Aila tried not to throw her lyre as her music teacher pointed out that she had made yet another mistake. It wasn’t the teacher’s fault she was so frustrated, she was actually quite nice, it was just that Aila’s patience had been worn thin these past two days. Since Miles had gone off with his family to go hunting, her own parents decided that it was time to increase the number of classes that she takes. Aside from the classes she takes with Miles, she also has her social etiquette, dancing, and magic classes. Now she has to take a music class too! Her music instructor had arrived just the day before, and she wants her to learn not only the lyre, but the oboe and the piano as well! Her teacher said that it was to learn about both the Empire’s culture and her elven heritage. The worst part is that even when she had free time, with Miles gone, she had nothing to do! It was so unfair. He got to go fight monsters, and she was stuck here trying to play this stupid lyre.

The only good thing about the past two days were the skill increases, and her magic. Aside from the recent music classes, Aila and her Mother had been spending a lot of time practicing her Mana skills. Right now, aside from Mana Sense and Manipulation which would both level passively, they were practicing to get 4 skills. Mana Output, Contain Mana, Mage Hand, and Mana Bolt!. They haven’t gotten to the Mage Hand and Mana Bolt spells yet, but they were supposed to do that this evening. If it ever came!

She plucked half heartedly on the strings. Idly, she pushed some mana out from her fingertips and onto the strings as she plucked one of the notes. Just because she liked to watch the mana wiggle along with the string.

Her teacher, Lady Arren, noticed what she was doing and commented on it. “You know, if you keep that up, you can get a magical music skill.” Instantly, Aila perked up.

“Really?” Suddenly music class got a whole lot more interesting. “What does it do?”

“Really. It’s the basis of my Class, the Charismatic Bard. There are many different magical effects that you can do with music. The most basic skills simply amplify the sound of the instrument. Others can amplify the emotions of those listening to your music. It makes any piece more engaging to the audience. As a Bard though, I can use the same technique to my voice for any speeches or debates that I have. Similar to a leader or noble type Class but with a more… musical flare.”

“Can I hear you play? Pretty please?”

“Certainly!” Lady Arren picked up her harp. “I love the harp the best, but we’ll have you learn the Lyre first as a good beginning instrument. Now, I’m not anywhere close to my Mother’s skill. I’m only Tier 1 after all. But I love this piece, called Evening of Starlight by Ragella.”

She started playing, in a soft melodious tune. Aila had wanted to watch how she handled mana during the song, but as soon as the music started all thoughts of magic went out the window and she was enraptured by the song. It was a rollercoaster of emotion. As the song’s tune quickened and slowed, rose and fell, she felt curiosity, excitement, joy, sadness, melancholy and hope. When the song slowed to a quiet whisper, she held her breath in anticipation. There were no words sung, but Aila could feel a story taking shape in her heart, her mind going back to the stories of star-crossed lovers. It was beautiful.

The song ended, and Aila was left speechless. Lady Arren smiled, “what did you think?"

"That was amazing! Though I wasn't able to pay attention to the mana. I was too caught up in the music."

"Yes, I used Engaging Serenade, which amplifies emotions. Though to play the piece properly requires tier 2 skills that I don't have." She sighed wistfully. Presumably thinking about the day she gets those skills. "Though emotions are just the beginning of what magical music can do. You can create warmth, enhance Strength or any other stat, you can even heal or harm. So, Aila, though I know beginning to learn a new instrument is hard, the reward is worth it.”

Aila nodded excitedly. “Okay! Can I keep practicing it with magic too?”

“Why of course! Though to get any magic music skill, it requires you to have a general music skill first. That’s also why you’re going to be studying three different instruments. The general skill Musical Talent needs three different instruments. This isn’t going to be anytime soon, probably only later when you’re in Tier 1.”

