Babies First Magic (Mana Suppression)
“Now, Princess, I think it’s about time you learned how to suppress your magic and shield your records from prying eyes.” Sylvia proclaims with an eager smile.
Mary looks at Sylvia with some mild dissatisfaction; she had been promised magic, and instead she was going to be spending time learning how to hide instead.
‘I know it's important. It’s really crucial that nobody figures out that I’m an otherworlder. But can’t I learn just one spell first?’ she thinks to herself, pouting.
‘Something basic… like lights. Or prestidigitation.’
Sylvia looks down at Mary, noticing her pouting, but before Sylvia can reassure her that this wouldn’t take long, she notices Mary's expression change from a pout to a look of shocked surprise.
‘Why am I pouting? It’s still ultimately a type of magic… Alexander wouldn’t have been disappointed in learning how to magically hide himself. Especially when being found out would be basically life-ending.'
Mary is surprised and slightly panicking as she notices a change in her mentality compared to Alexander's.
“Is something wrong?” Sylvia asks in concern.
Mary pauses, considering how to answer before reluctantly shaking her head. ‘I have no way to really articulate that Alexander was an adult man.’
Mary breathes out, visibly sighing as she considers her new situation again.
‘I will just have to get used to the change; objectively it would be stranger if being a newborn baby girl didn’t change my mentality in comparison to Alexander's' she thinks, attempting to reassure herself.
Sylvia looks doubtful before clearly deciding to continue the lesson.
“First off, I will be teaching you two things that you truly must learn before anyone can catch you alone. The first thing you need to learn is how to suppress your magic aura, which refers to the magical energy you radiate."
Sylvia begins her explanation: “Without me covering for you, it will be clear that your mana reserves are far greater than they should be."
“A reincarnator is essentially the only feasible explanation for your current reserves.” She finishes grimly, clearly trying to emphasise the importance of this skill.
“The second but less important skill is hiding the parts of your record that you don’t want other people to see. It’s generally considered impolite to look at someone’s record without permission, so there is less of a threat of discovery. I will be claiming that I have already checked your record, and later we will discuss what I will be telling people.” Sylvia finishes, looking at Mary.
Mary nods in understanding. ‘Both are important… we should have that discussion first and then move on to the mana suppression then.’
Sylvia smiles knowingly. “First off, I will be claiming that your mana aspects are medium. This level is considered high for a newborn, but it is understandable given that Elizabeth is your mother. Claiming that you are any lower could be suspicious in its own way, although most of the nobility might not have the good sense to realise that.” she says, apparently unable to stop herself from slipping in an insult against the hated nobility.
“If someone checks your record and sees that your mana aspects are extreme, they will likely assume that I attempted to shield you from trouble, which offers the benefit of being true.”
“The severity of that lie and the potential consequences I will endure will change over time. This is especially true if the discovery takes a year or two; the assumption that I am lying will decrease as the potential benefits from my milk become more apparent.” Sylvia explains further.
“Eventually, they would just assume that you saw far more benefit than a non-hero descendant.”
“Instead of a hero title, I will be claiming that you have the hero descendant title. Again, its absence would be highly suspicious, although even having the lesser title will cause some degree of scrutiny from a few of the empty-headed idiots at court.” she adds with clear disdain.
“And finally, I will of course make no mention of you inheriting the nature of a hero or having great hopes placed upon you. Those would be massive red flags for anyone with a modicum of sense; if anyone hears that you have those in your description, then you can expect immediate trouble.” Sylvia finishes with a firm warning.
Mary looks at Sylvia, giving an understanding nod. Sylvia returns the nod with a relieved smile.
“Good. Then, I will teach you the technique to hide parts of your record before I leave so that you can work on it in your own time.” At that, Sylvia stops briefly; she locks her eyes with Mary, sending a look of utmost seriousness.
“I cannot stress this enough: under no circumstances should you allow anyone else to figure out you are anything but a baby. Under other circumstances, the maids, most of whom are commoners, could be trusted with the knowledge. But as controlled maids, they can be questioned, and they will be forced to answer.”
“As I have already told you, I am your primary caretaker by command of the Prince Consort, so the maids will only really come in here to clean up. But it doesn’t hurt to be careful. I’ll remind you as many times as needed.” Sylvia says, smiling down at Mary.
