Ark presses a button on a remote in his left hand and suddenly multiple targets pop out of the wall. Quick as a flash, he pulls out the other revolver on his right and fires a flurry of shots of light blue light from the hip and each of the targets which were previously glowing and moving around, immediately stop and the glowing lights disappear as each of them are accurately hit.
Mel stands, mouth agape, as she tries to comprehend what just happened.
After shooting all the targets with precise accuracy, he spins his revolver back into his holster and looks back at Mel proudly.
"Now, it's your turn!" Ark says to her encouragingly but Mel is still standing there in shock.
"How… How am I supposed to do that?!" Mel asks frantically.
Ark chuckles, "Don't worry, I am not expecting you to do what I just did. That is impossible for most, even veteran, gunslingers. I just wanted to show off!" he says cockily which causes Mel to roll her eyes.
"Okay… so how do I do this exactly?" Mel asks, standing there holding out the surprisingly heavy revolver with both hands.
"Harnessing mana for the first time is not easy, but with your amount of mana, it should be easier than for most. What you have to do first is to close your eyes and imagine the flow of mana through your body." Ark instructs and Mel closes her eyes.
She stops holding out her gun and instead lets it hang down by her legs.
In her mind, she imagines the mana in her body like veins travelling throughout her body. She is unaware if this is actually how it works but Arks instructions were vague and this is the easiest way for her to imagine it.
"My body… feels warm, is that mana?" she asks.
"Probably…"
"Huh?"
"Alright! The next step is to move around the mana in your body!"
She again tries to imagine moving the mana throughout her body.
"If it helps, try directing it to your hands, and make sure to hold out your gun. Don't want to accidentally shoot your feet off." Ark says nonchalantly.
Hearing his warning, Mel hurriedly lifts up her gun with both hands and points it forward.
"Move it to my hands…" Mel says to herself as she moves the mana in her body to her hands. Her hands start to warm up more but then they start to cool down as the mana seems to leave her hands.
"If you've done it correctly, the mana should have gone from your hands into your gun, so open your eyes and try your gun."
She opens her eyes and aims the gun at one of the targets.
Bang!
She pulls the trigger and the gun makes a quiet noise and a slow, much smaller, gold ball of light emerges from the barrel of the gun. Mel stares, confused, at the rather different bullet that she produced.
"It looks, uh, a bit different, to yours."
"Well, of course it does, although you may have a lot of mana, your mana veins are too small and your magic control is too inexperienced. Honestly, I am surprised you were able to produce even this much."
"Oh, ok. But, uh, why is it gold?"
"Your magic attribute is light, and that is represented by a gold colour. My bullets are blue because that is the colour of basic, non-attribute magic."
"So, you don't have an attribute, Ark?"
"Umm," he hesitates, "Yeah, that's right… But anyway, you should keep practicing. The more you use magic, the larger your mana veins will expand and you'll be able to use more at a time."
"Okay, cool!"
Melissa keeps shooting the revolver at the targets. The time it takes for her to charge one shot is currently a few seconds, a lot more inefficient compared to Ark's multiple in a second.
"Okay, I've got other work to do, so how about we move onto the next weapon!" Ark tells Mel, enthusiastic to show her more.
Ark walks over to the weapons he left on the metal crate and grabs the sword. Moving over to Mel, he takes the revolver from her hands and puts it back into his holster before handing her the sword.
"This is a sword?" Mel asks.
"Correctomundo, Mel! But this is no ordinary sword, well I guess it is in this day and age, this is a mana sword! Do the same thing you did with the gun and see what happens!"
Mel channels the mana coursing through her body into her hands like she did earlier, this time it travels into the sword through the grip. The sword begins to glow gold like the bullets but instead of firing out, the sword starts to be covered by a hazy, translucent and somewhat solid mist.
"Woah!" Mel is amazed at the glowy mist that surrounds the sword.
Ark pulls out a metal training dummy from a storage room. "Strike this with the sword!"
Mel walks over to the metal dummy, still holding the glowing sword with both hands. She raises the heavy sword slowly to the side of her head before bringing it down. Although her swing is slow and lacks power, the sword slices through the metal dummy like butter.
She is taken aback by how easy the sword sliced through solid metal before looking up for answers at her grinning teacher.
"That's the power of mana! Although that swing was incredibly weak, that dummy didn't stand a chance."
Mel feels insulted but disregards it because it's true before nodding acknowledging what he said.
"Although the sword is cool," Ark continues, "It is too difficult for you to use, and isn't that effective at growing your mana veins, so you're going to have to train with that later."
"Okay," she replies, depowering the sword and handing it back to Ark.
"The next thing to learn is attribute magic!" Ark pulls out a small dusty book from his coat.
Opening it, he reads the words out loud.
"To learn attribute magic, you need to learn spells related to your attribute…" He reads before flipping through the book, "Ah ha, here it is, light magic! The best starting spell for light magic is… light?" He is a bit confused, but reads on to try and find out more. "Oh, light like a torch, duh. Okay Mel, light time! It says here, the easiest way to conjure magic is with an incantation so, here Mel, read this."
He hands Mel the dusty book and she takes a look at the part he is pointing his finger to.
She says hesitantly while holding her right hand out, "Oh… light, come forth and guide me through the darkness…"
Nothing happens except Ark sniggers and Mel gets embarrassed. "No, silly, you're still supposed to move the mana through your body like before." He corrects her.
She sighs begrudgingly before trying again,
"Oh light, come forth and guide me through the darkness." An non-physical orb appears in the air in front of her hand and lets off a dim gold light.
"I did it!" she shouts joyfully while looking at Ark for approval which Ark replies to with a thumbs up and an encouraging smile. "Can I try some of the other spells?" she asks with excitement.
"Of course! But don't worry about the incantations, when you practice enough, you won't need to use them."
"So can you use spells without incantations?"
"Basic, non-attribute magic can't be used with spells, the only way to use it is with mana weapons like guns and swords, so your light magic, but remember! You shouldn't neglect the use of basic magic, you should always use every tool at your disposal. Some stuffy nobles say that if you have an attribute, you should only use it, but don't listen to them, they've never had to fight to survive."
Mel is slightly taken aback by Ark's sudden targeted ramble but quickly acknowledges the advice given.
After this, Mel continues practicing shooting the revolver at the targets, slowly getting more accurate and building up her proficiency.
While she was doing this, Ark left to do the work he was assigned on the ship including checking the life support and engine condition. You may think Ark is too dense to be given such important jobs, and you may be right, but Ark is by all means a very diligent worker as proven by his skill when using weapons.
They each continued their work until Tholl made an announcement from the cockpit.
"Attention, all crew members! We will be leaving warp space very soon, so Mel, I recommend you come up to the cockpit, the Hub is quite the spectacular sight."
The intercom buzzed and Melissa stops training with the gun and goes to the cockpit where the rest of the party are already seated.
Sitting in one of the passenger seats without a console, she gazes out the window at the distorted space outside the Chimera.
Tholl makes a short countdown before the distorted space returns to normal and they appear with the other ships into a hub in empty space full of a large variety of ships flying around and going through the several much larger warp rings all angled in different directions. In the centre of all the rings is a giant space station shaped like a pill with a round full top half and a more empty, skeletal-like bottom half where all the ships are coming and going.
"Hey Mel, welcome to a Warp Hub!"