The next morning Hector was woken up by someone knocking on the door. He rose from bed, put his clothes on, and blearily opened the door.
"Hurry up, we need to get going now if you want to eat breakfast." Shawn said hurriedly. At that Hector properly woke up, and quickly followed Shawn downstairs to get some breakfast, after which both of them headed towards the school.
This time they arrived at the same time as the teacher. Saying good morning to her, Hector and Shawn took their seats.
"Morning class, as I said yesterday, today we will go through the transformation of mana. Now, what are the two types of methods to give mana properties?" Kyrie asked the whole class, and this time only one student raised their hand.
Getting a nod from the teacher, the student explained,"The two methods are guiding the mana, and forcing the mana."
"Correct. As She said, the two methods are to guide mana through transformation, and the second is to force the transformation upon the mana." Kyrie replied to the answer making sure everyone in the class heard it. "Guiding mana is the more powerful but dangerous method, as with that method you can add individual properties to the mana. If you add contradictory properties, or ones that don't mix well, it can have huge repercautions."
'Repercautions? Wait, didn't my mental mana skill say it had repercautions. Was it a way of guiding mana transformations?' Hector thought
Kyrie continued her teachings,"There are four known ways to guide mana, which work by using; runes, symbols, incantations and the mind. Pouring mana through specific shapes can give it properties, this is how guiding mana through runes and hand symbols can give it new properties and thus transform it. Mana transformation can also be done while moving the mana through the lungs and out of the mouth while making various sounds. And finally, imagining the effects and properties and giving them to the mana is the last of these ways to guide mana. However, as I already mentioned, making mistakes will cost dearly. When enchanting a item with runes, making mistakes can cause the object to explode. Making the wrong symbols can result in the same thing, but with your arms. Incantations and using the mind to guide, can easily result in death, which is why not many people do either. Even so, learning to guide mana instead of forcing it will result in being able to do a lot more miraculous things with magic."
Hector was now very interested. He was pretty sure he could already guide mana transformations, and even though he probably wouldn't like his brain exploding, he should just respawn. Maybe he could test combinations with runes to see if they'd work, but then again he'd have to study runes.
"However, those won't matter unless you become a member of this school." Kyrie said, immediately disappointing Hector. "What you'll learn today is to force mana transformation, which is a lot more simple, effective for daily use and more useful for most farmers, guards hunters and pretty much every other commoner. This way one farmer can do the work of 10, one hunter can survive encounters with many of the vicious beast's outside our walls, and guards are able to keep criminals in place."
Kyrie took a brief pause before continuing,"Forcing mana transformation is very simple, all you need to do is to gather enough mana into a dense ball, and it will take on the properties of the material or object, depending on your intention and knowledge of what your trying to copy with your mana. It is very similar to guiding the transformation with your mind, to the point that some scholars consider it a sub-skill of mental mana transformation. It does have one major difference though, instead of trying to give the mana properties to make something, you force the mana to change without conscious thought of doing so. It can only copy properties of the matter it is in, meaning you won't be adding anything that might result in unwanted consequences, making it much safer."
The rest of the lesson went on similarly to the previous one. They were taught the theory of how forcing mana transformation worked, and how they would learn it. It ended up being much more simple than Hector thought. It was literally just getting enough mana in a small area, making it dense enough, and then thinking about what you know about the object or material.
After having explained the theory, Kyrie went to explain a few important things before releasing the class for lunch. "Before I let you go the eat, or use your skill points for this, there are two important things you must know. Firstly, as you learned yesterday, you all have a limited supply of mana. Even so, just like you can train to improve your stat multipliers, you can use your mana and let it refill to make your supply larger. The same is possible with how fast you refill your mana supply, but it is harder to train. And secondly, you should know that the more accurately your mana replicates the essence, the longer it will last before dissipating back into mana, but it takes more concentration to control. Now, you're free to go for lunch, and if you don't want to use a skill point, come back in an hour, and I'll teach you to do real magic."
With that, most of the class walked out, leaving Hector and Shawn behind.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" Kyrie asked when she noticed them.
"Umm, Mrs Kyrie..." Hector started, getting immediately interrupted by Kyrie.
"It's Journeyman Kyrie, didn't your parents teach you manners." she corrected with a stern tone.
"Sorry. Journeyman Kyrie, yesterday when I was... practicing my mana manipulation, when my mana suddenly became... wet. I then checked my skill list, and saw that there was a skill called 'mental mana transformation' at novice level. I wanted to ask you about it."
