I wake up the next day, and try to get up. I feel no pain in my body, despite noticing my mana growing chaotic. I feel like I should recover soon, maybe 1 or 2 more days. After inspecting myself, I then began to do my morning exercises. I still couldn't do my usual amount, but I was able to do more sets than yesterday, showing my progress. I was planning on working out until breakfast, but realized that it was my turn to make food. Upon realizing this, I went down to the storage room to look at the ingredients.
On my way to the storage area, I passed by Ana and Astra's room, and was able to tell that they were awake. They were being quiet, but I could still hear a little bit of what they were saying. It seemed like they were still working on their own spells. While the ideas they have are cool, I am not sure if they can be turned into reality, since to actualize their ideas, we would need to integrate multiple commands into the spell. At the moment, we can only integrate two commands. I also feel like the more commands we put into the spell, will result in a greater casting length, and mana usage, which might not make them practical in an actual fight. Of course, this is only if I am the one who will be using them, since I have no experience with chantless casting. For all I know, they could be almost done with the spells.
Well, if they did create them, then we would have a wider variety of spells at our disposal, some of which, I probably won't be able to cast, which is a good thing. A wider variety will help us deal with plenty of different situations. While thinking of such things, I arrived at the storage area. I could see that we did have a lot of food stockpiled, but I am unable to confidently say it will last us all of winter. It might last if we are conservative, but even then it would only be barely. Well it is not like running out of food will be that big of a deal. After all, it will get us through a majority of the winter, and we can always hurt afterwards. In fact, with my detection spell, I would be able to easily find demonic beasts that are hibernating, which would actually be much easier to kill.
The only issue will be if we run into Diego, but again, even if we do it won't be a problem. Logically speaking, why would they attack us if they already know the location of our base? That is just a stupid move, as it would be better to wait us out. However, even if they do track us, we should be able to get away quite easily. While thinking of this, I gathered the foodstuff I would use and brought them to the kitchen. There I began making the meal, which I had decided to be a simple soup. After all, if we are trying to save ingredients, soup is one of the best foods to make for that. The only problem is the long time it takes for the water to boil.
I didn't really have anything to do while waiting for the water to boil, so I just decided to do some of the things on my to do list. Even though I say that, it's not like I will be able finish any of the tasks while waiting for the water to boil. I can only hope that I will stumble across a new idea while waiting. I decided to focus on ways to improve my mental training efficiency. This one seemed to be the easiest of them all, as I felt I had made some progress on it. At the very least, it is farther along than the other two were.
While staring at the pot, and waiting for the water to boil, my mind started to drift off into a weird direction. I don't know what prompted it, but I started to think of my last moments in the village, more specifically the last time I saw my mother's magic. I didn't want to think of those moments, because even if I did think of them, nothing would come of it. However, their was a nagging feeling that I should continue, so I decided to continue with this thought pattern. I didn't want to focus on the memories of my mother. No, that's not right. It's not that I didn't want to, but that I feared what would happen later if I did, so I instead focused on her magic, and while doing so, their was a sense of incongruity.
She was chanting the spells to fast, and they were much stronger than what they should be. Back then, most likely from the shock of the situation, and my lack of experience, I didn't feel anything wrong. But now that I am judging this objectively and with my combat experience, I could tell that what she was doing was a tough thing to do. Sure, when chanting a spell, one can speak quickly to get the chant over with, but there is a problem with that. The spells chanted quickly, would, usually, be less powerful, cause mana would not have proper time to cycle through the chant. Basically, higher speed comes at the cost of a weaker spell. Also, if a mistake was made when chanting, one could even get a backlash. At her chanting speed, it would be quite easy to make a mistake.
