I sat in stupor at her statement. The demons reported a demon invasion? “But, why?”

She crossed those alluring legs again. “Because the Darkviper clan has many succubi and incubi. Invading the humans will destabilize our clan, and cause much more problems than Fyren realizes.”

“Fyren? Is that your master?” I asked.

She shook her head. “He’s the king of all demons. He controls the clans.”

A demon king? Really? “Why the sudden invasion?”

Queen Ayana shrugged. “We don’t know. No one knows. I presume this is why my master wants to meet with you. Unfortunately, I don’t know any more than that. So, let’s talk about the guilds, hmm?”

The next day, I met up with my party in ADAS’ Perseverance branch. I had many mean glares from wizards, knights, and healers, which was to be expected. The Wizard and Knight guilds were to put together some groups of people for me to train, but their journey here would take a few weeks. So, I figured I’d keep myself busy.

“Tina, you choose this time,” Adam said. “If we let Lina choose again, we might discover a monster invasion this time.”

Now that I put the word out that the Lich God bestowed powers upon me, I could callously summon Dreadhoof and other undead warhorses for my party without batting an eye at the opinion of others.

We rode strong to large port town called Mesjern. Their main issues were lizardman monsters, but around a particular time of year, they’d have a crazy number of crustacean monsters called tailcrabs. They looked exactly like horseshoe crabs. They appeared on shore in large numbers.

Adam began taking them out one by one. “I was never able to kill them without using skills before! Thanks for the enchantments!”

Tina and Solina was amazed by his arrows piercing power as well. They joined him in attacking the tailcrabs, and I observed for the moment.

Did he say, skills? I asked him what he meant by skills, and I was blown away by his answer. No wonder people still register as warriors! I wondered for a while now, why they became warriors or knights when they could just use magic. I knew magic was difficult for them, but I never understood why so many of them would waste their time with being warriors.

Skills, according to this world, were physical enhancements powered by mana, but it was very simple when compared to the complexity and variety of magic. A skill would either make someone faster, stronger, tougher, or make their weapon tougher or sharper. It’s basically a buff then. Sometimes, I’d see Solina’s daggers illuminate for a second or so, but I always thought it was just the reflection of light on it. It was something I had to investigate.

However, my focus was on Tina. She cast a few Fire Lances, which would burn about two or three tailcrabs once she aimed it in an area where the monsters were close together. She did this around a dozen times before she took a break. I gave her a drink of water. “Are you out of mana?”

“Huh? Y-yeah.” She was a bit pouty. Perhaps it was an embarrassing thing for wizards.

After observing her, I found her method of casting spells was strange, but I had no idea why. So, I asked my grimoire, and the process that it showed me was the exact process that I used. I put an image in my mind, imagined igniting the image, and the image materialized.

What about casting methods for humans? Is it different? My grimoire turned its page and I saw the most convoluted process I’d seen in a long time. There were runes, symbols, drawings, incantations, and many other things to go through before their magic materialized. That’s why they suck, their shit is inefficient as fuck. Every process they go through worsens the spell and wastes mana.

As I read further into it, I understood what was going on. There were basically two types of mana and humans always used the normal one. Unlike monsters, their bodies didn’t naturally convert their mana into compact mana. It was like DNA, in a sense. Everyone had a different, natural flow in which their mana was intended to cycle, and this natural flow, if followed, turned normal mana into compact mana.

There was even an explanation on how to manually convert normal mana into compact mana. I swear, this book’s a cheat item. I followed the conversion method and used Synthesis to make something called magic powder. To get its full effects, a pinch of it was to be ingested, and it was soluble, so I figured I’d make it into tea and hope the taste wasn’t pure death. Hmm, shitty aftertaste, but it won’t kill me. After drinking it, I felt my own natural mana flow much easier, and was able to convert mana manually after meditating a bit.

Once I double-checked that there were no dangerous long-term side-effects, I put my stamp of approval on it. For the next week, we continued doing menial quests; we needed to make a living, after all. But during that week, I had Tina drink the magic powder tea every morning, noon, and night.

After the week was over, she reported feeling a strange ebb and flow whenever she meditated. For the second week, I made her day job training and supported her by doing quests for her. I feel like a dumbass for giving her money whenever I see this house. She was of a minor noble family, but they were still pretty loaded compared to the common man.

She put a hand out and cast Fire Lance, then suddenly shrieked and jumped onto me in elation. “I just made it to apprentice!”

“Congratulations!” I said, her excitement rubbing off on me, but I kept strict with her training. We celebrated with her that day, but the next day it was business as usual.

Tina turned her head at me like I was an idiot. “Huh?! What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I said. Forgot all the symbols, the runes, all those extra things.” I put an arm on her shoulder. “Trust me. Just think of the output of the actual spell, nothing more. Put yourself in the other person’s shoe. Think of what the spell would feel like if it was cast on you.”

Finally, ice shot out of the ground and upwards at me and trapped me. My lower half was completely covered in ice, but my upper half had ice spikes lined up in such a way that I couldn’t physically move. “Great, you just learned your first apprentice spell. Good work!”