How easy would it have been if I could just show a technique and have the other person copy what I did. But it wasn't possible to sense mana without passable ability at controlling it too. Our only choice was to return to the ancestral roots of magic training and use the awkward vehicle of words.

  I had Emily stand in front of the garden pool with a corrected posture. I was a bit vexed by how good she looked in that baby blue summer dress. The cloth was washed out and clearly old, the collar a little frayed on the edges, the design plain and inexpensive, but it was like made to be worn just by her. She showed none of the unease I felt when wearing dresses. In fact, I’d changed to a shirt and pants after breakfast, because I didn’t want to endure comparison to her.

  No, that was not the topic today. Back to magic.

  “You should already have a rough idea how this works,” I told her. “The energy channel is like a vertical river inside you, or a tree, split into its branches. Ancient people called it ‘mana vein’ and associated it with different body parts, such as the spine or liver, but they were a bit off. Mana circuitry isn’t a bodily organ like blood vessels, but a metaphysical framework formed into your soul. The spiritual body overlaps with the physical body and they share senses, but the mana channel doesn’t have an actual material form.”

  “It doesn't? Even though you can feel it so clearly?” Emily asked.

  “The body can't be separated from the soul, after all. Not while you live.”

  “Yeah, that kinda stuff goes way over my head.”

  It just happened to be the magic in magic. Her attitude wasn’t very disciplined, but at least she was paying attention.

  “Along the main meridian are five major convergence nodes. Wizards have known them for thousands of years and called them by many names. Chakra. Gates. Wheels. Circles. Today’s Mysterium favors the less mystical term ‘energy nexus.’ Basal nexus, abdominal nexus, heart nexus, throat nexus, and crown nexus, in order. These nodes anchor your soul to your body, to different emotional states and natural energies, and magic is projected through them. Here’s another reason why mages must mind their feelings. Blockade or imbalance in any of these nodes will impede your casting, and may, in extreme cases, even ruin your ability.”

  “Gosh,” Emily remarked, brow furrowing. “Come to think of it, I sometimes feel this kind of ‘lump’ in the way when I’m drawing power, but I didn’t know it was such a big deal. I just try a little harder and the feeling usually goes away.”

  “...Any sense of discomfort or resistance in channeling means there’s a blockade forming. Trying to brute-force it is not a good idea. In a minor case, the block can be cleared that way, but in a bad case, it can break the nexus itself and trigger overloading.”

  “Ehhhh…”

  Here we had one reason why education was vital. One of many.

  “Focus only on circulating, for now. Orient yourself properly and open the channel, as you normally would. But instead of letting the energy pass through and erupt through the crown nexus, divide it and guide it back down, along the back of the arms to the fingers, back up along the inner arms and down the sides, down the legs to your feet, and up the inner thighs, to reconvene back in the basal nexus. And then start over from the beginning, driving the mana up the main channel towards the crown and around and around. This is the basic form of mana circulation.”

  “Kuh—!” Emily started to cough and bent over. “Gaah! It feels like I’m about to burst from inside! While pricked all over by tiny needles! Is this method really safe?”

  “Don't lose control. It feels bad because only your mainline is hardened and the extremities have gone unused. Don’t draw too much power until you get used to it. If it gets unbearable, simply suspend the circulation and close the channel. The excess mana will fade away on its own. Just, whatever you do, don’t try to forcibly suppress or reverse the flow. That will definitely break something. I can't use healing magic, so you'll die.”

  “O-okay. I'll be careful…”

  Emily leaned on her knees for a bit, steadying her breathing, and tried again. But she was a quick learner and, after the clumsy start, got the flow eventually under control.

  “Is this really effective?” she asked. “It seems so…plain.”

  “Simple things tend to go overlooked. Everyone knows walking is good for you, but how many actually go out for a stroll regularly without a special reason? It’s boring and tiresome and people think they’re busy. True, it serves you little if you only do it once in a blue moon. But if you can make it a routine, circulation is the best lawful method to amplify your output. It also improves your physical fitness, self-control, and general well-being. At high volume, this technique can even be used to accelerate the body’s natural recovery rate and neutralize poisons. In certain cultures, they call this ‘cultivation,’ but I don't like that word very much.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because.”

