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Chapter 6: Magic Scholar

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Like all the naïve children I assumed that learning magic would be easy, but even with the memories of my genetic father there is no shortcut; muscle memory isn’t the sort of thing you inherit.

I’m 3 years old now; but do I look like a 5 to 6 year old?

Noooo!

I look like a freaking 12 year old!

Ovis and I still don’t have any Fur, but the lion-like main has started growing in so we have a lot of hair on our heads. Ovis has taken to tying our hair into ponytails because cutting the head hair is a complete no-no amongst the Knora. My head hair will eventually reach all the way to my hips, and that is considered normal. I’ve started noticing that my hips have started to take on a more feminine shape, and somehow I’m not too concerned about that.

A year ago Ovis started begging mother for magic lessons, but mother wouldn’t budge since Knora only start magic lessons at age 4 as a way to help grow the Mana Cores so they are ready for the awakening of their 【Full Might】 during the ranking contest. So to mother teaching spell casting to 2 year olds was dangerous; no matter how prodigious they may be. Magic is dangerous and there was a real risk of burning or freezing your fingers.

However Ovis wasn’t going to accept such logic; not by a long shot. So we started independent magic training; practicing injecting Mana into various elements. As expected progress was slow and it was obvious that we got more out of training with 【Full Might】 than practicing external magic. Because the Knora constantly use Mana since it flows into the bloodstream we develop a larger Mana Core than the other humanoids; That and the fact that the Knora are simply larger than the other humanoids.

Once we reach age 5 and develop the 【Full Might】 skill it becomes the primary form of Mana use, and that slows down the development of our Mana Capacity. Ovis and I felt that in order to avoid the plateau in Mana Capacity growth we had to learn spell casting early. Ovis reasoned that it’s a question of developing a healthy spell casting habit. The other humanoids cast spells on a normal basis to start fires, purify water and cleaning as well as regular maintenance.

It certainly explained why the Knora who start using the Mana Core early end up with the same Mana Capacity as the other humanoids when they reach 20 years.

Even so there was still a problem; without a proper network through the fingers it’s tremendously wasteful in terms of efficient use of Mana.

The solution Ovis came up with was putting our foreheads into a bowl of water; thus allowing the Forehead Crystal Third Eye to come into direct contact with the Element and making it easier to directly inject Mana. With this plan we could inject Mana into the water Element as efficiently as those with a proper magical network in the body. I developed a healthy respect for Ovis’s Intellect; she obviously had a brilliant mind to go along with he freakishly strong body.

And so began the most brutal year to date. Before we trained hard, but we had the 【Full Might】 skill to assist. However the new training regiment designed by Ovis required that we use up our Mana doing magic and then train the body while in the lethargic state of Mana depletion. Consequently the physical training became harder on the body; triggering a rapid muscle development. I could understand the situation Ovis found herself in; the weight of expectation for a future Clan Matriarch demanded no less effort.

I could not allow myself to take it easy in the face of such effort; my twin sister became my inspiration. Also; Ovis had thoroughly convinced me that the only way to be same was to have the power to protect myself, and being safe had become very important to me. If anything a powerful body would allow me to run away faster; you don’t have to be faster than the monster, you just have to be faster than the monsters next potential target. In the worst case scenario you have to possess the strength to protect your family.

The year of hell came to an end with mother finally relenting and acknowledging that Ovis and I already had a larger Mana Capacity than the average 5 year old Knora. We were allowed to join the magic class for 4 year olds held every 4 days. People would proudly proclaim starting magic classes at 3 years old was yet another record breaking feat accomplished by the Matriarch’s prodigious twins. For whatever reason Ovis was indifferent to such praise and I had grown more timid with the years.

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4 year old Knora are the size of 15 year old humans with the one distinct difference being that they still have flat chests. Knora start puberty when they reach the age of 7 years, and until then their chests remain flat. Given that all breeds of Knora grow to be an average of 275cm being the size of 15 year old humans at age 4 is only a little strange. Vnora start growing Fur when they hit puberty and I’m kind of exited to get my red Fur. It’s surprising how Knora I’ve become and in the process loose my human mentality.

The Knora don’t have a public educations system, and children are expected to learn from their families; be it reading or magic. However the Orro Federation has publicly mandated education systems and on federal lands children are required to attend school every 2 days. On Knora lands there is a resistance to any kind of forced education of the young, and the Knora regard such a system as federal indoctrination. Knora believe that children should learn values from their family.

Mother had been trying to get the Knora to adopt standardized learning methods for an Orro century and the only thing the Knora had accepted were standardized learning materials. The Knora were never going to accept public schools and they did a fairly decent job of teaching their own children. The wealthy families have established exclusive family schools for their children, and Ovis and I found ourselves in such a school. The rank held by Ovis meant that there would be no protests no matter how anyone might feel.

The only ones required to attend a Federal school are those who hold public office. At age 11 the Knora ruling class leave for the Federal Academy of Philosophy to study for 2 years; thus deferring military service for 2 years. I’m told that Ovis will take up to a hundred guards and attendants and Ovis has made it clear that I will be coming along. I’m one of the few people Ovis can trust completely and be free around so I’m happy to be relied upon by my future Clan Matriarch.