"Hmm, interesting. It is unusual, but not completely unheard of for some novices to instinctively learn that skill. Tell me, did you get a migraine, feel any pain or odd feeling after you had wet mana?"
"No I don't think so." Hector quickly replied.
"I'm that case, you're either extremely lucky, or skilled, since you didn't get any noticable brain damage. This is because wet essence is more complicated than most think. A solid object can't be wet without being covered or full of a liquid, meaning that you needed to transfer your mana into a liquid form. Not only that, but for a liquid to be wet, it needs to be slightly sticky. So you needed to add that property to your mana as well. With only one of those, the mana would have been a physical impossibility, causing it to revolt, leading damage to your brain. Since you felt no damage afterwards, I'm pretty sure you instinctively added both. Tell me, was the mana visible, did if feel warm or cold, could you smell it and what did you think about when you made it wet?"
Kyrie was babbling at the end, and Hector could just barely understand what she was asking. But before he could answer, Shawn spoke.
"No, it wasn't warm or cold, nor could I see it. It was just wet, nothing else."
"It also splashed at his face, and that's what I thought about. Wanted to splash his face with mana." Hector added.
"Well, that was very irresponsible of you, but either way it is curious. Depending on how well you learn to force mana transformation later today, I might even be able to get you a scholarship. Now, go eat lunch."
The hour passed quickly as Hector and Shawn ate lunch. When they got back to the classroom, there were lit candles and water buckets on the platform at the center of the room. After wondering for a moment, they took their seats and waited for the class to start.
"Alright students, come get a bucket and a candle. Then find an area with a good amount of space around you." when everyone did as she said, she continued. "First I want you to to gather as much mana as you can in a space around the size of the tip of your finger. I'll walk around, and tell you when your mana is dense enough" Kyrie told the class.
Hector started with slowly gathering a small amount of mana Infront of him, making sure it wouldn't hurt his mana channels. Then he concentrated on gathering another batch of mana, only to feel his previous mana quickly dissipate all around the room, and out of his control. 'Does mana dissipate in the air when I'm not concentrating on it?' Hector thought, before realizing that the teacher had said something along those lines.
He tried again, this time taking about one tenth of all his mana, moved it Infront of him, and tried to push it into a small ball. He failed, badly. He managed to squeeze it very slightly, but he lost his concentration when he thought about how it felt like trying to contain an explosion. The mana rapidly expanded in a similar way to a small pressure wave, which ruffled Hectors hair slightly.
The next two attempts Hector tried with both more and less mana. He didn't manage to get them much denser balls, so he gave up with both.
The fourth attempt was when he came up with a revelation. So far he had tried to squeeze the mana into a ball, pushing the mana on the outside of the large mana sphere. But the mana was a part of him, and he should be able to manipulate any part of the sphere, not just the outside. So he tried to pull every part of his mana sphere together. It was still hard, and required more concentration, but it was still easier than his earlier attempts. He got farther than before, but failed again. he was feeling very tired then, so he decided to take a 15min break for his mana to regenerate before trying again.
His fifth attempt was a successful failure. He once again took about one tenth of his mana, and managed to pull it to a small sphere that was the right size. He was overjoyed at first, only for the teacher to walk by and say that he needed about twice the mana. It took him another two attempts to get the density right.
"Great job, now, you can move on to step two. At the moment your mana is copying the essence of air, if you move it around, you'll notice it takes more concentration than earlier. But because you hopefully haven't been thinking about it turning into air, it has only copied few aspects of air essence, meaning it still behaves more like mana than air. So what you should do now, is to form your mana ball in the water bucket, and imagine all the different aspects of the water. Imagine how the water is cold, liquid, wet and whatever else you can come up with, and your mana will be able to copy the aspects of water essence more easily. Don't worry if you can't do anything more than turn the mana liquid, we'll fix that later this week" Kyrie told Hector.
Hector decided to take another short break before he started. It took two tries for Hector to get the small mana ball to form in the water. It wasn't any harder than earlier, but because he wasn't perfect. Once he formed the dense sphere, he started thinking about what water is. He thought about the molecules, how they were made from oxygen and hydrogen, the way they were bonded, which made water into a polarized molecule, how that affected how different substances dissolved in water. He thought about how important water was for life, how it interacted with light, and overall tried to squeeze out every little juicy bit of knowledge he'd learned in his years in a science focused highschool.
Hector could feel his control over his mana start to weaken, so he lifted it up and out of the bucket. It was no longer a invisible part of his body, it was real. A drop of water floating in the air, right in front of his face. He blurted out a bunch of random noises, at which point he felt the soothing and relaxing feeling of leveling up to level 2. Unfortunately, his noises caused everyone's, including his concentration. The drop of water fell in the bucket, and made a slight plop. Most people in the class glared at Hector for a while, before continuing with their own stuff.
