Lieren watched with yeasty eyes as Harita, wearing a borrowed apron with a heart on it, stirred the boiling stew with a happy whistle.
"Hey…M-…Lieren. Do you want to go hunting later? You've gotten pretty good at skinning wolves. So I thought—"
Lieren cut him off immediately. "Sorry. There's something else I have to do."
"What something else?" There was slight doubt in the man's eyes.
'Ah!'
"Oh, umm… It's kid stuff. Adults wouldn't understand!" Lieren yelled, dashing away.
'Not again.'
Making sure that his Aegis was appropriately distracted, he covertly hid in the dark shadows of the shaky carriage. The creaky floor platform creaked as he did so, but the boy just shrugged it off and sat with his legs crossed, his hands intertwined just like he had sneakily read all those years ago. Two years, in fact.
Lieren took a deep long breath and let it out slowly with a heavy exhale. He did this a couple more times, slowly but eventually calming his words.
As he did so, a familiar set of words seemingly read themselves to him openly.
The Theory of Mana and It's Machinations Volume 2: By Ramel Karentes & Namisa Karentes
An Adorned imagination and creativity is the key to developing a magical ability, often requiring both.
Except for talent, lineage, and other infallible traits; a mage's imaginary capability to weave and form the innumerable combination and vast applications that constitute what form a spell will take, as well as the specifics of it, will truly require at the very least skill and creativity to a degree.
Of course, this does not mean that Adorned with limited imagination are worse than those with higher imaginations. In fact, it is the contrary.
Adorned with rudimentary creativity are more likely to produce simple, yet powerful abilities, focusing on a single aspect of said ability to refine over time. Using this method constitutes requiring a shorter amount of time to master said ability, given that they reach several breakthroughs or do not suffer any mental blocks, whatsoever.
The general idea has just declared and publicized this to better promote the young budding mage's curious minds with next to no effort on their part. Which is not bad, per se, but otherwise suffocating when confronting more diverse and malleable spells that can counter their own. It is a moral dilemma just to choose one category to branch off on, yet alone the chosen application of it.
An Adorned's mentality will more often than not affect the form that a spell will take; their given psychological aspect and physical attributes influencing the finished product to either better suit their needs or improve upon it in the frame of a condition or restriction.
A restriction, by magical standards, is a self-implicated rule that a mage might bestow to a given ability to harness it's weaknesses and flaws to better improve on a spell's given aspect such as, but not limited to: speed, accuracy, power, range, duration, are of effect, or mana cost.
A single restriction may improve upon the more than one of these aspects, but more often than not, it will only supplement one.
A condition, on the other hand, follow the same principles of a restriction. Like a restriction, it is self-implicated and limit an aspect of the ability to better improve its strengths. These can be described in the form of: what, where, who, when, and how.
Conditions are the required actions like, for example: a gesture, needed to cast or fully apply a spell.
The forms that a restriction and condition could take are as diverse as spells themselves, nearly infinite in nature.
Lieren shut off his mind, having gathered what he needed and calmed his heartbeat. His pulse came in an even rhythm, his blood flowing to his body and brain steadily with every desire to keep him awake.
Even Lieren didn't know if he will be after what he's about to do.
With a heavy exhale, the boy focused on the aura around him; that thin film of radiant light that surrounded him at all times…and turned it off.
His stomach unexpectedly churned and his heart grew suddenly heavy, like he head just eaten something vile and abominable, something like a Hydra's venom or a Revenant's poison.
Cold sweat ran down the boy's face and stuck his shirt to his back he perspired like a waterfall, his deleterious decision brought agonizing pain throughout his already aching muscles and brittle bones. The boy felt like a thin friable stick. Each second brought him demoralizingly closer to a gruesome truth, one that he obstinately shirked away from.
There was something maliciously wicked in the air, around him, and in everybody. As the scrawny boy took more and more of it in, he sagaciously realized that, perhaps, it was something not meant to be wielded by humans, only to be enforced by those great beings above and beyond, farther than what he, and everything else could ever reach.
