Chapter 6

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Not racist but why black?

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Crunch* Crunch* Squish*

Hello it is me Michael, with my valiant mount Matilda !

Crunch* Squishy* Squish*

Sighhh that noise is Matilda eating... Don't pay attention to her. I learned that not only insects are on her menu... She's currently in the process of eating a toad.. Ewww At least i think it is a toad. See for yourself and decide..

Spoiler :

Even tho the scene is quite repulsive i have grown accustomed to it... It's been a week since i made her my pet. I dont really have anything to do since absorbing that toad looking thing's mana took me a few seconds and Matilda got quite the snack here.. It's taking her a lot longer to eat and judging by the size of this thing she probably wont eat everything.

Our routine is quite simple, 2 meals a day and... Well nothing else really, when she's not eating she's not moving... But now having spend a week with her and having absorbed 14 relatively powerful 'insects' i feel like she's holding me back... As powerful as i am i could definitively hunt a hundred insects on my own per days...

'I think it is time we part way my dear Matilda.' (Michael)

'...' (Matilda)

'What? One more day ? Come on Matilda you have been saying this for the last 2 days i can't let you hold me back forever even if i'm truly attached to you' (Michael)

'...' (Matilda)

'Please don't cry you are making me feel bad now.. Sob*' (Michael)

'...' (Matilda)

'OKOK! But this is the last time !!! Tomorrow i'm leaving my own way and you need to accept that !' (Michael)

'...' (Matilda)

'Sighhh you always win every argument..' (Michael) pout*

Then while waiting for her to finish eating i may as well explain where mana come from... Remember back then when i talked about knowing this planet had 2 suns ? Well you guessed it, mana is radiation from a mana star. Mana stars are generally very small and usually in orbit around the planet like a moon.

The mana radiating from it, is absorbed by the air/earth/plants. Everything... And mana being a kind of radiation create mutation when living entity are exposed to it in big quantity. So it is frequent that life form evolve to be able to generate their own mana thank to mana star radiation exposure. (It's not proven but many thinks it is the reason why dwarves living underground can't use it...)

Kakaaawwwwwwww*

Suddenly a bird flying by, scoop down and catch me and Matilda in his beak. It is a black and white crow looking bird that crushed Matilda in his beak effortlessly.

Spoiler :

'MATILDAAAA NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!' (Michael) Sob*

While in the air i quickly absorb Matilda's mana that was around 3 time that of that first crickets monster i first meet. I wont let Matilda's mana go to waste. As soon as i finished i jumped down before being carried away to far by that bird.

As i slowly glide down a bit trashed around by the wind i take a look around to take in my surrounding. I can barely see mother in the distance which give me a little feeling of sadness but i can't stay with my mother all my life. It's time for me to graduate and live my own life.

'I will never forget you mother ! Thank you for giving me life, i will come by to visit if i pass by again i promise !' (Michael)

You know for a while now i have been wondering about a lot of thing concerning my 'body'... In all of my past lives (At least those i remember) my mana as always been blue... As for most people.. Also insects and animals around have blue mana as well... There's like a one in a million person who's going to pop out out of nowhere with a weird colored mana but they never really seemed to be any different than the standard 'cyan blue' mana...

I am saying this because now that i am quite compressed, therefor quite opaque 'to my eyes' it's seem my mana/body is black... Pitch black. For one rare time i am actually at a lost as to explain why and what it means...

All i can think about is that mother also had black leaves but the mana emanating from her was definitively your standard 'nature print' mana.. The same mana all vegetation around is giving off... So that doesn't tell me anything. The next thing would be about 'mana affinity', but as far as i know they never influenced the color of your mana....

I dont want to go to much in details about 'mana affinity' for many reason.. First i hate them. They ruin promising mages. When they start using their affinities they become lazy and forget the basics. Affinities are the loser's 'get out of jail/wasting mana' card.

Do you still wonder how much i hate them now? Sigh... I will try to give an explanation as to why they suck but i will try to keep it simple stupid.. Ok first imagine you have the mana affinity 'fire' (One of the most common one and by the way people can have multiple affinities.) So if you want to create heat or light a fire of burn someone what will you use?

Well of course if you have the affinity 'fire' you will use it right? A simple spell actually just using 'mana conversion' and 'mana affinities'. How it work is you simply take mana and convert it to your affinity turning mana into something else...

Imagine you have 1000 unit of mana, you take 100 then convert in into fire... Just then you lost 10% of your mana. Why i say it is stupid and for lazy mages is because the same result could have been achieved with pure mana manipulation and physics knowledge...

All right an example, you take mana, then form 2 cylinders... You put them both alongside each other touching. Then with 'mana movement' you make both of them spin the same direction, be it clockwise of anticlockwise... What happen is 'HEAT'! Friction heat to be exact, the same as when you rub your palm against each other really fast. Trust me, if you put those cylinder on your target's head and put a lot of speed and mana into it !!... Well let's just say that in the past i melted a guy's eyeball out of their sockets in less than a few seconds. And all that only being pure mana manipulation barely cost any mana !!!! So for someone like me who can't generate his own mana this is crucial !

A powerful mages is not a mage with a lot of mana but one that always have a thirst for knowledge and applies it to his magic. Heck one of the most prized affinities in my book is lighting or electricity. (They are two different affinity by the way..) Them being so hard to emulate with pure mana manipulation i would definitively end up using eventually...

Can you imagine creating an electric generator with mana then build up an electric charge while in combat?? Let's forget it i tried it before and is take 15 minutes of charge to have enough electricity to kill a man... Unless you have a colossal amount of mana and mental training just forget it. In comparison if you have the affinity you just zap... It take less than a few seconds to kill.

Even tho those affinities are very rare, in some previous world they had formed clan of only lighting/electricity users and were breeding between each other to produce more like them. (Affinities are often hereditary) But knowing the side effects of inbreeding it's no surprise that most people thought electricity based affinity were turning their users into monsters.

For those who are wondering about lighting and electricity being different affinity well you are not the only ones. People thought they were the same since they basically do the same thing but one deliver a quick powerful shock while the other can be maintained and produce lower power. With that said, in one of my past life we had learned a lot about affinities...

It was a world highly advanced technologically because the mana star of this world was giving a very weak quantity of mana. Mana being weak, people relied on it less than other worlds where the mana is dense so by not being dependent on mana technology grew. (Like on earth)

There had been a study on affinities that had shown that mana affinities could be 'read' in the 'mana print' i talked about before... Anyway that way we discovered there was a different print between lighting and electricity abilities. Those prints are not the same on each world but if you learn what a certain affinity feel like you can then identify people who have it.

They had created a nifty little device you were putting your hand on and it was showing you all the affinities you had. No primitive civilizations could come up with that... Well as long as i don't know what affinities feel like in this world i wont know if i even have one.

Worlds devoid of affinities sensors usually rely on hereditary trees. You basically check what your parents affinities are and about your grand-parent and great grand parent etc. Then you try feeling it and using it... The wealthy pay for mages capable of feeling 'mana prints'... It's quite primitive and wont help identifying rare/forgotten affinities...

Back to topic, my mana's black... Why's that?? Possibly related to my tainted soul ? Are my wings now black like Lucifer's instead of my previously beautiful pristine white wings? That would explain a lot but i can't know for sure unless i go to a divine dimension... Grgrgrrr*

'Arggg it's super annoying not knowing things...' (Michael) Thought Michael while grabbing his imaginary hairs.

'Let's put that aside for now, today's objective is to leach at least 100 insects !' (Michael) thought Michael with a sudden regain of optimism..

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