This was also the first time I saw a beast face to face in this life. During the afternoon, we spotted a group of bears in a clearing, munching on something that looked very much like a cow.

The three young Mages went ahead to deal with the enemies while the big guy stayed behind to watch them. Or me, either one.

Did I mention that fights at this level were actually very boring? In all the books that I’d read, or the movies that I’d watched, they would always move and throw spells around while waving their swords.

Well, in the real world, at least at the earlier levels, fights were mostly each side glaring at the other one and waiting for the enemy to strike. Right now, for example, the woman and the second son guy - whatever his name was - went around the clearing and came out of the woods behind the bears, thus making some kind of triangle encirclement.

They proceeded to circle the beasts, while the latter glared at them and turned from one to another. After that, like usual, the beasts lost their patience and jumped. What happened after that was a fuckfest, even I would’ve probably done a better job, because they got their asses kicked. The big guy had to step in and cleave the bears in one swing, or the rich kids would’ve died right then and there.

Having collected the bodies, the young adventurers were now resting on the ground near the murder scene. Langos sent me to the side, needing to talk to them about that awful performance.

Ten minutes later they were done, and ignoring their sullen faces, we continued our journey. It seemed like I was quite lucky before, since we started seeing more and more Beasts on the way, but as the young ones had already used all their Mana and were quite tired, the big guy was in front.

And my man was killing it. Or them, I guess. He would just wave his longsword and most of everything was already dead. Only a few times did he take longer to win, but he was never on the losing side.

The guy was an awesome fighter, but also an awful teacher. I could see he was trying, but he just sucked - he would explain what was wrong with the straightest, strictest face, then expect them to learn in a moment.

But it was definitely not my problem - no, it actually worked in my favor. After all, when in a group, if there’s discord, you confine yourself in the ones you get along with, right? He he.

And like that, while fighting crazed animals almost every 10 minutes, we eventually managed to travel quite a distance, setting up camp for the night. Since I was being escorted they used their Formation Flag, while leaving me to use my tent and food - mostly out of consideration for still being strangers.

Which was a bummer - slipping a bit of blood in their drink was now harder. What, drinking a bit of blood never hurt anyone.

Oh, but that was no problem, of course. Guess who was too weak to escape from the attack of an overly-fluffy wolf, thus getting cut and spilling blood on its open wound. Oh, and that beast might have also been the one with the highest level that we met today.

You see, eating higher leveled beasts was very beneficial for Mages, making their bodies stronger and more accustomed to Mana. Of course, eating flesh belonging to a beast of much higher level than yours had negative effects, while one of a much lower level has no effects. Now guess who was just at the right level. Oh, yeah.

All according to the plan I just made up.

Obviously, this plan was full of flaws, the poison might not have gotten through the system of the corpse, the guy might not eat it, or I might be found out, which would be a disaster. But I really thought it would work.

As for the young ones, they weren’t much of a problem, to be honest. Even if I didn’t put anything in their food, they were pretty weak.

Speaking of weak, it was time to finally start making that fucking Core.

Going in my tent, I set up all the Formations I could and sat down on that meditation pillow I bought.

Contrary to popular belief, starting your magic journey was actually the easiest part. Everyone pretty much already had a core, just that it wasn’t manifested.

Actually, here’s a magic lesson. Mana wasn’t real. There, I said it.

Ok, jokes aside, Mana wasn’t a material thing. You couldn’t touch it, see it, smell it and hear it. All experts unanimously agreed that Mana wasn’t a physical thing. When I say Mana Pathways, I mean an imaginary path that you want Mana to travel through in your body. Same thing with a Core, it’s an imaginary construct that you use to store the magic fuel.

We could just be imagining an energy in the world and we would never know it.

When I talked about using all one’s Mana, I meant that the Mana in their core was gone and more just went in there as time passed, just really slow. You could still very much use it, you could take the Mana in the atmosphere, guide it through the pathways and shape it. Just that the spell would be much weaker.

When Mana went into a core, it combined with the Mana System of that person, it became theirs, it took their signature. It was law that once Mana got into your Core, it was yours and yours only, whether you wanted it or not.

That was why even common people could use magic. It wasn’t normally taught, but even an idiot would figure it out. Normal everyday individuals used magic in their daily lives for chores, for fun, and just everyday convenience, only using their thoughts to picture the effect - they didn’t know how Mana worked or how it moved, they just did it.

