S&M Chapter 3 (Patreon)

AN: As promised. Here's chapter 3.

Chapter 3: I'm Not a Water Mage

Time slowly passed, hours flying by as the sun traveled through the clear blue sky, and through it all, Dante was entirely absorbed in the book’s content.

It wasn’t long, nor was it overly complicated, but between translating the odd form of English and the world-opening information inside, Dante dedicated his full attention to it.

Only after three hours had passed did he finish re-reading the thirty-page booklet for the umpteenth time.

Exhaling deeply, Dante digested what he learned. ‘Goldmine really tried to make this stuff simple, didn’t he?’

The information provided wasn’t anything deep. It didn’t dive into topics and explain things thoroughly, but it got the main points across. And oddly enough, Dante felt faint memories of the anime stir and slightly link up with the occasional item he read.

‘I never considered myself lucky, so this is a pleasant surprise.’ Dante pinched his chin and recognized now why Bacchus made that joke about being a lucky caster mage.

The name of the continent was Ishgar, of which Fiore was the smallest of nine kingdoms, and among fourteen regional borders. Fiore is widely known for having the greatest number of mages. Yet even with that said, of a population of over seventeen million, only an average of 10% ever awaken the potential for magic. And of that 10%, only 1% awaken as Caster mages.

That’s not a figure of 90% of mages being holder types, but a figure of 99% of mages being holder types.

‘When have I ever been this lucky?’ Dante couldn’t help but think.

Not only did he wake up in a safe, legal guild, with a guy who offered him a place to stay and support, but he was in the nation best known for its mages. At the same time, he was also supposedly a Caster mage. ‘I’m not religious, but if anyone’s listening, thank you.’

The book simplified the explanation by showing a cartoon-like picture of a human with a mishappen sphere in their chest called an ‘Ethernano Container’ or ‘Mana Core’. Awakening magic meant connecting to this core, and the known average age to awaken was between five and fifteen.

This Ethernano Container gathered Ethernano from the world around, which was apparently a natural substance present in everything and invisible to the human eye. Yet only those with a container could gather this substance and convert it into Mana.

Mana was the lifeblood of mages, and once they had it, it was tied intricately into every facet of their being.

‘Goldmine really simplified this stuff with pictures.’

The book featured an assortment of images, mainly cartoons, with a container that absorbed colorful light and filled with glowing liquid. This liquid then flowed along a channel into the heart and spread from the heart throughout the bloodstream to empower a mage.

Having mana flowing through you didn’t make people immediately superhuman, but rather gave mages the potential to grow stronger than human limits. On a base level, it made one more durable in a physical and magical sense, sensitive to magical energies, and gave mages the capability to use mana as a fuel source.

The more a mage trained, the greater these factors would become.

‘I doubt this can be limitless.’ Dante frowned at the information. ‘I should ask Goldmine about it later.’

Looking around the room, Dante found a pen on Bacchus’s nightstand and grabbed it along with what looked like a takeout menu from a restaurant. ‘Hope you don’t mind.’ There was some scribbled text on it, but Dante was too engrossed to translate it and crossed it out.

He began jotting down everything he could think of. The book was simplified, focusing only on the main points, so Dante found himself with plenty of questions.

According to the book, being a Holder mage meant you had the potential for mana manipulation but lacked an innate guiding instinct for a school of magic, which meant they required a medium and/or external study to get in contact with a school.

For most mages, a single school of magic could be a lifelong study, and to perform Holder magic, one had to acquire a medium, or external item with a special spell formation carved into it.

The number of schools of magic was, from what Dante read, endless. Goldmine didn’t bother writing down more than a couple of examples, from common ones like elemental magic in water and fire to uncommon ones like painter magic, gun magic, and summoning magic.

Acquiring a medium for one of these schools could be more challenging the rarer the type of magic was. And the medium was only ever for a single spell, with rare or expensive exceptions.

On the other side were the lucky ones, being Caster mages. From what Dante could understand, Casters were like lottery winners who won a random prize from a vast pool of prizes. You might get a good or bad one, but it was still a prize.

The only listed reason was stated as ‘affinity’ with no further explanation. Dante made sure to write it down to ask about.

Caster mages gained something called a ‘Caster Seed’ in their Ethernano Container, which is a fancy way of saying an innate connection to a school of magic. The seed replaced any need for a medium to cast a specific type of magic.

Unlike Holder mages, a Caster mage wasn’t limited to a single spell and all they had to do to learn the spells of their magic was tune in to their seed and automatically gain spells and the ability to convert mana to their school.

‘That can’t be all there is.’ Dante didn’t enjoy that simplified answer and made sure to write down his questions. ‘I can’t be sure about the anime, but I’m pretty sure people didn’t have an endless supply of spells on speed dial.’