When I told Ovis of my desire to be independently wealthy she was relieved. I’m guessing that she had resolved herself to take care of me and is relieved to learn that I have some ambition. Most of the progress I’ve made thus far has been as a result of Ovis pushing me. However even I realise that at some point Ovis will be forced to take 4 spouses who should rightly be her focus. As my Clan Matriarch Ovis would then have the responsibility of marrying me off to a suitably qualified female.

But me finding the resolve to move forward on my own is a weight of Ovis’s shoulders.

Being wealthy will require economic know-how. The Knora economy is largely about supplying the Orro Federation Economy with Mana Cores in exchange for everything else; there’s hardly any production. The Mana Cores are mostly harvested from the monsters that populate the frozen Southern Continent. Leather working is developed to a respectable level but most of the leather is sent off unprocessed along with the Mana Cores in exchange for other goods.

There’s hardly any agriculture on Knora Island because of the cold climate. The primary impediment to economic development is Knora attitude. The Southern Continent is largely hostile to anyone other than the Knora and they have a virtual monopoly on access to the Mana Cores of large ice beasts just as they did in the north of the Orrba Continent. This makes it difficult to change the economy to one of production since the Knora get to act out their pronounced hunting instincts.

Fishing had always proved problematic given the large numbers of sea monsters in the oceans that make it difficult for anything other than a warship to transverse the oceans. Catching fish would trigger a response from the monsters who consider the fish their prey and territories in they oceans their exclusive feeding grounds. Therefore the only safe fishing takes place from the coastal shore and on the rivers. Not even the Knora are foolish enough to pick a fight with giant see monsters.

I already know that if I’m going to be wealthy it has to be by manufacturing products for the Knora in exchange for Mana Cores which I would then process into other products desired by the rest of the Orro Federation. Success had to happen while mother was still alive and on the throne since when she’s gone there will be all sorts of attempts to get in my way from the entrenched business interest benefiting from the current situation. That gave me 50 years since the Super-Regeneration born from an Unyielding Heart increases lifespan by 50 to 60 years.

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So there we were; 3 years old and excited about the first lesson in magic.

What a let down!

I should have expected it but I’m a child most of the time so I couldn’t help getting excited. These are Knora for fuck’s sake; it should have been obvious that the magic being taught would be limited.

Ovis called it a waist of time and immediately started dragging me out of the door.

Haaa; I can’t help sighing.

You see the class was basic Mana channelling.

The Knora don’t really practice external magic; the exception being channelling Mana into magic tools and weapons. So the first lessons would need to be about pushing Mana into elements; something Ovis and I have been doing for a year now. I had thought they would teach spell casting but apparently that would come after the ranking contest at 5 years of age. Spell casting is taught along with combat training because the two are related; at least the Knora see it that way.

Ovis wasn’t about to wait 2 years to learn formal spell casting and she was not happy; she was fuming actually. After going on a small destructive rampage in our room she calmed down and we started thinking about how to get over the hurdle. Both of us were already able to levitate about 2 litres of water shaped into a sphere, and then begin dissipating the heat from the ball of water to form a ball of ice. For some reason Ovis has better control of both the ball of water and the ball of ice. Her ball of ice seems to be denser and smaller than mine despite using the same amount of water.

It’s seems Ovis is better able to control the crystal structures in the ice; forming better ice crystals. It’s the same with the water; Ovis is able to compress water into better controlled shapes. The magic lessons were supposed to teach us formal spell casting; we already possessed the knowledge during sleep but it’s hard to remember things in detail so the hope was that with someone there to show us we would be able to develop sufficient muscle memory to become proficient spell casters.

Spell Casting is like swinging a sword in that repetition creates proficiency. The chants and gestures that people do while Spell Casting are just a crutch developed to help the mind rapidly remember and focus on creating a particular structure.

Spell Casting is essentially reflexive shaping of elements.

We could self study and develop our own methods of Spell Casting but that would be reinventing the wheel. The Chants, Stances and Forms used during Spell Casting have been developed over thousands of years to make it easier to conjure and ice spear or earth lance. We already knew that we would have to reinvent the wheel to some extent since most of the teachings on Spell Casting are meant for people with a magical network running through their body.

Finally I struck upon the idea that there had to have been a Gvern who through an accident or deformity became paralyzed from the neck down. Such a person would have to develop methods of Spell Casting that relied on the Forehead Crystal Third Eye and not the magical network in the body. It was obvious that we would be able to learn far more from such a person than we would be able to from any other teacher; provided that telepathic teaching is allowed.

When Ovis and I went to mother to request a paraplegic Gvern teacher the price for her involvement was that it be done under the auspices of the establishment of the Vnora Academy of Magic. Mother is the Matriarch after all and isn’t interested in creating favourable terms for just her 2 youngest children, and once she realised the potential benefits to Knora Island she wanted the advantage to be given to the widest possible population. Ovis and I would have to act as teacher assistants.

According to mother finding the paraplegic Gvern would take some effort and convincing them to pass on their knowledge to Vnora would require more than a bit of money so this has to be an official initiative of the Knora Enclave. So mother saw an opportunity to push through one of the major policy initiatives of her reign; public education. The Knora High Council had resisted all efforts to build public schools but the new Vnora are different and everyone knows it so it was a chance to build a major institution.

We would all become Magic Scholars.

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