Mary keeps her eyes locked onto Sylvia's own and nods firmly; she would act the part of a baby while the other maids were present.
“Now, how do you suppress your aura? It’s technically simple, but some people have trouble with it; close your eyes." Following her instructions, Mary immediately did so “and begin to sense your mana. You've already done similar, I’m sure.” Sylvia continued.
Mary had tried to sense her mana already, and her investigation told her that she was slowly radiating it into her surroundings. Having remembered that fact, Mary had a suspicion about what the next instruction would be.
“As you might have already guessed, the way to suppress your mana aura is to take control of the mana that you are unconsciously radiating and instead draw it inwards, holding it within yourself instead of letting it escape.”
“This doesn’t really have any effect on you other than helping to hide yourself; despite what it sounds like, you won’t solidify into a mana crystal or anything like that. Most people fail to do it for any length of time due to the sustained conscious effort necessary.”
As Sylvia finishes her explanation, Mary quickly confirms that her guess was correct; this did not surprise her, as it was, after all, self-explanatory. For Mary it is even convenient; thanks to her life as Alexander, she has experiences that few, if any, in this world could hope to match, and she is going to use that to prove to herself that his past still has merit.
‘Although… why wouldn’t there be benefits to stopping the constant release of mana from a person's body? Why wouldn’t this method help to refine a person's mana density or quality? Maybe there are extra steps involved. Has no one ever realised it because it takes sustained effort? Alexander knew very well that people could be shockingly lazy.’
For a moment Mary continues her habit of theory crafting.
‘At the very least I would have expected that it would increase your mana regeneration, as a sort of mirror to the archetypical meditation skill.’ But after a few moments she starts to try to draw her mana into herself, eager to make progress in her first magic lessons.
Mary, her eyes closed, begins to draw upon Alexander's knowledge and experience with augmented reality; for years he had seen and interacted with virtual frameworks that were not physically present.
In this case in particular, he was fully cognisant of his body and what was happening to it. People of this world would no doubt be amazed because this was true even while he was asleep.
Mary knows that Alexander's experience was heavily enabled by infrastructure and technology that do not exist here, his internal cyberware, the external equipment that supported it and the networks that were ever present on Earth, but even in this new life his instincts still exist inside of Mary.
She mentally grasps at the mana within her, something that she had already previously attempted but made little progress with.
However, instead of following the maid's instructions of trying to draw the mana she had taken control of and holding it in her core, she instead tries to feel her body through her mana. In her mind's eye she attempts to map out a mental framework of her newborn body.
Time seems to pass with no progress to be found; she finds herself concentrating so hard that the outside world falls away. The maids' arms that are tightly embracing her seem to disappear, leaving her almost flailing in a mental prison of her making.
Mary becomes increasingly desperate to prove to herself that her instincts are right, that Alexander's knowledge can guide her through the trials that this life has already presented her with.
Just as she is about to give up and start to draw the mana into her core, her mental flailing manages to catch a handful of mana motes as it travels from her core, her soul, into her physical body.
Mary latches on to the motes of mana that she has managed to capture, careful to not restrain their movements, but instead she chooses to follow them. Almost as soon as she begins to follow the motes of mana within her, she realises that they are flowing through familiar channels beneath her skin.
‘My circulatory system?’ Mary thinks to herself in realisation, ‘So mana doesn’t have its own system then.’
Now that she understands how and where the mana flows within her, following it through her circulatory system becomes a trivial matter. Focusing, she feels her infantile body; she feels the contours of her skin and the twitching of her muscles and ligaments. She can even feel the energy pulses of her nerves firing. But most of all, she feels it as her mana pools and swirls through her heart and organs.
Mary exhales in relief as her first task, the task of fully mapping her new body through her mana sense, is complete. Following on from that achievement, she sends her focus to the mana radiating from her, and Mary is mildly surprised at what she discovers: a small part of her mana, she notices, is escaping through her sweat glands.
With the information she now has, Mary could grasp the mana before it leaves via her sweat glands, and her assigned lesson of learning the ability to hide her mana aura would essentially be complete, but she finds herself curious. Why is mana leaving her?
With this question in mind, Mary begins to investigate her mana further; her thoughts once again track the mana flows within her, and she quickly realises why mana is leaving her without depleting her reserves.
