Arthur sits down on the chair in front of the table with books and parchments with intricately drawn circles. Carmen grabs the chair in front of her desk and sets it in front of him.

“I already took a peek at your soul when you were in the castle’s infirmary,” she says as she sits down and moves the chair closer to Arthur. “There’s only so much one can see with a quick method like that, so this time I’m gonna need your cooperation.”

“What do I have to do?” He asks.

“I need you to leave your defenses down. If I try to look too deep into your soul, one as strong as yours will probably just kick me out. It’ll feel worse than five hangovers.”

Arthur flinches.

“Alright. And how do I drop my defenses?”

“Really? That easy? I thought you’d be more skeptical.” Carmen hums, yet nods in approval.

“Sir Samuel asked you personally. Not only does that mean he trusts you, but I doubt you’d want to do anything to get on The Knight of the Sun’s bad side.”

She clicks her tongue. “Bringing his title and everything, huh? But yeah, that’s true. I’ll be careful. I promise.”

“Thanks.” He smiles.

She eyes him for a bit, humming in amusement to herself before she continues. “Okay, this is what I need you to do. Just relax and accept everything I do.”

“…Okay?”

‘What’s she gonna do?”

Carmen takes a deep breath and starts focusing. She leans in, looking directly into Arthur’s eyes, making him notice that hers are of a clear, brown color. When her forehead touches his, he flinches.

“I said relax,” she chides him.

“R-Right.”

‘Look at her eyes! Look at her eyes! Don’t look down! Just look at her eyes!’

She stares deep into him, their foreheads touch, and when she takes his hand in hers, his heart starts racing. Because, first impressions aside, Carmen is actually very beautiful. He swallows, trying to relax, as she said, but feeling her soft breathing right next to his face and knowing that letting his eyes look down will give him an amazing view makes it difficult.

“You’re making this a lot harder than it needs to be.” She says, putting her other hand on his cheek.

‘No, you are! Why all the touching!?’

He doesn’t voice his thoughts, though, and instead just takes a deep, deep breath. He tries not to think of her as a beautiful woman, but as a new potential friend. She’s one more acquaintance in this city.

…

‘I just hope we can get along.’

A final, soft sigh and with that thought he manages to relax. His own expression softens as he looks into Carmen’s eyes. As he does, he starts feeling lightheaded. There’s the feeling of foreign prana going into his body, but unlike Lady Eliza’s healing, there’s no soothing warmth here. He still has to make the conscious effort to trust Carmen and let her do her thing.

Next thing he knows, all his senses are gone. It’s an odd sensation, not unlike that feeling when you’re just about to fall asleep but still know you’re awake. But he’s wrong, there’s one sensation that’s still present. He hears something like a large being’s… breathing. It’s nasal, like the soft snoring of a huge creature. He can’t quite understand what it is before he’s brought back to the real world.

He suddenly sees Carmen’s eyes staring into his again and feels her hands on his own and in his cheek. She lets out a deep, tired breath and pulls away.

She’s frowning. She crosses her smooth legs and bites her thumb in annoyance. She seems to be thinking about something really hard.

“Found anything?” Arthur asks.

“Ah? Oh, right.” She clears her throat. “Just a couple of questions to go through the checklist.”

“…Sure?”

“First. You’re sensitive to the flow of prana in people around you, right?”

“I guess? I can usually feel when others are running prana through their bodies, but can’t everyone?”

“Okay. Then tell me what I’m doing right now,” she instructs.

And immediately, Arthur starts feeling a small heat signal coming from her. The prana inside her is gathering near her heart, then gently flowing through her limbs, then flowing towards her heart again. It’s very similar to the exercises he was doing while practicing [martial arts]. He tells her exactly what he felt.

“Then you’re more sensitive than the usual person. Anyone else would’ve only noticed the heat signal, but you can read the flow to a certain extent.” She says, nodding to herself.

“What does that mean?”

“We’ll see. Next question,” she says. “Tell me if you feel anything different after I do this.”

Carmen raises her index finger, and after a shift in the air just like the one he felt when the maid activated the elevator, a fire ball the size of a fist appears over the finger, making him lean back in surprise.

“Woah!”

“Okay, my bad. I should’ve warned you.” She shrugs, seemingly not actually feeling sorry. “So? Felt anything?”

“It’s like the air around changes. It’s hard to explain, but it’s like the wind current shifts or the air I breathe is different.”

“I see.” She nods again. “Okay, one last thing.”

She stands up and walks over to the table with all the glass containers. She grabs a vial with a transparent liquid and comes back to her seat in front of Arthur. “Drink this while running prana in your body and tell me what it tastes like.”

Deciding that he doesn’t have enough information to question the reasons for any of this, Arthur simply does as told and drinks the liquid.

“…Ugh. It’s like… soap or something.”

