Chapter 06: Mana's Breath - a Guide for Beginners

1 month and 1 day since my rebirth - January 10th 1501

The room was still - moonlight seeping in from the corner. The night was a state of peace that I was already far too well acquainted with in this new life. It was the only time that allowed me to do what I wanted to without attracting attention from my mother or sister. Throughout the day beforehand, I had noticed my sister glancing over at me a few times during her studies of 'Mana's Breath - a Guide for Beginners'. It made sense, of course, as she did still believe that I was the Demon King reincarnated. I just hoped it wouldn't go on for too long.

I once again lifted my mother's arm and crawled over to the crate. This would usually be the point of time where I lift myself on top of it and begin training either my crawling or speech. But now was different. Instead of either of those two, I was going to be doing two completely different things - entertaining myself with the book, while training my magic. I lifted the top off of it once more, before pulling the crate onto it's side and dragging the shoddy leather cover of the book out.

'Mana's Breath - a Guide for Beginners'

I still felt that 'Mana's Breath' was a bit too dramatic of a title for a simple guide for beginners, but oh well. Plus, if the book was this dramatic the whole way through, it may be even more entertaining to read.

I flipped over the cover, skipping through the author's note and special thanks at the beginning, trying to reach chapter one. I found it.

"Chapter 1 - What is magic?"

Wow. So, by 'a Guide for Beginners', they really meant 'a Guide for Beginners'. Oh, well. It's not like I was gonna skip a chapter just because I already knew what it was about. If that was the case, then I'd have to skip the entire book. And I needed any entertainment I could get my hands on.

I expended my one mana particle in my mana pool, summoning Frayhigh once again. The small flame danced to a melody unknown to me while floating just above my palm. This was gonna be how I read and trained my magic at the same time.

You can't really train magic itself, you can only train your mana. And you train your mana by expending mana. This is because when you use mana, your mana pool expands very slightly, causing you to be able to take in and use more mana. I know I'm saying 'mana' a lot, but just hear me out and try to grasp it as best as possible. Since the mana pool expands when mana is used, you can then store and use more mana - that's basically what I'm trying to say. You can gain mana through a multitude of methods, but the one I found to be most effective in my past life was a technique I created called 'mana skin'. Mana skin allows the user to constantly be taking in mana, by absorbing it through their skin. It's leagues more effective than any other methods you'll be able to find, the second best one being called 'mana breathing', which only allows you to take in mana when you inhale.

Unfortunately, mana skin is an extremely advanced technique that my one month old body wouldn't be able to withstand - it would pretty much crush me due to the amount of mana covering my body. So, I'd decided to opt for a simple altered version of mana breathing. In this altered version, I had managed to slightly improve the technique by making it so a person absorbs mana in every inhale and exhale. This alone was an improvement of immeasurable size, despite it seeming like a rather small change to the untrained eye. In fact, if I ever decided to go public with it, I would be practically guaranteed a spot in the history books.

Anyway, enough explaining my own way of training mana and mana absorption methods. It was time to find out what the book held in store for me.

"Chapter 1 - What is magic?"

"What is magic? This may be a question that you find yourself asking. If so, then dear reader, you are probably one of the most inquisitive minds of your generation. Most people simply wait for the concept of magic to be explained to them in school, but if you're seeing this text, then you must already be interested. And I'm here to inform you that you're in the right place - I am Percival Maylot, one of the greatest Mages of the current generation - and if you're reading this, there is no doubt in my mind that you too will one day become one of the very greats. So please, prepare yourself for the read of your life!"

"Magic, in a word, is everything. Magic is an informal way of referring to mana, which is the very essence that forms what we call reality."-

Hm... Not a bad way of describing it. This guy truly must be one of the greats of this generation. I think I'm gonna like this.

"Now, this may be difficult to understand, but please, try your hardest to keep up. If you have to, ask adults in the area - or you could reread every word until you understand it. This part is extremely important. If you can't understand what 'mana is the very essence that forms what we call reality' means, then nothing else that you read from here onward will make sense. Anyway, moving on."

"Due to the fact that mana forms reality, mana is also life - which is why people can make suggestions to ambient mana. Now, what is ambient mana? Ambient mana is the mana that exists within the atmosphere of the earth, yet is still separate from any physical or mental concept. A lot of mages have the misconception that ambient mana exists within the air - however, that is completely incorrect. Ambient mana exists in the atmosphere, but is not connected to or affected by anything else that exists on earth - unlike other mana. Most mana is connected to an object or being, but not ambient mana. That is why a person also cannot directly affect ambient mana - if nothing else can, why would a person be able to?"

"But you may be wondering, why can people suggest things the ambient mana then? And that's because people possess life. Nothing else can suggest things to ambient mana, because they don't have life. Life is what's known as one of the three main concepts of mana. The three main concepts of mana are the three things that mana forms directly, which then go on to form other things - life, fate and reality. Since living beings on this planet possess life, one of the main concepts of mana, they can therefore directly interact with any mana they want, including ambient mana."

Goddamn. This guy knows his stuff. Although, I feel that if an actual kid were to read this, they'd definitely not understand a single word.

I read as much as I could, until the sun began rising. It was at that point that I realized I had only just finished the first chapter. You may be thinking that I just became a slow reader because I'm a baby again. But no, my reading's fine - the chapter was just 200 pages long. And not only that, there were at least fifty more chapters, all around the same length as the first, if not longer. That was at least 10,000 pages. Although, the author must have used some reality magic to make the book appear to be only around 1000 pages - still long, but far from 10,000. No wonder my sister hadn't finished it. I'd be surprised if she had even finished the third chapter when she has an actual four year old's attention span.

