Chapter 49: Some Tension
While I had agreed to let Raisa come along, there was still some time before that would happen. I began to wonder what I could do in between to kill the time, but Raisa suddenly spoke to me.
"Are you casting a spell right now?"
I looked at her strangely.
"Huh? No?"
She looked back at me somewhat bewildered.
"...Then why is the mana in your body moving so much?"
I scratched the side of my head.
"I'm meditating."
Raisa gawked at me, like she saw a dinosaur in the zoo.
"What? How are you doing that?"
I shrugged my shoulders.
"Honestly, I'm not all that sure. I just kinda did it because it somehow started working."
Raisa furrowed her brows.
"You... just skipped so many steps."
It was my turn to look at her with confusion.
"What are you talking about?"
Raisa took a deep breath, becoming far more serious than she had been.
"Ordinarily, it is incredibly difficult to manipulate the mana within our bodies while thinking of something else at the same time. We have to meditate so much that mana manipulation eventually becomes second nature so that we can cast spells. The more second nature it is for us, the easier it is to cast spells that are more demanding on our mana manipulation."
She tilted her head to the side.
"Um, but if you can already manipulate it while doing whatever, then you've skipped all those steps. That means you can basically just cast any spell you want. Usually, only some of the greatest mages are able to move their mana at the same time as doing ordinary tasks."
Raisa muttered the last part.
"It's difficult even to walk. In fact, most new mages hold their breath while casting."
Huh. The way she said it made me sound extremely overpowered.
But she was definitely exaggerating it to quite an extent. It wasn't as simple as knowing how to manipulate mana perfectly just because I could do multiple things while holding mana.
Raisa helped me realize that I did start with a huge advantage out of basically nowhere, or at least from a place I didn't know yet.
However, while I had an easier time focusing on multiple things compared to other people, that didn't change the fact that I was still unfamiliar with my own mana.
"You are exaggerating it. I still had a decent amount of trouble casting the fireball. While I was faster, it wasn't by too much."
Raisa promptly shook her head.
"But this means you'll be able to learn stronger magic at an exponentially faster rate than others! The difference is not much now, but it very quickly will stack up."
A bitter smile formed on my face.
"You seem to be forgetting that my magical talent is basically average in our school."
After hearing that, she froze in place, without anything more to say back to me. She seemed to finally remember, no matter how good you were at manipulating magic, everyone had a limit.
There were ways to increase those limits, but they were incredibly difficult and unreliable compared to most stories and games. Under normal circumstances, there are bottlenecks that people overcome.
But in this shitty game, the only reliable way was elixirs that didn't really work, and the ways that actually worked generally involved extreme risk, such as nearly disassembling yourself in whatever a mana volcano was supposed to be. Most of these permanent methods were not known to the grand majority of people simply because of how crazy they were.
They weren't too important for the main character since his limit was already fairly high. It wasn't that increasing his cap didn't make him substantially more powerful. In fact, it was a very big power-up.
However, there was quite a bit you could get away with just the base magical talent you were given.
Of course, that wasn't the same for me, but increasing my mana cap wasn't the highest of priorities right now.
"Well, at least it's good to know that I won't have to try too hard to manipulate large amounts of mana at once."
Raisa smiled somewhat sadly.
"...Haha, I guess that's the burden we have of being born as people with lower magical aptitude."
Hm. I guess we could be similar in that nature, huh? Never really thought about it like that though.
I focused on meditating a little bit more, and it was at this point I could vaguely sense the mana in Raisa's body.
I don't really remember people ever talking about stuff like this.
Exploring my sudden urge of curiosity, I tried to move the mana in Raisa's body. And to my surprise, I was just barely able to grasp it, like water running down my hand. As for Raisa, she let out an audible gasp and pulled away from me, making that sensation disappear.
Raisa's eyes widened as she leaned over to whisper to me.
"D-Did you just do that?"
I slowly nodded, wondering why she was being so silent about it. Raisa took a deep breath before once again whispering gently to me.
"...Make sure you don't openly show that. It's not an application of mana I've ever heard about."
I narrowed my eyes slightly and followed her hushed tone.
"Is that a bad thing?"
Raisa sucked in a cold breath, whispering right next to my ear, yet was still just barely audible to me.
"If the Magician Association finds out, they will take you. They may do it in a respectful way, but nothing will change that it is essentially a kidnapping."
I slowly nodded.
"I understand."
The Magician Association. Basically the pieces of shit among the mages. I probably should've seen this coming. If I were to describe them, they are basically just a bunch of stereotypical mad scientists but instead of science, it was magic.
I slowly leaned over to Raisa and whispered back to her.
"Do you mind if I practice this on you?"
She looked at me for a few moments, hesitating slightly, but then gingerly nodded.
"Ok."
From there, I began trying to manipulate the mana in her body once more. However, I quickly found it incredibly difficult.
If I had to compare, the difference was like the difficulty of just breathing normally and using your hand to fan air into your mouth to forcefully simulate breathing. And manipulating my own mana was definitely not as easy as breathing, so you could imagine that I wasn't getting really far.
