Shades of the New World

Chapter 10: Magical Worlds

"How did you appear here?" Evin asked incredulously.

"I'm afraid I can't explain that to you as of now. But now, we don't have to worry about running out of time. The box takes a tad too much energy if you use it normally, but now we'll have all the time we need to teach you magic," Aran said happily.

"What do you mean?" Evin asked. He didn't know how entering this area would be connected to saving time.

"You're in the World of Thoughts. You feel that time is passing like normal here, but time passes many times faster compared to the Main World. We can talk for hours on end but only a few minutes would pass in the actual world"

'Minute? What's that?' Evin was confused, because Aran said the word exactly like one would say it in English. Even though the language was different, suddenly hearing an English word sparked his curiosity.

Evin heard his parents talk about time, but it was mostly in vague terms like half a day, before noon and afternoon, midnight, etc.

"What's a minute?"

"Ah, it's what we use to measure time. One, two, three, four, five. Every time I said a number, a second passed. If I do this 60 more times, a minute would pass. And if 60 minutes pass, an hour would pass. There are a little more than 26 hours in a single day,"

Evin found that it was exactly the same as Earth, except here they had 26 hours a day. Then what about months and days?

"How many days are in a month?" Evin also never heard his parents mention months, since they usually talk measure time with seasons.

"Exactly 40 days in a month and there's 10 months in a year. It's the 1275th year, by the way"

"Who keeps count? And who created that second, minute system?"

"Perhaps the Empress. Who knows? It's what everyone uses. People don't really worry about such things," replied Aran nonchalantly.

'This means that the Empress definitely knows about Earth, with the Arabic numbers and everything... Actually, It's not too surprising. Everyone says that the Empress is basically god almighty, so it wouldn't be too surprising if she knows about other planets. That woman back on Earth knew the name of this planet, too,' Evin thought.

But more importantly, Evin was afraid that this was a form of interplanetary plagiarism. Or is it interdimensional?

Wasn't he himself technically inter-dimensionally smuggled into Alvox? But the woman said nothing about staying low. She even told the spirit to go and become immortal somehow, or else. Isn't that the opposite of staying low?

'Perhaps the Empress knows about me already' Evin guessed and started thinking about the new revelation.

He was pretty sure humanity started using the hour and minute system during the rule of the ancient Babylonians. And that was much earlier than 1275 years ago, even considering the fact that years and days were longer here. Since it is year 1275 now, something big must've happened 1275 years ago and she decided to introduce the new system to the world.

"What happened 1275 years ago?"

"The Empire was born and a new Era emerged. The Final Empress created the Black Tower in the middle of the continent and then divided the rest of the land between the twelve races. If you want a brief history lesson, the Humans, Ivari and the Leyaq races won and divided the mainland into three countries, pushing the losing races to the Southern Islands. That led to the creation of the Island Alliance and the never-ending wars between the South and the rest of the world"

Evin was once again reminded of the extent of his ignorance. There were apparently twelve races in the world, and luckily he was part of the winning group.

There were probably millions of things happening all over the world and Evin will have to dive right into it. Some of those things were nice but mostly it was shit, judging from Evin's own experience in life. He was to become an eternal being some way or another, so he was sure he couldn't avoid being covered in all that shit, since his ambitions were so grand.

"Can you teach me about magic?"

Forcefully suppressing his thoughts, Evin decided to ask Aran about the subject he wanted to hear about the most. If he wanted to achieve his goals, strength was the most basic requirement.

"Now that I think about it, you will still have to wait until Arza gets old enough"

"Why?"

He wanted to complain, but the words Aran picked implied that he won't change his mind in the matter. But at least he could ask for the reasons.

"Magic is an extremely hard thing to learn. Arza can see essence, but it doesn't mean he will be a talented mage. In the worst case, he might even become some sort of expendable in a war. You, on the other hand, are intelligent from birth. I can teach you the very basics and give you some pointer, and you might even be able to work out all the things I learned in a few dozen years"

'Why does it sound like you've given up on your child already? Have some faith in him, please!'

"You're probably overestimating me"

Evin was happy with the praise, but he couldn't really spend all his life chasing Aran's trails. He needed to become immortal after all and Aran did not look all that immortal to Evin.

"But, that's not the whole problem. Teaching magic has severe repercussions if one does not follow the rules. I'm barely avoiding getting hanged in the gallows, by teaching you only the basics. And you would have to go to the Mage Association afterwards, to become legitimate as well," Aran said.

"What about the problems I'm facing now?"

