Tina is not a teacher by profession, but she is managing it smoothly. She is the daughter of a school dean and wife of an instructor after all. She satisfies the wishes of Eru, teaching him magic patiently.
-- In simple terms, magic in this world refers to the skill in manipulating mana to perform physical phenomenon.
All living things in this world have the ability to convert the 'ether' in the air into mana, and store a certain amount of it within its body.
"Mana is something like fuel, magic will be used in accordance to the content of the magic script to do things in the physical world through a catalyst."
Tina explains to Eru who is sitting down obediently.
There are 2 types of living beings in the world, divided to those who can use magic independently and those who can't. The difference lies in the existence of a catalyst within their body. For beings that can use magic, they have a crystal within their body that acts as a catalyst. For example, the strongest creature known as dragon possesses a catalyst, and their dragon breath is created using this.
"Humans don't have catalyst inside us, so we are a race that can't use magic."
Since human don't have a crystal catalyst, they can't use magic. From the laws of this world, this is a natural and undeniable fact. But people have learnt a way to use magic. This is the result of them using their weapon called wisdom. As a living being of this world, humans can make use of mana and develop scripts gradually to use magic, and use external catalyst to overcome their weakness.
With this breakthrough, humans who were always the weakest in the world, developed gigantic magic powered weapons after years of research - the Silhouette Knight. This makes the humans one of the most powerful races.
"Mom, since the Silhouette Knights are so powerful, and we have such a huge army of knights, we can build a bigger country right?"
"Maybe it can be done, but it is difficult."
Silhouette Knight might be powerful weapons, but it is a tactical weapon that requires large amount of resources to build and maintain. It is practically impossible to prepare the forces capable of dominating the land. Humanity uses the Aubigne mountain range as the border to maintain peace on the west of the continent. Fremmevira remains behind as a screen to protect their foothold in the east. The stalemate has been going on for centuries.
"I will leave the details for history class. You will learn about it in more detail when you will start schooling."
Tina is talking about practical application of magic. As mentioned before, magic has to be done through scripts, and the construction and usage of scripts is performed by a virtual organ in the brain known as Magius circuit. In this world, all beings that are self-aware have the potential to use it.
"And Eru, scripts are sigils that perform specific phenomenon. First is the 'Architect' Fundamental> sigil that perform basic phenomenon, followed by the Control sigils that coordinate and use Architect sigils."
By combining Architect sigils and Control sigils, the picture created will be something similar to magic summoning circles on earth.
For beginners in magic , the part they will stumble on is the construction of the script. Most people can manipulate Architect sigils immediately, but using powerful spells by using more complex scripts requires a great amount of practice. As humans can't use magic naturally, creating high level magic requires the accumulation of experience. Apart from perseverance, this also requires natural talent.
(Architect sigils that determine the phenomenon and the control sigils that maximize its effects. Both of them combining by a set of fixed laws... Right, I have seen this before, this is just like...)
Eru's occupation in his past life -- programmer, helps him in understand this part. In simple terms, the sigils and their interaction in the form of a script follows similar logic to program coding. The operation of the script by the magius circuit is similar to a virtual computer. Since the magius circuit is in built within the brain, activating it doesn't take time, which performs better than computers in his previous life.
After Eru grasped the logic behind it, he 'extracted' the architect sigil and control sigil from the text book and started using his magius circuit -- which is the human brain to start coding. With such a big amount of codes, even a veteran programmer won't be able to organize it within their head; they need the help of software editors. To counter this, Eru uses the magius circuit domain as a software editor to plan and compile the scripts.
Because he is a beginner, he has no idea how much magic the people in this world can use. He didn't think that his ability to easily build and control the complicated programming language to be special.
Eru held a tiny wooden wand and focused with his eyes closed.
A small crystal was fixed onto the tip of the wand. That is the crystal catalyst, a miraculous item which allows human to use magic. For humans using magic, they prefer wielding wands with crystal catalyst fixed onto its tip. The wand in Eru's hand made a gentle 'Pashu' sound, and a line of fire shot out, leaving a scorched mark on the middle of the target board. He just activated the fire architect sigil with beginner magic -- 'Fire torch'.
"Wow Eru, that's great. Although it is just the architect sigil, but I never imagined that you can use magic so fast."
"But mom, the textbook says that this is the basics of the basics, anyone can use it immediately."
"It is true that anyone can activate it, but to hit the target so accurately requires practice. Eru has talent for magic."
No matter how good Eru is in programming, it is useless if he only studies the theory without putting it in practice. A simple target board at the backyard, and Tina accompanied Eru for practical training. They practice all types of architect sigils one by one, allowing Eru to get used to the feeling of using magic. After casting spells repeatedly, Eru started to feel weird... it felt like energy was gradually draining from his body. It is like the fatigue you feel after exercise, but different at the same time. This unique experience confused him, but this is natural when you expend mana. He pants heavily and breathes in the ether in the air around him, attempting to replenish his mana.
(... I didn't know it was this tiring. If I used advanced spells, I would have probably fainted because of shortness of breath.)
Tina who has been supervising him walked over with a gentle smile and rubbed his head.
"This is how it feels when you expend mana. If you don't experience it now, it will be troubling in the future."
"... I can't catch my breath, it feels painful. My mana is empty with just a little magic use, so depressing."
"Don't be discouraged. You are still young, lacking mana is normal."
"Will I have more mana when I grow up?"
"Hmm -- Let me think. It's a bit different, but just think of it as something like stamina. The growth of mana is not solely dependent on your body growth. It will also get stronger as you train your psyche."
"I understand. Mom, since that's the case, I will be doing special training to increase my mana pool!"
Tina gave a bitter smile, rubbing the head of the spirited Eru.
"Ara, what a hardworking child. Don't be too impatient, going too fast might be bad too."
Eru reflect on this, and felt that he is being too rash. Tina is right, rushing won't be good for him, and he doesn’t want his mother who is accompanying him to worry.
"Yes mom. I will take it slow and steady."
Eru promised his mother with a straight face. Tina nodded and hugged him tightly.
Eru started his special training the following day.
With the promise with Tina and the future in mind, he will need to improve his physical and magical abilities steadily. Constructing script is Eru's strength, he will find a way if he makes use of his previous life's ability. The rest will depend on the mana he needs to use the magic. He persists in his routine of jogging, physical exercise, depleting his mana and recovering it. As he was gooing through his fundamental training, he found an interesting magic in the textbook.
He was looking up physical boost spells. Physical boost means literally strengthening the capability of your body, including strength, stamina and speed. Eru's plan was to incorporate this spell in his physical exercise, training both mind and body at the same time for efficiency.
The spell physical boost is a high spell which is difficult to use. The effects of the magic is dependent on the script, the simpler the structure, the closer it will be to the architect sigil and the easier it is to control; the more targets there are, the more complex and difficult it will be.
The high level complex spell physical boost has the ability of enhancing 'every muscle fibre', strengthening 'all the bones' to absorb the impact, and the improvement in durability of the skin. There is a need to control the target of the spell which changes rapidly with every movement. To use the effect, the script needs to be activated constantly. This is why the boosting spell is on a higher level than big spectacular spells which do not require constant upkeep to maintain.
Normally, Eru would have given up at this stage and would have chosen a more practical spell. But he knew how to solve the issue because of his unique skills -- programming concept. He has experience in designing and coding software to handle multiple variables. That's why he skipped the beginner magic phase, and jumped straight into the 'modified magic' phase. Reviewing the structure of the physical boost script, Eru compressed the structure to minimize the number of variables, creating sub scripts that will automatically extract the status of the body. After compiling it, he just needs to design the user interface to make it easier to control so