Observation 1

I wanted to know if mana was a physical substance so I placed a piece of paper on my fingertip until it was stable.

I then tried to push mana through it using my Will to see how the two objects would interact with each other.

The result was that the mana easily penetrated the piece of paper with seemingly no resistance while the paper moved in the direction the mana passed through it in as if the mana was physically pushing the piece of paper in that direction.

This effect was repeated on multiple trials.

The phase-through effect was noted on larger objects like doors and tables while the pushing effect was not.

This could be explained by the force produced by the mana phasing through objects was simply too small to affect larger objects but I wanted to make as few assumptions as possible.

Observation 2:

I used my meager mana manipulation ability to slowly remove all the mana from my soul.

I immediately noticed that after this process I felt my body become lighter while also feeling a bit nauseous.

I didn’t know if this feeling of lightness was a physical thing or a psychological one and since I didn’t have a scale to measure myself I did the next best thing I had available which was to stand in the middle of my bed and watch how much my body pushed the bed downward.

I then took a book and placed it right at the edge of the depression formed on my bed by my body weight.

I left the book in the same position and then repeated the process of releasing all the mana in my body like I did the day before.

Lo and behold when I stepped back onto the bed the depression formed by my body weight was noticeably smaller meaning that I weighed less.

Observation 3:

The next thing I wanted to observe was how mana moved within my body using my mana awareness.

The results shocked me in that mana along with stamina seemed to be constantly pumping throughout my body in small amounts.

***

As I took a break from writing in my book I considered the third observation seriously.

The phenomenon I observed made a bit of sense to me since, I already knew that my biology was weird compared to what you would observe in humans from my own world.

I was capable of extraordinary feats of strength and stamina for my age and weighed far more than I looked.

The problem was that I had no idea where mana was made.

I could vaguely sense that the stamina in my body was mostly produced somewhere in my large intestine, heart, and liver.

This meant that stamina was made within some strange organ or system in my body.

This explanation made a bit of sense as it followed the law of the conservation of energy.

Energy cannot be created or destroyed.

Stamina was simply a special substance produced from the nutrients I consumed on a daily basis which had some strange properties.

I confirmed this theory by simply not eating for a day and draining all the stamina from my body, as one would expect my stamina did not start to regenerate again until about three hours after my next meal.

Mana was a small bit weirder, to say the least.

I had a very strong connection to my soul because of my family's abilities.

Due to this, I could feel a supply of mana flowing into my bloodstream periodically in random locations from my soul.

Along with this, stamina would disappear randomly from my bloodstream and flow into my soul at seemingly random times as well.

By again using the conservation of energy principle I assumed that the stamina that was disappearing was being processed through my soul and being turned into mana only to be released back into my body once the process was over.

I didn't have much evidence for this belief but it only seemed to logically follow from what I had been observing and already theorizing about.

In that case, what I considered to be a soul was simply an organ for lack of a better term whose function was producing and storing mana.

This soul must also be capable of producing another type of energy to explain how my family skills worked.

That was the best explanation I could come up with to describe what I was seeing based on the knowledge that I had.

Even still, it had a lot of holes.

For one, I couldn't really figure out what mana was in principle even if I had developed a couple of loose theories on the matter.

I again dipped my pen in ink while making a new heading on top of the succeeding page in my notebook.

Theories related to mana itself:

Theory #1: Mana is energy - When my stamina enters my soul through unknown means and gets transformed into mana it is simply becoming another form of energy which is then released back into my body and is used up when I use magic.

What this explains.

It explains how spells function. They simply transform the raw energy of mana into the desired spell effects.

It also explains why mana was capable of phasing through objects with litte effort.

The Problems.

When I did that same piece of paper test the paper seemed to be pushed by the mana, meaning that mana has momentum and what has momentum must have mass.

Another proof that mana has mass was the weight experiment.

Theory #2 Mana is a type of matter.

What this explains.

It explains how mana would have mass obviously.

As any middle-schooler will tell you, matter is anything that takes up space and has mass.

It would also kind of explain how one could condense and shape the mana with their Will, as long as we assume that Will is just a kind of force you can produce with your mind even though I have absolutely no idea how that would work.

This theory would also explain how mana can form the solid constructs needed to change itself into different forms.

It also, just like the energy theory explains spells somewhat except in this case the Elemental Equalizer would work as an instrument that changes the atomic structure of the material.

Changing it into a flammable substance in the case of fire magic or something similar to water in the case of water magic.

In that scenario, I have no idea how the Mana Forge would work exactly.

How can instructions be encoded onto physical matter in the way it would have to for spells to work?

And then the spell ritual would act to reduce the density of the concentrated mana to achieve the desired effect though again while I can conceptualize it, I'm having a very hard time superimposing how that would work in my head to what you observe in reality when a spell is cast as detailed in the book.

It's really weird to think about from that perspective and I have no idea how it would work in reality but it doesn't fundamentally break the laws of physics the way I understand them in my head.

The problems.

