Thud!
Looking at the thick book set in front of him, Kiro frowned as he wondered why he wanted to learn magic in the first place.
"Alright, you need to start with the basics before you can try doing what I do. Every day you'll read this book for four hours then after we will do an hour of spell practice. When you're done with this you can do what you want for the rest of the day" Lara said as she saw Kiro look sad after hearing her plans for him.
Smiling as she sat across from him at their dinner table, Lara locked eyes with her son as she said to him, "I know that is a lot of time for you but trust me after you start reading you'll be asking me to read even after the four hours are done."
Seeing the denial in her son's eyes, Lara decided to help get him started as she motioned Kiro over, to which he quickly got up and pulled a chair to her side. Waiting for him to take a seat, she stretched her hand out a little towards his head to rub his hair while saying "You're getting big and you can read yourself but I'll read for you today ok? Ask me any questions you have when you think of them."
Seeing Kiro nod slightly, Lara opened the book titled "Astera's Book Of Magic" as she began to read the very first page of many.
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Kiro learned a lot during the first couple of hours of magic training. This came as a slight shock to Lara she realized that he was really invested in the theory of magic, though he needed to learn a few other things before getting too far into magic.
First and foremost, Kiro learned that the world he lived in was called Astera, with his nation being the human nation of Phallus. The ruler of the humans is the royal family with the surname Caddel who have ruled for the past two thousand years. Though the world was even older with records dating back hundreds of thousands of years.
At that time the dominant species were monsters with humans only becoming the dominant species after a great war nearly fifty thousand years before. This caused the ruling species at the time, the dragons, to disappear as the other races, Elves, Orcs, Giants, Vampires, Dwarves, Mermaids, etc. all became less apparent over time, eventually disappearing enough to allow the humans to multiply and take over the empty lands.
There were places where they were unable to take over, for example, The Great Forest, the home of a majority of elves in the world, humans were able to control about half of the land in the world, the other half either inaccessible, too dangerous to live in, or in control of the other races.
Through all this time, magic has been discovered, practiced, used, and refined over the years as the technology of the world increased bit by bit. Though they were still using wooden carts and carriages to travel around in the present day, the use of magic has been theorized, tested, and refined to a high level nearly reaching the powers of the weakest ancient magic from the period when dragons ruled.
After that brief lesson about the world he lives in, Kiro learned that the mages were separated into six levels of power, F to S, with the spells categorized into corresponding tiers, from one to six. With each breakthrough to a new level, the body becomes more engrained with mana, strengthening the body to accomplish inhuman speeds and use inhuman strength with an S rank mage/knight rumored to be able to travel close to speeds approaching mach one and having enough power to destroy portions of the continent at will.
Additionally, he learned a key fact about how magic is used in the current day and age. There were two ways to cast magic, Spellweaving and Incantations.
Spellweaving refers to weaving the spell with your hand. This means that the mage will need to physically write the spell in the space in front of them. Though this seemed ridiculous to Kiro, Lara explained that this made the spells cast a lot stronger than the same spell of an incantation mage.
On the opposite side, an Incantation made simply channels magic through their body and using their wand or their body itself, cast magic without needing to write it like a spell weaver, making this faster in most circumstances in exchange for the power of the spell becoming weaker than a spell weaver.
There were also people on both sides who can shorten a spell to a few words, the requirement being that they are extremely proficient in learning and casting magic in general. Usually, only one person out of a thousand can do this. They are extremely talented individuals that can quick chant incantations or speed weave their spells, giving them the tools to become high-rank mages in the future.
. As for chantless magic, which forgoes the need to weave or chant entirely, the castor has to have a mastery over the spell they cast, which means most chantless spells cast over time happen to be low-level spells practiced for decades before the castor masters it perfectly.
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Resting her hand under her chin, Lara smiled watching Kiro's ecstatic expression as he continued to ask her questions despite it being nearly two hours after they initially started.
Realizing he was getting lost in the more advanced topics she had brought up as their conversation branched off from basic element types to the spell rankings and the power of high-level spells, she had to bring him back to his current level as she remarked, "We can talk about this another time Kiro, right now you will start from F rank, the beginner rank where you can cast basic tier 1 spells. After that, you'll work your way up from F to E then to D, and so on.
Feeling his mood sink as his energy was slowly drained after hearing his mother's words, Kiro thought for a moment before asking, "Why am I learning with a sword if I can just learn magic from you mom?"
Watching his mom begin to laugh softly after hearing her question, Kiro wondered if he asked a stupid one until she gave him an answer after some time, saying," Some people won't be as good at learning complex magic spells or have the capability to cast a lot of magic without getting tired,. So instead they work with other weapons, a sword, a spear, a bow, anything they can. Want to guess why?" she asked, throwing a question back to Kiro.
"Because they still want to be useful?" he answered without a second thought.
"Kinda, while some people won't have the talent for learning complex spells they will be able to use simpler magic that is more focused on increasing their physical ability, or the strength of their weapons."
"Enhancement magic?"
"Exactly! Though they enhance themselves and their weapons, causing them to be able to match mages or protect them if necessary. Think about it, if we were off somewhere fighting a big monster and you didn't know magic as well as I did, you would still want to fight with me, help, and protect me right?" Lara asked, creating a hypothetical scenario into the conversation to get Kiro to understand better.
"Mhmm…" Kiro said as he began to get lost in thought. Seeing this, Lara let him come to an understanding on his own before continuing the conversation until his four hours of reading time came to an end.
"It's time for your hour of practice, get up," Lara said as she saw through the window Rudy raising four fingers towards her. Waving him away, Lara got up from her chair and lead Kiro outside, despite his insistence on wanting to read the book longer.
"We've only gone through ten pages sweetie, there are hundreds left before you are finished. I suspect you'll finish it in a year at least." Lara said as she stood in front of him after making it a safe distance from the house.
"Now we will focus on getting you accustomed to feeling the mana inside of you," she whispered as she placed a hand on his chest.
Feeling her hand on him, Kiro felt a bit confused until he felt something enter his body and begin moving around inside of him, filling him with energy. "Mana? This is how it feels…"
"Focus! You need to remember how this feels so you can do it yourself. Now do your best to remember exactly how I am circulating the mana through your body. This is the most efficient way, any other way is going to make it harder to control your mana in the future," Lara stressed once again, not wanting Kiro to lose focus.
"I understand…" Kiro said as he closed his eyes and concentrated on the feeling of mana flowing through his body while doing his best to ignore the feeling of wanting to burn the extra energy away by running back inside and reading all night long.