With that successful sale behind us, we were all walking back home and if one noticed close enough, they could even see a slight hop in my steps. This was my first success at something I have planned from scratch and it was an invigorating feeling seeing my plan come to fruition. But through all this, a question lingered in my mind, since it wasn’t something, I could hypothesise and test myself I decided to take the consul of mom

“Mom? What if he tries to skip the payment?”

“Well, the amount equivalent to the debt owed will be confiscated”

“But his debt to us is larger than his net worth.” I pointed out

“Well, in that case, he will probably be forced to work for us until he repays the debt.”

“What about his family?”

“What about them?”

“What will they do if he is serving our family?”

“They will probably have to take care of themselves.”

Well, at least a lot of good morals stuck around in the village even after the apocalypse. I was worried that being a post-apocalyptic world there would be cruel laws that subjected his family to a certain level of punishment.

“By the way, what would be the most heinous crime in our village”

“Hmm, I think it would be murder and rape. Murder you know is the act of killing someone. If you killed a person while you weren’t acting in self-defence, then it would be considered a major crime in the village”

“What is the second one rape?” Cylix asked suddenly.

Mom seemed to notice that she had talked about something not talked about in front of kids.

Instead of lying however mom just postponed it and said “You will get to know when you are a bit older.”

Seeing that she didn’t want to explain it, I instead decided to divert the topic.

“Mom, how close am I to learning magic?” I asked because this has been bugging me, I have already waited for a whole 4 months since the start of my training and I am starting to wonder if she wants to train me at all. She gave a non-committal hum, as she didn’t want to answer my question.

Seeing her being like this, I decided that I need to be a bit firmer and stand my ground today.

“Mom, I know you love me and are scared I am going to hurt myself but that is no reason to not teach me magic. If you are uncomfortable with teaching me magic, I can always find someone else to teach”

Mom looked a bit surprised to see my tough act. However, contrary to my expectations, she didn’t seem to take me seriously as she started to giggle, which then turned into full blown laughter.

“I am sorry, your serious face is too funny”

“Mom! Please be serious!” I exclaimed in a strict tone.

She said, still giggling, “Well, it seems that you have finally run out of patience honey. But I am sorry it still isn’t possible.”

“Why! Please at least give me a reason!” I whined

“Fine, fine, I will tell you, it is because your Mana capacity isn’t near enough to practise more than a few times. At the rate your mana capacity is growing, it will take no less than a year before you reach that level. That is why you are only learning about herbs and potion making.”

Huh, that makes a lot of sense, but what does she mean teaching me potion making?

“What do you mean you are teaching me potion making?”

“Hmm? You are doing the daily ingredient preparation right?”

“Hmm, yeah”

She had started to let me help her with the ingredient preparations while she made potions since the second month.

“Well, potion making is mostly based on ingredients preparation, the remaining part of potion-making is just adding the ingredients to the pot at the correct times to extract the maximum effectiveness.

So, you learning to handle the potion ingredients correctly means that you are already more than halfway there. I will teach you the actual making when you can prepare the most common ingredients correctly”

Huh, I didn’t think that my mom would teach me karate kid style.

“By the way it is fine that you want me to practise magic because of my limited mana, but you could at least teach me the theory, right?”

At my words mom started staring at me with an eyebrow raised in suspicion, she can’t think I am that childish right? While I know my feelings sometimes get the better of me since I was a child but with my memories of life as Angelo, I am already super mature compared to other kids my age, heck I am more mature than some kids on the reserve hunting team.

After staring and thinking for a while she said, “Well, if you promise me, you won't practice magic until you get my approval, I will teach you.”

Jackpot! With a wide smug grin of victory, I said “Of course! I wouldn’t practise without your approval!”

“Very well, let's reach home before we start your lessons.” she declared

“But mom, what about your patients?” I asked worriedly. I wanted to learn magic but not at the cost of mom abandoning her patients for me.

“Don’t worry, I have already taken today off due to the meeting and have already talked with the other healers to cover for me today” she said in a relaxed tone. Well, if that was the case then it's no problem.

“Mom, I won’t come home now, I have to go to the grounds for more training.” Suddenly, Cylix interjected.

“Are you sure honey? You can always practice tomorrow, you should take the day off.”

“No! I want to learn mana sensing as soon as possible, I don’t want to fall behind from Cyclos.”

That kind of surprised me, Cylix was always a soft-spoken guy but I never figured that he had such a competitive side in him.

“Well, if you are so sure, okay. But remember to come back home in time. Don’t make me come and get you, otherwise you won’t like the consequences.” she warned him.

Cylix nodded to show his understanding and started walking away after waving us off. The rest of the journey home was a silent affair as mom said that she was trying to make a lesson plan for me, so I didn’t disturb her thoughts. After we reached home, we switched out into something more comfortable and had lunch before mom sat me down in the living room and asked me to wait. She went inside her bedroom and came back with 3 books.

Where the heck did she hide those books? I had searched her room before for those books but never found them, I didn’t get to think more about it as she sat down in front of me. Gone was the sweet mother, in front of me was a strict teacher that wouldn’t tolerate any tomfoolery

“Well, we will start with the basic question. What do you think Mana is?” she questioned.

“I think Mana is a natural energy that is present in all objects, from the air to the earth and everything in between.”

She seemed surprised for a second before regaining her strict face as she said, “Good, that is correct. Mana is the ever-present energy everywhere in the world. You can trap mana, you can change how it works but you can never truly destroy mana.

After a person or animal dies, the mana that was in them will leak out back into the air or mix with the ground, if they are eaten by a beast, that beast will take some mana into itself as well, only to continue the cycle after its death.”