She hums and nods to herself again. “Yeah, that’d make sense, but…”

“So? What’s all this about.”

“Yes, you’re definitely a demigod,” she confirms.

Arthur’s chest tightens. “B-But my mother isn’t a demigod. My dad wasn’t, either.”

“It’s weird, I know.” She sighs in frustration. “We know for sure that you need to have a demigod as an ancestor to be one yourself, but there’s no consistency to it. Someone in one generation will awaken to the powers then they’ll spend 4 more generations with no demigods. For now, the important thing is that you are one.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“For starters, there’s your sensibility to magical energy. That alone is not enough, though. They’re fewer, but there are some normal people with senses as good if not better than yours. But all demigods we know have the ability to read the flow of magical energy,” Carmen explains. She then narrows her eyes. “But more importantly, there’s your soul. I looked as deep as I could, and even though I still couldn’t see much, I can tell you’re hiding something big. I’ve only looked at a couple of other demigods, but what I saw in you coincides with the written papers. Your soul is hard to read, as if there was a layer of fog covering it, but I can at least tell there’s more to it than a normal human soul. It’s stronger and much deeper.

“What doesn’t make sense, however…” She continues, crossing her arms and puffing her cheeks in annoyance. “…is your [Elemental Affinity].”

“Ah?”

“Right,” she sighs. “Okay, first magic lesson. This is the basics of all magic, so pay attention.”

“Y-Yes!” Arthur answers, straightening up in his seat. It’s a bit sudden, but this is what he came for, too.

Carmen raises two fingers into a V sign and puts them right in front of Arthur’s face.

“First thing you need to know is that there are two types of magical energy. One of them is the one everyone knows, [prana]. You can find it in all living, sentient beings. Animals, monsters and all intelligent races like humans and those from beyond the wall. Whether they have a lot of it or can use it is irrelevant. Basically, if it has a soul, it has prana.”

Arthur nods in acknowledgement. That, he knew.

“The second type of energy is called [mana]. Think of it as almost the same as prana, but instead it’s found in the atmosphere around us. Those shifts in the air you felt? They’re changes in the atmosphere due to a spell.”

She then points up to the lamp in the ceiling. “See that? That’s a crystal that reacts to mana. It does nothing else than giving off light, but that’s a product of the crystal reacting to the magical energy in the atmosphere.”

“Ooooooh.” Arthur nods. “So that’s why they’re used as lamps all around town.”

“Yeah. They’re useless for anything else now, but at least they make good sources of lighting.” Carmen nods in agreement.

“They were used for something else before?” Arthur asks, raising an eyebrow.

“…L-Let’s leave that for another lesson. Ahaha…” She laughs nervously with a crooked gin.

“…Very well. But the difference between prana and mana is at least easy to understand.”

“Yes, but here’s where it starts getting more complex,” she says and grabs the book Arthur had been eyeing before. She opens it to a page with a drawing of a pentagon.

“This diagram represents prana,” she explains. “This is a complex topic, as you can tell by the fact that there’s a whole book written about it,” she says, giving the book a gentle shake. “But let me try to keep things simple.”

“This is the result of years upon years of research. We’ve found out that, in human souls, there’s something we’ve come to call [Neutral Prana]. Some researchers call it [Human Prana] and others call it [Natural Prana].

“The thing is, all prana normally found in humans is of this nature. But adding to that, every being with prana also has an [Elemental Affinity] with one, and only one, of the five elements in this diagram: Fire, Earth, Water, Wind and Ether.”

“What does that mean?”

“Think of it like this. I heard you can do Arcane Arts, right?”

“Yes.”

“The prana you see coming out of you is [Neutral Prana]. It’s colorless and without any properties other than being energy, right?” she asks and Arthur nods. “Well, once you find your [Elemental Affinity], you can change the properties of your prana to said element.”

“…So if I was of fire affinity, for example, the blast of energy I create would become a fire explosion?”

“Exactly.” Carmen nods with a satisfied smile. “You’re catching on quick. We might finish this earlier than I thought!”

“So… what’s my elemental affinity?” He asks, leaning slightly forward in anticipation.

“Ether,” She says with an annoyed scowl. “Which is what bothers me, because there’s no known deity associated with Ether.”

“W-What…? So…”

“So we know you’re a demigod, but we don’t know your origin.” Carmen groans. “I’m gonna have to ask the headmaster for permission to use his library. I hate owing the old man favors.”

Arthur dismisses her last comments and thinks of what this new information means for him. He’s the descendant of an unknown god? His mother never mentioned any ancestors being demigods. But perhaps… it’s because the power is manifesting in him that it’s making him have his condition? Is a fragment of the powers of a god responsible for his sudden fits of pain? He voices this question to Carmen.

