Back at the desk, Shulim opened the book again and kept reading.
"It is nec... necessary to have a clear understanding of the most basic particles that make up magic, mana particles. Our mental force is the br... bridge that con... connects us to mana particles..."
She stopped again.
"The what of mana particles?"
...
Seeing her youngest daughter standing in front of her again, Lilia set her own book down once more.
"What do these two words say?"
Shulim asked, holding up the page.
Lilia explained patiently, "That says bridge. Like the kind of bridge you see spanning a river."
"Bridge?"
Shulim blinked those big silver eyes of hers.
"Well, what that sentence means is..."
Lilia noticed the confusion on her face and started to explain.
"I get it now. Thank you."
Shulim gave another bow and ran off again.
...
Watching her go, Lilia could not help thinking to herself,
What exactly did she understand?
Back at the familiar desk, Shulim sounded it out again.
"Our mental force is the bridge that connects us to mana particles..."
As she read, another question mark popped up over her head.
Why a bridge? What was the bridge supposed to connect? Were mental force and mana particles separated by a river or something? And if there was a bridge, was it wooden, or stone?
Before long, Shulim had wandered into a very strange train of thought about what kind of relationship mental force and mana particles were supposed to have.
"When our mental force be... becomes aware of mana particles, we discover they exist almost everywhere, including inside our own bodies. Through a process of... of... something-tion..."
She got stuck again.
"What kind of process?"
...
"Through meditation, we can turn free-floating mana particles into mana and store it inside the body."
Faced with Shulim standing in front of her yet again, Lilia still answered with the same patience as before.
"I see. Meditation. Got it. Thank you."
Shulim gave another quick bow, hugged the book to her chest, and turned to leave.
Lilia watched her little daughter for a moment, hesitated, and then softly said, "Shulim."
"What is it?"
Shulim looked up at her.
"Would you like me to read it to you instead?"
Shulim lowered her eyes to the book in her hands, then looked back up at Lilia’s gentle smile.
After hesitating for a moment, she finally held the book out to her.
Lilia set her own book on the windowsill, took the magic book, and gently lifted Shulim onto her lap.
Soon, Lilia’s voice filled the study as she began to read aloud.
"Magic is a miraculous power granted by the world itself. To use that power, one must first have a clear understanding of the most basic particles that make up magic, mana particles. Our mental force is the bridge that connects us to mana particles. Once our minds become aware of mana particles, we discover that they exist almost everywhere, even within our own bodies. Through meditation, we can turn free-floating mana particles into mana and store it within ourselves..."
...
Three days after Shulim started studying magic, she snapped the book shut.
"There’s... no magic in here."
Only now had she fully realized it. The book she had been reading was just an introductory text explaining how magic worked. It was not a spellbook with actual spells she could learn and use.
She pushed the dictionary aside, picked up the book on magic, and walked over to the shelf.
Lilia could not spend all day reading to her, but Shulim had become completely absorbed in studying magic, so Lilia had found her a dictionary instead. Shulim had quickly learned how to use it, and with its help, she had managed to finish the entire book on her own.
And thanks to those three days of reading by herself, her vocabulary had grown so much that she felt like she might not even need a teacher next school year.
After putting the book back in its place, she pulled out another one.
Then she returned to the desk and started flipping through it at speed.
This time, she knew exactly what she was looking for.
Before long, she carried that one back to the shelf too.
Then, for the entire morning, Shulim went back and forth between the bookcase and the desk again and again.
At last, after she returned the final book to the shelf, she froze.
"There’s nothing..."
There was not a single real spellbook in House Hayeral’s collection. Nothing she could use to actually learn magic.
...
"Father. Father."
Shulim went looking for Razelian.
"What is it, my Shulim?"
Razelian planted his training sword in the ground, crouched down, and looked at her at eye level.
"Do we not have any spellbooks at home?"
"A spellbook? Didn’t you find the magic books on the shelf?"
"Not those. I mean the kind that lets people actually use magic."
Razelian paused.
"What would you want a book like that for? Those can be dangerous. If someone reads one and starts messing around without knowing what they’re doing, they could get hurt."
Shulim hurried to reassure him.
"It’s okay. I already understand magic really well now. I won’t mess around."
And to be fair, she was not just saying that.
Even though the past few days had technically been spent reading the wrong kind of book, she had still gained a real understanding of what magic actually was.
At its core, magic was a special phenomenon caused when mana particles, which existed throughout the world, were set in motion according to specific patterns.
There were seven kinds of mana particles.
Under normal circumstances, every person’s soul could resonate with at least one of them. That resonance was called affinity. Someone with the matching affinity could use mental force to control the corresponding mana particles, gather large amounts of them into the body, and form mana.
Then, by shaping that mana into a special pattern of pathways, it would produce a specific phenomenon.
Those pathways were called mana circuits.
By observing how mana moved and what effects it created, people had gradually worked out certain rules. The end result of those rules was the spell incantation.
By chanting a spell incantation, mana could be guided into a specific pattern of movement, producing the desired effect.
And that kind of controlled, deliberate phenomenon was what people called magic.
Seeing how serious his youngest daughter looked, Razelian also grew more serious.
"As for books that actually contain spell incantations, we really don’t keep those in the house, mostly for safety reasons."
The moment she heard that, disappointment spread across Shulim’s face.
"But," Razelian quickly added, "even if we don’t have any here, White’s Bookshop in town does sell them. If you want one, I can go buy some for you another day."
"Really?"
Shulim’s eyes lit up at once.
Then she suddenly remembered that she had already wasted three whole days, and she shook her head.
"No need. I can go buy them myself."
The moment she said that, she turned and ran back into the house.
The Hayeral estate was a two-story manor with double front doors, plus a separate storage building off to one side for tools and odds and ends. A stone wall topped with iron fencing surrounded the property, and the front gate was made of sliding iron bars. From there, a stone path ran through the yard all the way to the front entrance.
Shulim raced up to the second floor and headed for the room at the far end on the left.
That was her room.
It had a round glass window that opened on a hinge, and through it she could see the flowers and plants growing in the yard below.
She yanked open a drawer.
Inside was the little coin purse where she kept her allowance.
She opened it up and counted.
There were nineteen silver coins and fifty-two copper coins inside, a total of 1,952 kor.
Ever since she had started prep school the year before, Lilia had been giving her two silver coins a month as spending money. She had used some of it, but she had saved most of it, and over the course of a year it had added up to this much.
Looking at the purse stuffed full of coins, and the pretty silver gleam flashing back at her, Shulim suddenly felt full of confidence.
"That’s so much money. With this much, I can definitely buy lots of spellbooks."
After tucking the coin purse away safely, Shulim rushed right back out the door.
She was not willing to waste any more time.