A Sinner’s Chance

School life suited me quite well, though that was likely because I was able to choose the majority of my classes and much of what I was learning felt enjoyable. There were of course classes I didn't enjoy, such as calligraphy and dance, but until I became an adult, Alcrem and Marian had some sway over the classes I was to take, and they obviously preferred that I learn the Skills of a housewife over Skills meant for more dangerous professions.

That said, they still expected me to be able to defend myself so I was still able to train my combat and magic Skills. However, since I was still a first year student most of the advanced classes were unavailable to me, so I was stuck with classes that were not extremely helpful. There were a few classes that actually retained my full attention, one of them being Magical Theory. It was a class I'd picked on a whim and one that I had though would be a boring lecture of things I already knew. While the class was indeed a lecture conducted by a old and wizardly old man and covered or reiterated things I'd already learned there was plenty of new content that delved deeper into the workings of magic and ways to apply it.

For instance, the most common way to use magic was through formations, of which there were three types. Chants, the easiest and most used formation type, by speaking a string of ancient words together one guided their mana to take the desired effect. The downside of chanting was that it always output the same result, regardless of Affinity. This meant that if two mages were to use the same chant they'd create an effect that was identical, the sole difference would be the mana used by each depending on their Affinity.

Magic Circles were the second most used formation and had a wide range of applications. Most permanent magical effects were the work of this kind of formation and they were used frequently in both alchemy and enchanting along with most forms of magical research. The reason magic circles were not as widespread is that they were expensive, even the most simple of them were beyond the price range of even lesser nobles, let alone common citizens.

The final and least understood formation were Magic Arts. The professor didn't go into too much detail, but there was a method of using one's body movements as a form of mana manipulation allowing you to cast spells by performing a set of movements. There were several kinds of Magic Arts but each was a closely guarded secret, and while they did occasionally appear in auctions there price quickly became exorbitant meaning no researcher was that willing to purchase them for study.

It was with great surprise that I learned that formations were not the only way to use magic, primordial magic was one such method. It involved controlling your mana manually and shaping it to cause your desired effect. This was extremely difficult for most people as even if they managed to assert control over their mana, they lacked the knowledge and imagination required to bring the effects out. Many historical Heroes had been proficient with primordial style magic due to their advanced knowledge of science. This was a frustrating fact for me to learn since while I also had advanced scientific knowledge, most of my Affinities were likely too low to properly bring about any effect.

Thankfully the two S-rank Affinities I had were also the ones with the least amount of formation magic available. Most people with Life Affinity and therefore the affiliated formation belong to the churches, making learning them difficult unless you were apart of them. Besides the commonly available Life Formations and whatever Elaine taught me I was going to have to experiment to find out what I could and couldn't do, thankfully I could raise Superhuman Regeneration's level at the same time.

Vibro was even worse off and was actually considered an interesting but mostly useless Affinity. In addition to a lack of formations people didn't understand how to apply vibration to cause effects. While I didn't know exactly how certain effects worked I at least had a solid idea of what was possible.

There were a few other interesting tidbits I learned about the Affinities and magic in general, such as that ice wasn't part of Water Affinity, but lava was, or that everyone had a certain space around them commonly referred to as a Territory. Essentially an area where other mages couldn't manifest their magic, so it wasn't possible to just create water in their lungs or other similar attacks.