"I have seen 'Thunder', and now, I want it."

This happened while I was clearing out the 22nd level. Night was the time. Darkness had taken the land in its embrace. Tearing through the darkness I was running, like a battle crazed maniac. One foe to another. Suddenly the sky lit up. From far away, came a light. Blue serpents engulfed the sky. It was beautiful.

Flying through the night sky was a butterfly of thunder. Beauty transcending the boundedness of this world. Stunned, baffled, I stood on the spot. A massive tail slammed on my chest sending my flying. By the time I stood up, the light was gone. I made a promise to myself at that moment.

"I will get that thunder whose beauty could lock me in place even amidst a battle."

A lot of small things happened after the bird hunt. For starters, I started to enjoy fighting. Going up close and personal with a magic beast has a fantastic flavour to it. At first I would just get a little excited. Slowly it became like an addiction. Sometimes I would forget to take rest and other times, to eat. I wanted to feel more of that thrill. In an uneventful place like this, that was a welcoming surprise.

Knowing about something and being able to prevent it are two entirely different things. For me, having a second option of all my insecurities eating me away did not help at all. I was not born with a warrior's code of honour. All my life I have learned how to serve others. Now suddenly I have to kill my way through a savage land. I would take that addiction which allows me to kill more efficiently any day. I'm sure it will be gone soon enough. I am a coward after all.

All that fighting did some good though. I have gained some muscle and it turns out that my bones are really tough. A few dozen hits from the 21st and 22nd level did virtually nothing to me. A few cuts here and there, they heal soon enough.

I learned air magic. From my observation, birds seem to be the apex predator in this free for all battle royal. Their flying capabilities and use of magic gives them an edge over every other land dweller. If my theory is correct then that flying lightning was the doing of a bird.

The flash was truly beautiful, which in turn reminded me of the grim reality of this place. There is always something stronger. Better yet, it turned my excitement down a notch. Told you. I am a coward. Just fighting like a madman won't do. I have to think about my actions. Correct them as I go forward and learn. If magic can make everything powerful then magic is the strongest thing in this place. I have to learn to manipulate it for my needs. I know how to use magic but I don't know how it works.

So, I sat down. Trying out all the magic I knew. My magic usage involves copying the feeling I have learned from the remnants, then pouring my mana following that feeling and producing duplicate results. Every time spells are casted, the mana flows through a rigid structure. My assumption is that the rigid structure gives mana its characteristics.

"Thinking about it. It does make sense. So, theoretically speaking, if such paths are changed that will result in changes in spell."

As the saying goes 'Easier said than done'. Theories don't always translate well in practice. After trying a few times I came to that conclusion. If I try to change anything from the structure the whole thing collapses. No matter how small it is.

I searched for a long time but could not find anything common between the different patterns I knew. Even if there was a slightest thing common between them, I could try to deduce some logic from it.

"Huuuuhhhh. How do normal people use magic?"

The experience was disheartening, true, but not improbable. Let's take a computer program for example. If someone tries to run them, replacing ';' with '.' It will not work. And there are so many programming languages. Trying to understand them without any prior knowledge is a fool's errand. I am sure there are a lot of people who worked on magic for their entire lives without finding anything. Me not succeeding is nothing unnatural.

Being unsuccessful is okay. Giving up is not. I have always been obsessed with things I liked. Magic, I like very much. So, instead of moving on, my precistance increased. I started trying out all the knowledge I had gathered from those sacred documents (manga,ln). Chanting, imaging, assigning codes, remembering molecular structures, so on and so forth. Nothing worked.

Laying down, my mind wandered around. It's not like I could not go on without learning new magic. I just wanted to know. How a seemingly electric fluid from my body can do such fantastical things. Why it exists. If I want to learn new spells, I can just go out and kill a beast that has that kind of spell. It won't be easy but it will be more practical. It was more than enough for me until now. Now however, I want more.

"There is one thing that I can try."

That's right. My mana body. How could I forget about it? If one can move it as I wish. Which in turn implies that one can use magic through it. Huuuuuuu… let's calm down first. Getting hopes too high up only comes crashing down.

Entering my mana body, I found myself in the familiar eternal void. I like it here. It's calm, dark and cosy. Feeling of the magic pulse never gets old. It's like falling in love with the same person again and again. The more you feel the more you want. Busking in the comfort for a brief moment I opened my eyes.

"Not gonna lie, I am a bit nervous."

Connecting the dots in a similar way I started channelling mana. My skin became warm and my body enveloped in flame. 'Success.' In here, it's much more apparent how the whole system works. As the mana can be felt much more clearly.

" I see a smoke."

While casting magic with the mana body, something clicked. A strange sensation that I have never felt before. A peak at something new. I had a feeling that if I followed this smoke, I would reach the fire. So I did. Casting the same spell again and again and again. Ten times, twenty times, fifty times, hundred times, thousand times. With each casting I was getting closer and closer toward that fire. And then I saw it. The origin.

