More than 200 long years. Just as I'd once been obsessed with spirit arts, this time I became obsessed with books. I read every book except the magic texts, mastered the knowledge within, and memorized all their contents.
About 150,000 of those books required me to learn through physical practice. The rest were literature or subjects where theory alone was enough, so although reading took time, they weren't particularly difficult. Above all, by mastering the basics before moving to the next stage, I found things easier to understand and my reading speed increasing.
As a bonus, I now looked like a 17-year-old boy on the verge of turning 18. I certainly was growing?
And at last, the day came when I took up an introductory book on magic.
Aaaaah, I'm so moved! So moved! Finally, I'm going to use magic, too!
Dragons had their own unique form of magic called Dragon Speech, but I wanted to learn humans' written magic. That was because I preferred magic that produced a phenomenon by personally moving and handling mana to Dragon Speech, which could manifest with a single short word and be used without any special study.
Then shall we begin with mana, the most important and indispensable part of magic?
As I could tell from Mom's explanation, mana was something like particles formed by densely concentrated natural power, a strongly nature-attuned energy that couldn't affect any living creature's body. Since mana never stayed in one place but flowed constantly, gathering and storing it in one place was absolutely impossible. That would violate nature's power so completely that if you ever considered trying it, absolutely don't; it would be utterly futile...... That was how it was explained.—In ‘An Introduction to Basic Magic.’
But this world was full of magical items. Didn't those hold mana in place? The answer was ‘no.’ As I'd explained when discussing the Dragon Heart, mana couldn't be held because it flowed constantly, but you could make it flow ‘through’ somewhere. A magical item was something made to produce an effect by constantly channeling mana through a particular place.
That was why this world had no levels like Sword Master. Accumulating mana inside your body to produce abilities like a martial arts master's in a novel was absurd to begin with. Perhaps you could use a human body as a channel for mana like a magical item and produce such abilities, but that didn't seem to work in this world.
Once, an outstanding mage and his disciples had tried such an experiment. What would happen if a human body were used as a channel for mana? Apart from the subjects living about 2–3 times their normal lifespan, the experiment had yielded no results. In the end, I reached one conclusion.
-Mana(Mana) isn't qi.
Mana was energy formed from concentrated natural power, while qi was concentrated bodily energy. The energy produced by a body and the energy of nature could never be the same. If mana was external energy, qi was internal energy.
In martial arts novels, qi accumulated within the body to become internal power, which was expended whenever martial techniques were used. Eventually, when all that power was spent, the practitioner replenished their qi through breath regulation and circulation. Often, they took in nature's power, refined it using methods passed down in their own sects, and accumulated it. What they took in could be called natural power, and if you regarded that as mana, you could see it that way.
But if ‘qi=mana,’ wouldn't there be no need to circulate it inside their bodies to refine and accumulate it? What if internal cultivation methods were ways of accumulating mana within the body? Then why on earth perform lesser and greater circulations? Why painstakingly circulate it inside the body when you could simply take in mana and store it? Ultimately, it meant this.
Mana wasn't qi, and their properties were distinctly different.
Let's scale down the concepts of natural power, mana, and qi a little.
Let's call the enormous concept of natural power ‘water.’ If we saw it as water, the source of life said to make up 70% of the human body, mana would be its largest form, occupying the greatest part of the world: the ‘sea.’
To humans, the sea was a treasure house of natural resources and the largest food storehouse. You could use it in various ways and, to the extent of your abilities, refine some seawater into salt or catch fish in it.
Then what was ‘qi’?
Qi was said to exist inside living creatures as the fundamental energy that moved them. It was always within our bodies, but we couldn't sense it, and sometimes it seemed not to exist at all.
But in martial arts novels, training that qi properly inside the body could produce great power. Here, I could find an equivalent concept for qi. Qi was like ‘liquor.’ I'd compare it to liquor made by refining water and subjecting it to special processing.
We couldn't do anything about the sea, that immense part of nature. As though it had a will of its own, it moved slowly and gradually, changing its form. We could use a portion of it. Liquor, however, was made from various ingredients by someone with specialized skills, and its flavor and depth depended on the maker's tastes.
The decisive difference between qi and magic lay in how they were used. Martial arts involved moving qi inside the body to produce the desired power. Magic involved incantations, gestures, tremendous numbers of formulas, and powerful will, introducing variables into mana's flow to produce chain reactions of collisions that manifested the desired phenomenon. Wasn't that a simple conclusion you could reach just by looking at magic and martial arts in use, without delving into conceptual theory?
