Otherworld Adventure

Mana

The morning sun's rays illuminated a room inside the house of the Fauxe Village's chief. A young teenage boy got up from the bed inside the room and started stretching. This boy was Cecil.

Beside the boy was a wolf that had also just woken up from its slumber. This was none other than Silver, who was transported to this world alongside Cecil. The two had already been staying in this village for a little over a month now and during the past few weeks, they hadn't been lazing around.

In the morning, Cecil and Silver had their usual training routine at the backyard of the chief's house. The chief of the village was named Zaki. He was a muscular golden-haired and golden-eyed foxkin.

The people of this village were beastkin that had animal-like features resembling that of a fox. This race of people was known as the foxkin. Zaki's daughter, the person who had brought Cecil to this village was called Lucia who was also Cecil's first friend from this new world he had suddenly transmigrated to.

During his stay, Cecil had gained substantial knowledge of the world he was in, the most notable thing was that Cecil had finally learned the language of this world through his studies with Lucia. He was now able to hold a normal conversation with other people and it was to the point where it came out fluently just like with him using Earth's language.

Of course, he still had trouble reading, but it seemed he would be able to be fluent with that after learning for another month or two.

Cecil lazily stretched his body and quickly went over to a basin near his bed that was filled with water and washed his face. The cool waters from the basin immediately woke him up. He quickly got dressed and stepped out of the bedroom with Silver. The two made their way to the house's backyard and started their morning training routine. By the side was a young lady foxkin who was out washing and drying clothes.

This was Anna, village chief Zaki's wife, and Lucia's mother. When she saw the two going about with their normal routine she smiled and called out to them.

"Good morning, Cecil. And you too Silver."

"Good morning, Mrs. Anna."

"Raah!"

After greeting her, Silver and Cecil proceeded with their training. After an hour into the training, when the sun was rising even further into the air, a young foxkin girl dashed out of the house.

When she saw Cecil and Silver training, she ran towards them intending to join them on their routine. This was naturally Lucia. After she had witnessed Cecil and Silver's bizarre training method for about a week, she had also decided to wake up early in the morn to join them, not wanting to be left out.

Of course, she couldn't wake up as early as Cecil and Silver, but she still joined them even if she was late. Seeing Lucia join them, Cecil started to teach and help her with the training and exercise. The training Cecil did was the one that he would normally do when he was still back on earth. 

In the eyes of Lucia and her family, although it was a strange way of training and exercising, there were some similar training methods even in this world, so it wasn't all that surprising. After they had trained for another hour, they made their way into the house all sweaty and tired.

The 3 quickly went to the bathroom to bathe. Of course, Cecil had to wait until Lucia was finished, but Silver went in with Lucia. This was a normal occurrence. Lucia was the main person in these past few days that bathed Silver. So they went in together to save time.

After the two finished, it was Cecil's turn to bathe. Once the 2 kids and wolf finished washing up, they went to the kitchen and had breakfast along with Lucia's parents. This was Cecil's daily morning routine after he had arrived in this world and settled in Fauxe Village. 

After breakfast, he would normally go out with Lucia and hunt in the surrounding forest for animals, herbs, fruits, and such. Today, they were going to venture deeper into the forest to look for monsters to fight.

Cecil wanted to keep fighting the unique monsters of this world to hone his fighting skills. Lucia was against this at first, but whatever she said didn't seem to move Cecil at all. So in the end, she was forced to tag along since she was already with them.

Naturally, chief Zaki assigned a guard to them. After following Cecil's routine, she had already integrated this with her normal routine. They came back to the village at around an hour or so past noon, all tattered and a little weary.

They had lunch back at Lucia's house and they continued their day with Lucia giving Cecil language lessons and various other topics of this world. The lessons lasted for 1-2 hours. After the lessons, Cecil would help out around the village by completing certain requests and work that he would voluntarily ask from the villagers. Cecil, Silver, and even Lucia started taking the requests of the villagers and completing them. Some of them were to help the villagers with farming, foraging, herding, and other miscellaneous tasks.