Now onto the other point, her spells were much stronger than they were supposed to be. Not even considering the fact that she was chanting her spells fastly, even if she were to chant them at a normal pace, they shouldn't be able to do what they did. She mostly used her spell for defense, and, now that I have gone through a lot of battles, I can tell that defending something, is much harder than attacking. Also, her wind spells were able to push back multiple armed village guards. Even if I were to try to replicate that, I doubt I would be able to do it, and this is with my mana quality that should, at least, be better than my mom's. So this menas, that my mother, can do things with magic that I can't do, despite having better mana quality than hers.
Now that I am thinking about this, I found another point that should've bothered me, but didn't. It was back during the last moments I had with her, when she protected me from the elf swordsman. She, at the time, only had the time to cast one spell. She had shown that her spells where strong enough to push back multiple people, so they should have been enough to push back that elf. She also showed that she had a great casting time, so she should have been able to chant more spells. She didn't have to use her body to protect a worthless thing like me. Wait no, I can't think this way. I should go back to the main point. So despite showing off incredible ability during he battle with the guards, she showed none of that same ability against the elf swordsman, and there must be a reason for this.
I felt like I was on the verge of discovering something, but the pot of soup began to boil at this moment, so I could only shelve this matter and get back to it later. I stopped channeling mana through the heating magic circle. I then took the pot, along with some bowls and spoons and brought it to the table. I didn't see Astra or Ana at the table, so they are definitely still in their rooms. After placing the soup in the middle of the table, and setting the bowls, I went to their room. When I got near them, I could vaguely hear their voice, but could only make out the fact that they were arguing. It seemed like they were trying to be considerate towards me, as they kept their voices low, but they seemed passionate in their arguement.
"Sorry for taking so long," I said, deciding to interrupt their argument despite knowing nothing of what it was about, "but breakfast is finally ready."
Once they heard my voice, they immediately stopped talking to one another. Then immediately afterwards, as if it were planned, their stomachs started rumbling. I guess I might have taken too much time making the soup. I'll try to wake up early the next time I have to cook, which I think is tomorrow. That way, they don't have to wait for as long as they did. Well once we all sat down, we began to eat. Everyone was in silence, as usual, and we were able to finish ½ of the pot, before everyone was full.
"You guys are fine with having this for dinner right?" I asked as I began to clear up the table.
"Sure." "It was tasty, so its fine."
"Okay, just wanted to make sure with you guys," I say before taking everything from the table. I moved the pot of soup back onto the heating magic circle, that way for dinner, I could just channel mana through it to heat up the soup. I also put a lid over the ceramic pot, to make sure that nothing unwanted gets into the soup. I wanted to chant the water jet spell to clean the bowls in the kitchen, but decided against it. After all, while my mana is chaotic, I will only be able to use a limited amount of spells, as shown yesterday. As such, I went down to the storage area, and went to the underground river. There I began to wash the bowls, though not thoroughly since I didn't really feel like it. Once I decided I had done enough, I left them on the bank to dry and then went back to the kitchen. Astra and Ana were still sitting on the table, so they probably had something they wanted to talk about.
"Did you use the healing spell?" Ana asked once I sat down with them.
"The what?" I asked confused.
"By that response I can safely assume you haven't done it yet," Ana said as she sighed.
"Oh, the healing spell," I exlcaimed as I suddenly remmeebred what she was talking about. Yesterday, she wanted me to try my healing spell to see if it would help with my recovery. At the time, I didn't do it because my mana had already grown chaotic from using to many spells, so I made a promise with her to do it today.
"So you remember it then," Ana says.
"Yes, I do," I reply instantly, "I'll go ahead and use it right now."
"If you didn't say that, I would have insisted that you do it right now," Ana says.
"O spell of water, combine with the wind as a healing mist that heads to heal myself," I said. Like usual with this spell, water vapor covered my body. Even though I could see it working, I couldn't really feel anything. I guess this means that my body doesn't have any injures, which I guess is reasonably. After all, right now, I am in no pain, so I should have no injuries. This might have helped relieve the pain if I had used it earlier, and it also might have helped to speed up the recovery. However, right now, it isn't really doing anything. I guess it is my fault for creating this spell, and then forgetting it when I needed it.