Huh, so it looks like the law of conservation of energy holds to mana as well. It's good to know at least some knowledge I learned as Angelo is useful.

“Well, now that you know what Mana is, can you tell me what magic is?”

“Magic is causing a phenomenon with mana as a fuel?”

She bonked on my head and proceeded to scold, “Just now I was praising you for being intelligent and then you say dumb things. What did I say, Mana cannot be destroyed, only changed. With this hint, can you tell me what magic is now?”

“Magic is changing Mana from one form to another. But that's what I said before.”

She seemed to have caught that last murmur as I was bonked again, “One is destroying something and the other is just changing its form. Firewood is fuel, after it is burned isn’t it destroyed? That is why that is an incorrect statement.”

Damn! This is unjust! It is obviously her fault she doesn’t know the law of conservation of mass, why do I still get hit. I decided to make my pain obvious and explain the flaws in her logic so that I could cure my ego. “Mom, that is the same thing, we are just converting the wood into ash and smoke. They will eventually become fertilisers for another tree.”

My explanation seemed to work as she sank into thought before a moment of enlightenment appeared on her face. She fell into some deep thinking that I had to shake her to bring back her attention. Immediately after I broke her thinking she seemed frustrated by the disturbance before she realised, she was at fault for daydreaming during our lesson. Then she looked at me with a weird gaze as if I was something alien, which I would definitely count as due to my previous life.

“Ahem, anyway, Magic is the conversion of mana from one form to another. However, now that we know what magic is, how do we achieve said magic?” she questioned rhetorically.

That's it! The juice of the matter I have been waiting for!

“We convert the mana by shaping our mana into mandalas and then pushing our will and intent through it.”

So that’s how the magic in this world works! It wasn’t enough if I simply willed the mana, I was supposed to shape into a mandala! But what mandala? There are too many mandala variations.

She continued her explanation, not noticing the light of realisation in my eyes. “A mandala as you know, is the repetitive configuration of symbols. That means in theory there would be an infinite number of mandalas and it would be almost impossible to learn them all. However, there was once genius mage that ultimately condensed the mandalas into two designs.”

“What! He condensed the mandalas into just two fundamental mandalas! What is the name of such a genius?!” I instinctively shouted out loud. Because this was too unbelievable! To condense an infinity number of mandalas, how much of a genius was this guy?

Mom chuckled as she replied, “Yes that was my reaction too when I found out about him. His name is Merlin and he was the court mage for the first emperor.”

I almost face faulted in disbelief when I heard the name. How does this guy end up in all universes with magic in them? Is he the multiversal god of magic or something?

“Anyway, he was the one who made these two mandalas “, so Mom flipped the pages in her book carefully to show me two mandalas.

I immediately recognised both of them. One was a mandala of the star of David and the other was an overlapping circle grid. Underneath both of them there was a title, the one under the star of David was written Mandala of the spirit and the one under the overlapping circle grid was written Mandala of the flower of life.

“Since then, these two mandalas have been the only two that have been used, because they are the strongest and most versatile mandala. Now I have a question for you, after hearing that all magic is done by the same mandalas, how do you think people divide the strength of the spells?”

“By the amount of mana supplied to the spell?”

“Yes, you are in the right direction, but since the mandala is only so big how will it differ between the strength of the spells?”

Hmm, since the mandala created by the mana is only so big, to increase the amount of mana, “I would have to either create multiple mandalas, or make the mandala so big that it would fit the amount of mana required for my spell.”

Immediately mom broke out into laughter, I was starting to think if I was wrong when she got herself into a bit of control but still said while giggling, “Your second answer is correct, we just make the mandala bigger until we can fit all the mana for the spell. *giggle* Make a second mandala, hah, the things kids say.”

I didn’t get why she found it so funny, but I let it slide because I had further questions.

“Ok, I get it now, but then why do you and everyone keep saying that magic has been lost? Since we already have these two mandalas, we can use every magic in the world.”

My question immediately made her stop giggling, as her face turned serious and she sighed as she said, “You see Cyclos, using a person’s mana, we can only do so much. The magic that has been lost which is the main reason for human dominance against beasts and dragons alike is the ability to pull the mana from the surrounding for the magic.

There is other knowledge that has been lost as well such as the knowledge of the research into the truth of the world. You see when we do magic, we don’t exactly know what we are doing with the magic, supposedly the more you know about the truth of the world, the more you know about the truth of the world, the lesser the cost of magic.”

While Mom was melancholy looking at the books, I was doing a celebration dance in my heart. This was literally the ideal world for a person with a life's worth of engineering memories to live in. If the truth of the world that mom is talking about is science then I will be nearly unstoppable!

She got herself together and then continued to explain, “Anyway, the problem becomes that the size of the mandala we can form with one’s personal mana is heavily limited. Since for personal mana the farther away it is from us, the harder it is to control as it seeks to disperse back into the surroundings. The largest thing I can do is this big.” she said as she projected a fireball the size of a beach ball.

“With the amount of mana, I keep losing with the size of this mandala, any bigger means that more mana will be lost than the amount of the spell, and I only have enough mana to make this 3 times.”

What! Only three times? I once again checked mom’s mana with my mana sense and confirmed that she only has a third of the mana left. I focused my senses on the mandala, obviously, there seems to be a greater level of mana sense one can reach because I can only see a vague shape of the mandala and not the details.

But from what I can see the mandala is as big as Mom herself. I could even feel vaguely that not all mana was being used to create the fireball as some of it was leaking into the air! No wonder people are struggling against magical creatures. If this is what all the mana can do currently, they are of no use, not to mention that bigger creatures probably have mana resistance.