The mind is probably the most important part of the trio of self. For a similar reason as to why your brain is the most important part of your physical body.

Your mind is you. It is your memories, your personality, your emotions, anything that is not the physical or the magical. Most importantly it houses your 'will' which is the force that allows you to make things happen, everything from just moving your arm to casting complex spells. Without your will, you can't act on the world. The prospect of using up my will and being trapped in my own body still terrifies even me.

But, rarely, with a strong enough will you can do the impossible.

See, abilities that are spawned by this over-abundance of will, usually showing themselves in one form or another and are impossible to predict, the only common thread being that the user can affect the material and/or magical plane in some way inherently.

It's pretty much an inborn spell that uses will instead of mana, I don't know if elements are involved, but usually these powers aren't elemental in nature.

These abilities are known as gifts

Examples I've seen include

telekinesis, which I have.

Flight, without wings.

Unbound telepathy.

Increased physical attributes.

Animation (as in instant golems, though the alternative is impressive)

And strangely enough, the ability to pee on command, even with an empty blatter.

(ended up stuck in the desert with that guy back in the day. It's more useful than sounds)

All of these things could be performed without any spell sigils, and don't expend any mana. Gifts use ‘will’ instead and can be accomplished with a thought. Though, like I mentioned earlier using up all of your will put you in a pretty bad situation until it recovers. And increasing your capacity for will is much harder than cycling and frankly, all methods are unpleasant.

But no decent mage would say no to extra power, so for any gifted, this fate is inevitable.

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Chapter ten

Kenn-

The Demon King took them over to the center of the clearing where they’d ‘sparred’

“The first step of the mortal stage, along with awakening the internal portion of your mana sense also unlocked the first two nodes within your system. You should be able to sense them as a congruence of mana channels in certain areas, for now, we should focus on the active ones in your throat and hands. Again, Ali and Hailey should be able to help the rest of you, at least in locating the latter of the two.”

“So we’re just looking for a place where a bunch of channels overlap?” Sandra asked

Ali answered rather than the Demon King “More like a web, it's a whole bunch of overlaps, not just one”

The demon nodded

Kenn turned his senses inward as he had been taught looking at his hands first. He found what he was looking for immediately, a dense collection of channels localized entirely to his palm in a spiderweb pattern. The same was found in his throat near his voice box, Kenn could feel the mana flowing through them, inadvertently he let his mana sense follow the flow throughout his body and eventually back to his cores. He stared at the balls of light his mental eye drawn to the leftmost one, the pale brown of his time core felt strange and utterly foreign compared to the steely silver of his armament mana, that truth made the former catch his eye with the feel of it. It was distracting.

Kenn was forced out of his reverie by a sharp pain in his ribs.

He jumped to find Giel’s elbow planted firmly into his side.

“Earth to Kenn. I know your heads filled with air but get it out of the clouds.” the beast-kin whispered, "you staring at my butt again?"

“N-no what I" Kenn knew his response made him look guilty so he just quit "Sorry, what did I miss”

Giel just pointed to where the Demon King had started talking again

“Each node is a canvas that you’ll use to manifest spell sigils. Currently-”

“Spell sigils?” Kenn asked, confused at the new term.

“I don’t know either” Sandra said echoing his ignorance

The demon grunted apologetically “Sorry I forgot all of you don’t have experience with spells for a second” He stroked his chin with a clawed hand “Overall, spell-work is easier to learn than cycling, especially since skill in one supports the other.”

Ali started to interject something, the demon interrupting her,

“I know some spells are harder than others, but I meant learning the skill is simple, spells are formed by forming symbols with your mana on the appropriate node or nodes. Each line tells the mana what it's trying to accomplish and the node, as well as the mana types, tell it how to do so”

The students stared until Sandra spoke for all of them “What?”

“I… already know magic and I don't understand what you’re talking about”

The Demon King sighed “Sorry I’m talking over your stupid stupid heads. Did any of you have coding experience on earth?”

Giel and Hailey both raised their hands. Ali huffed which Kenn assumed was a yes.

The Demon King nodded “Good, think of it kind of like that, the minutia doesn’t really matter until we get to the actual creation part of spell work. For now, you should know there are five-” he paused as if being interrupted by someone “No there are five, that doesn't count. Five! Okay. Okay! No need to shout! There are six, ...apparently, main types of magical techniques. But we’ll only be dealing with the three available to you now. Casts, incantations… and, arguably, skills.”

“Those words don’t mean anything to me” Ali sniped.

“Well I’m tired of sounding like the tutorial of a video game, so I’ll just give the short version. Casts create something or induce an outside effect with mana. What you do is casting, fireballs, ice bolts, lightning bolts, even Hailey’s healing magic. “ The Demon said gesturing to the elf “as For Incantations” he grinned “Allow me to demonstrate. You might want to step back”

Having seen enough to know when to listen the student collectively took a few steps backward.

With that, the Demon King began chanting “Heart of dark mountains, a single drop of planets blood. Cooling to the sharpest blade” The ground began to quake, power seeming to fill the demon's voice with each word. Echoing out and filling the surrounding area. The ground shook and as the last of the words left the demon's lips, “OBSIDIAN TINES!”

Spikes of black stone erupted from the ground, Dozens of them shooting from the earth to cut at the sky. In an instant, they were nearly fifty feet tall towering over all of them like emperors.

Kenn stared up at them with a mix of wonder and fear, The force of their exit nearly causing him to fall. Like prey, he looked into the maw of a great dark toothed behemoth and only had one thought.

How long until I can do something like that…?

This was the power of a mage.