"So, is it any helpful?" Ana asks excitedly.
"Not really," I say, as I stop channeling the spell. "My injuries are being caused due to the imbalance between my body and mana. While the healing spell will definetely be able to heal my body, it won't do anything about the issue. It might have helped speed up my recovery though if I had used earlier, or at the very least, I wouldn't have been is as much pain as I was in."
"You should have used it earlier then," Ana said.
"I completely forgot I had this spell," I retorted instantly.
"How could you forget this spell," Astra calmly asks, sounding genuinely curious.
"Astra is right. How could your forget this spell? Would you just forget it in the middle of a battle, when it could very well save your life."
"Okay, first off, I never made the spell to be used on myself. I had always intended for it to be used to heal both of you. As such, I definitely forgot that I had it when I was in trouble. Second off, their haven't been many times where I have had to use this spell, nor is their any big reason for me to remember it. As such, I feel it is perfectly natural for me to forget some of the spells I have created. I'm sure I will also forget many other spells that I have created in the future as well."
"That is not very reassuring."
"Yeah Astra is right. You should at least try to make an effort to remember the ones that would be helpful."
"That's the problem though, all my spells could be helpful. Magic is very flexible, especially wind magic which is what I am best at. Because of that, my spells could cover a wide range of areas, making any of them helpful in certain situations."
"Uh that makes sense, but their is got to be a way for you to remember them. If not, why don't you just generalize your magic. That way one spell can be useful in a wide variety of situations."
"I don't think I can really generalize my magic any further. I just can't think of a way to do it that makes the spell actually helpful. Also, I fear that the more generalized it is, the more commands it would need, making it practically impossible to use in any situation."
"Well I guess the only thing we can do is try to remeber the spells you have. Why don't we write them all out, so you can keep track of them."
"That is a great idea Astra, but how would we write it all down. Even if we do find a large leaf like before, I feel like it wouldn't be able to fit all the spells I have. Also, I kind of don't want to have a similar situation to before when Diego and his crew found us due to a leaf."
"Sylvi, I think I have an idea. Why don't we carve it into the walls. The walls will stay with us, and you'll be able to look at them anytime. Also, if we ever need more space, we could always excavate more of the walls."
"That is actually a great idea," I say. "Why don't we carve them in the storage room. After all, if we are going to expand any room, it would definitely be the storage room. We also wouldn't have to worry about seeing the same carving every day."
"Sure, I also feel like putting it in the storage room is for the best," Ana says.
"If we are doing this, then we will have to send Syvlain done to get the ingredients," Astra says. "Otherwise, he would only be able to see them once every 3 days."
"Astra, don't forget that I have to do most of the dismantling work, so I will be staying their for a long time," I say. "However, if you want, I don't mind going down everyday to get the ingredients. Just make sure whoever is cooking comes down with me so I pick out the right things."
"Sure I think we can both do that," Ana says after sharing a glance with Astra.
"So, are we going to be carving them now, or will we do it at a later date?" I ask.
"I think that I am really close to creating a new spell," Astra said, "so I would like to work on that today."
"If that is what Astra is doing, then I'll help her out," Ana says.
"So we are going to be doing this another day then," I say. "That's fine by me, since I also had something that I wanted to think over."
"Try to remember that it is your day to cook," Ana says, "so don't get to absorbed in thought that you forget to make lunch."
"It's fine, I won't forget," I say. "And even if I do, I can just always heat up the leftover soup."
"Then you'll still have to cook dinner," Astra says.
