Chapter 7: Hunt

The mana heart has a certain capacity, which is set naturally at birth. Naturally, magi need a lot of mana. Does that mean that people who have high magical affinities but low mana capacity will be surpassed by those with lower affinities but greater mana capacity?

Initially, perhaps. But there is a technique to increase mana capacity. The amount is minute, but over years, decades of doing it every day, the increase is greater than even the largest natural mana capacities.

Because of this, affinity is still the single largest determining factor of whether one will be capable of becoming a powerful mage.

There is a catch to this technique, however. Slip up, and you could get the opposite of the intended result, shrinking your mana capacity… Or, in the most extreme cases, destroying it completely, leaving you unable to use magic ever again.

Which is why arch magi Jamison didn’t let us do it ourselves, and instead went through us one by one and guided us through the process individually.

The process itself was relatively simple: drawn in mana slightly over one’s capacity and hold it in for a moment before letting it out again. Doing so would stretch the mana heart slightly, and once it healed, it would be just a little bit larger. Draw in too much, or hold it in for too long… Well, one has to be careful and precise.

Also, because the mana heart has to heal from the stretching every time, one can only do it a few times a day – otherwise, magi wouldn’t bother with spell formations: they’d just sit around all day meditating to increase their mana capacity.

Naturally, Jamison was very careful to make sure none of us injured ourselves in the process. Helping everyone took up the rest of the lesson.

Once that was done, I somehow managed to slave my way through another training session despite having the approximate limb mobility of the average manikin. It really didn’t seem to be getting any easier over time, but then again, that was only day three.

The first interesting fact from that day’s general knowledge class was that time was measured differently there. 35 days a month, ten months in a year – 350 days total. It made it much easier to keep track of dates, once we got used to it, although I wasn’t quite sure how it worked relative to this planet’s rotation speed, time to orbit the local star, et cetera.

The second, and last, was the difference between an animal and a monster. The difference is more nebulous than you might think, and for things like simple wolves, could be impossible to tell from appearance alone.

A monster was something that was spawned, naturally, from mana.

Animals were the result of a birth.

But, he said, many monster species were capable of reproduction. The only thing stopping them from becoming as common as sheep and cows was constant, daily killing of spawned monsters. You almost feel sorry for them. They were only born yesterday, after all.

After another four days of strenuous training, I thought that I might have been getting stronger from the training, and maybe even have been in a little less pain… Or it might have been a fatigue-induced hallucination, I’m still not entirely sure.

Either way, the captain seemed to think we were improving, because he gave us sets of boiled leather armour to wear while training. Of course, that only made everything harder, moving around with the extra weight and stiffness. So that was a joy.

On the topic of magic, which was progressing much more smoothly than our physical training, I discovered to my sadness that you can’t just cheat the system and put a bunch of miniaturised magic formations on a single page with itty bitty labels, so that it’s super easy and quick to find everything.

No, that causes the page to burn up quick as blinking, even ignoring the power reduction reducing the size of the formation causes.

Interesting fact: the covers of grimoires are generally made from a higher quality of monster hide than the rest of the pages and are embedded with a mana crystal. What this means is that if you put a magic formation on the cover, you are able to cast it more often than your other spells, and by filling up the mana crystal beforehand, you can use it to instantly cast the spell once or twice… Depending on the consumption of the spell and the capacity of the crystal itself.

Grimoires are also really expensive. Our grimoires are only basic, the pages within them made from the hides of weak monsters, with a single small, low-quality mana crystal in the cover. Even then, what with some fifty pages and the difficulty of processing, we were told each costed around thirty silver.

Higher quality grimoires had prices venturing into the tens of gold coins, and Jamison said his own cost him nearly five platinum, even with part of it being funded by the kingdom.

It didn’t look like we would be getting an upgrade any time soon.

That night, Nelson held another meeting, clearly realising by then that we would always be tired so long as the captain insisted on our physical training. It was mostly a rehash of the last meeting, although the people who actually listened in general knowledge class recounted some of what they thought were the more important points in the lessons.