  “...”

  It has a poor ring.

  We immersed ourselves in practice in the afternoon garden, mindful only of the movements of magical energy, and being bound under an almost religious silence.

  Maintaining a balanced circulation with the dragon rings on was, as expected, torturous. As soon as energy passed through my left side, the rings tore at it and threw it in a flux, devouring almost everything. But excluding the arm from the circulation was not an option. If the circuitry withered, the limb would no longer conduct magic, and in the worst case, could go into necrosis. I could only endure the revolting feeling and force the flow through.

  “When you have good control, you can gradually draw more power,” I spoke, half to distract myself from the agony. “This is one of the key advantages of circulating. The caster can freely adjust the difficulty level. The more mana you can handle, the faster your growth rate will be, but there’s no need to get greedy. Simply maintaining a stable stream will lead to progress over time. The same way as a river widens its channel by erosion. The circuitry hardens and becomes better insulated, so casting spells won’t wear you down so fast.”

  “Hmm...”

  “Once you get the hang of it, you can try to ‘stall’ the mana as it enters each nexus. Slow it down as far as you comfortably can without completely blocking it, before allowing it to leave the node. The stream will build pressure and become harder to manage, but this reinforces the capacity of the nexus nodes themselves. They’re more durable than the base circuitry, but ironically receive the least burden in standard casting. It’s recommended that you train only one nexus per session to mitigate the risks. Each one is associated with different elements and strengthens rituals of that element, so you should prioritize the nexus that best supports your talents. This training method is known as Iron Gate Threshold.”

  “How long will I have to keep this up?” Emily asked with a grunt, small beads of sweat forming on her temples. “It’s getting kinda heavy already…”

  “As long as you can. Even fifteen minutes will give decent results if you do it every day. But the longer you last, the better. Just, never do it alone until you're certain you can keep control. And don't force it if you're not feeling well. I shouldn't have to tell you why.”

  “Ugh! I’m saying uncle now!”

  Emily stopped and plopped down to lie on her back on the paved, sun-warmed garden path. The leftover mana escaped her figure in a fizzy steam only visible to my eyes. Her channel capacity was quite good but…Eight minutes and twenty-eight seconds?

  So soft.

  In the Nines’ training, they fed us powdered nethercite before each session to ensure we ran at full capacity. One session was ninety minutes. Somebody smart had calculated that if we were precisely 18.82% over the safety limit, the risk of overloading was an acceptable 1/8 and channel growth as big as it could theoretically be.

  But the theory was based on statistical averages and didn't account for personal differences. Someone went critical every day. If the unbalancing was noticed in time, an overseer could still fix it, but once the overloading fully began, nobody would risk their life for a nameless orphan. All we could do was watch them die. It was the single biggest cause of death in training. The great culling. But those without the necessary capacity and grit had no use as soldiers.

  “Wonder what’s for dinner tonight,” Emily pondered, and I was back in the evening garden again.

  Blessed were the ignorant.

  * * *

  It was easy to misjudge Emily Troyard, but she had clearly practiced hard in her clumsy, outdated way, and obtained an intuitive hold over mana. The academy had rated her a budding Tier 3, but because of how little she knew about energy control, her channel utilization had been nowhere near 100% then. After I got her on the right track and fixed her bad habits, she progressed by leaps and bounds. Only a week later, she was like a different person in terms of output and casting speed. Her pure energy yield was already four or five times mine with the rings on, and growing, though she didn't know many techniques to spend her vim on.

  It was time to raise the hurdle.

  Friday evening, I led Emily into the trees at the southern end of the estate. I took her to the midst of the uneven collection of beeches and shrubs, where I had her stand in a small clearing between the ridged gray trunks, and covered her eyes with a black cloth.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  “Uh, Hope?” she nervously spoke. “Could you kindly explain what we're going to do today?”

  “Kiss passionately under the cover of the trees?”

  “Ehh, can girls do that?”

