NOVEL NEXT Chapter 128 Part 1
Arthur sat on the porch and watched in bemusement as more and more people left the tents standing ahead of Argul, who in turn stood in front of the porch, to stare at the woman in the form of a giant predator. He had to admit her body was quite imposing, but what the people didn’t know was that her magical abilities were equally unreal. That magically collecting all excess water from a large area by having it follow your will, as Argul was doing right now, was possible was still hard to wrap his head around. Even after travelling half a year with her and thinking he couldn’t be surprised anymore, he was every damn time.
Arthur shook his head and turned away from the spectacle, looking down at his sniper instead. He inspected it inquisitively, noting every little scratch and piece of dust. Then he began to dismantle it piece by piece. The action was so second nature by now that he could easily continue his train of thoughts as his hands moved.
Argul was a weird person in his opinion, adamant in her belief that she was nothing special. She wasn’t delusional enough to think she wasn’t powerful, but kept reminding everyone every once in a while that they too could be powerful if they raised their levels and stats enough.
That had to be bullshit though. To an extent he might get more powerful, true, but the way mana simply, sometimes even eagerly, moved when she wanted it to was much too different from how he had to struggle and put his entire will into it was just one of the less obvious differences where her narrative of not being special didn’t add up. Much more obvious were her daughter and that she was the [Origin of Mana].
Arthur wouldn’t call her out on her bullshit though. It was probably better this way than her ego inflating and her power rising to her head.
With the sniper dismantled and the parts neatly arranged in front of Arthur, he began to clean them with a rag. He took his time, being careful and applied a neat polish to the outer casing of every part.
Arthur wished he could do magic like Argul. Life would be so much easier that way. It wasn’t like he couldn’t do magic at all, just that Argul’s particular method of forming complex spell matrixes didn’t come easy to him.
For Argul it was the approach that made the most sense as it allowed her to break a spell down into smaller parts and document the different intents scientifically. That way everyone could perform the spell in the exact same way to the exact same effect, even if it made no sense at all to a person. It reminded Arthur awfully much of chemistry and took a lot of the magic out of the magic in his opinion. Like modern technology it only seemed magical to the ignorant and uneducated.
Since spell matrixes didn’t really work for Arthur he had been forced to experiment on his own. Well, nothing had forced him but the ultimate desire to be able to cast magic.
Argul had advised him that her method was just one of many and he just hadn’t found his yet, so why not follow up on that?
Arthur put his rag aside and began to assemble his sniper with practised ease.
Ultimately all magic could be boiled down to the manipulation of mana through intent, intent that could be communicated in many ways. Argul’s was just the most straightforward one of willing something to happen. The spell matrixes weren’t necessary for that, but made it much easier for everyone else.
Arthur had tried out a few other possible methods over the past few months. Some of them worked better than others, even better than Argul’s, but none felt right to him. Perhaps he wasn’t meant to be a great pioneer mage or should lower his expectations, but meh. In the worst case he would just have to keep following in the footsteps of others which was kind of difficult when the collective knowledge of humanity wasn’t readily available through the internet.
Back to the intent communication, Arthur had tried out dancing, singing, hand gestures, rituals, writing and chanting. The one that was easiest for him was chanting. Argul had even helped him translate some of her easier spells into chants, like her light spell for example:
“A yellow shine in darkness bright, I command thee, let there be light!”
The thing with chanting was that it heavily depended on a person's understanding of language and what they were thinking about during the chant. In essence that meant that even if you were to write a five page long chant to go into every little detail the spell would still differ a little between two people, which Arthur had found most obvious when it came to colours.
The other thing with this method was that you had to direct mana through your throat and then chant, which was cringe on every level. Sure it was probably worth it in the end, but the suffering before he got used to chanting would be immense.
The true reward for all that experimenting was a little accident though. At one point when Arthur had worked on rituals - He honestly wouldn’t recommend that to anyone. It was way too convoluted. - and nothing really went his way, he had been so frustrated he emptied his mana pool, encasing his body in it. He had stomped away from the ritual site, wanting to be alone, but schooled his body language and decided to go on a walk through the village they had been to at the time.