The last two items addressed in the book were about the Magic Council and beginner exercises.

For the Council, it was said to be the governing body for mages throughout Fiore, and it had a reputation for being strict and fair with its laws.

‘Fair?’ Dante scoffed. ‘Like I would trust a government on word alone.’ He narrowed his eyes and remembered what his grandaddy taught him. ‘All the bastards are good for is pushing paper, giving old folk a hard time with silly rules, and trying to tax homemade booze.’ The last part is what gave Dante the most chills. ‘No one taxes the drinks. Government won’t take my babies.’

Jokes aside, Dante never liked government, even if he recognized its necessity; his family was screwed over by bureaucratic corruption too many times.

A flash of an arrogant bastard's face in a police station when he lost his parents was all the proof he needed of that.

‘Although, the book says the council serves the king, and the current king is responsible for Fiore’s currently blooming economy.’ Ironically, Dante didn’t mind the idea of a monarchy with a good king. ‘Bacchus seemed to favor the guy, at least.’

Back to the book: it described a cheat sheet of which laws to pay attention to, and it left Dante scratching his head at how some of them were taken seriously. ‘What does speed limits have to do with mages? Do they have cars here? Is there speed magic or something? And what's with the extensive list of laws on situational destruction necessities? Why is that so specified? How many times have legal mages hurt you?’

Dante's vague memories of the anime slowly pulled up an image of that fire mage at the beginning, tossing a cruise ship onto a beach, destroying it and scattering who knows how much debris, and then proceeding to break a few streets to knock out a single enemy.

And that was only the first episode.

Dante slowly looked down at the question about the laws he wrote for Goldmine and casually crossed it out.

‘His name was Natsu, and he’s a menace.’

After confirming that in his heart, Dante focused on the last golden nugget of information: beginner exercises. ‘Finally getting to the good part.’

Goldmine must have known what his readers would be looking for, so he spread out the exercises through the descriptions of magic, ensuring they had to actually read it in total. ‘You really must have suffered, man.’

Giving a small prayer to the middle-aged guild leader, Dante put down the pen and prepared for the most basic method to access mystical power.

He lay back against the wall and placed the pulse points of his wrists over his ears, firmly pressing down. 'Step 1, listen to your heartbeat.’

Dante hadn't done this move since he was a bored kid. Never did he think Goldmine would use it to teach thick-skulled muscleheads how to focus on their heartbeat.

Slowing his breath, Dante easily fell into a calm rhythm. ‘Learning to control your breath and heartbeat is basic knowledge in the woods.’ Animals were far more sensitive than modern humans, and staying still was an acquired skill.

Once Dante’s heartbeat pulsed loudly in his ears, he moved on. ‘Step 2, feel for the noticeable warmth spreading out from your heart.’

Dante wasn't sure about this step, but as he listened to his heartbeat, he couldn't help but notice an immediate temperature difference in his chest. Whatever his blood temperature was, this warmth felt a degree or two hotter, almost like a warm open faucet, but inside your body.

‘How interesting.’ Dante used to be fascinated with such things when he was…well…fifteen. It was around that time he got into anime, and he only stopped watching when he lost his grandfather. ‘Step 3, follow the warmth to the source.’

It's difficult to say how Dante understood it; it wasn't sight or touch, but it felt like the warmth responded to his intentions, reversing its flow into his heart and from there…. Somewhere else.

Dante didn't see so much as feel the warmth wiggling through a curving channel, suddenly filling a color into an unknown blank space in his picture.

The warmth kept wiggling at a snail’s pace, slowly but surely filling out the space, and Dante slowly grew more familiar with this ‘channel’.

Minutes passed like this until, like dropping a small stone into a pond, the warmth reached its origin. The ripples spread and rapidly expanded Dante’s awareness of the most odd yet familiar place he had ever touched before.

‘Step 4, feel the core.’ Dante marveled at the sensation; a smile unconsciously plastered on his face as he felt this entirely new organ go from foreign to instinctive.

There was a grapefruit-sized sphere connected to his heart by the channel, and at the center of that sphere was a hollow space with a small pool of liquid. The sphere seemed to rotate on an axis, gently pulling particles of light from the air and converting them into liquid that filled the pool inside. And from that pool, liquid seemed to automatically flow down the channel, feed into his heart, and pulse throughout his bloodstream.

‘Wow.’ Dante was floored at the sensation once he felt the whole organ in action. 'It's far clearer than I expected. I can't exactly feel my spleen by itself, and unless I'm drunk, I won’t be feeling my liver. Yet this container is practically glowing with sensations.’

Dante just sat there, feeling this alien thing that felt so natural, like something he should have always known yet had forgotten. It took nearly half an hour before he pushed on with the rest of the steps. 'Step 5, perform the first exercise, actively attempt to absorb Ethernano, rather than passively. Just make your intent known, and will it into action.’