"I'll cross that bridge when I get to it," I calmly reply before quietly heading to my room. Once there, I immediately contine my train of thought from when I was cooking. I also make sure to leave one part of my brain as a timer so I could go make lunch when it was lunch time. I was just thinking about how weird it was for my mother to put up a great resistance against the guards, but a horrible one against the elf swordsman. I doubt she wasn't putting her all in that fight. After all, the life of me, her son, and more importantly, her life, was at stake in this battle. Their would be no reason why she wouldn't use her full power, which leads me to only one conclusion. My mom couldn't use her full power in the fight with the elf swordsman.
Now why would that be the case. I'm not sure why, but I feel like I will have great gains if I am able to figure this out. The easiest way out of this problem, is to just say that my mom couldn't use her full power against another elf. This also does make a certain degree of sense. After all, a trait of the elf race is that they excel in magic, so it is believable that their magic will have more of an effect on humans, who comparing to elves, are lacking. However, while this is a good reason, that does make sense, it can't explain everything, like how my mom was able to chant really quickly without making a mistake, and why she didn't use that against the enemy.
This means, there is another reason for why my mom was able to do the things that she did. I tried to think of something else that could explain my moms actions, and while I did have some ideas, they didn't explain away all of her actions. The first one I thought of was that she was out of mana when she was fighting the elf swordsman, but that definitely wasn't true because she was able to use teleportaion magic to transport me away. She definitely had enough mana to do something else.
The next reason I thought of was that she was too kind to hurt the elf swordsman. This idea was one that stuck with me. After all, there was no way for me to deny it unless I personally asked my mom herself, which could never happen now. However, I didn't want to believe this reason, because it felt like a cop out to me. I also felt like, with her strength, she would have definitely been able to deal with the swordsman without hurting him.
I then thought that the elf had something on him that nullified magic, and my mom knew about this. After all, he was confident enough to get hit by one of my spells. However, in his eyes, I was just a kid, so the spells I knew definitely wouldn't be enough to hurt him. That must have been where his conifdence came from. Also, I have never heard of anything capable of nullifying a spell, and once again, this felt like a reason I was just forcing.
I thought of many similar ideas, but none of them could stick. It felt like I was just missing one thing, and when I had it, I would be able to solve this puzzle. However, that one piece of information just eluded me, making it impossible for me to complete the puzzle. After continuing at this for a while, I went to go make lunch, since my mind's timer said it would be lunch time soon. I didn't want to eat soup for lunch, and instead wanted something with substance. However, since we are trying to save our food supply, I didn't make anything to extravagant.
I decided to make some simple sandwiches for us. I chose sandwiches because I could customize how much I would put into them. Since we are trying to save, I decided to put in the minimum amount of meat and edible herbs. With lunch decided, I took all the ingredients I would need from the storage room. The grains had already been grinded, so I just mixed them with some water before placing them on a pan over the heating magic circle. I didn't channel any mana through the heating magic circle, and instead began to chant my water jet spell to wash the edible herbs. I'm sure Ana had already washed them, but I decided to do it again just to be safe.
"O spell of water flow from my hands as a jet to fill my container."
While I was at it, I also decided to wash the meat. Again, while I had already washed it earlier when I dismantled it, so cleaning it again will just make sure that it is safe. Once both of them were washed, I cut them up thinly. I then placed the edible herbs to the side, while I put the thinly sliced meat into a separate pan. With that done, I then began the cook the bread and the meat. Since the meat was thinly sliced, it didn't take long for it to be thoroughly cooked. I should have grabbed the meat that was already marinated, but I didn't do that. After all, I'm sure Ana was the one who marinated it, and she would probably be extremely mad if I took it without permission.
I was thinking of what to do, before stumbling across a new idea. What if I created something to put on the bread. So far we had just created stuff that would compliment the meat, but what if we went a different way. After all, their is nothing saying that bread can't be delicious. In the end, I decided to tell Ana about this, and see if she had any ideas. Ana is the best cook among us, so she would definitely make better use of my idea than I could. I finished making the sandwiches while I was thinking of that idea, so I put them onto plates and moved them to the dining room table. With that done, I went to go fetch Ana and Astra.