There wasn’t really much to say. Every day was fairly similar, and everyone went to the same lessons, so there wasn’t much that any one individual knew that another didn’t. It was more a social meeting than anything else.

In the next morning’s magic lesson, we learnt more about magic formations. I was quite disappointed when I discovered that the base was indeed a simple circle and hexagram. We spent most of that lesson practicing drawing circles and triangles, free-hand and with a compass – precision positively affects mana efficiency.

Captain Pierce’s training was as per usual, hard and exhausting, but when it came to the general knowledge class, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that he had finished teaching us the basics of etiquette.

He actually started to teach us useful things: common animal species, plants, herbs metals, weapons, armour, so on and so forth. Of course, he wasn’t teaching us everything about them, just general appearances, what was dangerous and what could be helpful.

Because that lesson had finally become interesting, it felt like the days had become shorter all of a sudden, and the next week passed by quickly; our second week in this world.

After those two weeks of training, the captain saw fit to arm us with real weapons.

The swords given to us were unadorned straight-edged iron blades of a length perhaps some twenty or twenty-five centimetres under a meter, with leather-wrapped wooden hilts and a leather sheath. Also given to us were wooden round shields with diameters of around half a meter, rimmed with iron and featuring an iron boss in the center. Even more weight for us to carry while training, in other words.

He also made us spar against his own soldiers, after we do the physical training. ‘Because your enemies won’t always allow you the luxury of waiting until you’re ready’, he said. That doesn’t mean we always have to spar while exhausted, does it?

Spars were done with practice weapons. Apparently, although the captain considered us strong enough to carry weapons, he didn’t consider us skilled enough to use them. A fair assessment, if I’m being honest.

We had about as much success as you can imagine: 0% win rate across the board. And they don’t even retaliate seriously. I didn’t notice until a few days of sparring had passed, but all their swings wouldn’t reach our bodies, even if we were to stand still.

Still, they were good trainers. Under their tutelage, I started to feel like I could defend myself.

Getting stronger and faster was one thing, but knowing how to fight was something else entirely.

We were also taught how to maintain our gear. At that point we weren’t going into actual combat so there was very little to do on a daily basis, but when it needed to be done, we knew how to do it.

At around that point arch-magi Jamison was finally getting past the foundational aspects and into teaching us how to create our own magic circles.

Within the hexagram itself one wrote the symbols to designate which type, or types, of mana were to be used in the spell. The actual form of the spell was determined by what one writes in-between the inner and outer circles. Why that worked, precisely, was beyond me. It could have been some sort of placebo effect, with the magic working because people believed it did… Otherwise, it was strange.

After all, it was just English we were writing. And English wasn’t magical. English was, perhaps, the strangest and most contradictory language in common use in old Earth, but it was certainly not magical.

But regardless of why, the fact remained that it did work. We each created a standard elemental arrow spell according to the instructions, and soon the room was full of multi-coloured arrows as we each tested them out. One dangerous pyro decided to test out his lava affinity and made a lava arrow, melting a small hole into the wall we were testing them on, but beside that there weren’t any incidents.

After another two weeks, I finally got used to swinging my sword around. I wasn’t exactly proficient at using it, but I was at least confident that I wouldn’t end up chopping my own arm off in combat.

I did wonder about the training sometimes. We always sparred against the soldiers, who were a mix of humans, elves and dwarves. Wouldn’t that make it difficult for us to adapt to combat against monsters, who were very rarely humanoid?

That question I had had was resolved that day, when captain Pierce announced that instead of the usual training, we would be heading down the mountain and into the forest at its base to perform an actual monster subjugation.

We checked our gear, and the captain checked that we checked it properly. Then we headed outwards and downwards.

There were no carriages that time, only a few carts to carry supplies. We walked on foot down the mountain.

The walk gave me an opportunity to simply look out over the landscape, an opportunity which - surrounded by the stone walls of the keep - I hadn’t been able to enjoy over the past four weeks. Unlike old Earth, the landscape here was completely natural, devoid of power lines, skyscrapers and highways.

Given that even the atmosphere had been negatively impacted on a global scale on old Earth, I think that such a landscape was somewhat superior to what you might find deep in the country, in those few places relatively untouched by man.