"I found the b..bbinary"

…………..

"I found the binary."

"I found the binary code of magic."

"Oh my god. I actually found it."

There it was. The basic building block. Right in front of me. I couldn't believe my own mind. It was like a fleeting moment. But after so many tries I finally tapped into it and like an oh shit moment I understood.

Let me explain properly. So magic is like an atom but also like a part of your body. It's small. Really small and normally one cannot sense the individual part of it. What I learned was that there are this bunch of, what should I call it? Let's call them particles for now. They are like electrons and protons so it will work out just fine.

So these particles, which there are a lot of, make and determine how the magic atom is going to behave. To be more precise, a permuting set of them gives the magic atom their property. Imagine a godly atom that has a maximum number of fundamental particles in it and you can use them to build any kind of atom you want. Unlike normal atoms however a magic atom has more than three fundamental particles and they don't turn into new elements. They just act like one. For example, when the magic matter turns into flame they just heat up, change colour and take the form of flames.

Now for how to control them. The magic atoms obviously can't be seen but I can feel them.It's like having a body. You just know it's there. I don't know why they can change into different forms either. Going with the limb example again, you don't need to know the specifics to move them. You just can.

But, there is a major setback. Unless you know the exact permutation, it is nigh impossible to perform a new change. Fire uses 23 particles where ice uses only 6. But, 4 of them repeats themselves twice and one of them does it 8 times, making a set of 17. Remembering them is not hard though. The sensation of past experience does the job. That makes experimenting with the sets even harder. As I don't know how to arrange them individually.

There is another problem. They change one by one. It's time consuming but I feel like with enough repetition I can improve the timing. But the biggest advantage is that I can control the output. This is why it is so important. The spells I used before were not mine. I merely copied them. Replicating something may contain your lust for the time being but not being able to create something your own will never satisfy you to your fullest.

I exited meditation. My hair has grown substantially while I was immersed in my search. I suspected as much but not to this extent. Looks like, sense of time gets even more convoluted during my time in mana body. I have to be careful from now on. Warning myself, I took care of my hunger, had a nice bath and slept.

__________

I woke up feeling lethargic. This happens when I sleep for a long time. I wanted to sleep again but thinking of magic practice got rid of my sleepiness. Knowing how magic works is a good thing but if I can't use that in combat it will be useless.

So began the new routine of my life. For the next few days I would only eat, shit, sleep and practice. My control over conversation steadily increased yet I was far from proficient in it.

My next breakthrough came from playing around. Let me tell you, accidental discoveries are the best kind of discoveries. At this point in time, I could convert entire 4 atoms at the same time. Don't you dare laugh at me. It took me months to accomplish that. Converting two atoms may sound easy but I guarantee that they are not. It's like writing with both your hands, at once. Converting two atoms into different elements is even worse. Now you have to do the whole thing of writing with both hands but in different languages. I am calling the different properties as elements. It's more fantasy like.

Anyways, I was playing with magic. More specifically, I was trying to gather a bunch of magic at a place and knock them down with another, like bowling. Don't ask me why. A caveman needs entertainment too. So I was doing this and then with a "take this, my flaming ball" I threw a flame elemental atom at them. This time something different happened. The normal atoms that got hit by the flame atom changed for a brief moment. 'That happens?' After trying it for a few more times I understood what was happening. It's basically lighting wood with a lighter. Transfer of energy if you will. The excited atoms transfer their energy into a passive atome to excite them.

"I have an idea."

The idea was to set up a chain reaction. By arranging the atoms in a cluster then set one atom in the middle ablaze. That will trigger change in the adjoining atoms. I will take them under my direct control, rinse and repeat. With an idea in mind, I started a new experiment.

__________

"Today is a good day, they are rather rare but today is a good day. It indeed is."

I was over the moon. The experiment was a success. I have learnt the art of quick casting. Now I can use them for combat. While in elation I tried doing double castings too. It's hard but not undoable. And while doing so I have learned a few more things. Fire and ice cancel each other, as they should. Air boosts every element that I can perform albeit some in different ways than others. For fire, it increases combustion rate. Burns through mana faster too. For ice and poison, it spreads them around like fog. Mana requirements don't increase. Oh by the way I theorised mana as the energy present in an magic atom. After spending its energy it returns to you and stays dormant. I think mana does not go away unless one dies.

The cancellation of elements works something like this. Equal amount of fire and ice energy will completely neutralize each other. In case of difference in energy level the one with higher energy will be victorious but it will have its energy subtracted by equal amount from the losing element. And, Ice freezes poison. Maybe because poison is not a true element? I don't understand this one.

With that I was satisfied. I have collected enough knowledge about magic for now. It was time for some action. I have devised a good buff to my fists in the form of fire and air combo.

"I can't wait to fight that lighting cunt."

One more thing. You know how I change one magic atom then use that as a fuse! Turns out if I use two of them at once the speed doubles and every subsequent fuse I use the speed increases exponentially. So, I have to keep practicing that too.