While her actual mana quantity, which Mary now considers her reserves, is seated within her soul, and her soul itself apparently generates her mana without her input, she remembers that her body does actually constantly contain some degree of mana too.
Not just her circulatory system, which her mana flows through, but her entire body is slowly attempting to absorb the mana that flows within her. As she watches, she can see that almost imperceptibly tiny mana motes are attempting to merge with her organs, and a quick look confirms that this is true throughout her body.
She stiffens in realisation.
‘My body is trying to absorb the mana that my soul radiates, and when it fails to do so, the mana eventually radiates out of my body as an aura instead.’
‘Most likely this process would slowly strengthen a person's biology over time. Perhaps this process should be called mana augmentation?'
‘Of course, this technique does explain the lack of the typical meditation skill. A person's mana reserves are in their soul, not their body. Mana that leaves the body has already bled out of their mana reservoir. Increasing mana regeneration through restraining leakage… it would mean stopping your mana from flowing from your soul into your body,' she notes.
‘I will definitely look into it later, but I suspect that it would have negative physical consequences. Starving your body of a resource it has always had… that could only end poorly.’
With her curiosity satisfied, Mary grasps her leaking mana and pulls it back into her body, fully preventing any of it from leaving her. With her task complete, she opens her eyes and looks at Sylvia.
Sylvia instantly smiles down at her. “Good work; your aura has receded entirely!” she says, congratulating Mary before adding an extra surprise.
“Should I say, ‘As expected of a hero'? That didn’t even take you a full hour.”
Mary throws a look of surprise at Sylvia’s exclamation; to Mary, her meditation had felt like it had lasted for hours. She had worried about running out of time, and after Mary’s original success, she had strayed from the task given to her!
Sylvia smirks at her surprise. “That is the nature of heroes. They’ve always been able to pick up magic faster than Terran natives, and supposedly that is something that became even more extreme with more recent heroes," she explains.
‘Recent heroes are even better, huh? This improvement may be attributed to a combination of acceptance and understanding of their circumstances.' Mary wonders, ‘The benefits of the modern world and isekai anime.' she concludes sardonically.
“Then, let's quickly get hiding your record done. And then we can get to the good part," said Sylvia. “This process is simple in theory; I will observe your record to give you an idea of what’s happening. But essentially, you will find your record within you, and that record can be obscured.”
“Now, prepare yourself." she says, before blatantly focusing on Mary.
Immediately Mary feels the invading mana, and she slaps it away.
“Oh!” exclaimed Sylvia in surprise, her eyes widening. “I didn’t expect that.” She continues laughing.
“Yes, you can completely stop a record observation. But in your case that would be even more suspicious; you're a baby, after all.” She explains, “Now, focus on the feeling of the observation; you need to understand where your record is.”
Sylvia sends another observation at Mary, and this time Mary allows it through. She follows the mana pulse to her core and watches in mute surprise as it brushes against her soul.
“And that is where your record is. As you’ve probably guessed, amongst the many names that people call it by, the most common is the soul.” said Sylvia, noting the mild look of surprise on Mary's face.
“Now, focus on your record and you should be able to see it properly. The record itself is quite malleable; the way you shield parts of it is to essentially push them further into your soul.”
Sylvia smiles down at Mary. “Get my attention when you think you’ve managed it.”
Mary nods in understanding.
‘Essentially, an observation is similar to a radar pulse. By having the public parts of the record being higher, they can bounce the pulse back before the lower parts are seen.’
Mary sends her focus into her soul, and thanks to her previous work, she finds the task trivial; she instantly sees her record at the very surface of her soul and grasps the parts that Mary needs to obscure. With those parts in her mental grasp, she pushes them deep into her soul.
Mary quickly grabs the attention of Sylvia, impatient to get this part done and move on to the real magic.
“Oh? That was quick. Well, let's see then.”
Mary feels the mana pulse reach for her record again and watches as the pulse fails to reach the truly incriminating parts of her record.
“Yes, good work. Of course, if someone sees this obscured record, they’ll know that I lied about your mana aspects. But that should be somewhat more manageable than if anyone learns that you're a hero." explains Sylvia.
“Well, I see that you're getting impatient. So let’s have your first lesson on how to cast a magic spell.” said Sylvia eagerly.