"After you're recognized as a legitimate mage apprentice, you will be considered a half 1st grade citizen, since you will be my apprentice in name. That should be enough to deter that inn owner from trying things. And also, I'm also almost done with this war, so you don't have to worry about things. I'm teaching you the basics of the basics as a last resort of some sorts," Aran explained and continued.

"Okay, we've delayed enough. Let's start with magic studies,"

Evin was finally going to learn how magic in this World worked. To say that he was excited was naturally an understatement.

"What do you think a World is?"

Evin was apparently in a World, so he had many thoughts in his head. He was trying to succeed in his magic in some way for the past half a month, but he lacked the crucial information on how to access it. And now that key was in his hands.

First of all, Evin guessed that they were what allowed mages to perform magic.

"Worlds are a medium that helps you channel magic. But I feel that there must be something bigger behind it, now that I'm inside one myself," Evin said.

"That is true, but that's not the only thing that defines a World. Never think that a World is just a tool. It is a live entity that wields real, tangible power in the main world. If you start believing that a world is just a tool to be used, you can even be rejected entry into them. And by tangible, I don't mean just the magical aspect of it. Worlds hold extremely important political, cultural and religious meanings to all the people of The Empire"

"I'm sorry, but I don't understand half the words you're saying"

Evin really didn't. He could talk the language, but he still had the vocabulary of a one-year-old child. Though he could roughly guess what he's talking about, it still mostly sounded like gibberish to him.

Aran's cheeks flushed a bit from the embarrassment, and he seemed to realize just exactly who he was talking to.

"I guess this talk is a bit too early for you, huh? Let's just talk about magic then. Just remember to respect the Worlds, perhaps think of them as the Empress' hands and feet, I suppose"

"Okay"

Aran's talk about the Empire did interest Evin, but he couldn't really be part of it until he became a decent enough mage.

"First of all, there are twelve Worlds. We divide them into two major groups: the Elemental Worlds and the Conceptual Worlds. Most mages dabble in Elemental Worlds, since it's much easier to imagine uses for them. Obviously, there are other great specialists of the other worlds, but you can safely say that 8 out of 10 mages would be an Elemental"

"This World would be a Conceptual World, right?" Evin figured.

Evin heard Aran call this world the World of Thoughts. Also, the name of the "Authority" attached to it was Veidrakar, which should mean Vei-dragon. If Evin's Northern wasn't sorely wrong, it should mean something along the lines of creation dragon or origin dragon.

"Yes. As I've told you before it is a Conceptual World named the World of Thoughts. We'll get to that later. Mages must enter a world and then offer mana to the Authority of the World. The Authority of this World is the leader of the dragon kin, Veidrakar. Your ancestor, Evin," Aran said, smirking.

Evin pretended to not understand Aran's dumb joke, only making a solemn face. Not seeing the reaction he wanted, Aran could only sigh and continue:

"The Authority will then give you back some of the World's powers to use. The more mana you offer, the more energy you will get back. But you can't receive more energy than you can handle. In your case, the most you can offer should be the size of that lodestone I gave you when you were a child. If you exceed that limit, your mana core will burst, rendering you unable to use magic for a week or a month, depending on how much you exceeded your limit. And the explosion of your core will probably the most painful thing you will experience. You can compare it having your arms explode, I guess?"

'My mana-core? Is that an organ that people in this world have? Wait, doesn't that mean I have really crap talents at magic?'

"Does this mana core get bigger?"

"Yes, it gets bigger as you grow like all your other organs, and if you constantly use it in moderate amounts, its ability to reuse energy will get faster as well"

"I see"

Evin figured that he didn't have to worry too much about overexerting himself. Even if such a thing did happen, at least it will grow back after exploding, so he will not be completely crippled of his magic.

"And finally, you can use the energy in your core to perform magic. The most important part in this entire process is your knowledge and imagination of the magic you want to perform. If you want the flames to hover above your hand, without hurting yourself, you must properly imagine that. Just like how you can hurt yourself with your sword, you can very easily hurt yourself with your magic"

'Well, that should be obvious. Basically, it means "Don't be an idiot"' Evin thought smugly. He was very confident in his ability to imagine things, after a year of 'gruesome' imagination training he went through.

'Is that all there is to magic? Seems a bit too easy. I spent so much time trying out all sorts of things to work out this whole thing, and it was this easy? I just had to offer the stone to a World and I could start using magic? Wait, now that I think about it, I actually never thought about offering the stone What is this, some sort of a moral lesson for selfish people?'

"I see" Evin said with a deep sigh.

"Your tone seems to contain some other emotions, but that's the whole gist of it. Though, don't think that it's simple. You will have to do a lot more mental exercises to start using magic at a practical level" Aran warned.

"Can you tell me about the Worlds?"