Now, in his experience villagers tended to talk a lot to outsiders, provided nothing bad happened lately and they weren’t too suspicious. This time though, most avoided him like a plague, walking by as fast as possible without seeming rude. He had found it weird at the time, but wasn’t able to put his finger on why until someone actually came to him and asked why he was so angry and if he needed help. He hadn’t shown his feelings though, which never worked fully, true, but how would they know he was extremely angry and not just feeling unwell?
The only thing that came to mind had been the mana he encased himself in so he began to experiment with this whenever they came by a settlement. At first he thought that it gave him some kind of aura and wasn’t that cool?
His strange fantasies of making himself more attractive, or making others give him valuables aside, they didn’t work anyway, he didn’t have much success in his experiments. He could make others feel things if he used the right intent, but that was it. Even worse, the people he travelled with didn’t react at all beyond wondering why he encased himself in mana.
As much as he had hated it, he was forced to admit defeat and went to Alyra to seek help. The next time he had gone out she followed him from afar, suggesting he try a combination of strong but subtle intents like “I am normal. Everything is as it should be. Forget me.” and it worked surprisingly well together with his tendency to blend in. He wasn’t invisible by any means, but people seemed to overlook him like Waldo in a massive crowd. Funnily enough he was instantaneously flagged as a highly suspicious individual by the local guards and a few private detectives. They even pulled him aside multiple times to question what he was doing, looking frustrated when they noticed he was a law abiding friendly citizen, not that that was true, but they didn’t need to know that.
With his success and a few more tries to prove it worked, Arthur still didn’t know why though and went back to Alyra. Of course it would have been too easy for her to simply tell him what was going on, Arthur sighed as he attached the sniper muzzle to the main body. Instead she had asked him the simple question of what was different between the townspeople and their group. A question that had so many different answers.
Argul and Alyra were so powerful for example that their group enjoyed a good amount of politic immunity as they had the ability to say “Fuck you, we don’t care.”, but no, it had something to do with mana.
Everyone in their group could do magic? Again no, was probably too easy of an answer anyway.
Everyone in their group was at least level 4 because ever since they left Newport Argul had steadily dropped how much she held back and it occasionally happened that she raised the local mana density level? No, but nice try.
Every single one of them had [Sense Mana] and could actively perceive it? Yes, absolutely, not that it was much different from being able to do magic.
What did it matter that they could actively, and the distinction is important, sense mana?
See, this is where it got interesting even for Arthur, because it mattered a lot. Actively perceiving mana was something every being with a mana soul could do, but they had to sort of unlock it first because it lay dormant. Of course there were organs that could emulate close to the same, but the actual true mana sense was an ability of the soul.
The difference between organ and soul was that while the former let you perceive mana and sometimes even intent, the latter let you do all that while shielding you from being influenced by the intent. Something that normally happened because organics gave an impression, a feeling and to differentiate that from your own feelings required an emotional awareness that was seldomly taught in modern times.
The next important thing was that every living being with a mana soul passively perceived mana on some level, but without the active sense the intent of the mana blends in with the beings own feelings. When Arthur coats himself in mana with a specific intent that roughly translates to “I’m angry. Leave me alone.” people might suddenly perceive him as dangerous, some might even get angry themselves. With anger being such a strong emotion though, that would give most people pause.
In the same vein, if he coated himself in intent proclaiming he was normal, doing exactly what he should where he should and not at all interesting, people were more likely to overlook him. People whose job involved looking for oddities in the behaviour of others, or in situations and searching for specific individuals would likely become suspicious of him, because to them his normalness would stand out.
To summarise all that, Arthur discovered that if he coated himself in mana and intent he could subtly influence how people perceived him or thought about him, not unlike how one could do the same with clothes. With the help of Alyra he then figured out why and how exactly it worked.
Since then he had been training and practising this method more. It was just too perfect a force multiplier even if its effectiveness was heavily situational. By now he was even able to fool people with higher than usual awareness under the right conditions. If there was a massive distraction like Argul around for example, most were simply too distracted to notice. For most people however, he was now able to hide in plain sight. The only thing he had yet to accomplish was to fool someone with an active mana sense.
Satisfied with the conclusion of his inner monologue Arthur stood up and put his beloved sniper on his back. He jumped down from the porch and strolled towards the tents, casually walking by the refugees, perceived but forgotten.