Mannat got comfortable on the chair. With the book in front of him on the table, the dictionary on his left, and an empty page on his right, he started reading.

The whole fiasco started when settlers around the no man’s land learned that the area was highly rich in resources, including a variety of iron that was three times stronger than normal iron.

Mannat read the line thrice to confirm he hadn’t made a mistake. He had not. However, the book was definitely written by someone who didn’t know how to compare two metals. The word strong was too ambiguous. Metal could be hard, ductile, malleable, or any combination of those three. They could also be brittle and volatile in nature.

He moved on.

In the place, there were trees as tall as twenty stories, herbs more potent and numerous than any other place, vegetables that tasted like the heaven itself. None of them fuelled the war but a tiny crystal that shone in the dark. The crystals were only found in the mineral caves around No man’s land. They had a faint natural glow to them, but weren’t as pretty as diamonds and couldn’t be cut into different shapes either. Most importantly, the crystals would diminish in size over time and completely disappear in a couple of weeks once mined.

The caves being near the no man’s land had thwarted many people with thoughts. The place had always been a site of attraction for daredevil explorers and people with a nose for money in general. Many had even entered the fog-covered parts of the no man’s land, but only a few had managed to come back alive. None of them had stayed sane to tell their story.

However, one of the empirical scholars by the name of Gyani Chand, on a trip to the area, returned with some fairly large-sized crystals and noticed a few strange things. Fire near the crystal burned hotter, and his pots flowered far too quickly and stayed fresh for longer.

He experimented with the crystal in his garden and found that the plants near the crystal grew faster and produced tastier fruits.

This information alone wasn’t enough to encourage the empire to act. The scholar wasn’t dismayed by the lack of interest in his findings. What hadn’t he seen in his life? He poured his wealth into the study of the crystals when the empire stopped funding his project.

It wasn’t until five years later when he was penniless and on the brink of madness that his life changed forever. He had a chance encounter with a nameless girl in a garden that allowed him to make an exceptional discovery. He affectionately called her his flower, since they had met in a garden.

He discovered that the crystal was not a gemstone or a mineral, but a piece of solidified pure mana.

He regretted sending his findings to the empire until the day he died three decades later from heart failure.

His letter not only fuelled the start of the magic race between the empires but also directly led to war when the eastern hegemony found a crystal mine on their side. It not only went for miles underground but even had crystal mountains covered in years of dirt and crem on the surface.

The news traveled fast and the war was inevitable.

Mannat closed the book and took a back seat to digest the information. He was not sure whether to believe the book or not. He didn’t know wars. In the stories, wars happened on the whims of the rulers. Many had even started over women!

He decided to ask the Witch when she returns.

There was a reason why there were no popular jobs related to mana. Mannat didn’t have to look outside for examples. He also faced many challenges because of his lacking mana pool. He was in dire need of some mana crystals to practice mana strike. There would be nothing limiting him from practicing all day if he liked then.

It was an extremely exciting prospectus. The only problem was that the war had ended centuries ago with no winners. The no man’s land still stood untarnished and untainted, free of outside embellishment and corruption.

Amazingly, the no man’s land was smaller than even the southern region. Yet its inhabitants not only had the strength to defend their territory but were also strong and courageous to take the attack to the two of the biggest empires in the world. Then suddenly a thought appeared in his mind and his heart skipped a beat.

Magicians--

There were magicians in the no man’s land! It was entirely possible. They had the whole world’s worth of crystal mana in their hands to fuel their training. They definitely had a population small enough to splurge.

Mannat could not sit still. He stood up then looked around for something to do.

He jealously wanted to know the past. He had so many questions.

The book didn’t mention it, but something must have happened to end the cold war between the two empires and pull their interest toward the mana caves.

Why did the people of no man’s land go into hiding and cut ties with the rest of the world? There had to be a reason.

Mannat looked at the bookshelves around him. He went through a whole cabinet to find something related to the no man’s land but didn’t find a single mention of it in any of the books. He was missing something. The books had answers to all his questions. That’s what the Witch had told him the last time he had asked her about the place.

One idea led to another and suddenly, he was standing in front of the tree that was glowing in different shades of red and orange colors. The Witch stood with her back to him using her staff for support. He had a question that had him equally horrified and sensationalized.

“Are you from the no man’s land?” He asked. His heart thumped, hairs stood straight, eyes were wide-open, fists clenched and legs stiff. He was excited and nervous at the same time. On one hand, the whole world struggled with magic, and then there she was, using magic as easily as one breathes.

He heard a chuckle; or was it a snort? He couldn’t quite guess.

“I am not,” The Witch said. He didn’t believe her, but her next words changed his thoughts.

“The garden belongs to the flowers. People like you and me, we don’t have a place among them.”

“You mean--” Mannat peered at the tree past her. The Witch was talking about the feeble-looking girl sleeping in the underground chamber. The Witch had introduced her as the flower of Morality.

“What are you doing out here?”

The Witch stumbled forward a step. Mannat followed her, keeping a distance.

“We are here because the roots don’t reach here. The outskirts are the only place safe from those of her kind.”

Mannat had too many thoughts, too many ideas, ideas that were further flamed by her acceptance. Were they fugitives? Were they being hounded by the inhabitants of the No man's land? What would happen if they when they do find the Witch and the girl underground? What did they do to deserve the hate of their own kind?

He looked at the tree. His feet stopped moving, but his mind worked faster than before, bringing his thoughts together toward the thing, the clue most important.

“What did she touch?” He knew it was something related to miasma, something powerful and destructive. However, the Witch didn’t tell him.