“That’s what I was thinking, too.” She nods, dismissing her annoyance for the moment. “I’m thinking it has to do with the fog covering your soul, as I mentioned before. I won’t say much else because nothing’s certain, but I want to examine you again after you’ve had another fit. Hopefully that’ll be soon.”

“No, hopefully it’ll be never.” Arthur sighs tiredly, but knows that’s not gonna happen. Two fits less than a week apart? That had never happened before. Who knows when the next one will come?

“Well, let’s focus on more practical things,” he says. “What does it mean that my elemental affinity is Ether?”

“As a swordsman, it means you’re screwed,” she says bluntly.

“W-What…!?”

“Most elements are self-explanatory, right? Fire is fire, Water is water, Wind is wind. Earth is a little more complex because it’s not just the ground and dirt, but the energy of nature. More on that some other time.” She shrugs. “But Ether is different from the others.”

“How so?”

“Just like there are five elements of prana, there are five elements in the mana around us. All of them are present at once, but there are some areas where a certain kind of mana will be stronger. There’s a volcano to the far southeast of the continent that’s rich in earth and fire mana,” she says. “And the thing about Ether is that it’s a conductor element. It’s what allows all other elements to freely flow through the atmosphere.”

“…” Arthur can’t speak. He has nothing to say. He’s still trying to understand what this means for him.

“Look, it means that your Arcane Arts will have no extra properties. Even if you add the Ether element to your blast of prana, it’ll only make it a better conductor for any other element, not make it more destructive or special,” she says, then smirks. “However, it means you’ll be an excellent jack-of-all-trades as a mage.”

“Ah?”

“This is the last lesson for today, alright? We’ve already spent too much time on this and I need to go read on some stuff to find out what you are,” she humphs. “What do you think is the difference between an [Arcane Art] and a [Magic Spell]?”

“…” Arthur thinks, but he doesn’t know enough to come up with an answer. He knows they call Arcane Arts ‘the halfway point between Martial Arts and Magic’, but…

Wait!

“Mana!” Arthur answers suddenly with an excited smile. “Magic uses [mana] instead of [prana]!”

“Ding ding ding!” Carmen grins. “There’s far more mana in the atmosphere than prana inside the soul. Magic takes advantage of that to create even grander effects. But how do you make magic happen? You use your own prana to touch mana and mold it to make it power the effects you want to manifest.”

“I… I think I get it.” Arthur nods, still smiling, proud to have been able to come up with the answer himself. He felt the shift in the mana around when he saw people using spells, after all. That was his biggest hint!

“Here’s the thing, though. [Neutral Prana] can touch all types of elemental mana, but the synergy is terrible. You can create mediocre effects at best,” Carmen explains, shaking her head. “In contrast, touching Fire mana with Fire prana enhances the effects even more. So creating a fireball with Fire prana is five times more efficient and effective than creating one with Neutral prana.”

“I see,” Arthur nods slowly. “Then… Ether, as a conductor… can have good synergy with every type of elemental mana?”

“Precisely!” Carmen grins proudly again. “Creating a fireball with Ether prana is not as good as creating it with Fire prana, but it’s still three times more effective than Neutral prana.” She nods to herself. “It’s also the most useful for researchers like me. There’s too much stuff I wouldn’t be able to try if I didn’t have an Ether affinity.”

“Oh, so you’re Ether too?”

“Yep. Although I’d say there’s still something fundamentally different between you and me on account of you being a demigod.” She shudders in excitement. “Ugh! I want to understand this so bad! You’re just so full of mysteries! I’m so glad Samuel let me have a look at you! I won’t let the headmaster or his apprentice steal this one from me!” She giggles to herself.

“Well… I’m thankful for your help,” Arthur smiles. “So if there’s anything I can help you with, feel free to tell me.”

“Very well, Arthur. It’ll be give and take! You help me further my research and I’ll make you a top-tier mage!” She says, standing up from her seat in one swift motion and extending her hand towards the young knight-trainee.

“I’ll be glad to work with you, Carmen,” he says, standing up more slowly and shaking her hand before noticing again how she’s half-naked. His cheeks start heating up as Carmen enthusiastically shakes his hand. “However… perhaps you could wear more clothes next time? I like the view, but it’s also very distracting.”

“Distracting?” She asks, puzzled. She then follows the line his eyes are traveling from up there to her cleavage. Her own cheeks start burning. She slowly lets go of Arthur’s hand and turns around to hide her chest. “I-I see. Y-Yes, I can see how it would be… uh… distracting.” She clears her throat.

‘Is she seriously just realizing it?’

“Yes, I’ll uh… I’ll wear more clothes next time.” She swallows and mutters to herself. “Gods, this is embarrassing.”

Carmen gets dressed in a clean overall and accompanies Arthur to handle the elevator for him. They both say their awkward goodbyes, yet with the promise to meet again soon for another lesson.