  What a lame reaction.

  “I'm going to shoot projectiles at you until you master sensory magic.”

  “Excuse me, what!?”

  Much better.

  The blindfold firmly on, I tapped the tip of her pointy nose. “Observe your surroundings solely by magic and evade the shots as they come. Of course, I won't stay in one place all the time. I'll be changing position, so you can't just blindly guess where the fire is coming from.”

  “You were serious!? Hold on, hold on, hold on! I’m not even sure I’ve got the hang of Mana Sense yet! Can’t you explain one more time how it works?”

  “Experiencing it with your body is the best teacher.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if you just hate me…”

  This girl. She wouldn’t even try to think for herself, but wielded her pitifulness as a weapon to extort the answers. She had figured out my weak points, if nothing else.

  “Emily, what is the first law of mechanics?”

  “The first law of what?”

  “Your general education score wasn’t so bad. You should know this. ‘An object in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by outside forces.’ The same principle applies to magic too. Project mana in waves around you, while feeling how it moves. These waves are unaffected by gravity and will continue to expand linearly at a fixed rate, unless they collide with something. Through these disruptions in the flow, you can ‘feel’ your surroundings with your mind, without relying on your eyes.”

  “Can I? Really?”

  “Not only possible, it’s mandatory. Mana Sense is the single most important skill for a mage. Some forms of magic are too vague and too fast for your bodily senses to keep up with. If you end up in a fight with a professional wizard, you will die without ever knowing what's going on, unless you master sensory magic. So you will master it. Get ready.”

  If you can’t learn even this, you’ll never be of any use to me. In which case, I’ll really have no more excuses to hang onto you.

  I left the clearing and walked among the trees. I could move very quietly, if I wanted to. In my pocket, I had a handful of peanuts I took from the kitchen. Finding a good spot in the shadow of a bit thicker tree, I took out a goober, briefly weighed it on my palm, leaned out and threw it. The throw landed quite precisely in the middle of the girl’s forehead, as she stood dazedly still. I could still do that much without any spells.

  “Ow!” Emily cried out, rubbing her head. “What was that!?”

  “That was you dying. Not off to a great beginning.”

  “You're crazy. Did you know that?”

  “Concentrate now. Reach out with your feelings. Feeling is the basic form of Mana Sense. The harder way is seeing, attuning your brain to parse the feedback as visual data. That’s the advanced form of sensory magic, known as Third Eye. It's significantly harder to learn, but also allows for much faster responses and more comprehensive analysis. That's your goal. I want you to fully make this technique your own before the start of the school term, to the point that it becomes an automation.”

  “Easy for you to say. So why is it necessary to throw things at me…?”

  “Because your senses sharpen when you feel threatened. You wouldn't learn Third Eye in a million years if I just told you how it works. Nobody does. So we're forcing your brain to learn it without your conscious involvement, by exploiting your base survival instinct. It should be doable, as long as you have enough circuit capacity and the necessary state of mind.”

  “Be honest with me now, Hope. You’re not just making up elaborate excuses to bully me, are you? How did you even learn to do something like this?”

  I didn’t answer and moved on to a different tree.

  When I learned sensory magic, they used stones in the first week and rifles in the last. But everybody (still alive at that point) passed the training.

  Emily was trying at least. Without the glasses on, I could see the faint emissions of her mana. But the waves she sent off were deflected by the trees, so she couldn’t pinpoint my location. Mana wasn’t a strictly natural energy and responded to the caster’s will, so it could be made to bend around objects and cover blind spots too. But that level of fine control was still beyond her. She could only throw it around in haphazard puffs like fairy dust.

  I leaned out of my hiding place and tossed another nut in between the scan waves. Though she was late, she actually detected it this time and swung her right hand to the side, as if to catch a fly. But the peanut was coming from the left and hit her shoulder.

  “You're getting mirrored feedback,” I pointed out. “Don’t rush. You need to pace your scans, or the waves reflect each other.”

  “Gaah! This is so frigging hard!” she groaned.

  “Well, Third Eye is part of Mysterium’s High Mage trial.”