Even the colours of the sun rising in the distance and the forest far below feel more vibrant than what I remembered.

A rock shot out from under my boot to clatter off the edge of the path.

I listened to the sound, suddenly feeling more relaxed than I had been since before we came here. When was the last time I went outside and simply appreciated nature? Perhaps the metropolitan expansion of the modern world meant that I never truly had.

Still, we were about to go into actual combat, the first actual combat we had ever been in. I took a deep breath and regained my focus, keeping my eyes and ears open to any changes in the surroundings.

It didn’t take us long to descend the mountain. At its foot were two roads.

One was the road we took to get here; it pointed to the south, and a little west. The other ventured almost straight north, through the forest. We took neither, and ventured east, straight into the forest.

I was somewhat relieved to be under the shade of the trees, after climbing down a mountain in the sun. At least, until I heard the faint buzzing of insects around us. I sincerely hoped there were no mosquitos just waiting to transmit whatever local diseases they were carrying.

Diseases which, I needn’t remind you, we would have no resistance to whatsoever. Or would we? I don’t remember anyone getting sick, now that I think about it…

Regardless, the worst I saw were flies and gnats. We walked through the forest – thankfully not so dense that the carts were unable to navigate through it, narrow though they were – for about half an hour before the soldiers had us stop in a small clearing.

They then unloaded the primary contents of the carts: barrels full of the blood of whatever the soldiers had hunted over the last few weeks.

Breaking open the barrels, the soldiers poured the blood over the ground in a disgustingly smelly red pool. Swarms of insects immediately flocked to it, even as the minor wind magic the soldiers were employing to spread the scent killed them in droves; the mana within it, while not concentrated enough to harm a human, was more than enough to overwhelm insects.

We had been advised beforehand that doing this would usually be incredibly dangerous: One would almost always attract more and stronger monsters than one was intending. This area, however, was regularly cleared by the soldiers; the numbers and strength of the local monsters were well-known to them, and was much less than in most other areas in the kingdoms.

Within seconds, the quiet forest sounds of rustling leaves and chirping birds were disrupted by howls and roars that came from several different directions.

I cleared my throat. Just a month before, I would have been running at the sound. Now… Well, we’d see.

The soldiers quickly vanished from the clearing, leaving us to fend for ourselves.

We weren’t used to fighting as a group. We weren’t really used to fighting at all. But someone had the good sense to call out, “Get in a circle formation! Magi in the middle, warriors on the outside!”

And so we did, the significant portion of us who were more proficient in magical arts than physical arts – myself and Greg included – stood huddled together with hands held over the open pages of our grimoires, ready to cast those one to three spells we had created. Outside, wielding swords and shields, were the warriors who, honestly speaking, would be doing the lion’s share of the work today.

Despite being in a relatively safer position, many of the magi were panicked, their eyes darting back and forth in every direction. The howls continued, and fear bared its fangs over my heart as well. I took a deep breath and kept my eyes forwards.

The enemies behind me were for my allies to deal with. I would have been doing them a grave disservice if I were to assume that I would somehow be so much more capable than them that I would be able to defeat all the enemies in front of me with space to spare, and they would not.

By that point, I have to assume that even Antonio had discarded some of his hubris.

Barely seconds after we stood at the ready, they came upon us, darting at us from the trees with hungry jaws and glaring eyes. There is a moment of shocked inaction before the front lines are forced to defend themselves or die. Another few moments after their desperate defence and subsequent retaliation, us magi remembered what we were supposed to be doing and started doing it.

Arrows of various colours streaked out as people fired any and every spell they had that wouldn’t risk burning the forest down.

My own earthen bolt flew over the head of one of our defenders to knock back a beast leaping at them, although more by coincidence than by design. Unfortunately, nobody had enough of their wits about them or the skill to take advantage of the opening, and the wolf regains its feet unmolested.

My second hit, however, was entirely intentional. Sending an arrow of ice into a stationary target wasn’t that difficult with magic, even without much practice.