First off it wouldn’t explain how mana can quickly move through solid objects with little effort.

Secondly, the energy requirements to turn regular energy into the solid matter needed are way too high considering it all has to come from me and by proxy the food I eat.

Don't get me wrong there is a similar problem with the energy theory, considering that spells like rock blast exist that literally create solid earth that's propelled in a particular direction but if mana is a form of Matter this problem is turned up all the way to eleven.

And this remains true even if I assume that stamina is also a form of matter as well.

Of course, this could work if the food in this world is just extremely energy dense for some reason but I don't want to use too many unproven assumptions to prove my theories.

A third problem with the matter theory is that were it to be true, the process I am seeing to turn mana into a spell my skimming later chapters would need to be way more complex than what I saw.

The mana would literally have to be changed on an atomic level.

As for the final and most bizarre theory.

Theory #3 Mana is a signal/wave.

What this solves?

It would explain the results of my paper experiment, sound (a type of wave) has been known to both pass through objects and move them at high amplitudes.

It solves the energy problem somewhat in that under the signal theory the energy needed to perform magic wouldn't come from the user themselves but from the system directly.

In this way, the soul would act as the communication system between the body and the system with mana simply acting as the information needed to be conveyed.

Why can't the system be the entity supplying energy under the matter and energy theories?

Simply because they wouldn't need a middleman in that case.

Why go through all the trouble of converting digested material into stamina and then converting it again into mana if you just plan on using an outside energy source, to begin with?

There could be a very valid reason for that but since I don't have enough information that seems unlikely.

This would also explain how spells work, as in this framework the Elemental Equalizer's role would be to change the “frequency” of the mana.

Think of how radio stations operate at different frequencies, and how you can tune into certain frequencies to listen to different broadcasts.

In this view, let us say that fire mana would be operating at 50Hz while water mana would operate at 60Hz.

The role of the Elemental Equalizer would be to change the frequency of mana to 50Hz when using fire magic and to change it to 60Hz when using water.

The actual values would be arbitrary as what is important in the receiver(the system) knows how to interpret the signal received.

In this view, the Mana Forge would also make perfect sense as its purpose would simply be to superimpose new information/slash instructions onto whichever frequency it receives.

The final part, the Spell Ritual would simply be the step where the system receives the information giving you a “response”, that being your completed spell.

This theory to me is the most complicated but also the only one that solves the energy problem to an adequate extent.

Problems with the signal theory:

It doesn’t explain how mana can be shaped with Will or how mana could be turned into the spell constructs that are used as the Elemental Equalizer or the Mana Forge.

It wouldn't explain why mana would have weight as a signal is weightless the medium would have mass but it wouldn’t make sense for the medium to move out of the body with the wave.

In summary

I conducted three experiments and found that;

Mana can pass through things, has weight, comes from my soul, is likely made from stamina, and can lightly push the objects it passes through.

My three main theories on what mana is are: Mana is Matter, Mana is Energy, and Mana is a Signal.

***

After I finished writing that line I picked up my pen and started to think to myself.

There were many other possible ways mana could be explained but I didn't have much evidence for them so I didn't bother writing them down.

Of course, with all that being said there was a likely fourth option, which was that Mana was a mixture of all three of the previous theories and simply took whichever properties it needed at whatever time to make the phenomenon I've observed make sense.

This admittedly was the most likely option with the most evidence but I refused to accept it because if there was no rhyme or reason to the properties mana exhibited except what was convenient to explain the phenomenon I was observing then I might well have said.

“Mana is a mythical substance that allows people to use spells.”

Which missed the entire point of everything I was trying to do here.

My head was feeling like it was about to explode from all the thinking I was doing but a smile was etched on my face as a feeling of excitement pierced so deep into my body that I could almost feel it in my bones.

Further questions to consider:

If the smallest unit of matter is the atom then what is the smallest unit of magic and does it maintain its same properties regardless of quantity big or small?

Where is my soul actually located? I feel it as if it is over-laid onto my body but I can also feel that my internal mana existed outside of my soul yet it was still channeled through my body.

The dimensions of the feelings I experience simply don't make any logical sense.

What does it mean to have a high mana conductivity and why does it make a soul polluted?

Neither my teacher nor my father has bothered explaining this to me yet no matter how much I ask them.

Why are Kent and the maids so tight-lipped about how the system actually works and why do they rarely give us any actual advice on how to advance our skills?

They are extremely detailed and strict when it comes to teaching things like math and history yet they can’t be bothered to explain that.

Since I was able to learn techniques from skills way above the level I was supposed to at my skill tier does that mean that you don't necessarily need a corresponding skill to achieve these supernatural effects?

Though in my case I didn't really learn anything new all I did was take what my Sprint skill was already doing and changed its purpose.

Why am I so excited and why is my heart beating so fast, this was a feeling I thought I left behind years ago in my past life yet here it is once again rearing its ugly head.

***

After I pondered those questions for another half hour I realized that I wasn't getting anyway so I simply went back to doing something I was going way too comfortable within this new life.

Practice.