“The Water Goddess Church is one of the five main religious powers of the world. They each focus around one or two elements of mana, and are generally based in areas with large bias toward that particular element. It is hard for them to remain dominant in a region without this fact. The different powers are as follows. The Followers of Terra, the earth based power that worships terra, the god of the earth. There is the Burning Congregation, the followers of the flame god. Disciples of the sky, follow the god of the winds. The Church of Light and Life, probably the most biased and corrupt church funnily enough, they once tried to eliminate the opposing elements to light and life. That ended up crippling an entire generation, but that's another story. Finally there is the one we have had the most trouble with, The Water Goddess Church, They pretty obviously follow the Water Goddess.”

That long base explanation of the religious groups would have been nice if I understood the basics of mana but I was already lost. “Um, Oraki?” I started to ask

“Yeah, question?” He responded, sounding pretty happy, surprisingly, it seems like he likes to teach. It seemed like the anger and frustration from before was subsiding a bit. Probably because he was able to take his mind off of it at least a little bit.

“Yeah, I don't even know the basics of mana or elements or anything. Could you start there? It's hard to follow all these details since I know nothing.”

“Oh you didn't even know that? sorry my bad.” He apologized before continuing. “So the elements, what are they? The elements are what we call elemental mana, and there are eight types of elemental mana. They are, Flame, Water, Air, Earth, Light, Dark, Life, and Death. There is one more type but it does not fall into the same category as these other eight, that one is Neutral Mana. How you distinguish between these nine total types is complicated so I'll leave that out for now. But throughout the world there is ambient mana almost everywhere, and a lot of this mana is Neutral Mana. It is only in specific areas that high concentrations of ambient elemental mana are present. These kinds of places can include oceans, volcanoes, mountain tops, and deep caves. So this creates areas where certain groups hold more power because of the abundant ambient mana of their respective types. This creates the situation we are in with the water goddess church, because this city is a port city named Kitamo. Since it's next to the water, and especially this area of the coast, there is an abundance of ambient water mana here.”

In school in my past life, even though I was learning just to get a good job and earn more money, I did enjoy learning. It felt rewarding, the efforts I put in to understand concepts and practice them to perfection, bore visible fruits of my labour. There weren't a lot of things that held those good qualities in my life. So as I sat there listening to this lesson on the fundamentals mana, I felt that feeling again, my desire to learn and improve at the things i was hearing. I was completely wrapped up in the content of his spiel.

He went on “The other organizations have similar situations. It's harder for others, depending upon the commonality of these areas and people near them. For the most part, this has a big impact on the expansion of said organization. The Church of the Water Goddess has grown expansively due to this fact. Most of the port cities are controlled in some capacity by them, and their recruitment base is exceedingly large as well.” He paused to start a new thought. “The most powerful group, I would say that it’s probably the Church of Light and Life. The Water Goddess Church is probably second. It's hard to say because not much is known about the others, all I know is these two are the most prominent throughout the continent.” It's kinda interesting hearing about a new system with which the world we live in is affected by. These things sound like crazy ideas meant for stories, but it’s my reality now.

“So why does the Water Goddess Church seem bad?” I ask, not because of naivety but because I want to know what it is they are actually doing to the people in these cities they control.

“What has happened with them is they got arrogant. There had always been a power struggle between the Water Goddess Church and the Church of Light and Life. They keep each other in check more or less. But the Church of Light and LIfe made a mistake, they ruined a whole generation of their people. The reasons how and why are complicated, do you wanna know?” He asked, seeing how deep I wanted to go with this.

I was really enjoying it up until now and definitely wanted to learn more no matter what it was about so I agreed. Then he continued.

“Ok then, first you need to know about Mana Cores. Everyone who properly developed to the age of 13, should have nine Mana Cores inside their bodies. There is one main one at the center of your body, this holds neutral mana. This is the main weapon ninety nine percent of the Mana Users have. Then aside from this main core, there are eight other Elemental Mana Cores, they surround the Neutral Mana Core. There is one of each element, and these cores are what yoou use to perform actions in any elemental form. You pass mana through one of the Elemental Cores, from the Neutral Core, and out comes elemental mana.” Even just these quick explanations were very helpful for my understanding of how this world functions.