Cecil thought that this was a good idea to do from the start because he didn't want to be seen as a burden and a freeloader to the rest of the villagers who had kindly taken him in. He wanted to pull his weight and village chief Zaki respected that and even permitted him to do it. He also helped out a little by letting the other villagers know of Cecil's willingness to do work so they wouldn't hesitate to give the young lad jobs to do.

Naturally, while Cecil was here, he was able to meet with other young foxkin children. Most of them were curious about who he was and thankfully, they didn't discriminate against him just because he was of a different race.

It was a relief for Cecil that he wasn't bullied or anything, but that might be because of the presence of Silver that had kept following him around everywhere. Because of the activities that Cecil and Lucia were doing around the village during the afternoon, it had turned into some kind of trend for the other children and teenagers of the village.

Once the other children started hopping onto this trend by helping around the village, their work commissions grew fewer and fewer which of course wasn't a bad thing because it had earned Cecil and Lucia the praises of all the other adults in the village. It lightened their workload and gave them the time to do other things.

Activities like hunting for animal meat in the forest or trading with the town located in the direction north of Faux village.

Speaking of that town, to get there from the village, one would have to take the main path Cecil and Lucia had first taken, travel in the opposite direction they took to get to Faux Village, and continue walking towards that direction for around half a day before getting to the town called Forest Hill Town.

As the name suggests, it was a town that was built on a large hill that was flattened somehow and was surrounded by a dense forest.

Finally, at the end of the day after doing their work around the village, Cecil and Lucia always came back to the house before evening to have dinner. After having their dinner, they would take a bath, sometimes together, and Lucia would continue teaching Cecil about the world's language and letters.

Only this time, she would focus on giving Cecil actual practice by letting him read simple books that were found in the library of the house and practice speech by trying to hold a conversation with her.

This was Cecil's daily routine after coming to this world.

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Today, right after finishing his breakfast, Cecil was now sitting on the couch in the living room, thinking about what he was going to do for the rest of the day.

"Hmmm…"

"Cel, what're you thinking about?"

Lucia plopped down next to him and asked Cecil what in the world he was pondering about. After spending nearly every day together for the past month, the two had grown quite close to each other.

"Let's not go into the forest today, Lulu," Cecil said after a while.

"Hmm? Why?"

"Let's just study magic and geography for today, there's a lot I want to know."

"Okay, Cel!" Lucia happily replied.

She was quite happy that they wouldn't need to go deep into the forest today. Of course, it wasn't that she was scared or anything. By no means was this foxkin girl weak. Lucia was pretty agile and she was trained to know basic combat by her father. Also, she knew how to use magic. That's right, magic. This world which was called Alterna had magic.

In the atmosphere of this world, there was an additional particle besides the naturally scientific elements called 'mana'. This 'mana' was something that the people in this world could use to bend the laws of nature to conjure magic.

There were many different types of magic. Elemental, shadow, light, darkness, void, nature, summoning, space, etc.

There were even race-specific magics. The pale blue foxfire and illusion magic that Lucia used one time when they were in the forest was inherent magic that was the characteristic of the fox-type beast-kins.

The 'mana' that was omnipresent was accessible to all forms of life, even sentient plants could use it. Cecil was all hyped up when he found out that magic was accessible to everyone in this world, which included Cecil himself who was an 'otherworlder'.

Cecil only found out about this a week prior when he first saw Lucia use magic because they had suddenly landed themselves in a rather dire situation when they were exploring deep into the woods. 

A treant, a sentient plant-race monster in the shape of a tree, suddenly attacked Cecil. It was the first time Cecil had ever seen one so of course, he was caught off guard.

'I mean seriously, who the heck would be wary of a friggin' tree? Right?'

So the person who came to Cecil's rescue was Lucia. She used her foxfire magic and repelled the treant. It seemed that the treant was wary of fire so it had backed off and turned away.

Cecil was thoroughly surprised since Lucia didn't continue with the fight. It was only until after the treant went away did she explain to him that plant-race lifeforms were especially hard to kill, sometimes to the point of them being undying.