The wolf was struck in the head by my icy bolt and collapsed back onto the ground. I wasn’t sure if it was dead or not, so I used my third and final spell: another arrow, this time of decay. It hit home mercilessly, the fur and flesh in the area of impact rotting away and falling off to expose bare bone.

A moment later it was kicked out of the way by one of the defenders.

Shutting my grimoire, I put it back in its holster. I wouldn’t have been able to use my spells again for another ten seconds or so, so I would do more good if I were to simply take out my sword and shield, perhaps sling a few freestyle spells into the action.

Drawing my sword and grabbing the handle of my shield, I wormed my way in between the people in front of me to join the front line.

Outside our group was a cacophony of wolves, boars and blood. I sent a rising slash towards a boar that sought to take advantage of the gap in the line caused by the others moving apart for me.

The boar turned its head slightly, and my sword only hit its tusks, causing only a glancing wound. Enraged, it charged at me. Using my longer reach, I was able to smash it on the head with my shield, stunning it and giving me time to slash at it again.

Perhaps I hesitated slightly, or perhaps I underestimated the amount of strength I needed to put into my strike, but my slash wasn’t quite lethal. Now thoroughly incensed, it tried to gore my legs with its tusks, but was thankfully distracted by an arrow of water that hit it in one eye.

I blinded its other eye with a flare of light magic, stepped to one side and slashed down at its neck.

This time, it died.

Still, it wasn’t nearly the end. There were still dozens of monsters attacking us.

Before long, the front lines started to get overwhelmed. It probably would have been the end of us, then and there, had the soldiers not come back.

Unbeknownst to us, they had completely encircled the clearing while we had been fighting, and burst into action when they noticed we were taking injuries. Within half a minute, all the wolves and boars were lying on the forest floor in pools of their own blood.

As the adrenaline faded from my system, I quickly noticed the smell – the smell of the blood, guts and waste of the monsters spilt on the ground. Then I noticed I was standing in it.

I tried to step back, to avoid staining my boots in blood, but there was nowhere that I could stand where there wasn’t blood, a corpse or someone else already standing. Many of the front liners were ignoring the blood and sitting on the ground, nursing claw or bite wounds. One poor fellow had a broken leg with a significant chunk of flesh missing; the results of a boar charge, I later found out.

The magi group fared much better. Most of them were barely out of breath, since most of them did little more than cast a few spells the entire combat. At that point, we as magi were so amateur that we had difficulty causing our mana pool to empty.

We knew things would change in the future, that we as magi would become more useful, but at the time it felt terrible, being able to do little more than stand and watch.

The soldiers allowed us very little time to rest. After they were done bandaging everyone’s wounds, they instructed us in dismantling the beasts. It was a grisly, gristly thing, to skin the pelt off a wolf or cut the hide from a boar. Then they taught us which parts were safe to eat, and how to remove the parts that weren’t.

Even a small mistake could rupture the organs as they were removed, causing their contents to spill, more often than not, over the hand and clothing of the person removing them. We… made many mistakes. The stench in the clearing became considerably worse by the time we were finished.

All of the pelts, hides and meat we produced we dumped into the carts, and we started heading back to the keep. I rendezvoused with Greg and Boris as we walked. Greg was in the magi division, like me. He was fine. Boris had been one of the front liners, thankfully only receiving a slight scratch on his wrist.

Over the past few weeks, Boris had been dedicated to training. He was already losing significant amounts of weight, although it seemed that he was actually naturally big boned and was still a considerably large man, even without it.

He wasn’t particularly talented at swordplay, from what I saw. Couldn’t make the soldiers even breath hard when he sparred. But if he dedicated himself solely to defence, he could last longer than most of us, so long as the soldier didn’t get serious.

Because of the weight he’s lost, and that he’s managed to not only keep up with everyone else but overtake many of them, Boris is looking happier and more self-confidant than ever, instead of his usual chronically depressed look.

Hunting day, as we called it, became a regular aspect of our training. Once a week, we would go into a different place in the forest, pour blood everywhere, fight a horde of beasts and monsters – usually ending in us getting rescued by the soldiers – dismantle the corpses then head back.

It became business as usual. Until it wasn’t.