The ethereal, almost ghastly entity avidly wrapped around the boy's prone and slavishly exposed body. It vivaciously wrapped around him in a covetous grasp, holding the scrawny boy in a domineering enfold.
The boy, as backbreaking and hellacious of a nightmarish task he had voluntarily put himself in, he ardently persisted, absorbing and integrating the ghastly energy into his scrawny body.
His Resistance, the boy's immanent ability, did not actually disappear, instead acting as a pugnacious filter by which the ghastly entity is perfunctorily sifted and purified through to be assimilated by the scrawny boy within himself.
Lieren took steady even breaths, staying as lucid as lucid as possible. It was not an easy process, which he lugubriously expected. But, still…
This was simply, purely, substantially: too much.
Expecting the worst, the boy prepared himself for a painful—maybe even traumatic experience, steeling his mind and preparing his body, making radically certain to keep himself ready for whatever it was waiting for him.
It was, way beyond his expectations, monstrously beyond what he ever imagined, beastly surpassing his comparatively small imaginations.
It was frighteningly powerful.
It was exceedingly profound.
It was immensely complicated.
It was blindingly beautiful.
It was mind-bogglingly confusing.
It was devilishly enticing.
It was understandably unyielding.
It was appropriately shapeless.
It was beyond what anybody is, are, was, and ever will be.
And that was exactly why…
"I want even more of it. Beyond what this body can take. Above what this vessel can harness. Past what is possible; into what is impossible, make that finalize that potential…and surpass it. Reaching and going beyond what is known and unknown."
Thoughts. Powerful, profound, complicated, beautiful, confusing, enticing, unyielding, shapeless thoughts coagulated in the boy's mind. It felt…odd, comforting, and disgusting. It did not feel like his but somebody else's—somebody holding much more deep, profound and genius thoughts than he ever could.
Lieren nevertheless accepted these thought and the knowledge and insight contained within them and embodied it.
He felt—no, was indisputably certain that, even with his limited intellect and myopic wisdom, he knew that he could improve upon these thoughts, make them better and stronger, give them the power to rid him of his foes, settle debts, and protect those dear to him—and this time, he won't fail.
Instead, he will continuously improve what he never could, surpassing all expectations.
The collapsed on the floor of the rickety carriage, his lungs furiously burning as the boy gasped for oxygen, voraciously taking in breaths. His mind felt like an untangled yarn ball, scattered and laid about incomprehensibly like a loused up spider web. The pieces were everywhere, all around him.
The edges of Lieren's lips curled up unconsciously.
All he needed to do was piece it together.
◇◆◇◆◇
Meanwhile, as the naive boy fell into deep slumber from his self-afflicted travail: a regal figure sat on his throne-like chair, reading a book with lazy, apathetic gaze, barely glancing at each page as he flipped page after page furiously.
His ears perked. "…Oh. What do we have here?"
He looked up with only his eyes, his face resting at the same level as before. His gaze held a curious luster as a formless wicked entity invaded the space with its infectious aura, blending into the darkness with pliable ease.
The King raised his head and smiled satisfactorily.
Diamond strings designed like brilliant grids lay about everywhere evenly, but not definitely. They waved ever so slightly amidst the boundless darkness, their form staying true amidst the caliginous abyss.
Normally, these encompassed the darkness like an uber-powerful adhesive, embracing the darkness in a constricting grip, eventually adjusting into a less visible form.
Except, of course, right now, because of the naïve and, frankly: foolish boy.
King conformed to the wicked entity almost instantly, assimilating it into his space, granting it a clear-cut form.
Over all things, King chose books as the entity's form, lots of them.
A gratified smile on his lips, King willed a book to his hand, and—as he imagined exactly—a different book appeared, bearing the same appearance and features as the one he was just reading.
With a new and fresh expression on his face, King opened the book and handily took a deep breath.
"You foolish, foolish boy. You have no idea what you have just done."