Abuse of Magic

After lunch, each day, the mages would gather to learn from Joseph, during the warmest part of the day.

"Mana is the power behind all magic. Without mana, magic will not happen. What you have been practicing is a skill called mana emission. It refers to how well you are able to emit mana. This is primarily how much control you have over your spells, and how efficiently you can utilize your mana."

Joseph surrounded himself with mana particles to show them an area emission.

"Many of the first of you, have already learned the basics of gaze and breath. They are fundamental sub-skills. Gaze allows you to see magic and increases the strength and aim of gaze spells. Breath increases the strength of breath spells, but more importantly, increases the speed of internal mana recovery by pulling in external mana.

"What I am demonstrating now is another sub-skill called area emission. You must circulate the mana, or even with the benefit of breath, you will pass out. Start from the basics and it will become more detailed and complicated. Expanding your area too much is pointless. Your goal is to learn control not to expand size. A crude analogy using fist fighting, would be to stick a finger into their eye, rather than to punch their stomach.

"I approached the edge of mastery but wasn't able to breach the barrier. My ability evolved into a grand skill known as mana control, and downgraded from advanced level to intermediate. Mana control is extremely powerful but is no longer capable of being advanced by simple practice or I would have trained it back to advanced already. It only advances, as I learn completely new skills. Only some of which, can be done with mana emission. For now, it is enough to know that these things will be possible for you some day as you advance."

He then cycled the mana around him through the life/death cycle he had learned from the fog, as several of the shamans' gasped.

"Now, shamans use spirit magic. The basis of which is a contract with a spirit that knows one or more magic spells. Living mana exists in you and is how you do spells. Spirit mages give their mana to a spirit who converts it into dead mana to do a spell. Depending on the contract, and abilities of the spirt, the dead mana can then be converted back into living mana and returned to the spirit mage. What we are going to discuss now is the process for the spirit mages. This will provide benefits equivalent to mana breathing, for us who draw runes, so it is extremely important for you to pay attention. Few spirits are capable of doing this for you even if they would be willing to return the excess mana or harvest from the mana in the environment."

Several hours later he was finally able to return to his carriage. After the lecture, when the mages and shamans went back, the message appeared again. That made 4 bonuses to reputation today alone.

"Hey, Stella?"

"Yes, Master Joseph?"

"Do you know why my reputation keeps increasing? I had several messages saying my reputation increased among the mages while Selena and I were working earlier in the morning, and another a little while ago after everyone left."

She pondered for a moment.

"Ah, I was telling them all, that you were a god who had descended to spread the knowledge of magic to the lost humans once again, while I was helping in the kitchen this morning. Could that have done it?"

Joseph paused. Cold sweat began to break out on his face.

"Stella, you did what?"

She finally smirked.

"Oh! Thank god you were joking!"

She giggled sweetly.

"At least do a supervillain giggle if you are going to scare me like that."

Stella shrugged and gave an evil giggle. Joseph's mouth dropped open. Wow, her evil villain chuckle was way better than his. He wasn't even mad. He was too impressed.

"You are ridiculously good at that."

"Thank you. Now about your question, that is actually one of the easier to believe rumors."

"Rumors?"

"Yes, there are several, including: blessed by the god, or gods, of magic, which is actually true ironically, trained by elven tutors in magic lost to humans, actually being a half elf, several theories have started springing up about the child of prophecy."

"How did that happen?"

Stella laughed.

"Your original disciples talked of your marvelous knowledge and how you do magic fundamentally different than any of their old teachers. Derek and Stephan both experienced mage trances, Stephan two of them. Several of the things you take for granted, like making visible mana emit from you, is considered an extremely rare talent that only master mages have. It's only gotten worse as those you taught become more and more powerful.

"Now that the mages are traveling with the shamans, they ended up talking to each other, which they wouldn't normally do. Apparently at the basic level that you are teaching, the similarities are amazing, when they were always taught that the differences between how they did magic couldn't be breached.

"Then one of them mentioned how we killed that thing in the north and the mages were like so he killed a monster? The other shamans all jumped in with the child of prophecy destroyed a fallen god and he is only seven. Soon he shall befriend a dragon. Dragons aren't real. Are you sure there aren't dragons anywhere? Well, no, but nobody has seen them in a thousand years. Yes, and this fallen god, the boy destroyed, was so powerful all the elders could do was seal it away because it couldn't be destroyed, and yet he did it. Something had to go and release it, because the seal was so strong it was meant to never be broken from the other side, because that creature would destroy the world if released.

"So, the mages have a huge love of prophecy and the shamans have a huge love of talking about prophecy, so they continued. One prophecy concerns you and the elves."

"Why didn't Tekaun mention that one?" he asked, shaking his head at the whole thing.

"Well, it's only half a prophecy. The prophetess died in the middle of speaking it. Apparently, they have dozens of prophecies about this Child of Prophecy. So many in fact, that the barbarians have debated for generations how many children would be needed to fulfill the prophecies. The mages said that nobody ever visits the elves, and then another said, well, his dad is the only human they talk to, so they shut up."

She smiled.

"You enjoyed it didn't you?" he asked.

"Extremely."

"You instigated some of it, didn't you?"

"Maybe."

It's a good thing she had a cute smile.