This was probably substantially harder than dual-casting.
Whenever I did briefly grasp onto Raisa's mana, she seemed to instinctively withdraw and also attempt to regain her hold on the mana. Naturally, her ability to manipulate it was stronger than mine, so I lost control immediately whenever she did that.
It was definitely a little annoying, but it seemed as though she couldn't really help doing it.
In fact, I could tell she was trying to repress that instinct, but it was definitely not working.
Eventually, the carriage stopped moving, and we ended up back at my place. Naturally, I got off and Raisa followed me awkwardly. After a few awkward moments, we decided to spend the next moment just in my room, doing pretty much nothing.
The servants panicked when she walked in, but Raisa ignored them all, making them feel rather awkward.
Still, the chefs seemed to be panicking somewhat.
One of them even came up to me and asked if I still had any of the special meat, but I didn't. I would have to get some from Edward later. This stressed out the chefs, but I didn't really care too much about it.
Upon making it to my room, Raisa spoke to me softly.
"I... I think I'm understanding things about my own mana when you try to take control of it."
I raised an eyebrow.
"Eh? Really? You're not just making it up so that I do this more, are you?"
She promptly shook her head quickly.
"No, it really isn't like that! Before, I had to try to move my mana by myself, but when you try to take it away, my body automatically moves it in a really proficient way. If I can get used to moving mana just like that, it should make it far easier for me to move mana!"
My eyes widened ever so slightly as I nodded a few times.
"Then could you also try doing it on me?"
Raisa flinched before smiling awkwardly.
"U-Um, I'll try my best."
She placed a hand on my shoulder, but even as a few minutes passed, unfortunately, nothing happened. Her eyes were closed tightly and her brows were intensely furrowed.
"I just can't sense it."
I let out a sigh.
"Well, I guess it can't be helped. I suppose it isn't necessary."
With that, I began trying my best to manipulate the mana in Raisa's fingers, which caused her to pull her hand away and wrestle back control over the mana. But soon after, she relaxed and placed her hand back on.
To be honest, from the outside perspective, it looked like I was willingly letting her touch me so she could get over some sort of trauma over touching people. Which all things considered, was very ironic.
Regardless, I continued on.
The progress was very little. Honestly, that was the same with just meditating normally, but at least after an hour, there was at least a feeling of progress, even if it wasn't really visible. And after a day or two, there would be a noticeable difference.
However, after an hour of silently doing this, I didn't feel myself getting any better at this.
I couldn't help but ponder if there was even a point to doing all of this. On the surface, this looked like it could be an incredibly deadly technique. If I could control my opponent's mana against their will, then not only would they be unable to cast spells on their behalf, but I could force them to cast spells that helped me.
But that was simply far too unrealistic. The first reason being how hard it was to control other people's magic. Of course, it was a skill that could be improved, but I didn't have all the time in the world.
I can't just invest all my time into learning this type of manipulation.
On top of that, the body seemed to instinctively fight against this manipulation. Even against a person that was absolutely terrible at using mana consciously, they would still be able to do it very practically subconsciously.
If it was a person very skillful, it would probably be even harder to take control of their mana.
Though doubts rose in my mind, I still continued to practice.
Other than Raisa occasionally letting out a sound of discomfort, and our shallow breathing, it was almost silent. My thoughts were few, naturally because it was hard to even think with most of my focus used up.
But my mind wandered randomly as occasionally thoughts popped up.
They were quite random honestly, like if there was a place to get a pet like a dog or cat. Not that I would ever get one, but I still wondered.
Say, I was getting quite thirsty but was also too lazy to pick myself up to get a drink.
What happened to the real Bryson? Did he realize that his own consciousness was getting stolen before I entered? Was it the same thing that happened to Nathan?
Hm.
At some point, Raisa gently put a hand on my forehead.
"Um, maybe we should stop here."
I glanced at her.
"What's wrong?"
She smiled slightly.
"Your head feels really hot. It's like you have a fever."
As my focus returned, I could actually feel the heat being emitted from my head. She was probably right, a fatigue was setting in that I didn't realize before.
"Ah, fair enough."
The moment I got up and stepped out, a butler bowed to me.
"The meal is prepared for the Lord and your Highness."
From there, I scratched the side of my head awkwardly.
"Ah, I see."
Raisa clapped her hands together and looked at me expectantly.
"Oh! Do you have that specially prepared meat?"
I shook my head with an awkward smile.
"Uh, no. I have to get some later."
Raisa pouted for a moment, but nodded understandably.
"Ah, ok."
We went down to sit at the dining table. Soon after we showed up, Jess also came. She gave Raisa a glance, remaining on her for a few moments before snapping to me. While Jess had a neutral frown on her face the entire time, it wasn't hard to tell she was definitely thinking of something.
I tried to just keep silent, but it didn't seem like things would go my way.
Raisa spoke up.
"Is my presence disturbing you?"
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