Like I said, actually starting your magic journey was the easiest part, it just got harder the more you went on.

And this system wasn’t something universal, something that the universe just told sentient races to do, this was something honed through millennia, modified and upgraded as time passed. I’d seen stories about the magic systems from before, how it evolved into what was known today (ancient magic sucked so nobody cared if you knew how it was back then, thus it wasn’t secret).

What I was getting to was the fact that this Core, and whatever I was doing here, was, is and will be the best way to start practicing magic for a long time. And I don’t mean to say it was the easiest, or more balanced or anything since everyone used it. No, it was the actual best, it gave the most benefits and was the easiest to make, maintain and all that. Just best in everything.

Now back to the actual Core I was making. For starters, it needed to be perfectly round. Like round round, no dents no nothing, the most perfect sphere ever. This was so that Mana traveled uniformly and you could draw it out as fast as possible. It also needed to be like this for another step down the road, but that wasn’t important now.

Now of course, the perfectly round part wasn’t that important; just make something resembling a sphere and you could smooth it later on, but it was for the best to make it perfect right now.

Like I said before, magic was subjective, so actually shaping that ball required you to think of it perfectly, and trust me, that was hard. You might think you could, but the moment you actually try to make something like that from your thoughts you will find out that it’s not that easy.

Anyway, I’d been picturing that fucking ball for a goddamn lifetime (literally). Now it was my time to shine.

Taking a deep breath, I tried to enter that meditative state again, this time much faster. Unlike yesterday, I could feel that this was smoother and more comfortable.

Again, I imagined the inside of my body, but this time in a different scene, in a “spiritual” kind of way. No blood or cells, it was time for magic. Since I had never used magic in this body, it was as pure as a baby, meaning no channels or any trace of Mana; I was the most magically useless person right now.

And that was for the best. I could make it as I wanted to, to shape it on a blank slate. Not that it really mattered, but it felt better and maybe it would matter later on. I already had the idea to refrain from using Mana, but any kid in this world would use it for fun without thinking, so the idea of a blank slate would be gone.

I did mention Mana Pathways, but it was more complicated (not really). They were shaped by the mind, molded into a system of veins that instead of blood, circled Mana around the machine of flesh that people called the body.

Anyway, what I meant to say was that my body was empty in terms of anything magical. Meaning that what I was imagining was just a contour of a body, a white line with a black interior. I turned my attention to the center of that black interior, just above where the belly button would be. Then I zoomed in.

Now all I could see was that blackness, and here I made sure I was right in the center, going from one side to another to measure it for about five times. Now, the moment of truth.

Somehow, maybe from the excitement, or the confidence, maybe even the Trait (probably not), I managed to go into an even deeper “calmness”.

Slowly and carefully, I imagined a small seed, no bigger than a pea. Then, from that pea, I thought of it getting bigger, rounder, and wider, and sure enough, it was happening. Like that, it continued, turning into the size of a golf ball, then a baseball, then eventually a volleyball.

The size didn’t actually matter, it was still all in my mind, but imagining a bigger one supposedly helped in growth, since the space was there, you just needed to fill it, as opposed to making it bigger and also filling it. This was just a theory some random guy proposed a while ago (or in the future, I guess) and I thought I would take my chances since there was no harm to it.

Now, from the white contour of a man filled with nothing, it turned into a white contour of a man filled with a perfectly round white sphere the size of a volleyball. Still a monotone black and white nonetheless, but much better. The details would come in later.

Now, the Pathways. This was actually the easiest part, I just needed to imagine some lines and make sure they filled my whole body.

Ok, maybe not that simple. They were like blood vessels, with a few big ones and a lot of small ones. So, I imagined a thick blue line on each limb, with another three in the middle of the body, one in the center and two on each side.

Now… I was actually stumped. I had no idea what to do with the head. There was no mention of magic or Mana working in the head, so I had no idea what to do. I mean, I had to draw some lines in there too, I couldn’t just leave it empty, but how? Curve it and make a circle? A spiral? Maybe I could take it to the middle of the head and make some smaller ones, like a cobweb, but that just didn’t feel right. And these motherfucking Mages didn’t say anything about it.

I got an idea a while ago, but I decided I would just figure it out at the time.

‘Oh look, that bridge I said I would cross when the time came. Now what?’

