Joshua got out of the shower looking refreshed.
Rubbing his wet hair with a towel, he walked towards the bed where a black T-shirt and gray pants were placed.
Walking down the stairs again, Joshua felt the clothes seemed a little baggy.
As he entered the dining room, he saw Ken already sitting at the dining table and eating something that looked like toast.
As if noticing his arrival, he turned his head, meeting Joshua’s gaze.
Looking him up and down, he remarked,
“It’s a size bigger, huh?”
“It’s manageable,” Joshua replied.
Lily came from the corner, placing a plate of sandwiches on the table.
“Take a seat,” Ken instructed as he finished his toast.
Joshua complied, taking a seat.
The breakfast looked surprisingly normal.
Seeing Joshua just looking at the food, Lily asked,
“Joshua-san, would you like me to serve the dishes?”
“Umm… I”
Before Joshua could answer, Ken cut in,
“Yeah, help him.”
“Umm…”
Joshua, looking a little stiff, just accepted the help.
Lily put two sandwiches, a surprisingly big egg roll, and poured him some juice.
Joshua simply started eating.
From time to time, he felt Ken’s gaze, while Lily was simply staring at him as if she didn’t care how strange that was.
Taking a sip of the juice, he stole a glance at Ken, only to see the guy looking at him while giggling silently.
Joshua felt like crying.
As the incredibly awkward breakfast for Joshua ended, he followed Ken as they both headed deeper into the house.
Ken opened a door and walked in.
Joshua followed him inside, only to be stunned by what he saw.
“You have a classroom in your house?”
He exclaimed, looking at Ken for answers.
It was a spacious one too, with maybe 20 seats and a blackboard.
Looking nonchalant, Ken sat at the desk.
“Do you teach others too?”
“Nope.
You’re my first student.
I have to say, you’re very lucky.”
“So why do you… well, okay.”
Deciding not to question the absurdity of the situation, Joshua just walked in and took the first seat.
They both looked at each other.
“Sooo, what now?”
“You’re the teacher, you tell me.”
“Well, this is my first time teaching someone, so I don’t know how this goes.
Well, it is me, so I’ll just figure it out.
Okay, let’s start with the basics.
Let’s talk about mana.”
Joshua sat straight as Ken stood up, taking a piece of chalk and starting to write on the blackboard.
“Mana is the diluted form of a higher-dimensional energy commonly known as ether.
I think it’s also the thing scientists call dark matter in our world, although it’s just a theory of mine.”
Turning around, Ken continued,
“Every creature in this world has some amount of mana in them.
It’s present in the atmosphere all around us.
We can’t really make our own mana.
We take it in with our body, storing it in our flesh, organs, and blood.
It’s most concentrated in our hearts.
“Most can store a tiny amount, with some exceptions; these exceptions are those who have the potential of becoming mages.”
“Are you with me?” Ken asked, to which Joshua nodded.
“Yeah.”
“So now let’s talk about us exceptions among those exceptions.
You see, most mages have normal mana.
They can cast magic, but they need incantations and sometimes even hand gestures.
We can do that too, but we can also do more.
“A unique mana type is like a maxed-out affinity for a specific type of mana that gives you an extreme level of control over your mana so much so you can cast magic without any incantations. You are reading on novelping.com, the official source.
In fact, if you refine your control enough, you can even control it like it’s another limb of yours.
“Now, of course, there are differences in unique mana too.
You and I have a unique mana type.
I call it Flux Mana.
It lets me transmute anything into another thing I want, as long as I keep providing the mana.”
Taking the chalk, Ken added,
“Watch.”
Joshua looked at the chalk in Ken’s hand with full focus.
Gray energy came out from Ken’s palm and entered the chalk.
Like liquid, it started morphing, turning smaller into a diamond.
Joshua was slack-jawed as he couldn’t believe his eyes.
The diamond then morphed and spread outward into a sheet of paper.
Then the gray energy came out from the thing, and it morphed back into chalk in Ken’s palm.
“See,” Ken remarked.
For a moment, Joshua couldn’t speak.
Seeing the phenomenon of magic right in front of him was truly a different experience, and the fact that he had the possibility of doing it himself was truly…
“Now, you might think this is breaking the rules of science, physics, and whatnot and you’d be right.
“As I said before, it is a diluted form of a higher-dimensional energy, so normal laws of science and physics don’t apply here most of the time.
But magic has its own rules.
“For example, with my Flux Mana, I can change, transmute, and alter things, but I can’t change the mass.
Meaning, if something has a mass of 1 kg, even if I change it into cotton, it’ll still have the mass of 1 kg.
“Of course, I can get around this by simply adding more mass into it.
There are ways to get around it too.
“Also, I can only change it if I know what I’m changing it into.
Like, if I want to change a rock into gold, I need to know and understand what gold is and what it’s made of.
“It costs mana to keep the transmutation going.
If I can’t provide mana or my control over mana slips, then the transmutation will be undone, bringing it back to what it was before.
“It’s like blowing air into a balloon and holding the mouth of it as soon as I let go, the air comes out, and it’s back to what it was before.”