Let's leave magic and martial arts there. Anyway, I first learned the theories underlying magic.
Learning the complex formulas that accounted for mana's fluidity, magical languages, and such gave me quite a headache. It took 10 years to memorize all 10,742 magic books. Even as a dragon, I found some parts confusing, and properly understanding them before moving on took that long.
Then I began learning practical magic. I was tremendously excited to move mana myself, process it, and give it the form I wanted. I decided to try Magic Missile, supposedly the most basic attack spell.
First, control the mana flowing around me with an incantation and formulas, then manifest it through my will! The moment of my first magic spell has finally come!
“Go! Magic Missile!”
Flash! Fssst, when I used magic while shouting the activation phrase, a little light formed before me and immediately went out. With a disappointing little ‘fssst.’ at that.
“Huh?”
“Kyahahahahaha! Fssst! Seriously! That's so funny! Those 10 years of reading were wasted! Ahahaha hahahaha!”
Grr, sometimes Mom reminded me of Spark. Would she get stronger if I made her laugh, too? Hmm, let's stop these pointless fantasies.
Letting Mom's mocking laughter pass right by my ears, I checked the formulas again and thought. Hmm, even if I'd focused on theory and was weak at practice, I'd spent 10 whole years learning. Wasn't this a little too disappointing? And all this whining from a mere beginner spell?
Oh, right, I hadn't explained. This world's magic system had the very familiar 1st through 9th Circles I'd often heard of, with higher Circles containing stronger spells. One of the books I'd read suggested there might be an ultimate level called the 10th Circle, and since that claim appeared across several books, surely the 10th Circle existed, too.
But never mind the 10th Circle, does it make sense that I can't even use the 1st properly?! Does it?! I'm angry! I'll keep trying!
“Ah, whatever! Practice, and more practice!”
Mana flow! Control! Will! Manifestation!
“Magic Missile!”
One more time!
“Magic Missile!”
Again!
“Magic Missile!”
One more time......
“Magic Mi......”
“......”
Magic was so addictive that it turned me into a complete wreck(a dragon wreck?). It was such a fascinating subject that the deeper I went, the more tightly it held me.
Four hundred years.
A full 400 years. I spent 400 years on manifesting and applying magic and making magical items. As a result, 200 years after I began using magic, I reached the 9th Circle. At 300 years, I'd fully mastered creating spells and crafting magical items. Then, for another 100 years, I summoned no spirits and practiced no swordsmanship. I devoted myself solely to magic! Magic! Magic. Finally, in the 400th year, I came to my senses and looked around to find myself surrounded by magical items I'd made and traces of my spells.
The various spells I'd created, and the items I'd made. Among them, the ones I'd put the most effort into were jewel-like objects called Personality Stones(Personality Stone). They contained personalities(personality) I'd made by magically combining and processing ghosts, souls, and such that I'd caught through magic and by asking Mom.
I also used them to make Ego Swords(Ego Sword). I'd made about 25–30 Personality Stones and apparently used 5 of them in crafting magic swords. Until I sent a magical signal to wake them, these items were just ordinary sleeping jewels, so while making them I could avoid pointless chatter and wordplay with the personalities inside. The fellows set into the magic swords didn't seem likely to wake before I roused them either, which was a relief.
I made 5 swords in total, giving one to Mom and one to Father. Perhaps taken by the appeal of magic swords made by their own child, a dragon(hatchling) at that, they praised me over and over. After investing a remarkable 400 years—apparently, no dragon in history had trained in magic for so long as a hatchling. What did they all do, then? Their poorly nourished bodies meant they spent half their time asleep? Hmm, that's why humans and dragons alike need to be healthy first.—I broke through humanity's limits and could use purely human magic with power rivaling Dragon Speech. It was a great feat achieved at a younger age than any other dragon, an unprecedented result that beat the previous record by a full 100 years.
In the end, a little past the age of 800, I'd learned everything I could in the 800-odd years I'd spent in my own world, Mom's lair.
With nothing left to do, I decided to sleep. It felt as though this would be a rather long sleep, longer than any I'd taken before. Somehow, I felt that if I slept now, I'd wake up very late indeed. With Mom's warm gaze as the last thing I saw, I closed my eyes. Then I sank into a deep sleep.