It was still a lot of work, but now that she knew that she could use magic with it, Aila was excited for it.

~~~

They had just finished lunch, and it was now time to train with Mother! They would be learning actual spells! Practicing controlling her mana was cool and all, but she wanted to do things with it. Not just make shapes.

They were in the basement training room, and Mother had some servants bring in a chalkboard, and a table with various items. Her Mother was currently mulling over some papers, but she put them down when the chalkboard arrived. “Okay, Aila. May I see your Status Page?”

Aila opened her Status and went into the Settings tab. Scrolling through all the different settings available, she went down to the sharing section and set it from private to “Friends Only”. There was a public section, but it was stupid to use that anywhere outside of a court mandate. Or so her Mother said. The screen gained a silver border around it. Now it was tangible to anyone on her friends list, though they couldn’t look through the tabs themselves.

[Status]

Skills

Quests

Library

Friends

Notices

Settings

General Info:

Name: Aila Waesdove

Class: [Child of Rina / Erlan Waesdove(Sta)]

Race: Elf

Level: 0th 59

Age: 8

Experience: 53 / 59

Health: 365 / 365

H. Regen: 0.8 / day

Stamina: 215 / 215

S. Regen: 1.8 / day

Mana: 453.6 / 590

M. Regen: 3.4 / day

Stats:

Strength: 29

Intelligence: 59

Constitution: 14

Willpower: 59

Alacrity: 7

Acuity: 9

Pending Stat Points: 0

Favored Skills:

Noble’s Posture 0th 40

Meditation 0th 40

Memorization 0th 51

Mana Sense 0th 46

Pain Resistance 0th 54

Mana Manipulation 0th 48

Skills:

Running 0th 21

Lightning Resistance 0th 50

Jumping 0th 12

Standard Language 0th 47

Empirical Language 0th 38

Mathematics 0th 56

History of The First Empire 0th 27

Stealth 0th 3

Aila grabbed the edge of the screen and handed it over to her Mother. She looked over her status, focusing more on the skills as she can already see Aila’s stats and resource pools with her Analyze skill. Her Mother nodded in satisfaction. “Your skills are coming along nicely. 10 levels in Memorization yesterday alone! Was it all of the music notes and chords?”

Aila nodded. “Yeah, it's so complicated! But! Did you know that there’s magical music? That would be so cool to learn! Lady Arren’s so amazing! I want to learn it someday.”

“Yes, I’ve always wanted to be able to get some magic music skills as well. I was just too caught up in my other pursuits to get all of the regular music skills required for it.” She sighed. “I was always jealous of Lady Arren’s Mother for it.” She handed Aila her Status Screen back. Though it wasn’t necessary, she could have just dismissed it, it did feel more natural. Aila dismissed it herself.

“Alright, Aila. So far, we’ve only worked on sensing mana and pushing it around. But now that we’ll be working to get some more active spells for you, we need to go over what exactly it is and how it affects its surroundings.

“First of all, mana is one of the three fundamental energies, along with stamina and health. Each of these acts differently, and have their own special properties. Mana is elemental in nature. Raw mana, called arcane mana, will start to take on properties from their surroundings once expelled from the body. Not immediately, of course, but after a few minutes it will start changing. For example, around a fire you can find an abundance of fire mana. Or high in the sky, or in strong winds, you can find air mana. In a storm, you can find water, air, and lightning mana.” She started writing a list on the chalkboard as she talked, listing out different elements.

There were a lot of them: Water, Ice, Mist, Lightning, Fire, Lava, Light, Dark, Acid, Ash, Earth, Metal, Air, Sound, Blood, Poison, Wood, Arcane, Crystal, Dust, Sand, and Storm. There were even included sub-types for niche aspects. Like under Metal, there were various types of metals like silver, gold, iron, etc. Under Crystal, there were gems, glass, salt, etc.

“You can find any of these out in the wild, as they are more simplistic in nature. However,” she started writing more types, like Radiant, Life, Death, Astral, Vampiric, Gravity, Mind, Space, Time, Curse. “These mana types are far more complicated. Here, with these types, we start to overlap what separates mana and stamina. Stamina deals with more conceptual ideas, rather than elements. For example, death. We know that death mana exists, but so does death stamina.”

“Wait,” said Aila, “Stamina is like mana? You can use it for spells?”

“Yes and no. Stamina is one of the fundamental energies, and is one of your resource pools. You can use it to fuel many types of skills and powerful abilities, but we don’t call them spells. They’re usually called techniques, or arts, or some other word. The most powerful abilities will come from combining the effects of these energies. But Stamina is only similar to mana in so far as these mana types here.” She pointed back to the second list. Then she moved back to the little lesson.

“Each element has its own branch of magic and research, but there are some types of magic that are generally outlawed across the kingdoms. Death, Blood, Mind, and Curse magics are almost universally banned. Poison, Dark, and Vampiric are more controversial and are only banned in some nations.

“The reason I’m talking about this is because of our next exercises, the Mage Hand and Mana Bolt. This can take on any number of different shapes or forms, like a hand or cloud or tentacle, but the basic concept is that you reach out with your mana to grab something. The basic skill Mage Hand will use the base Arcane mana, but when you’re doing it with pure manipulation, what element you use will matter. If you use fire mana, you’ll burn it, water will soak it, and so on.”

Her Mother motioned towards the items in front of her on the table. On the table was a feather, a coin, then several balls of metal increasing in size. This was the part that she liked. “Let’s practice picking up this feather first, then we’ll move on to the next item until we reach the final ball. Most people will have the skill by the time they’re able to lift this 10 pound ball. Now, move the mana underneath it, and will the mana to pick it up.”

Aila went to do so but stopped when her Mother said, “And remember, we’re still practicing Output Mana and Contain Mana. To push out the mana as fast as you can and hold onto it as you practice. The farther from you you go, the harder it’ll be to keep control of it.”

She found it easiest to output her mana when she imagined it as streams coming out of her palms. With her Mana Sense, she saw the small jets of mana forming a small cloud between her hands. She pushed it out towards the feather, making it form a small plate underneath it. It was hard, a mental strain that made her sweat. But if she let go the slightest bit, she could see a little vapor come off of her plate, turning into loose ambient mana. Slowly, she tried lifting the plate. The feather didn’t move. She could only try two more times before the plate had shrunk too much of her mana and she had to expel more. Though neither of those tries succeeded. She outputted enough mana to make another plate and tried again.

It took her another 3 plates before the darned feather rose up with it. Aila shouted with joy and jumped in excitement, hugging her Mother. “I did it! Mother, look! I did it!” But in doing so, she had let her control slip and the plate dissipated into ambient mana. The feather fell back down to where it was.

Luckily Her Mother saw it, she smiled at her and gave her a kiss on her forehead. “Well done, Aila! Do it once more and if you can hold it, then you can move on to the coin.”