This was because as long as their roots or any part of their bodies that was able to suck in nutrients and mana, weren't destroyed, they'd be able to live even if they were slashed in half. They'd only regenerate quickly after receiving any type of wound, so it was best to avoid a fight with them.

Repel them, but never pick a fight with them.

Plant-type lifeforms were mostly docile anyway. The treant attacked Cecil because he tried to cut off a branch from it to turn into firewood. This was a lesson to him so next time, he'd better start talking to the trees before chopping anything off. Better yet, it would be much safer if he just picked up the branches or twigs from the ground than anger a plant-race creature.

The two kids went to the house's study and Lucia started to explain to Cecil about magic and the different races of this world which was truly an eye-opener for him.

The different races and life forms of this world were abundant. Lucia even told him that even earth and rocks could gain sentience and become earth elemental life forms such as stone giants and even earth titans.

The same went for the air and water, though it was harder for them to actually come into being compared to rocks and earth. Places that had an abundance of fire could produce fire elementals, but they were confined in places with high temperatures such as volcanoes, underground areas with lava, etc.

As for magic, it was something that Cecil could only try out for himself after his aptitude was tested but Lucia did give him the basic know-how of how to build up mana inside his body. The technique to building mana was just a breathing and meditating technique that had him focus his mind on sensing the surrounding mana in the air, guiding it into his body, and storing it inside his abdominal area, otherwise known as the 'mana point'.

It sounded like a Chinese cultivation thing Cecil had read in the novels when he was still back on Earth. If he was able to store mana inside his body he'd then be able to start using magic! Although it sounded pretty simple, Cecil figured that it was probably going to be a grueling process for him because he didn't even know how to even 'feel' mana. He just didn't have the experience, after all, Earth was a mana-void planet.

After attracting and settling mana into one's mana point, the state of mana in one's body could also reach a peak and transform from a particle gas to a liquid and then from liquid to solid. This world classified these stages into the initial, intermediate, advance, master, and perfect mana cultivation stage.

Initial Stage meant that the person could only use the mana in the surrounding air to conjure magic, this type of usage was the weakest and most people would be at this stage if they chose not to cultivate. 

The Intermediate Stage is when a person was able to guide mana and store it into their bodies entering what was called the Mana Vapor. Magic used in this stage is visibly stronger than when used in the Initial Stage.

Advance Stage is when a person can gather enough mana inside his/her body and condense it into a liquid state. This stage was called the Mana Sea.

Master Stage is when the mana sea inside the body is abundant in volume to the point where the mana can gather together and compress into a solid-state, this stage is known as the Mana Core.

Finally, the Perfect Stage is when the mana core inside the body could manipulate the mana in the surrounding air naturally, as if by instinct. The feeling was somewhat like having the surrounding mana become a new organ or limb for the person and this way, the person can form a cycle with the mana in the air with the mana inside their body, practically giving him/her even better control and usage of mana.

For some races, they already have a high affinity with mana so the last stage would automatically be applied to them when they enter the Master stage. Only the size and density of the mana core would not be as strong as a person who was properly in the Perfect stage through long terms of bitter cultivation and training.

Once a person enters the Intermediate Stage or the Mana Vapor Stage, they would finally be able to use magic spells. This would mean that the person had an affinity with mana higher than the average person and he/she could become a Spellcaster.

Spells and magic in this world had a difference. Although they had similar meanings, magic was used widely by everyone. For example, a normal person, meaning someone who was only at the Initial Stage that had adequate control over mana, would be able to produce fire and water out of thin air, summon a breeze or dig a small pit into the earth, but only Spellcasters could create and develop magic spells.

One example of a spell would be something like a spell that summons a fireball and shoots it at high velocity towards an enemy or target, a spell that condenses an ice spike in the air which could impale monsters or objects, or even spells that can manipulate the winds to be as sharp as a sword and cut at an enemy or a spell that could raise and harden the ground into a wall which could be used to block arrows and blades.

Unlike the stories Cecil has read back on Earth, the usage of different magic elements in this world wasn't limited, everyone could use all of the different elements of mana, but some tend to use a specific magical element that they have the most affinity with.