“The day you become a magician you will naturally know.” She said and left him.

Mannat couldn’t stay calm. He shared a secret with the Witch. He didn’t follow her into the hut and directly sat under the glowing tree to ‘meditate’. The skill had a calming effect on the mind, as it increased mana regeneration, and it was exactly what he needed.

He had never actively tried to absorb mana from the surrounding. The need had never arisen once his headaches stabilized when he was a child. Still, when his mind emptied and his thoughts quieted, his sensed sharpened and his breathing calmed.

It was in that state of meditation that he naturally sensed the mana quietly floating in the air around him, undisturbed and uninterested. It was not just a few motes here and there; the mana was flowing like wind given shape and color. He sensed the cold that wafted from these invisible particles. The mana flowing freely in the air started flowing toward him as his meditation deepened and his pores opened. Their touch numbed his senses and he almost woke up.

He felt a kind of deep cold that began from his skin and touched his inner being. He could feel the mana moving inside him, but couldn’t sense it at all. Limited by his ability, he could only let the irritations and relaxations of his muscles guide him on the path taken by the mana particles moving inside his body.

Mana flowed from all over and then gathered inexplicably at his heart, which thrummed harder, faster, stronger, integrating the cold, strengthening power into his blood. The cycle continued repeatedly. Mannat opened his eyes a little while later feeling energetic and full. He looked around. The world was still covered in the veil of a bright and cloudless night. The light of day was still a distant notion. The moon was still in the process of rounding the sky. There were still at least four hours until morning.

It bamboozled him. He checked his status and was surprised to find his mana recovered. It was full and it shouldn’t be. The calculations were all wrong. Then he checked his mana regeneration and finally got an answer. It had tripled from twenty-three points per hour to sixty-nine points per hour.

Mannat didn’t want to waste the chance. He would be going back to sleep soon. By morning, his mana would be full again. It would be a waste to not take advantage of his increased regeneration. He wanted to get into the garden, but that would obviously be a big mistake. He had not seen the raven for a few days but knew she was around keeping her eyes upon him. He need only approach the garden and it would spring out of whatever hole it was hiding in, and attack him with ruthlessness and aggression that even enemies didn’t deserve. Getting hurt was the last thing he wanted.

Should he strike mana into the air? That would only improve the force behind the skill, not his control over the mana. He wanted to practice his ability, not to wastefully implode and scare sleeping birds.

He was still thinking about how to empty his mana pool when he noticed the Witch’s staff sticking out of the ground at a distance. Of course, he might not be able to use it to open the underground chamber. The witch had told him, he would need precision and dexterity instead of force to get through its mechanism. That was exactly what he wanted to practice!

Mannat excitedly hopped to his feet and ran to the staff (It felt like the best option available to save some time). He tentatively tried to pull it out of the ground, but it didn’t budge. It didn’t matter; he wasn’t there to steal it anyway. He easily gave up and calmly placed his hand upon the staff’s globular head. It was like a crystal ball, polished to touch but obviously tougher than glass. The Witch hadn’t been kind to the staff, as he had seen her flinging it around at precious, valuable objects (like his head) at various occasions.

Anyways, he didn’t start the action right away. He calmed his breaths and controlled his heart rate. Only when his senses became sharp did he allow the mana to rise inside his body.

“Mana… strike,” He exhaled with a breath. Mana started gathering at his palm and entered the globular crystal head of the staff. It started calmly. As for what happened next, he couldn’t sense. The crystal head glowed vibrantly for a few seconds before calming down. Mannat thought he had failed –not like he was trying to succeed in the first place. Since he had some mana left he thought about trying it one more time.

He would have stopped had his mana met any resistance like that time when he was practicing the skill against an eggplant. His mana had disappeared into the staff like raindrops falling in a well. It hadn’t even caused a ripple on the surface.

So he tried again. He wanted to empty his mana pool, practice his skill. He dissipated another 40 points of his chaotic mana into the stream of the circular head, wanting to see what happens. And something did happen. The staff suddenly grew hungry. The mana that should have cut off at 40 points flooded out of him without stopping.

Mannat panicked. He tried to lift his hand from the crystal head but the suction kept his hand glued to the staff no matter his actions. He lost control over his mana. However, he sensed it moving inside the staff, going through various bends and warps, filling deep troughs and chasms and outlining an incomprehensible character in the dark. Not all the mana that seeped out of him filled the illusionary circle. Most of it got lost in the void, but the deformed character did start glowing.

Mannat sensed it with expectations, only to suddenly grow uncomfortable and weak. His head started aching. He had run out of mana. The last thing he sensed before his senses stopped working was the character exploding, and then his mind grew blank. A deafening explosion expunged the mana back out of the staff, and it was not a calm affair. Mannat was picked off the ground and flung back. He fell a good five feet away from the staff, rolled backward twice or thrice before stopping. He stayed there on the ground for who knows how long before something sharp stabbed the back of his head and he cried awoke.

He hurriedly got to his knees as the raven snarled in response. She backed away from him when he screamed at her, and it opened her wings in a show of strength in repose. She didn’t fly away but stared at him with her beady red eyes. The bloody thing had pecked him! Mannat rubbed his head to calm the burning sensation, staring daggers at the bird. Fortunately, the hand came back bloodless. Thank god. Then he remembered his previous actions and hurriedly checked himself for injuries. He was uninjured. His clothes were covered in dirt, but that was not a huge problem. He hadn’t twisted or broken anything, either. It was great news.

There was just one small problem.

It was daytime.

“I slept through the night!” Mannat said befuddled staring at the bright blue sky as the raven took flight behind him.