8 Swirling thoughts (5)

Two weeks had flown by, and with it, an air of peculiarity settled over the household.

Sebastian, much to everyone's surprise, found solace in the presence of his mother and brother.

It was an odd sight for Mary, watching her son cling to every moment he could spend with them.

When she wasn't buried in work, Sebastian was deep in conversation with her or immersed in games with his little brother.

Yet, a significant chunk of his time was spent holed up in his room, a mystery to Mary.

On the rare occasions she stole a glance inside, she'd find him fervently jotting down in a notebook, lost in thought.

Sebastian's past was a tapestry of wild and crazy achievements and ingenious exploits.

Now, with a firmer grip on his psyche, something that made him curious why, he leaned into his knack for crafting and creativity.

While he tried to make other skills, based on what he remembered, Sebastian was piecing together a unique system to remember them.

Sebastian's method was not innovative, but it was secretive, grounded in a fabricated language of his own design, complete with a unique system of letters he designed, making them look like runes.

These weren't just any symbols; they were the letters of his new language, each rune vibrant with meaning, allowing him to weave words in a tapestry of his own making.

He recorded everything in his notebook, a personal lexicon designed to cement his memories.

To ensure he never lost the thread of his abilities, Sebastian detailed the behavior of mana with painstaking precision by using the language.

This wasn't just note-taking; it was a safeguard, a way to jog his memory should he ever forget how to summon a skill.

The purpose of this elaborate system was twofold. Primarily, it served as a mnemonic device, a way to keep his increasing knowledge organized and accessible. Second, it was a layer of protection.

Should the notebook ever fall into the wrong hands, its contents would remain indecipherable to the uninitiated.

The language, while not overly complex, posed a sufficient challenge to deter casual prying, though Sebastian knew a linguist might crack its code.

His experiments with the Cinder Blast skill revealed another facet of his ingenious system.

Sebastian discovered he could link specific words and runes to this skill, enabling him to cast it by writing the runes in the air with mana.

This method, a simple yet effective trick he mastered, offered an alternative to vocal incantations, which he also created.

To make chants served a dual purpose: not only did they facilitate casting spells by guiding the flow of mana, but they also helped Sebastian memorize the process.

This approach to spell casting set Sebastian apart. He referred to his abilities not as skills but as spells, a distinction that underscored their uniqueness.

They were no longer bound to any system; they were purely his, a result of his creativity. The third reason he did this was that Sebastian found that cool.

The man was in his room practicing. He imbued a fingertip with mana and started tracing the rune he associated with the Cinder Blast spell.

As if the surrounding area was a canvas on which he could write, the rune appeared in the air.

He had the particularity of being able to set the Skill to work later. Like a sheet of paper, the rune stayed suspended in the air.

However, since Sebastian only got the Cinder Blast spell, the effect was always that his palms released fire.

<If I make something different, like setting up an explosion, can a rune that would act as trap. Luckily, once use the mana, it stays in for sometime.>

Two hours was the most the Rune lasted. Sebastian also noticed that, if he gave it more mana, it would last more.

He could also replenish the mana and increase the total amount inside the rune, but since the amount he had was low, he couldn't do much.

Then, as his mana replenished, he tried the chanting. That worked differently than with the runes.

As soon as he made the chant, the spell was created. For that reason, he made the chant as short as possible. The chant also reflected how difficult it was to weave mana, meaning that complex chants meant the way mana flowed was harder.

"Thrun."

Sebastian used the chant for the Cinder Blast spell and then a small flame burst out from his palms. Then a huge grin appeared on his face.

<The only problem is that with this much mana, I can't hope to kill anything fast enough not get caught.>

He turned to see if his door was closed. "Well, at least I have a way to defend myself."

Sebastian saw how his mother looked at him sometimes. It was clear the woman noticed something weird was going on.

Besides, Mary didn't like that he wasn't going to school, especially how she spent to send him to Hayhurst Highschool.

The place was a private school where Thespians sent their children. There, they would not only learn the usual subjects, but they also learned how to survive in the wild and how to wield some weapons of choice.

That was why Sebastian was able to survive in Somnium in his past 30 years. Without that, with no friends, connections, and comrades, he would have been dead already.

Luckily, his mother wasn't stupid. She knew that the chances for the son or daughter of a Thespian to awaken were higher than the average person; she sent him there to prepare him for what was likely to come.

The only problem was that the school's fee was high. Mary had been forced to sell a lot of stuff to sustain their family, and especially to pay for Sebastian's, and later for Lucius's, tuition.

Sebastian, lost in the intricacies of his unique system of spells, was pulled back to reality by a knock at his door.

"Seb? It's breakfast time. Come, eat!" Mary's voice, warm yet insistent, filtered through the wood.