So I said ‘fuck it’ and did it. Slowly, just like before, I imagined a small point, like a pea, but this time I left it like that. A small point, only a bit bigger than the line connected to it. Worst case, I died.

Now with that done, it was time for the smaller lines.

Have you ever drawn a tree, and tried to make lines for the branches, but realized they were either too crooked, too many, too small or just horrible? Yeah, drawing lines was actually pretty hard. I essentially had to draw an entire circulatory system, making sure it went everywhere in the body. Not easy, I tell you.

Still, I had enough time to think about it so I’d say I did good. From the thickest lines, I drew smaller ones, about half the thickness of the others, and took them as close to the edge of the body as possible. From those, I drew smaller ones, as many as possible, but not too many, and made them touch the “skin”. From those, I took the smallest ones I could think of and covered anything that was left.

It transformed into a system of rivers that cascaded into smaller rivers until there was no water left to split again.

Now to connect the big ones. Remember, they were still hanging around, inches away from the circle in the center. They connected successfully, now my Core having four lines going in, two from the hands and two from the legs. While at it, I made another in the center of the chest, connected it with the other two at shoulder-level and brought it down as well.

Now near the Core, I did something a bit unconventional. Normally the big ones would just go in as they were, but why not make more channels? What my experience playing city planning games told me was that if a street was busy, you just made a parallel one going to the same place -which was probably horrible but it worked for me.

So, I connected the big ones to the sphere, and from there for a small distance I took smaller ones and connected them all throughout the Core, eventually covering all of its outside.. Like a big highway with a lot of smaller streets all going to the same place.

Then I realized I was an idiot and forgot about the hands. It was the place where spells came out so it had to be good. Right now, the thickest line stopped in the middle of the palm, so I split it in five and took it in each finger. From there, like before, I made a lot of smaller lines filling the remaining space, thus covering everything.

Then I did the same with the feet and the toes, something entirely unconventional but why not.

Now the finishing touches. With a thought, all the lines turned blue, like Mana (people just said it was blue so everyone imagines it as blue), including the Core, with the contour and the interior.

Then, getting another stupid but amazing idea I made the contour of the body blue as well. Why not make the skin be able to hold mana? Which it probably already did.

Now I had to anchor this image. All this was just my imagination, I couldn’t have my magic body away from me. Okay, I should shut up, I was getting ideas.

Picturing my actual body next to the magical one, I placed them above each other, eventually turning it into a mass of organs with a lot of blue lines over it. The image had to be perfect, or at least close enough, so I hoped doctors didn’t lie about the human body, because I never got to cut up any of my kills.

Now it was all done.

You see, making all this was actually weird. You’d think a lot of energy was needed to make the whole system, but on the contrary, you didn’t need any. For the creation of this, all the Mana or energy or whatever was used was pretty much supplied by the world itself. Or maybe the System, now that I thought about it.

Like always, curiosity threatened to come out and make me do something stupid, but I had no way to know anyway so that part of my brain calmed down.

All this was just speculation of course, when a person first made their Core and Pathways it just happened, there was no energy coming in. So whatever I was making here was sure to happen.

Moment of truth. Coming out of that space, I took a deep breath again, and thought of the energy in the atmosphere, something akin to a gas, coming towards me and going through my skin, into the small blue veins, to the big veins, and straight to the Core, taking the small pathways if the big ones were too full.

At first, nothing happened, but slowly, I could feel something on my skin, something cool but also hot, if that made sense. Then, from the skin, I could feel all my body on the inside, getting cooler in some places but hotter in others. Then a lot faster, I could feel that feeling traveling to my belly, where it just stopped altogether.

I panicked, thinking I screwed up, but then I instantly felt like I got hit in the stomach.

‘Oh, yeah, this is it’

I tried to keep a calm face and posture, guiding that feeling towards the sphere, and pushing it inside as much as I could.

Faster than I thought, I was getting a weird feeling, something I could only compare to really needing to go to the bathroom, like I was extremely full. Weird, I know, but everyone described it like that.

What I was feeling was my body telling me that it couldn’t hold any more Mana. I could definitely stop, but I feared that this much coming in wouldn’t happen any time sooner, so I had to do something with what I had.

My knowledge of spells was null, devoid of any way to throw all this Mana out fast enough. So I thought why not, and refined it. If I could already go to the first Stage.