“No wonder I can’t take it,” Lucan dejectedly muttered. Silvas Anderle’s understanding of the various elemental affinities was between him and the world itself and just how trying to cast a spell with heavy mana would break a Grand-Master Mage’s mind before it would implode his body, trying to grasp at higher laws of an elemental affinity without even understanding the basics would do the same… or worse to him.

  Did that… ascendant, the one who cast this spell, if it can truly be called that, limit these memories so I wouldn’t go insane? Or is this the work of the world mana itself? I’m starting to think that there’s more to this world mana than just being a higher level of energy, like us mages like to claim. Not that it’s surprising, with literal go- ascendants running around.

  Lucan had known that Aura Knights were notoriously different to train, which was why magic was considered by far to be the greatest offensive force the Kingdom was capable of, but the level of difficulty involved was far more difficult than he thought now that he considered the full length and breadth of it.

  To comprehend something as esoteric as an aspect of the wind itself and to be able to call upon the resonance in the midst of battle, only for it to be a part and not the whole of one’s arsenal? What kind of ridiculous training standards were that? How did one teach that to another? And how in the world was he supposed to live up to that?

  “Wait a minute,” Lucan whispered, as his eyes reflected his confusion. “I’m not the only mage who knows how an Aura Expert’s attunement works,” He muttered, finding himself at the precipice of either a great discovery or a complete whiff borne out of his own incomplete knowledge.

  Yes, Aura was different from regular mana that mages used and yes, it was a lot closer to what heavy mana was, but mana itself wasn’t entirely divorced from heavy mana either. Would that be enough reason for mages to give up on studying the nature of the very elements they had a natural affinity with and wielded? When there was empirical evidence that showed that an understanding of the corresponding element they wished to wield could not only increase their efficiency, but also give birth to an entirely new path to power? History at least suggested that mages came before Aura Knights, with a high degree of certainty at that, so he was taking that at face value.

  And if he did, then… no that wouldn’t be enough of a reason for mages to give up on trying to understand the element they had an affinity with.

  And of course, the answer was equally simple. Mages did try. Just because Lucan had never really gotten to wield a spell with his elemental affinity didn’t mean that others hadn’t. Why could one mage create a spell circle that was better than another's, when they had the same education? Assuming their affinities were identical and even their ranks were, there still ought to have been such cases. Of course, one answer was a sharper or more creative mind, willing to take risks and approach the problem from new options, but what gave them that confidence?

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  They’d practiced more. They had attained a deeper bond with their elemental affinity, which gave them a greater instinctual understanding of its capabilities and limitations. Not to the point where they could attune their mana to a specific aspect of the element, but a more surface level yet broader understanding of the whole. Maybe their pursuit of logic and calculation kept them from seeking the primordial secrets that required something more to comprehend.

  Then mages would presumably hit a wall, which was why mages were mages and aura knights were aura knights. Once a mage evolved their mana core into a mana heart, they could never look back upon the path of an aura expert and aura knights could not finetune their weighty attunements into delicate spell matrices wrought into whole spell circles.

  There was only one reason why magecraft was superior in terms of strength and why aura knights would never be able to surpass it, or such was the case if one kept Silvas Anderle out of the equation and that was because magecraft was a communal effort. The curriculum of the Imperial Academy was the work of thousands of mages across decades upon decades, of mages both within borders and even beyond.

  While the understanding of an aura expert was so incredibly complex in its uniqueness that it could not even be inherited through a literal memory transplant, if any empathy mage was even capable of accomplishing such spellcraft.

  So what about Shadow Mana? No Noble Family keeps Shadow Mana affinity mages on employ, so Shadow Mages can’t be very useful. There are no spells to be found on the open market, which is almost comically ridiculous. Even something like Empathy affinity, which is hard to even wrap one’s mind around, has spells passed down from generation to generation, but there’s nothing for shadow mana.

  “Why? Easy, it’s useless. Except, past me was strong as heck, even though he only ever showed three spells to Silvas Anderle.”

  Past Lucan did use a staff, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary about that (in Silvas Anderle’s mind) and he did call upon magic circles to cast his spell, but they’re blurry messes in Silvas Anderle’s memories because he wasn’t paying attention and saw no value in memorizing a magic circle comprised of matrices he was not trained to read.

  “I’m cynical enough as is,” Lucan conceded. “Past me probably wasn’t off the booze, just cut it down enough to stay functional. So he hated everything even more than I do right now. Oh and he’d lost… enough, I guess. So he really hated everyone and trusted them even less. But he goes to a dungeon with Silvas Anderle. Why? Because Silvas is a buffoon with a large metal stick, is good with the stick and doesn’t ask questions. How much of what past me had shown Silvas is even the truth? How effective would a Shadow Mana Illusion spell be?”

  The more Lucan thought about… everything, the more chills he got. The world was far greater than the four walls he had been hiding behind and now, he was the forced participant in a game with much larger consequences than, he suspected, even a few fallen kingdoms.

  And there was only one place he could get the answers he wanted.

  following the story here!

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