Roughly 2 years had passed since I had died. Well, since I had reincarnated. Whatever. And the results?
Well… I have a mana core. A tiny purple mana core condensed into the shape of a fragmented crystal shard. It’s not much, but it exists. Turns out I wasn’t entirely insane. Huray! After running around biting down on air, with fleeting attempts to gather mana, I managed to gather some. At first I got sick from chowing down on weird energy, and Mom had to heal me time to time… Yeah, it was quite the mess. I realized that some mana particles were not meant to be eaten. Particularly the darker shades.
Fun fact, mana has flavor. Weird, but hear me out. Blue mana tastes like water, red mana like pepper… At times like this I feel like a mana gourmet. Whatever the case, the darker the color, the deeper the flavor, so I’m assuming the denser the mana, the darker the color. I can’t tell what my own mana tasted like, though. I stared at the illusive and slimy mana on my fingertips. It tasted weird, as if I were swallowing my own spit.
Regardless. As fragments of mana entered my body, I managed to turn them into purple. I don’t know why it became purple specifically, but ever since the mana that entered me turned purple, I don’t get sick, so I’m assuming that my color is purple and I was refining mana. Or something. Whatever the case, I liked the color purple, so I wasn’t going to dwell on it.
After Rudeus started to pick up books, the sole five books were left at more reachable corners for children. I don’t know why they hadn’t done the same for me, though, probably because I kept getting sick from eating random mana sparks. And because I was only interested in the magic book. My bad.
Anyway. Among the five were a reference guide to the world, a monster ecology from the Fittoa region where I live, a textbook about magic, a book about Perugius and the tale about three swordsmen and a labyrinth.
By this point you probably think I would be here plotting some evil schemes against Hitogami after knowing the whole plot of the story. But in the end, I decided to do nothing about it. Yes, as a reincarnator inside your favorite novel, I probably should have wrestled for the main protagonist position, fought in that place, and gotten all the chicks and stuff…
But no. Seriously. No. I’m tired of struggling. This life, I decided to live only and solely the way I wanted to. If anything, programming taught me that if a code works, then don’t touch it. Since the happy ending is a guarantee, it was better not to intervene, especially since a single variable could turn the tables. And I hate the spotlights. So, what will I be doing in the meantime? Play, of course. What else was I supposed to do?
Since one should have a goal to live a satisfying life, I decided that I was going to travel the way I had wanted to in my past life. Touch grass, swim against krakens, slay a dragon, or do anything worthy of a magical fantasy. Hell, maybe I’ll even get a girlfriend for once. I mean, I got Paul’s genes, so my looks would definitely be more than average at least. But traveling requires money and combat progress for self-defense.
Becoming the best. That was the goal I set for myself. After all, one should always aim high. Not for particular reasons. I already have a head start, and I wasn’t going to waste it. And strength was always a necessity. I’ll probably gather funds and grow stronger, save Paul’s ass, and then travel. So fighting a nine-headed hydra was probably within my to-do list.
I read the magic book in front of me. While I do know about how magic and aura works in this world, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t mistaken about anything. And as far as I could tell, the magic here wasn’t as far off as I had assumed. If anything, the standards were probably lower than my expectations.
First, magic wasn’t very developed, used only in combat. It hadn’t reached the level of Frieren From Beyond The Journey kind of magic. There were only Attack, Healing, and Summoning… And silent magic was rare, so give me enough time, and I’ll probably be on the top of the food chain. That said, any mage will lose to a swordsman in speed, so I probably need to be some magic swordsman to live a smooth-sailing life. Something like Orsterd. Yup. It might be wise to take a page out of that guy.
Second was mana. What I notice is that you don’t need to pour your own mana into the enchanted items. And I don’t mean by magic stones. Some enchanted items have their own mana to be used. Hm. I wonder. If enchanted items have their own mana, then could it run out and the enchanted items lose their powers? Maybe I’ll go into that when I see one.
One day, I will probably open a tiny shop and sell magic items. People are going to find me asking if I had that type of magic item, and I’d say I’ll keep an eye on them. Then in the back, I would make the said item, and they'd pay me a hefty amount of cash for it… Wait, I’ll need clients and fame… I need to let people know that a reliable shopkeeper who gets you what you need exists, build up connections, and start marketing around. Hah, this is going to be harder than when I was a programmer, isn’t it?
Anyway. Third, magic can be cast through either incantations or magic circles. In short, incantations are more flexible but slower; magic circles can be prepared beforehand. Hmm… I wonder. Is the incantation like the linguistic version of the magic circles? Because if that were the case, then the linguistic version could also convert back to a formula.
Then what about silent magic? If controlling mana was like pulling on muscles, then can I draw mana into a formula? Wait. Since incantations can break and all, does that mean that the one with more control can forcefully take mana from those of weaker control? Then that would mean that magic formulas are harder to hack because they're like a private class, so no one aside from their coder can access their source code. Better write that down… Oops, I sidetracked. Anyway, yada, yada, yada, it’s time to twerk—I mean, time to swallow more mana.