Contract Magic

Kevin Rounce was a normal person who was studying in college. It was time for the finals and he had been studying until late at night every day. One night, just when he was going to fall asleep, he started hearing something at the edge of his consciousness. It was something like a chant and kept repeating itself every minute. Every time it repeated it also got louder. To the point where he couldn't ignore it anymore. He started to freak out.

"What is this noise!? If it keeps getting louder I might get deaf."

He blocked his ears with his hands but nothing changed. He filled up a basin with water and put his head in it but the chanting could still be heard and was getting louder. Eventually it felt as if his ears were going to explode. Right when he felt like he couldn't take it anymore, the chanting stopped.

He carefully opened his eyes and what he saw dumbfounded him.

'Huh? What is this? A dream? A hallucination?'

He turned his head to look around. He was in a big hall shaped like a dome. At the other end of the dome, there was a huge, magnificent double door decorated with blood red skulls, figures of demons, mythical creatures and various other stuff. It was by all means a masterpiece. However from what he could see, the decorations were too realistic. As if they could come to life at any moment.

On the walls which eventually curved into the ceiling, there were drawings of demonic and angelic figures fighting eachother and at the very top were two figures facing eachother. A demon with grey skin, black hair and red eyes wearing an ominous black armor with golden lines and an angel with snow white skin, white hair and blue eyes wearing a white armor with golden lines. Both had a neutral expression and were outstretching their opposite hands.

Their hands stacjed on top of eachother with the demon's being at the bottom. From the painting of their hands, a chain came out. On the end of the chain was a chandelier which used black skulls as lighting. In the black skulls' eyes there were glowing white orbs and from their foreheads came out white horns.

After checking out the surroundings, Kevin looked at himself. He was seated on a throne on an elevated platform. His whole body was covered in black armor and he couldn't look at his face because he didn't have a mirror. He touched his face in hopes of getting information with his hands. However his head was also covered by a helmet.

Sigh.

"What is this?"

Right after he spoke he noticed his voice was different.

'Why is my voice so deep... and sinister? Well... Let me take a closer look around.'

He stood up from his throne walked down the stairs. He started to slowly make his way towards the door. Now that he was closer to the ground, he noticed that there were lines carved on the ground. When looking from above, one could see that they made a circular pattern on the ground.

'It looks like a magic circle.'

While studying the pattern, he reached the door. Up close the door was even more realistic, like the creatures on the door would come alive and swallow him whole. However he needed to see if the door could open. So he reached out with his hand and pushed the door. It didn't even budge. He put all of his strength into it but still, not even a budge.

'Fuck.'

'Am I stuck here? No. There must be a way to get out. I should look around.'

Kevin started looking around, inspecting the walls, chandelier and the throne. In the end he couldn't find a thing that could get him out of here. What he did find though was that this place did not seem to be earth. The drawings on the walls seemed to be very old and there were drawings of mythical races at war with eachother. Using magic and other supernatural abilities.

'If there's magic in this world, can I also use it? There's no harm in trying.'

He went back to the throne and sat down. He closed his eyes and tried to feel something different. A minute, ten minutes, an hour... If there was a possibility that he could use magic he would sit here for days without moving. At first he thought that he would get bored or his body would get uncomfortable but even after hours he was still in top shape. He didn't feel hungry or thirsty.

'Perhaps I am in a different body, that's why. After all, if I'm in another world, one with magic no less, anything is possible.'

A few more hours later he still couldn't feel the mana that should exist if there was magic.

'Maybe I need to sit in a different position.'

So he wanted to change position. Right when he moved his body, he felt something brush against his hand.

'Hm?'

He started moving around and wiggling, trying to get a feel of this thing. A few minutes later he could feel that his body was moving through something. This thing was not inhibiting his movements. It was just there.

'I guess this is mana.'

Kevin closed his eyes so he can feel the mana better. After a while he opened his eyes. The view in front of him had changed yet again. This time he could see everything glowing with a cyan light.

'I can even see mana now? Let's try moving it.'

He concentrated and tried to move the mana around him. At first it was a bit difficult, but it got easier by the minute. After a while his control over mana got better and he could move it pretty smoothly. Then he checked the inside of his body.

'Hm? Woah! Isn't this too much?'

Inside his body was a massive amount of mana, so much in fact that with his new sight he could see his body glowing like a beacon. Whwn he tried to move move his mana-

Whoosh~

The air in front of him parted with tremendous force, as if a jet passed by. Even though he had just moved a tiny bit of his mana, just that tiny bit was enough to cause havoc. Though the surroundings didn't get damaged at all.

'I should probably practice manipulating my mana so that it doesn't go out of control like just now.'

Kevin sat on the throne and spent the next few hours practicing his control over his mana. Little by little he decreased his output until only a whiff came out. Then he poured out as much mana as he could and went back to the minimum amount. Since there was nothing else to do here he simply focused on his practice. Eventually he could fluctuate the amount of mana coming out of his body. At one moment it was a harmless breeze and at another it became a raging current that would sweep anything in it's path.

Now that he could adequately control the amount of mana coming out, he decided to focus on actually controlling that mana. So far he had only been pouring out mana and letting it disperse in the surroundings. Now, he would try holding it and giving it shape.

Hours just kept passing by. Since there was no windows or anything to tell the time, there was no way Kevin could tell how much time had passed. He didn't care anyway. Here, he didn't feel hunger, thirst or sleep. He didn't get bored either and there was something he could focus on.

Giving shape to mana was harder than controlling the output. It took much more time to give it a decent shape. He first started by making geometrical shapes like cubes, pyramids, cylinders etc. Once he could hold the lines straight without them bending randomly, he started trying other stuff.

'Few. I don't know how much time it took, but this seems barely passable.'

From his hand sprouted a flower. It wasn't perfect but someone who looked at it wouldn't say that it wasn't a flower.

After spending some more time on improving his control he decided to move on.

'Next is color. Mana naturally has a cyan color... I think. Whatever. I'll just try to change it's color. But how am i supposed to do that? Increasing or decreasing the output and making shapes with mana are basically just manipulating it in space but changing it's color would change it's property. I don't know how to do that. Hmm...'

Kevin spent hours upon hours just thinking about how he could change the color of mana and did various attempts but he just couldn't find an answer. In the end without him even noticing, his eyes slowly closed and he fell into a slumber.

Some time later he woke up.

"So that's how it is! It's that easy huh?"

He let out some mana and shaped it into a flower. Then he focused. Slowly the leaves and the stem turned green, the petals turned white and the center became yellow. There was a daisy sprouting from his hand.

Although Kevin couldn't see it, from an outsider's perspective, in this huge space, sitting on the towering throne was a huge humanoid figure wearing a terrifying pitch black armor that covered it's entire body and from this demonlike figure's outstretched gauntlet sprouted a beautiful glowing daisy. It was a quite a mesmerising and picturesque scene.

'The next step is giving it taste but before that..."

Kevin let go of the flower and started letting out mana. However this time he wasn't simply letting out mana like water coming out of a faucet. He was following the guidance from his soul.

The mana first flowed through a number of veins in his body and while they were doing that they also got influenced by another energy inside his body. He didn't notice it at first but mana wasn't the only type of energy in his body. This other one was purple and gave of a different feel from mana. It was also smaller in quantity.

As the mana travelled through his body it got even more influenced. Eventually it gained a unique property and gathered at his fingertips. It then rose up and took shape on it's own. It was a piece of paper that looked like it could be used for making a treasure map.

'So this is magic. My first magic. Contract Magic.'