I was told to lie down carefully by the lady in a white dress, as she was approaching me with a mana crystal in her hand. I knew she was trying to check my vitals and if I was a bit better than before or not.
The lady then lifted up the crystal sphere in her hands and bent down a little bit to match my eye level. She had dark green eyes, and her long black hair was tied in a side ponytail, which moved slightly with her head movements.
With a calm smile on her face, she said in a soft voice, "Don't worry… just touch the surface of this crystal."
Without saying much, or rather I had nothing to do because I knew how things were going to turn out, that's why I kept my mouth shut. I gently put my right hand on the surface of the sphere, which felt cold to touch.
The lady narrowed her eyes and focused on the sphere and hovered her palm above while she said the incantation, "Curar!"
Incantations were a series of words or rather spells used to activate a magic. To be precise, different kinds of magic had different incantations and if done correctly, it could increase the mana output by tenfold without using much mana input. They were like transformers used to supply electricity by changing the voltages.
At least that is what I read in a book.
We waited for a while, but there was no response from the mana sphere. Everyone in the room wasn't much fazed about it except the man and the lady in front of me. They seemed to have a confused look, as I asked, "Is it broken?"
The lady looked at me and hesitantly said, "I don't know, but it doesn't seem to respond."
"Did you activate it properly?" The man asked the lady as his eyes shifted onto me and the lady shook her head, being completely baffled, as nervously raised her hand over the sphere again, "Yes, let me chant it again…"
"Curar!" she said, but still there was no response, as she looked at me completely embarrassed and at a loss for words, "Eh?"
It was of course, embarrassing for her because being a medic, and not tuning your magical tool was something very irresponsible. Also, this was a sign that she was a novice in this field, not that I could tell that already by looking at how young she was.
"Curar!"
"Curar!" She repeated the incantation in a louder voice and by her face it looked like she was trying way too hard for this. Removing my hand from its surface, I looked at the lady and politely asked, "Is it calibrated properly?"
Often, tools like these needed to be calibrated with mana tuning to keep the internal receptors and circuit properly functioning.
She nervously looked back towards the man whose eyes seemed to be piercing through her and twisted her head towards me and chuckled awkwardly as she said, "I mean… I checked it just a few hours ago and it was working fine."
The tall boy in the room glanced at me again with pure contempt in his eyes. But I couldn't care less about a simple-minded baboon like him, who would be nothing but a disposable character if everything goes according to what I theorised.
Though the girl and little boy were looking at me quite curiously. Rather than contempt, they seemed to be interested in what was going on here. Probably because the little one still hadn't awakened his mana prowess to its fullest potential.
I looked at the magic sphere for a while as the man and the lady seemed to be talking with eyes instead of spelling out words. I could understand why the lady in white was nervous about this.
I looked at her and suggested in an ambiguous tone I pointed towards the base of the crystal and started, "Maybe there's a problem with the mana core wavelength sensor inside, or something…"
The lady looked at me and nodded along as I said that and as she was about to repeat a part of what I said, she looked at me with a baffled expression and asked in surprise, "Wave… how do you have knowledge of this?"
"I guessed it since most mana crystals nowadays work on the principle of core exchange, so I thought that might be the case." Looking at her surprised expression, I got confused and answered as she rolled her eyes and sighed, "No, that's not what I meant."
Looking at our conversation, the man asked me with a bit of curiosity in his voice even though it was really subtle, "How do you know this? How old are you?"
"I'm… 12" Taking a slight pause, I looked at him and answered hesitantly as the corner of his lips rose slightly into a smile and he said in an assuring tone, "That's nice to hear. I think you'll get along well with them."
Get along with him? So the man clearly had every intention of letting me stay with them. But what was the catch in this? Ain't no man, let alone a noble family like him, would let a kid like me stay at their place for free.
Even looking at the man's eyes, it was hard to tell what he was thinking, and neither did he appear to be the type of man to reveal his true intentions prematurely. His eyes were cold and calculating, even his words were sugar-coated.
Though, I wasn't very sure about my intuition because I had a gut feeling that this man had some other reason behind his act of kindness. Because humans are weird as they never word without a latent bargain in the ordeal.