~~~

An hour later, she had burned through nearly 200 mana and had gotten through the coin, but was stuck on the smallest ball. But that was as far as she was going to get today, because her Mother called for a break. It had been a big mental work out, and she was tired. With her notifications popped up, small screens that read:

Mana Sense gained 2 levels. +2 EXP

Mana Manipulation gained 6 levels. +6 EXP

You gained 1 level. +1 INT +1 WIS +1 Free Stats

Looking over her stats, she had to place the remaining free point into Strength, sighing as she did so. Why couldn’t she just get free points like Miles did?

After their break, full of nice tea and snacks, they started the next exercise. The Mana Bolt! The base attack of any mage. Maybe with this, she could go with Miles next time they go hunting? With the thought about potentially being able to fight monsters, she felt a little bit of fear and excitement.

“For this exercise, we’ll be learning about the basic attacking spell of any mage, Mana Bolt. Since we’re trying to make you into a Lightning Mage, our end goal is for you to learn Lightning Bolt, but Mana Bolt is a necessary step. Through this training, you will learn how to send your mana out far beyond your range with base manipulation.

“Most mages will only learn an elemental attack at tier 1, because of the limitations the tier 0 Mana Sense has. Not being able to differentiate between elemental mana does make it very hard to learn. However, there are certain tricks we can use to help you. First of all, your personal man that you generate within you is a mix of many different elements together. So for you to use lightning mana, we need to try and replace your mana pool. First step, empty your mana as much as you can. Don’t worry about retaining control, just expel it.”

Aila began expelling mana, but instead of through her palms for when she’s trying out spells, she’s expelling it throughout her entire body. With her Mana Sense she could see a purple black cloud radiating away from her. Without the Output Mana skill, it took her a good 30 minutes to get down to 10 percent. She began feeling a headache and a drowsiness come onto her. She gritted her teeth and pushed a little more, until she was nearly at 5 percent. She was sweating with the pain of her headache, but this was nothing compared to the resistance training.

“Okay Mother, I’m as empty as I can be.”

Her Mother snapped her fingers and a huge wave of mana washed out from her. All of the ambient mana in the room was forcefully pushed out, and was replaced with her Mother’s mana. While the ambient mana had been in a constant random motion, creating areas of higher and lower densities, now it was still and uniform. The air felt almost tingly and there was a metallic smell in the air. “When we meditate, we take in ambient energies to increase our own natural regen. With my lightning mana saturating the room, if you meditate and refill your mana pool, it will now be mostly Lightning. However, to meditate back up to full would still take you about 2 months. And by then any lightning mana you’ve already absorbed would have lost their affinity and this would be pointless. So, here is a mana potion especially designed to fill up your mana pool with lightning.” She handed Aila the potion. It was different from regular mana potions, in that it was a white-blue color. It tingled as Aila drank it, and her tongue was slightly numbed, but it was still a huge relief to refill her mana.

“From now on though, never meditate anywhere except in this room, to keep your pool mostly lightning.”

Aila took a moment to feel out her mana. Even though it was supposed to be filled with lightning now, she didn’t feel any different. But she trusted her Mother.

“Now that that’s out of the way, let's try throwing a bolt. Initially, it will be easier to form a ball in your hand and try to throw it. Once you can do that, then try to ‘shoot’ it away from you without moving your hands.”

She formed a small ball of her mana into her hands. Aila looked at the ball, trying to tell what was new about it. The color was still the same, a tier 0 Mana Sense couldn’t sense any colors besides a purple-ish black, but it felt slightly different. It felt jittery and it was harder to shape. She tried to throw it, but as soon as it left her hand it dispersed into small sparks and faded. She tried several more times, all of them resulted with the same sparks and failure. She tried keeping her control over the ball, even after she threw it, but it just stopped where it left her hands. She tried to keep control of it, but to keep pushing it, but it just moved slowly until it reached too far and her control slipped.

Her Mother spoke up, “You’re doing very well, Aila. but instead of ‘grabbing’ the ball with your mind, try slapping it. One forceful push of your will to send it flying.”

The results were better. Now she was able to send the ball out several more meters before it dissipated. And while it moved fast, it was far too slow to be called a “bolt”. As with anything, this would need a lot of practice.