When he read the instructions, Dante was worried about how he was supposed to actively use intent like a muscle, but once he tried it, he realized he was overthinking it.

With the feeling of a switch being flipped, Dante focused and felt his container begin to rotate faster, pulling more of the particles into it, only for it to short out a second later as he got distracted by the process.

‘So, I need to keep consistent attention on it?’ Dante mused and tried again.

And again, after that.

He lost himself to the exercise and didn’t notice Bacchus cracking open an eye from the other side of the room, observing a sheen of faint glowing light on Dante’s skin, and smirking in approval before turning over and going back to sleep.

After fifteen minutes, Dante felt sweat on his brow and down his back as he got the container to keep spinning for sixty seconds before losing it. ‘Damn, that’s harder than it seems.’

Dante took deep breaths and wiped his forehead. ‘No wonder the book said this was a daily exercise. I should ask Bacchus and Goldmine what the standards are for this.’

The book had similar basic exercises for each aspect of Mana Fundamentals. From Ethernano absorption speed, mana liquidation efficiency, mana pool size growth, mana channeling speed, and mana manipulation.

All of them could be practiced individually, each a vital part of the foundation that makes a mage.

Dante didn't see the need to go through all of them right away; rather, he focused more on something he had felt since he gained sensory input of his core. The floating ‘seed’ hovering above his mana pool.

'There's gotta be a better description than 'seed'. That tells me nothing about what this is supposed to be. Goldmine’s notes only say how to use it, not what it is.’

Dante focused on controlling a tendril of warmth, or Mana, the same way he used it to find his core, only this time he was extending it to that floating seed.

With the concern compared to putting your finger in a live electrical socket, Dante poked the seed.

And nothing happened.

Dante frowned and poked it again.

Still nothing.

A third poke.

It was almost insultingly silent.

Dante came out of his meditation, flipped through the book, and re-read the page on activating a Caster seed.

‘Oh, I’m a dumbass.’ Dante realized he mistranslated the line. ‘It’s not about poking it, it’s about intent.’

Regathering his focus, Dante dived back in. He repeated the previous step by touching the tendril to the seed, only this time, he gathered his intent. 'Give me your secrets, oh sacred seed of mystical power.'

Seemingly accepting his pious offering, the seed sent a tingling shock down the tendril of mana, rapidly transitioning through the flow of mana to his heart, and from there spreading like a current throughout his body and up into his brain before he could comprehend what was happening.

A grunt escaped his lips as knowledge poured into his mind while the magic carved itself into his veins like it was giving his body permission to use it.

“Holy shit.” Dante couldn’t help but comment out loud as his eyes flashed open, sweat covering his face, and quickly looked over to see Bacchus had his back to him, out cold, and then took a deep breath as he ran a hand through his hair. ‘What an alien feeling.’

Instantly being granted knowledge was weird enough, like rediscovering how to take a dump with all the needed muscles being highlighted clearly, but the knowledge itself was eye-opening.

Three spells carved themselves into his mind and veins alongside an entirely new instinct. With a simple thought, Dante felt his caster seed sink into his mana pool, dyeing the neutral liquid in it into a vibrant jade color as his mana was converted to an entirely new element.

He couldn't see the color, but he somehow got the sensation of it, like tasting a color.

Dante got the sense that that was important, but he was too distracted to focus on it as he held up his hands in awe and whispered. “I’m not a water mage.” A tear rolled down his cheek as distant memories of some of the happiest moments in his life burst with warmth in his chest. “I’m a brewer mage.”

“Hm?” A twitched ear, a grunt, and a burst of wind pressure were all the warning Dante had before he noticed an intense gaze lock onto him from the edge of his bed. “Wanna repeat that?”

Dante blinked and found Bacchus staring at him from feet away with dazed, hungry eyes before the guy's blanket even hit the surface of his mattress.

It took Dante’s brain a second to respond, and when it did, he spartan kicked Bacchus in the face.

Yet worse than that was that all his kick did was knock the guy’s head back with a shoe print on his face, and Bacchus wasn’t happy about it.

“Ho-oh.” The guy laughed eerily and slowly tilted his head back into place.

Dante didn’t know someone’s eyes could glow red like that, and he had more questions for Goldmine now.

Chapter End.

Alternative Ending:

Dante blinked and found Bacchus staring at him, shirtless, from barely feet away with hungry eyes, before the guy's blanket even hit the surface of his mattress.

“Um…” Dante was caught off guard and said the first thing that came to his mind. “This is my no-no square.”

Bacchus’s brow twitched violently.

End.

AN: I decided to remix the magic system and get it set up firmly from the beginning. My previous attempts were too messy.