"Hey Lucas, do you have a second?"
"Uh, yeah," I wiped some sweat off my brow and powered down my arm cannon, it was unusual that Emmy joined me and Cecily outside the Sanctuary, "what's up?"
"Madame Velhiem says you have to leave in about a month or so." Emmy looked at me sheepishly.
"Wat?" I asked with a dumb expression.
+++
Let me give a recap of what happened so far.
After I ingested my medicine Cecily told me what went strangely about my whole mana circuit adaption process.
"Lightning, Ice. No compatibility." she mumbled as she pointed at my right arm, "Fused. Potent. Very potent. Strange."
Emmy cleared it up a bit, apparently both the elements I was adept in were unusual. Ice was an intermediate level element and lightning was... apparently theoretical.
Generally, if a human has potential to be a mage, which was already pretty rare, the vast majority of them have potential in one of the four basic elements.
Fire, water, wind, or earth.
Even more rare than that were individuals who had potential in more than one basic element.
Oh, by the way the intermediate elements consist of elements who take application of the basic elements in a different fashion.
For example, the basis of fire magic was something along the lines of "manipulation of energy mana" or as I understood it, temperature management. So, ice is an intermediate element that builds on fire, since instead of turning the temperature up, you turn it down.
Wind was similar, instead of managing internal energy, it moves external energy, basically moving things from one place to another. Water was manipulating liquids, and earth is manipulating solids. There are more nuances but that was generally the gist of things.
There are also outer elements, which is just the general label for "we don't know what the hell to classify this magic", which are, surprisingly, more common for people to have talent in than intermediate elements. These elements are things like necromancy, teleportation magic, and shadow magic. Don't get me wrong, having innate potential for these outer elements was extremely rare to the point of magic institutes paying visits to your house, it's just that... well...
Having talent in an intermediate level magic without having talent in a basic element was kind of like not understanding how to do addition and subtraction but being able to solve linear algebra problems with ease.
It was just plain weird.
Even stranger than my affinity for ice was my affinity for lightning which, following recently breakthroughs at Darinstone academy, has been moved from one of the outer elements into a theorical branch of fire magic.
In one of the excerpts from the Argon Updates it said, "in a recent expedition, a brave team of research mages from the prestigious Darinstone academy have managed to make a breakthrough discovery following their encounter with a lightning elemental" and "the team under Professor Owen believe that it is theoretically possible to produce lightning magic from extremely fast and precise applications of fire magic, to learn more about this exciting discovery be sure to follow the newest of Argon Updates. Next regarding the institutes stance on the rising tensions between-"
I wonder how the Madame even gets her newspapers in the middle of this forest anyways.
Knowing what I know I ask the Madame if she knew about electrons and atoms and such.
"What an outlandish theory, this knowledge comes from your time in your world I presume?"
"Yeah, in fact, I was wondering why you guys haven't used something like magnets to discover electricity already." This was back when I was still bedridden, so I was talking to her during one of her visits to my room, "From what I've read civilization seems well past the point to discovering these types of things."
"Oh? You know of the existence of magnets? Perhaps you may gleam some insight from this artifact then."
She then left for a bit and came back with a weird compass looking thing, "A dwarven compass used for navigation within the deepest mines. Its center is what I remember to be the material known as a magnet, it is rather useless in the overworld, but I have kept in hopes of returning it."
"Useless in the overworld? Really?"
"Yes."
We then had a very lengthy discussion on electricity and magnets and from what she told me I understood a few reasons as to their lack of modern technology.
Firstly, conversion to electricity is fundamentally hindered by mana, in fact any conversion of energy is hindered by mana whether its mechanical to electricity or steam to mechanical. Something about the nature of the world is just extraordinarily less efficient at converting some forms of energy than ours.
If you made a light bulb here at hit it with the same electricity on earth it wouldn't even glow.
"Wouldn't us humans just die then?" I asked.
"The mana inside your body keeps you alive." she responded while writing something down on a notepad, "the full extents of their functions is not yet understood."
Secondly, the effect of mana also discounts the idea of the scientific method of discovery. Isolating one variable in an experiment doesn't work since you don't really know if it's the mana causing the effect or the variable itself unless you have a lot of the variable or very little surrounding mana. Even then the experiment can sometimes turn out different results given the exact same circumstances so to truly verify a claim you need unspeakably many trials in order to convince the broad community.
