I Ask You, What Is Magic?

Having been burned by recklessly rushing in head first into the magnificent phenomenon called 'Magic,' Ryan was humbled and sought to further train his magical senses through meditation.

Mostly, this was because he wanted to first witness someone else use magic and show him what it actually was and how it worked.

And so the wait began. Long and boring wait, suffering through multiple winters without having developed any mystical blanket to shield himself from the merciless cold.

The only solace for baby Ryan was having young Tristan and Oliver to play around with, and sometimes, to mess around with, having Eloise become a rare angry mama hen.

Which was something Ryan craved more of, instead. Giggling whenever it happened, unknowingly saving himself and his brothers from their mother's wrath every time.

A few months into his idle training, a new face became a regular sighting in the Eatery, Cloe was her name, barely older than Tristan. Whom he also ignored as he did all strangers.

That was when he finally asked Tristan about his curiosities and got to know how the surrounding civilization worked.

According to him, they lived in some sort of village surrounded by a massive forest, almost cut-off from the rest of the world if not for the monthly travelling merchant. The village had a population of around 250 people, comprising approximately 50 families.

Interestingly, there was a culture in the village where kids of age six and older were encouraged to roam around the village and get acquainted with different people and their professions.

With the child interested and the person willing, they might enter an apprentice - teacher relationship.

Hence, the presence of Cloe. She was interested in Eloise's wonderful cooking, and wanted to learn it for herself and build a career out of it.

'I never thought I would regret mom's cooking being heavenly.' Ryan sighed, as he watched the black haired happy-go-lucky girl carry two plates of cheese buns to their customers.

'I guess she's not too annoying.' With every bright smile she made in his direction and every bite of food she fed him, she grew ever so slightly on Ryan, despite his reluctance to admit it.

Aside from getting to know about the professional status of the village, Tristan also revealed that these apprenticeships helped the kids understand their respective futures more responsibly.

'Of course, it did.'

As it was connected with what kind of magic they would be able to perform in their whole lives.

At the same age of six, kids were sent to a local, basic education system run by the village head — some kind of noble fledgling — and taught the basics of reading, writing and basic magical education.

And Tristan being the kind older brother that he was, noticed Ryan's interest and went out of his way to educate his younger sibling, bless him.

The path to magic was paved by three types of bricks, namely: Beast Souls, Runes, and Heart Engines. Each one more important than the other.

[The so-called Heart Engine is probably the magical construct required by most humans mentioned in my database.] Ryan remembered Codex's interjection, proving that only he himself was a weird hybrid surrounded by pure-bred humans, prompting no other response from him other than his growing resolve to keep it a secret.

Moving on, hearing about these things from Tristan had triggered an unlock of more information in Codex's database, filling in the gaps left in Tristan's vague explanations.

In short, due to the presence of the energy called mana, some animals had evolved to use it much better than humans had, developing the ability to harness it into a tangible essence — Soul Cores.

These magical beasts utilized mana in the form of 'Runes,' illegible diagrams that channeled mana in mysterious ways to achieve a pre-determined effect. Finding beasts who could use magic was rare, those having complete mastery over even a single complete Rune was even rarer.

Which was fortunate, actually, as an abundance of such creatures would just decimate the whole village and the cities beyond.

Next came the 'Heart Engine,' something the 'Gods' had apparently bestowed upon the praying humans to survive in this dangerous world.

'Yeah, I don't buy it.' Ryan thought, mostly because he didn't believe in any form of the so-called godhood, and because he didn't see any such being while crossing over into this world.

Regardless, the Heart Engines were what the humans used to form a bond with the magical beasts' souls and use their magical affinities to perform their own magic. These were intangible mystical constructs formed completely out of mana inside a similarly intangible and mystical organ that overlapped the human heart.

Logic would suggest that procuring materials for any of the three necessary things would be a tremendous chore, and the logic would be right. Except for the fact that most of the low level things were publicly available.

There were many professions in the village, one of them were the hunters. They went out into the wild to hunt game for the whole village, and the occasional weak magical beasts. Whenever they find one, they would kill it and sell the harvested Soul Cores to the village head.

The village head, in turn, had an open-for-all hall with a limited number of Soul Cores that the young kids could choose from, along with details of the beast which the Core had been obtained from.

Which Ryan found somewhat hard to believe, after all, why would the headsman go out of his way to provide such niceties to the village people? 

In any case, who was he to judge?

Along with the limited number of Beast Soul options, there were also three different blueprints of Heart Engines.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, it wasn't viable to pre-construct and mass sell these heart engines, and people needed to form their own from scratch all by themselves, from cogs and pipes to the chasis and... well, you get the gist of it.

Furthermore, every year, the village headsman would take all the eligible kids with him to the nearest city with a cathedral to get them baptized — a term that Ryan translated as being accepted by the Gods — and bond with their selected Beast Soul as well as imprint their very first Rune in the Heart Engine of their choice.

As for how to actually do magic and the intricacies of the magic system... such important details alluded Ryan and Codex.

And soon, at the age of ten, it was time for Tristan to choose his own path in life...