going to get naturally, and unless he pursued the path of a mage long enough for his core to reach stage three, he was never going to stretch it any farther. But I’d hardly be a good teacher if I let him cripple his future potential just to skip a step now. There was only so much that could be done to fix a flawed foundation, after all. It was best to just do things properly the first time, a lesson I’d learned the hard way during my first go at life.

“This can’t be how the spirits bless somebody,” Father muttered. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“There are other methods to igniting a core,” I told him. “The most common one, and I suspect the one that’s happening in your mass gatherings, is to just soak up so much ambient mana that your core fills to bursting, and then to move it in an attempt to create some sort of magical effect. It would be random and inefficient and would almost certainly result in a very poor stage one core, but it would technically work.”

Senica’s reflex to grab at loose mana in the air made her a prime candidate for ignition through a ceremony like that. All she would need to do was consciously try to use the mana in her once she’d gained enough, and the struggle to get the spell working would likely agitate her core to the point that it ignited on its own. I had no doubt that absent any other contenders, she could become a mage at the next spirit worshiping ceremony.

I would have to get to her first. There was no way I was letting my sister start off with a subpar core that could only generate three or five times as much mana as an unignited person’s, not when my technique would give her twenty times the generation rate. Of course, it was probably best to wait a few years until she was a bit more mature.

Besides, Father’s ignition was going to need significantly more mana than mine had. I had enough left in my mana crystal, but it was going to take the lion’s share of it. We wouldn’t be defenseless by any means, but it was closer than I liked. But we’d made a choice, and in order to keep Nermet alive, Father needed an ignited core. The drain from usurping the subjugation spell was great enough that I was operating at a net loss, and the farther away from Nermet I got, the more the strain on my mana would grow.

Challenging Noctra now meant taking Nermet with me, which meant giving Noctra the opportunity to break the patch I’d placed on the control nodule. I would mitigate that by not letting Nermet get within a thousand feet of Noctra so that there was no chance of him taking over again.

Truthfully, I probably would have killed Nermet last night and put him out of his misery if not for Father. I was not a good person. I’d accepted that about myself many centuries ago, and while I’d hoped that I might change with a fresh start, I’d known it was foolishly optimistic to think it could actually happen.

I shook my head and said, “Okay, we need to get this done today. Time to practice.”

The whole reason we were out here was to get as far away from Senica as possible. She reflexively grabbed loose mana, and we didn’t have enough to spare for her. I could get some of it back with a mana drain, but it would be better to just not lose it in the first place. And since we were testing out Father’s ability to absorb ambient mana, it seemed easier to avoid complications.

I released some mana from my own core into the air around Father. His ability to sense mana was definitely up to the task of igniting his core, and he immediately started collecting it. It had taken us six attempts to get this far, but there was no getting around it. The spell I’d used to feed Father mana directly for our Testing wasn’t going to do anything helpful once his core was full. He needed to push that limit.

When I was first learning to be a mage, we’d used special rooms designed to keep the ambient mana at bay so that we could eliminate distractions and variables. It was only after we learned to properly absorb mana in an artificially clean room that we were allowed to pull it in raw with all the impurities that needed to be filtered out.

Ironically, living in a mana desert meant that none of those impurities existed and every single person I’d met possessed a practically pristine mana core. It did make this part easier, but if Father ever traveled far enough away from home, he’d need to learn to deal with that.

Father finished absorbing the mana, perhaps not as fast as I would like, but at an acceptable rate. “Good,” I said, my own core empty. When it came time to do the actual ignition, I’d be relying heavily on the mana stored in my mana crystal. “Now start it spinning.”

This part didn’t go as smoothly. Father could get the mana moving without an issue, but it more sloshed than spun, and the more he tried to force it, the more it randomly splashed around. “Not like that,” I said.

“I. Am. Trying,” he told me through gritted teeth.

“Think of stirring a pot of stew. You don’t just stick the spoon in and wiggle it around randomly. Start on the outer edges and push the mana in a circle. Don’t worry that you don’t get all of it. Just keep it going and more will get pulled along as you work up some momentum.”

Slowly at first, and then with increasing speed, the mana in Father’s core began to spin in place. He got about half of it going properly before he let out a gasp and let it slow to a stop. “That is hard work,” he said.

“The faster you get it moving, the easier it’ll be to keep going,” I said. “And you’re going to need to move a lot more than what you’ve got now. About twenty-five times as much as you currently have.”

“Twenty-five!” Father yelped. “That’s impossible, and even if I could, we don’t have that much mana.”

“We do,” I assured him. Just barely, but it was there. I’d have enough left to fill my core five or six times after the ignition ritual, assuming there were no screw ups.

I gave Father ten minutes to rest, then had him try again. This time, he got the mana spinning sooner and at a faster speed. Almost everything in his core was moving in sync before his strength gave out again.

My own mana hadn’t recovered, so I pulled a bit more from my mana crystal and spread it out into the air with instructions for him to absorb it. Hopefully, Father got this figured out soon, because I couldn’t afford to waste any once his own core was full.

Six hours passed following this cycle. As Father got better at spinning the mana, we started focusing on pure speed, then added keeping the mana rotating while absorbing more. Eventually, we hit the wall.

“Your core is completely full,” I said.

“For probably the first time in close to twenty years,” Father said.

“Yes, but it also means we can’t practice anymore. I wish we could, but it’s not in the budget. Normally, I’d have a prospective apprentice do this a few times as I slowly fed more mana to them so they could get used to spinning it with two or three times as much mana as their cores normally hold. In this case, it’s not an option. You either get it right on the first try, or Nermet’s going to die.”

“No pressure then,” Father muttered.

“Take an hour to recover,” I said. “We’ll start then.”

That would also give me some time to recover my own mana. Every bit I could feed into the ignition from my own core saved me a bit on waste from the conversion between crystallized mana and personal mana. It was annoying to have to worry about such things, but that was the world I’d been born into.

“Do you think I can do this?” Father asked at the end of his hour.

“By yourself? Probably not. But I’m going to help. It still won’t be easy, and while I’m hopeful to get your core going at maximum strength, realistically it’s probably only going to be around fifteen times your current output. I’m sorry for that, but we don’t have the time or the resources to prepare you properly.”

Father glanced over at Nermet, who was still sitting in the same position he’d been for the last few hours, and gave me a firm nod. “I understand why. You’ve done all you can, and let’s be honest here. I was never going to be a mage on my own. However this turns out, even if I have the weakest core you’ve ever seen, I’ll still be better off than I am right now.”

“I’m glad you’re so optimistic,” I said. “Now, let’s get that mana spinning.”

And together, we started the process of turning my father from an unignited farmer into a mage.

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