The Chair’s Observation Log: Ai and Emma

There wasn’t a door on Ai’s room, so I could easily see in. In the center, she was just sitting limply on the ground with her eyes closed. Her chest rose and fell in a rhythmic pattern, almost as if she were asleep. However, there was no doubt she was wide awake and training; it was just impossible to see without mana sense.

Mana was a finicky thing due to its obscure properties. To improve your skill with mana, you basically cast a spell over and over again. Once you got the hang of it, you kept practicing until the flow mana became ingrained into your memory, allowing it to be used by instinct. The pathway was similar to a stream of water: once the stream became large enough, water would naturally want to flow down that path.

Using different types of spells would create new paths for the mana to flow through. It was difficult to cast a second spell, but once you managed it, creating more wasn’t that hard. It took most people around five or six years to use multiple spells at once, but there were plenty who had the talent for it.

Casting two spells of the same type at once was another thing altogether. Both spells would attempt to use the same flow of mana that was previously carved out. When two mana pathways came together, like water, they would merge into one giant stream. In this case, one of the spells would be cast on a larger scale. For example, if I used water magic to create a ball of water and a stream of water at the same time, only one phenomenon would manifest much stronger than expected.

Which one manifested usually depended on the complexity of the spell; however, a sudden increase of mana could cause it to break down before manifestation. As such, most people who tried to cast two spells of the same type would simply not be able to manifest anything.

So, could you cast two spells of the same type at once? Well, yes. All you needed to do was keep the mana streams separate from one another. It might sound simple, but it felt like an impossibly high wall. You would need to understand how mana flows within the body while maintaining a high level of control. On average, people with the talent for mana manipulation could cast multiple spells of the same type after thirty years. For those without talent, it could take them upward of a hundred or two hundred years. Most races died before then, so there weren’t that many who achieved that goal. Not to mention, since pathways differed between each skill, all of their effort needed to be repeated each time. It was no wonder why a mana user that could control at least two spells of the same type was considered a B-rank.

And that was exactly what Ai’s trying to do. With most of her mana being used for a large spell, it naturally resisted another spell she was manifesting. I could see her experimenting with her mana flow, attempting to isolate and cast a small spell alongside her current one.

At first, she tried shaping the mana into a tube, which wasn’t a bad idea. Mana did maintain its shape when solid, but when it flowed through the pathway, it acted more like a liquid. After failing a couple of times, she switched to doing nothing. Well, it looked like nothing observing her mana flow, but I could guess what she was trying. She was trying to see whether she could imbue different properties onto the mana. For example, if she imbued a repelling force to the outer layer of the mana, it could force the separation. Based on the mainstream understanding of mana though, that was impossible. There was some research on a potential solution a hundred years back, but there wouldn’t be any definitive results for tens of thousands of years.

After giving up, Ai tried to increase the density of her mana, causing one of the nearby vines to move just a little. Noticing that, she tried again but failed. She repeated the process over and over, sometimes making the vine move slightly, sometimes having nothing happen. It might seem trivial, but it was monumental progress. She managed to manifest both spells at once, if only for an instant. She was on the right path too. The denser the mana, the more solid it was. So, if dense mana was used to surround the mana flow in a pathway, it would prevent two streams from merging together, assuming that they could maintain their shape. Of course, that required a larger amount of mana to cast spells and concentration, but it was well worth the tradeoff.

For right now, I couldn’t imagine Ai able to control more than two or three spells of the same type. She needed to process how both spells would activate. Mana users needed that for other spells as well, but spells of the same type required an extra layer of effort to cement the pathways into instinct.

It didn’t look like she would be doing anything else, so I left for the last room on the list: Emma’s.

“Hyah!” Emma slammed into the wall of the vine house, holding one of the rain covers close to shattering. Each time, she rebounded off the wall, falling onto her butt. If I had to guess, she was trying to keep herself upright.

She never had any formal training – her stance was atrocious. She could block a hit or two, but her body didn’t have the strength necessary to withstand the impact. Her arms were slightly bruised from the shield’s recoil. They likely had small fractures, her muscles probably torn.

Strength couldn’t be built up in a day. It took at least a season for any visible change and a few years to put them into practice. I understood she felt she had to do something, but all that did was destroy her body. If she ended up needing a healing potion, it would undo all the work she put in so far.

As a supporter, there was nothing she could improve at the moment. She could already use her supporter skill effectively. Sure, she could increase her mental fortitude, but judging by yesterday, she had that in spades. The best she could do was sleep and be well rested for tomorrow. She would need to support Aster and Rufus with items while keeping herself safe. If her body was broken before then, she might not make it to the Dragon’s Sigh intact.

Of course, I wasn’t going to stop her; it was her choice to make. The most I could do was keep watch until she fell asleep, making sure she didn’t self-destruct.