They didn't seem to be quarelling. At the very least, I couldn't hear them arguing when I got near there door. I knocked on the door before going inside. They were there, and it seemed like they were practicing their magic. I could see many water and fire creations hovering in the air. I am pretty sure they are no longer working on creating new spells. Instead, it kind of seems to me like they are trying to improve their control. I didn't want to interrupt them, so I quietly waited inside the room. I knew that they wouldn't last long, as it was practically lunch time. They should be growing hungry at the moment, so I continued to sit there.
While I was there, I observed the hovering magic. They seemed to take the shape of different creatures, and they seemed extremely detailed. They were all based of demonic beasts that we have fought. I think I could even count the furs that each demonic beast had. There were also ones that didn't look exactly alike, and others that seemd to combine different parts of different beasts. I honestly couldn't tell what they were doing, but it was interesting to see. Soon enough, Ana's stomach rumbled and all of the water creatures kind of popped, spraying water all over the floor. This caused Astra to also come to, causing all the fire creatures to burn up in smoke.
"Lunch is ready," I promptly say once they have gotten their bearings.
"How long have you been there?" Astra asked shyly.
"Not to long," I lied calmly. "So what were you guys doing. I swear I say some demonic beasts made from water and fire."
"Nothing much," Astra calmly replied, before leaving.
"Yeah, just trying to get better control," Ana adds shakily as she followed Astra out of the room.
"Okay," I reply not really buying her explanation, but not pursuing any further. I followed them out of the room and into the kitchen. The sandwiches hadn't cooled down yet, not like it mattered even if they did. After all, warm or cold, they would still be good.
"Let's eat," I say once everyone is seated before going to eat my share. With my prompting Astra and Ana also start to dig into their food. I, of course, finished first, before Astra and Ana did. Once they finished, I gathered up all of the plates and went to go wash them in the underground river. By the time I had finished that, Astra and Ana had already left. I had really wanted to talk with them, but I guess they just wanted to go back to whatever they were doing. I went to their room to confim my guess, and saw the same creations hovering in the air. I just decided to let them be and went back to thinking. Of course I also kept track of the time so I could reheat the soup for dinner.
Despite trying my best, I couldn't find a satisfactory answer. Sure, I found answers, but they felt forced. It seemed like I was just trying to use them as an answer, even if they didn't answer everything. As such, I decided to stop thinking about it, and began to focus on the other things in my to do list. Even though I said that, I didn't really make any significant progress before dinner time. I had many ideas, but they either didn't work, or I couldn't confirm if they did. So I just went to reheat the soup, as I didn't want to think anymore.
Since the pot was already on the heating magic circle, I justhad to channel magic through it. After I finished heating it, I took a little taste. It was good, but I felt like it needed more water, so I added some more into it. Of course, I made sure to heat the water I added, so as to not have any temperature changes. With that done, I tasted it again, and it tasted just like what I had made this morning. With that done, I picked it up and moved it to the table. I then brought out the bowls and spoons I had washed in the morning, and set the table.
"Astra, Ana dinner is ready," I yelled out to them, as I didn't want to walk to their room to tell them.
"You can eat now." "We'll eat later." They said one after the other. I was a little sad that I wouldn't eat with the both of them, since we had done that practically every day since we met. If this is what they want though, then it is fine. I ate my meal in silence, before placing the pot back onto the heating magic circle.
"I don't know how long you guys will take, so I put the pot back on the heating magic circle," I yelled out after I finished moving the pot. "I'll be going to be then. Make sure to clean up after yourselves."
"Thanks, and good night," the both of them said in unison. With that, I went into my room and went into my bed. However, before I was able to drift off into sleep, I had come up with an idea for why my mom showed such disparity between her two fight. In fact I am a little upset that I didn't think of this earlier. The idea, is that she had used an original space spell. Before I could expand on this idea though, I fell asleep.