Thirdly the dwarfs are isolationists and rarely give their material and goods to outsiders. Magnetic material is so rare unless you're as learned about the world as the madame you've likely never even heard about it in your life.
"Speaking of which where did this compass even come from?"
"It was a travelling memento from an old friend of mine."
"Oh neat," I said while twirling it within my hand, on the side of it was engraved the words 'Darven Stonesworn', "is Darven Stonesworn the name of your friend?"
"Yes, it was."
"Where is he now?"
"Dead, most likely."
"Oh.... I'm sorry."
I felt a soft pat on my head, "There is nothing to apologize for Young Lucas, death comes eventually. All we can do for those that have gone is remember their tales from when they were alive. They shall live beyond their ages, from above destiny's brush; between the ink of our pages and the lives they touched."
"..."
Fourth this world has no global magnetic fields, not sure what this implies though, didn't study too much on it.
After the talk the madame thanked me for my "marvelous insights into the microscopic realm" and was going to work on building "the microscopes you've so kindly mentioned".
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah magic.
Ice magic, really weird already. Lightning magic? Mages would look at me stranger than if I had three arms. No offence Cecily.
On top of all that, ice magic and lightning magic were of two completely different fields and had zero compatibility currently known. Yet I've somehow created something that fuses the two together.
What I think I've done is inadvertently created a superconductor in my right arm, which is like, so out of the current technological scope of current civilization that no one even begins to understand how it works. Creating something of out of a microscopic phenomenon shouldn't even be possible since mana forces, or particles, or waves, or whatever will interfere much stronger at a smaller scale but whether it's from my outlander disposition or the strange environment within my body, I made it happen.
I had to practice how to use it through trial and error and so far, I've gotten the error down no problemo.
My right arm acts not only as the most bat sh*t insane magic conductor ever but also amplifies the mana to an insane degree, which, is crazy because when using magic normally the mana inside the body acts as a big resistance force which dampens the effect quite a bit.
So, whereas normal mages go from 100% to 10% or so, I go from 100% to like 3000% from my right arm.
The output on what I've lovingly dubbed "the arm cannon" is so effective that when I fired it for the first time at a bunch of logs outside the Sanctuary (the name for the place I've been staying at) it split the entire thing in half and lit it ablaze while continuing on to split a tree in half and also light it on fire.
Some fairies that were watching nearby fled from the ear-splitting noise.
The Madame took care of the fire but had to make an apology visit to the Fairy Queen. I would have joined her, but I fainted on the spot and hospitalized myself for a week again with that display.
My body clearly can't take the miniaturized rail gun I slapped onto my right arm.
I was then banned from using it anywhere inside the Sanctuary. I wanted to get practice in so I could control it better, but something tells me that wouldn't be a smart argument to take. It didn't help that my arm was blue, extremely cold, had ominous pattens on it, and glowed in the dark. I could barely even move it, so I had to get used to living with one arm.
It wasn't pleasant and the Madame didn't go easier on her lessons because of it that's for sure, but at least Cecily accompanied me outside the Sanctuary when I wanted to practice. I thanks to three months of practice I can deliver about two shots without fainting.
+++
"Sorry Lucas, but it's the Fairy Queen's command. There isn't much she could have done." Emmy looked saddened as she delivered the news.
"What? What did I ever do to the Fairy Queen?"
"It's not you Lucas, it's just that," Emmy twiddled her fingers, "You're a human, and a male, on those grounds alone you would have never been allowed anywhere near the Sanctuary. You were only granted a right to stay due to the Madame appointing you as her guest, but..." she started hesitantly.
"Yeah?"
"Your display of magic that other day proved that you could be a threat so she's having you expelled."
"I only set a tree on fire, that can't possibly justify me as... a threat." As I say these words, I hated myself for understanding the perspective of the Fairy Queen, "I... dang it! Aren't they masters of magic or something? What can I ever do to them."
"They are but... no one understands lightning magic, and the fairies don't like you here." Emmy looked like she was about to cry.
"Monsters. Nearby." Cecily tugged at my sleeve, "Leave."
On her words we returned to the Sanctuary to discuss my current state of affairs.