Most people would be limited to having a good affinity with just 1 or 2 elements, while some very talented people would have a good affinity with all 4 basic elements. The most frightening of talents had an affinity with the basic elements and some of the extra elements. Extra elements refer to the type of magical element that can't simply be categorized under the 4 basic elements. Examples would be Space, Illusion, Demonic, and Holy, etc.

There are many different types of spells in this world, some are inherent while others have already been perfected and systematized by previous generations of Spellcasters and magical researchers. Of course, the systematic spells could be learned by anyone who has entered the intermediate stage and enrolled in a magic academy.

The present knowledge of mana, magic, and spells has been systematized to let later generations of Spellcasters learn much more easily. Magic was seen as a special talent, so many children, teenagers, and even adults go to an academy to learn the systematized knowledge of magic if they had to aptitude for it.

This exception was only for those who have inherent or race-specific magic because the basic knowledge of inherent magic would be understood naturally by the time the person was able to use magic itself. It was like an instinct for them and this could be considered a cheat, but this wouldn't mean that they couldn't learn the knowledge of the present magic system.

The downsides to inherent Spell Casters are that they have a hard time learning the modern magic system because they already have an inherent knowledge of their magic, it would be hard for them to adapt and learn the modern magic system's spells.

Although hard, it wasn't impossible, all they had to do was put in more effort than normal spell casters did. Of course, they could just imitate the spell's form, effect, and usage with their own magic, but this was limited. For example, Lucia could use foxfire and illusion magic. So technically, Lucia could also use the fire spear spell with her foxfire, turning it into a fox flame fire spear.

Illusion magic was categorized as special magic, but the modern magic system could use water, fire, shadow, light, and even wind to imitate illusion magic. Technically, illusion magic was the pinnacle of illusions conjured from the modern magic system so it was useless for Lucia to learn them, but she could use their forms and usages as references for when she uses her illusion magic.

But since she currently only had foxfire and illusion magic, she wouldn't be able to use the modern magic system's water, wind, and earth magic system or even imitate the effects of them, because of her limitation in element, unless of course, she studied them extensively.

The upside to this is that because inherent magic users have an already basic all-encompassing understanding of their magic, they could easily develop and strengthen their inherent magic with practice. This was hard for modern Spellcasters because they weren't the trailblazers of modern magic and their understanding of magic was only limited to the magic system of today.

It was hard for modern spell casters to develop new magic or strengthen their own, but once again, = it wasn't an impossibility. Lucia had mentioned that there were very strong Spellcasters that were titled by the people as Sages, these Sages were able to use powerful original magic that they had developed, and most original magic spells were unique to the Sages.

Of course, the study to strengthen and create original magic was something that every generation of Spellcasters strived for. There was never a stop to the research and experiments. Because of that, over the years there were some new spells although not powerful were able to make the living conditions in this world more luxurious and convenient. These 'weak' original spells were given out to the people for public use and development.

A prime example would be the 'light stone'. This 'light stone' was original magic that was created by a Spellcaster who accidentally created a spell that combined earth system and light system magic. It created a perpetually glowing rock, which was now used for illumination in the dark.

This magic replaced the need for torches and fire or fuel-based light sources. Even in dungeons, a light elemental would still be used, but the spell caster had to maintain the light elemental with their own mana.

This 'light stone' wouldn't need that. After creating one, the light stone would continue to shine for 12 hours before slowly dying down, unless the caster, someone, or something dispels it. To Cecil, it sounded just like a light bulb but this was just one example. There were plenty of others, but Lucia only listed them and didn't explain things too deeply.

There were some examples of non-offensive, but useful magic. However, there was without a doubt an abundance of some useless and failed original magic spells. There were also some taboo magic spells, but Lucia doesn't seem to know any of them. She only vaguely explained that there was a spell that permanently hexed people into other objects and evil spells like curses, necromancy, etc.

In conclusion, there were plenty of magic spells out there, some powerful, others useless, but they were, nonetheless, awesome in Cecil's inexperienced opinion. With Lucia's guidance, Cecil began to learn more and more about this unique and magical new world he was in.

'I really hope I could use it soon, that'd be way too awesome!'