Typhon was currently setting up what little belongings he had in his new room. Besides the bag of clothes and amenities he had at the hospital, Typhon was given a small lockbox that managed to survive the blast. To open it, Typhon needed to insert mana into the locking mechanism, but he lacked the ability to do so without a circle, so he would be focusing on that when Carmine came to help him get up to speed. For now, all he could do was read the replacement textbooks they gave him, maybe he would be able to glean some knowledge from his memories with the help of the textbooks.
Recalling the body's memories required Typhon to directly see something or someone linked to those memories, like when he looked at the box, he knew that there was something important inside yet he couldn't tell exactly what it was. Flipping through the pages of the textbook titled 'Beginners Magic Theory', Typhon found the page detailing the fundamental principles of a magic circle. Skimming through the first paragraph, information began to rush forward in Typhon's memory, filling in the gaps as he was reading with relevant theory.
From what he now recalled and what he had read, Typhon could very distinctly differentiate magic from cultivation in a rather straightforward description. Cultivation was using the natural forces of the world to manipulate what the body was capable of while magic was using your body as a tool to manipulate the world around the mage. While magic circles were comparable to a dantian in general terms of importance, their functions could not be more different in practice.
Dantains were a core of energy that served as the main store of Qi in the body. Depleting your dantian meant that you would need to recover through cultivation to use any of your techniques. Mages lacked this weakness and could feasibly use magic as frequently as possible but unlike cultivation, where a cultivator could specialise in spiritual, body or mind cultivation, the path of the mage required equal training in all of these aspects.
To use a spiritual technique you already knew as a cultivator, the only cost this would have is the amount of Qi needed to activate the technique. For a mage to use a spell they had learned, they had to combine the words of the spell as well as circulate natural mana through their magic circles and into the appendage utilising the spell. This would tax the mind and body severely if a mage was undertrained.
'While cultivation seems harder on the surface due to the time investment, magic's depths seem unfathomably deep to the current me. I look forward to learning its intricate secrets.'
For Typhon who had walked the path of a tri-cultivator, balancing the mind, spirit and body in his past life, magic presented an unsolved puzzle he looked forward to working through in this life. While it seemed that he lacked talent, the old Typhon made up for it with study, as Typhon flipped through and skimmed the passages of the textbook, more and more memories came forward and filled in the gaps in his knowledge. Before long, he heard a knock at the door. Broken out of his concentration, Typhon went and answered the door, where he found Carmine with a bundle of books under her arm. She looked past him and saw the textbooks all splayed out over the floor where Typhon was reading them. She gave him a small smirk.
"I see someone was eager to study."
Typhon gave a small smirk of his own and shrugged his shoulders.
"Magic is an interesting subject, much different from cultivation."
Carmine stepped into the room and closed the door.
"Cultivation? You were a cultivator in the past?"
"Yes, I was one of the strongest cultivators of my time."
"Wow, you must have been pretty old then. I hear that it takes a long time to get results in cultivation."
"Well, age is pretty relative for the different races. 100 years is a long time for a human while for an Oni it is only about a third of their natural life. I was fairly young for my race when I passed away."
"Oh... sorry, I don't mean to go digging through your past."
"It's no bother. Although I may have been young I was still nearly 1000 years old. Having spent a long time among the mortal races, I learnt to appreciate my longevity."
"1000 years and still young? What were you?"
Typhon looked Carmine in her eyes before shaking his head.
"It doesn't matter. I am a human in this life so I should think as a human would."
Typhon turned his back to Carmine and pulled up an extra chair to his desk for her to sit at.
"Right... Um... Typhon?"
Typhon paused and looked over his shoulder.
"Yes, Carmine?"
"I uh, I don't really know if I can relate to your situation at all but... If you ever wanna just, talk about how you're doing and things going on in your life, well... just give me a call, okay?"
Typhon turned around to look at Carmine and gave her a gentle smile.
"I appreciate it. Now, we should get started on forming this magic circle of mine."
"Forming? My brother should have already had a magic circle."
"My theory is that the backlash of whatever your brother tried destroyed his magic circle. I investigated my body shortly after the confrontation with your father to assess what was going on. I found several shards of unidentifiable energy floating around my heart which I now assume to be his shattered magic circle."
Carmine ran her hand through her hair in frustration.
"This is the worst-case scenario. A damaged magic circle requires a lot of resources to fix but a shattered one? I don't think any mage in the history of the world has ever fixed one."
Typhon tilted his head to the side.
"Really? Then would it be easier to flush out these shards and start from the bottom again?"
Carmine sighed.
"Yeah, that would be easier but the problem is that it's never been done before. The body can't handle all that pure mana so people with shattered circles typically die from mana poisoning a few weeks after. All attempts to flush that mana from the body results in broken mana circuits, meaning that you'll never use magic again."
"Couldn't I just absorb it with my dantain?"
"Dantian? Like, the core of cultivation? I don't know enough about cultivation to know if that would work but it hardly matters, everyone knows that you can't have a magic circle and a dantian. The two systems of energy manipulation can't co-exist with one another."
Her words caused Typhon's brows to furrow.
"Then why did your brother have a red core dantian before I entered his body?"
Carmine's eyes widened as she stared at Typhon.
"You... You mean to say that my brother had both a magic circle AND a dantian?"
"Yes, not to mention that his body had extreme cultivation talent. The fact that he was seemingly born with a red core dantian would be why he struggled so much with magic. Yet somehow he managed to do the impossible and form a magic circle with a dantian. Your brother was a very talented individual, it just seemed that no one knew how to nurture those talents."
Carmine's eyes began to water and she fell to her knees with slumped shoulders.
"So... he wasn't a failure? Just that... everyone else failed him?"
Typhon hesitated with his reply. He closed his eye and thought for a brief second before responding.
"I wouldn't say that anyone failed him besides your parents... if what you say about magic circles and dantians not being able to co-exist is common knowledge, it makes sense that no one caught it. Still, your parents should have had some knowledge about his aptitude when he was born. Even in my era doctors checked for talent at birth, it was just a natural thing to do."
Carmine looked up at Typhon with tears still in her eyes, threatening to spill out.
"So... you think they knew?"
"I would find it extremely difficult to believe they had no idea."
Slowly the look of grief on Carmine's face turned into one of rage.
"Then... they just abused him for no reason? They treated him like shit for 18 years just because he was born a cultivator!? WHY!?"
Typhon put his hand on her shoulder and looked her in the eye.
"I don't know, but if you want, then I will help you look for answers once I'm ready to take powerful people on. If I am able to absorb these shards and form a magic circle, then I will be the only known person with both a dantian and a magic circle. The potential for what I could accomplish is potentially limitless but right now, I need you to push your feelings aside for a moment. Right now, I need you to teach me everything you can. Please, Carmine..."
Carmine wiped the tears out of her eyes and looked at Typhon with resolute eyes.
"Okay... let's get started."