“Now more on the development of these cores. The main Neutral Mana Core will form during the first three years of a child's life. Then over the next ten, the eight elemental cores form. These cores include both Light, and Life, as well as Darkness, and Death. If you tamper with the formation of these cores then it will offset the balance of that person’s mana control. We know this now but didn’t know a bit over 50 years ago. We know because the Church of Light and Life made a decision, a decision to eliminate the Darkness and Death cores in all the children of the rising generation, the ones they governed over anyway. This created a catastrophe for the church, because as they grew up with either crippled or nonexistent Darkness and Death Cores, they could not manipulate their mana with any sense of control. The outcomes of their lack of control ranged from them being completely powerless to being an uncontrollable danger to others. Many people died because of the latter case, but overall they had lost an entire generation's worth of man power and strength. Once the repercussions of this were realised, it provided an opportunity for the Water Goddess Church to increase its power and influence, they essentially entered their hayday. The people growing up in the fold of the church then were proud as the strongest power in the continent. This all lasted for around 35 years, until the Church of Light and Life made a comeback, they grew in power once more and recovered from their previous mistakes. They pushed back and gained power again. And then just 4 years ago it was made clear that they were once again the strongest power. In a battle against the Light and Life they were beaten. After that the amount of bullying and controlling they did radically increased, they started to condemn those who didn't use Water Mana and tried to suppress great talents of other Elemental affinities. They seem completely blind with prejudice against those not of the same affinity as them.”

As he was wrapping up his explanation, it all began to make sense now. I had seen it first hand, Shina’s terrifyingly strong flame attack. That blade of fire that she created, it was a beautiful thing to watch, but probably left a sour taste in the mouth of the church. Thinking back now, if they used that attack from the beginning the fight would have been easy, so why don't they? This was probably why Koshi looked frustrated as he gave the call for Shina to attack, he was probably worried about this.

“So that’s why,” I say as I realize why this happened.

Right Koshi, did they take himi too? Where is he? Also Tobi, I haven't seen him since I passed out. I don't know if Oraki is worrying about that or not so I better not bring it up for now, I just hope they are ok.

“You get it now?” He asks, genuinely checking to see if I really caught on. Probably doubting I really did since he thinks I'm a kid.

“Is Shina really that amazing?” I wonder aloud.

“Dang you do get it, I take it you saw her attack then. During the goblin attack right?”

“Yeah, the extra blade of fire that Sliced into the back line of goblins was amazing.”

“You saw that even? You were really watching weren’t you?” He asked while chuckling to himself.

“I couldn’t take my eyes off it man she was amazing.” I was just being honest that kinda power was something unheard of in my past life. On top of that she was the first one to use Mana right in front of me so she made a good first impression at least.

“Well I'm not sure how or when but I think her using that move today may be what caused this. It may be speculation but that’s the only thing that would make sense.” After he spoke he looked at me, realizing that he was inadvertently putting the blame on me for the whole event. He opened his mouth to speak, but then stopped, tilting his head back down to the ground he spoke again. “You said you would help, you want to stay with us. It may be in some capacity your fault, I know you're just a kid and there was nothing you could do. I'm not gonna blame you anymore or pressure you because of this. But right now, I feel like something is telling me to trust you.” There was a long pause after he spoke those words. There was no anger or resentment, his voice sounded careful and deliberate. He almost spoke with respect, towards a kid that was responsible for this whole situation. I couldn’t understand why, it made more sense to get frustrated at least, I would want to get rid of the kid. Here he sat looking as if he was pleading with me for help. His words didn't say that, but everything else did. It made no sense.

“Show me.” I said.

“Huh?” He looked at me.

“Show me how to fight back.” I spoke firmly and with intent, “Show me so I will never drag you guys down again, I want to help fight against the church of the Water Goddess.” The call to fight felt a lot more real this time. We had just gone over the power and influence of this church and how they have been an overpowering force over the land for 35 years at least. I knew what it was, and I still managed to stand there and say,

“I will fight and take back what is ours.” As I spoke these words with great conviction, I could feel the path forming solidy in front of me. There is a lot to do, but I wont give up along the way that’s for sure.