  “... Remind me again, why am I doing this now? I’m not even a novice yet!”

  “Because I believe you can go further than this. Instead of wasting your days at Belmesion learning only common practices, I want you to study the things that are actually difficult and get stronger. That’s what you wanted, right? To become powerful enough to help people and make a real difference? Or did you already forget about it?”

  “Who are you, seriously? Why can you do stuff that High Mages do before you've even gone to school?”

  “Is that what you should be thinking now? Focus.”

  The third peanut fell above her heart and she awkwardly scratched her modest chest.

  “That's your third death today. Do you think you have as many lives as cats do?”

  “Oh, I can't concentrate when you keep talking trash! Be quiet!”

  “I’m unbalancing you on purpose. Mages rarely get to fight in peace and quiet. Battlefield is a chaotic place. You have to keep your nerves in check, set your own mood, and shut out distractions. Take in what you observe with a calm, analytical mind. Didn't I tell you that on the exam day?”

  “Well, I wasn’t born with a heart of cold ice!”

  “You're not going to tell me how life is unfair, are you? How many times were you ever given fair treatment only because you asked for it?”

  “I don't think that's happened once.”

  “That's right. People can only live in one of two ways: either you suck it up and keep your head down. Or else, you stop playing fair. Which is your way?”

  “I don’t want to go through life on my knees.”

  “So you'll rebel and rampage mindlessly. And then you'll die...for the fourth time.”

  Emily made no effort to evade. She stood still and stiff and let the nut land on top of her head with a soft pat. It got stuck in her mixed up hair and didn’t fall.

  “When what you really should be doing is—using your head.”

  I thought I'd change the pace a bit and toss the sixth nut right after the fifth. But at the same time as I raised my hand to throw, Emily released a sudden wave of mana much quicker and stronger than those before.

  Putting too much power into the scan had the same effect as lighting a lamp in a dark room; it only blinded yourself. The more skilled the mage, the less energy they needed to get a clear overview. But Emily now drew up her full channel’s capacity and blasted it out in an omnidirectional energy barrage.

  “Ow…!”

  I didn’t have my glasses, my eyes tuned to tracking the minute movements of her energy. The rush of sparkling, blinding white hit me like a lightning bolt, and I had to cut all optic feedback.

  What was she thinking? If the goal was to blind us both and get a breather, her trick was too naive. I didn't need to see anything to hit a stationary target by memory. I tossed the peanut at Emily’s face with a quick wrist motion as soon as the emission had passed. But when I looked again, I found the “bullet” caught on her upheld palm.

  “Haha! How's that for ya, ‘boss’?”

  The blindfolded girl laughed cockily, tossed the peanut in her mouth, and chewed.

  I stood and stared. Really? She actually made a plan? She discharged another, weaker scan wave in the wake of the big blast, to screen for follow-up attacks. She figured I was reading her moves, so she baited me to attack at the timing of her own choosing...? Was that it? Beyond evading it, to catch such a small object, she needed not only to shut out everything else, but also a degree of visual comprehension.

  “You actually saw it...?”

  “Well, for just a bit, I think I did!”

  For a time, I was lost for words.

  Experiencing a feeling so very complicated. I didn’t know it was possible to be proud of something you didn’t do yourself, but that seemed to be it. A joy that beat in my chest with a hot, heavy heat. I’d long since ceased to be fascinated by my own techniques, but Emily’s success now rekindled the embers of that youthful thrill I felt when magecraft was still new and wonderful to me.

  Before I knew it, I was laughing aloud.

  “That’s incredible, Emily! You're getting the hang of it! And so quickly too!”

  The girl bashfully smiled and brushed her nose. “Hehe. I'm not a complete doofus, okay.”

  “Then, that means I won’t need to hold back anymore, right?”

  Next, let’s give the shots some acceleration and see what happens. Maybe try some less natural trajectories too?

  Emily's composure quickly faded.

  “Huh? What? Wait, we’re still doing this? Wait a minute! That one really took a lot out of me! Hope, stop! Time out!”

  What a wonderful toy I’d found.