By the time I put the book down, my mana pool had expanded enough to be able to hold 1000 mana particles - enough to cast around 2 Star level spells. Although, the cost of this was that I was indescribably exhausted. I crawled back over to my mother's sleeping bag, and huddled myself in her arms, before drifting off to sleep.

1 year since my rebirth - December 9th 1501

The year had been rather peaceful. As a baby, I didn't have much to worry about. I had said my 'first' word to my mother at 4 months old, making me a prodigy, and had shown her I could crawl even before that at 2 months old. My sister still thinks I'm the Demon King reincarnated, which is a bit of a hassle, but she isn't cautious around me at all anymore - probably seeing me more as her brother than the Demon King, which is a relief. My uncle still visits every Tuesday, bringing food and telling me more stories. And I've even learnt to walk - behind the scenes, of course. My mana pool can also now hold up to 100,000 mana particles, putting me at around 4 Stars. I'm also at chapter 10 of the book.

Speaking of, I can now also read the book during the day as well, whenever my sister isn't studying of course. My mother doesn't really find it suspicious, as she thinks that I just like looking at the little symbols - letters.

"Chapter 10 - What is the ranking system?"

"Now that we've covered the basics of what mana is, what it is capable of, and why people are capable of using it, I'm starting a section of chapters that I've deemed the 'History' section. This will go over all of the history of mana that should become basic knowledge."

"Starting off, I'll tell you about all the ranking systems for mages throughout the world - and ranking systems that have been used in history. First, let's start with the current most common ranking system in the world that defines all mages, knights and mana creatures - the Zander Scale."

Huh... This is something I haven't heard of before, meaning it must be a measuring system created since my death. This could be really interesting.

"The Zander Scale was invented in 999 by a brilliant mage called Arwin Zander. It is used as a universal scale that encompasses everything from the power of mages to spells themselves. It goes from weakest to strongest as follows; Inadequate-tier, Advanced-tier, King-tier, Angel-tier, Leviathan-tier, Catastrophe-tier, and finally Infinite-tier. To this day, no person has ever managed to reach Infinite-tier, most believing that it was actually Zander's way of paying his respects to the Infinite Party, as logistically, they're the only people in history who could be considered strong enough to enter this tier. The average mage and knight are both around Advanced-tier. I myself am only Leviathan-tier, and there are only three people on the planet with a Catastrophe-tier."

Hm... That sounds like a rather fun way of measuring things - although, it is quite dramatic with the tier names. But hey, it's okay to be dramatic every once in a while.

I was just about to break away from my thoughts and continue reading, when I was called away by my mother. It was my birthday, so I really should've expected to not get much time to read. Oh, well. I'm sure it won't be too long before I pick it up again.

2 years since my rebirth - December 9th 1502

Alright... so, it took me a little while. Over the year, I had spent all of my time training my mana, as it became much more active of an experience, due to me getting stronger, so having to use stronger spells to increase my mana pool. As such, I didn't get any time to spend reading. I also had to deal with slowly revealing to my mother that I can speak in sentences in a natural way that made it seem like I was just learning it, slowly showing my mother I could walk, and revealing to her that I had awakened my mana pool at the age of one and a half, even if, in truth, it had been much earlier than that.

But anyway, I finally had some free time, and so I was going to use it to read once more.

"The second scaling system I'll introduce is called the Star System. This is the second most common scaling system worldwide. There are actually two very interesting facts relating to this scaling system; the first being that it was actually created by the one and only Ato Aywrath in the year 960. Yes, the strongest mage to ever walk the earth - the God of Magic himself - created a scaling system. The second is that while it is often considered outdated by most sources, you'll actually find that the strongest mages alive right now, including myself, prefer to use this system over the Zander Scale. It goes from weakest to strongest as follows; 1 Star (Inadequate-tier), 2 Star (Inadequate-tier), 3 Star (Advanced-tier), 4 Star (Advanced-tier), 5 Star (King-tier), 6 Star (King-tier), 7 Star (Angel-tier), 8 Star (Angel-tier), 9 Star (Leviathan-tier), 10 Star (Leviathan-tier), 11 Star (Catastrophe-tier), 12 Star (Catastrophe-tier), and finally Infinite Star (Infinite-tier)."

"To be completely truthful, I don't have any idea as to why people often think of it as outdated. In my opinion, it is far superior to the Zander Scale, purely due to it's preciseness - something that the Zander Scale doesn't offer as much of. But that's a question for you to answer yourself."

Well, it kind of sucks to know that the system I created is considered outdated, but at least the strong mages like it. Right now, I'd probably be considered a 5 Star mage, putting me at King-tier.

...

Goddamn it, just comparing my system to the new one makes me feel weird. He did say that the Star System is still the second most common, right? I think I'll still just use my Star System from here onward.

And just like that, the day drifted into a blur, as I spent the entire time absorbing information I already knew. Eventually, as the sun fell below the horizon, thrusting the world into the deep peace of moonlight, I reached the end of chapter 10. I picked the book up, and put it back into the crate, before putting the box's lid back on and going back to sleep in my mother's sleeping bag. It felt a bit weird to still be doing this as a 2 year old, but I understood that it was simply cheaper than buying another sleeping bag for me, when I wasn't even technically a child yet.

4 years since my rebirth - December 9th 1504

Okay... It's been two years since then. Listen, magic training's been very intense, even if I'd only be considered a 6 Star mage - only 1 Star above 2 years ago.

Recently, I've become a bit impatient. I really should start training with the sword soon. No.

I need to start training with the sword soon. After all, I have to get stronger. That is my main goal.