Hector realized that he still could feel his drop of water mixed in the bucket. It hadn't yet fully dissipated out of his control, on fact only a small amount of the drop had done so. He remembered the teacher mentioning something about the more accurately the essences properties were replicated with the mana, the longer it'd take to dissipate. He gathered his drop together, and lifted it to where he could easily see it, before calling for the teacher.
"How! This is extremely advanced water mana. Where did you study, who are you?" Kyrie shouted out in surprise.
Hector lost his focus, and for the second time, the water drop fell into the bucket.
"W-hat do you mean. I'm just me." Hector stammered.
"Your knowledge of water essence is at least as high as mine, and I've studied and experimented the workings of essence for nearly twn years. You didn't even know what essence was yesterday, So where did you study?" Kyrie sharply explained, calming down a little bit.
"I'm a Wanderer, so nowhere around here. I went to Highschool and University, where I mostly focused on the natrual sciences and math. Don't know about my essence theory though, it's probably at novice"
"Hmm, that is curious. Those are usually the knowledge of the scholars at the city library, not a mage. We usually think about what the purpose of something is, or essence in other words, instead of what causes what it does. Thinking about complex theories can be problematic while manipulating mana."
"Why would it be problematic?"
"Essence defines what something does, science explains how. When throwing a ball of fire at someone, you can imagine it devouring what it touches to create heat and light, with science you'd have to imagine exactly how and what burns. Doing that on the fly is difficult, and making small mistakes or having misunderstood something can easily be fatal. Sure, the best scholars who have studied science for decades can change the colors of flames, or make air freeze solid, but a mage with a few weeks or days of training can light a fire or increase their strength. With months of training we can make simple enchantments and cast spells. Years or even decades, we are much more powerful" Kyrie said, now seemingly back to her usual self.
she sighed before continuing"However, a sage of Natrual sciences will probably be more powerful and versatile than a sage of essence theory, but they'd need to spend a dozen lifetimes of study and research just to reach that point. They have to reach Journeyman to even be able to use their knowledge while casting spells. A novice in essence theory can already start casting spells at the novice or beginner stage."
"What about studying both the essence theory, and science?" Hector asked.
"That isn't something that's been done successfully to my knowledge so far. Mixing why something happens and what it does together in one spell would be either impossible, extremely difficult or useless. It hypothetically could allow someone to create spells that normally are considered impossibilities, like solid shadows or cold fire, or it might not. Most likely it would just be a more complex way to cast spells that could be done with both science and essence. You should try transforming your mana again, but this time think about what water does, it's properties and uses, instead of what causes them." Kyrie said before she walked to help another student.
Hector thinking about the possibilities of combining science and essence based magic together, started to gather his mana in a small dense sphere in the water once again. Even though he thought it'd be unlikely (as it seemed essence was just a way of describing stuff), If there was any way to create new types of matter that seem to defy every law of physics with magic, he would figure it out sometime. But for now, he would have to figure out as much as he could about essence.
It was nowhere near as good as his first try. He thought about how water was liquid, reflected light, was wet and felt cold. When he lifted his mana from the bucket, It had exactly those properties and nothing more. It looked like water, but when he let his concentration go, it started to dissipate much faster than his earlier attempt, so he knew it wasn't as good as earlier. It seemed that thinking about what gave water those properties also gave it other properties. But when using essence, he'd have to imagine all the specific properties.
His next few attempts were better, each time he came up with new aspects of water essence, making the replication more accurate. Within an hour, his water was much better, and he realized why using essence was less versatile than using science, but took less time to study. Truly understanding how molecules, chemical reactions and all that works, would allow one to use them in any way. Knowing everything about how water works, would also give some info on how fire, or air works, maybe they could even turn lead to gold. But someone who only knows about the essence of water, wouldn't necessarily know anything about the essence of fire.
By the end of the day, Hector could replicate water, air and fire with both his knowledge of natrual science, and what he figured out about essence. He could even decently copy the essence of the bucket, and using it he could lift a small amount natural water in the air. His mana well had also grown at least tenfold, instead of ten drops of water, he now could do one hundred. The teacher even told him that he shouldn't come to the school before Monday, as they'd use the time to teach everyone to do what Hector already could. The idea was that on Monday he'd go meet the headmaster again, so that he could join the school, meaning that he'd have five days to do something else. But for now, he'd sleep.