“For fucks sake” I mumbled.

I tried to set up the computer as the last part of finally moving out.

I was 21. It was about high time that I’ve finally did it. At least that was how I felt about it.

A few hours before, this apartment had simultaneously been very barren and a mess, ass there had been boxes, with my stuff in, all over the place. I had used the last hour getting everything in the right places.

I gave up trying to get the cables from my computer to reach the plug. Instead I pushed everything a little to the left and tried again. It worked!

(me) “Can’t believe I dint do that before”

I sighted and leaned back in… my comfy chair. I hadn’t acquired a sofa yet.

Have to get one in the near future - i thought to myself.

You might think : How did you use “a few hours” on moving in when you don't even have a sofa?

Well... you see: I dint just do that the last few hours, which by the way is a broad term for the entire day

. I just wanted to move in, play the new video game i bought [Demon Retribution), and then party and get drunk somewhere later in the night!

But no0Oo0o, for some reason the universe decided to let everything happen on this day.

At least it was good things. My thoughts returned to the start of the day.

I woke up to see that it had snowed in the night.

Now that might not be an unusual thing, if it wasn’t because it was in the middle of the summer! I decided to play around in the snow with my siblings, Martin and Mathilde, they were twins and 16 years old. It was in the middle of the summer, so the snow quickly melted away.

Is it unusual for a 21 y.o to play around in the snow? Well i don't know, but i had my fun, besides: it was in the summer and i was about to move out.

I later looked it up on the news:

It turned out that the snow was due to “The largest mana storm in years ”, a rather rare event that could cause all sorts of things. This one had caused the thermal energy to drop in on cloud level of the atmosphere. We were lucky the storm din't happen on the ground level or else everybody would have frozen to death. That realization actually scared me a little. The government had deployed a few professional magicians to investigate it further.

Mana storms is, as you might expect, the result of moving mana, creating such a high density that some of it transcends into the physical plain and creates various results depending on the mana type. Theoretically this can happen on any scale, even interplanetary. it's said that such an mana storm was the reason for the latest mass extinction 47 million years ago. Luckily such events are quite rare.

Speaking of rare events: 2 hours later, when I was about to move everything into my new home, my mom called me.

She had won a 2 week holiday to some sort of hotel at a beach, in a tropical country called Balmas, including a bunch of money to spent. The price included the entire family! Sweet!

She asked if I wanted to stay or go with them. Hell yes I wanted to go with them! I would take 2 weeks in a tropical country over 2 weeks in a department any day. Still had to pay rent tho.. Dammit!

The Plane would already leave in tomorrow. Normally i would be highly alarmed that i had just won a holiday i had to take on the next day, but you won’t believe the problems this country had with postal service’s the last few months, so I wasn’t.

I should consider us lucky that we even got the memo in time.

The next ridiculous low-chance thing that happened, was when my brother called me and informed me that my sister suddenly had her aura collapse, which was a good thing, since it was the only way to awaken your magical potential without outside help. This essentially meant that she afterwards would be able to manipulate mana and perform magic just like everybody else. Almost everybody whose potential wasn’t forcefully awakened experienced their aura collapse sooner or later in their life. I’ve experienced mine when I was 11, and martin, my little brother, got it when he was 6.

When I’ve heard the new about her magical awakening I immediately stopped what I was doing and began to drive to her school where it was happening. I was excited on her behalf! To still not have experienced your magic awakening at 16 years was an anomaly. It had bugged her for years to not be able perform magic like her classmates, unfortunately we couldn’t forcefully awaken her before she was 18, because of the laws of this country. To forcefully awaken had… a few drawbacks and risks. But now she was about to awaken! So cool! Awakenings don’t usually last too long, so I would properly not be able to witness it.

Mana exists all over the universe, in basically endless amounts.

It's very interactive with spiritual beings, a.k.a. Some beast and all Humanoids. a.k.a. Humans, orcs, elfs, etc.. It has a natural flow towards spiritual beings and their aura. The aura usually matches and follows the shapes of our body. Until the awakening it is slowly entering the aura at all time . It is however unable to escape once it has entered. This causes it to slowly build up pressure outwards.

Depending on the absorption rate of the mana, and the amount of spiritual force the aura can withstand, the aura temporarily collapses and all the excess mana will flow out of the body resulting in what's know as an Aura collaps. Afterwards the mana absorption rate increases tremendously for the person experiencing it, and that person will then be able to manipulate mana and send it out of their aura and force it into the physical plain.

5 minutes after I left I parked my car on the park place by the school

It was probably over by now. A shame, an aura collapse had the same random results as a mana storm. it is a fun and cheap way of determining the persons affinities, a.k.a those mana properties the person would have a easier time manipulating than others.

I began moving towards the football field on the other side of the school. Today was the last-school day for the kids. I smiled as I remembered mine years ago.

There was surprisingly few people around..

(Girl) “Come jakob you got to see this!”

A 3-grader half-orc girl was pulling another kid towards where I was going.

(boy) “But I still haven’t picked up all the candy”

The boy complained.

(Girl) “who cares about candy? This is to cool!”

The half-orc said, as she kept pulling the boy, her orc strength won and the boy had no choice but to follow.

The scene slightly amused me.

I wonder what the commotion is about

I crossed a corner and got my answer. There was a huge crowd of people blocking the sight, but I could hear a sound similar to a flamethrower/explosion, and see fire, ice and light and air

fluctuating outwards, from a center I couldn’t see.

(Me) “You got to be kidding me, it can’t be”

That couldn’t be my sister, could it? Aura collapses simply din't happen on such a scale.

A feeling of awe and worry about her began to rise in my chest.

I ran forwards past the other people and was immediately meet with a wall of heat that almost made me want to go back in the crowd again. It was true then, my sister had the most epic aura collapse ever. Around her was mostly fire and lights in all color being made around and shoot out of her, occasionally there would be lightning, ice or floating dirt around her. The grass around her was burned in a 10 meter radius, and there was a crater slowly being created beneath her. Blows of wind and heat hit my face.

Surprisingly she wasn’t hovering a meter above the earth in a strange position as you might would expect and imagine, but was simply sitting down and trying to remain as calm as possible. Her clothes wasn’t burned to a crisp, maybe it was because the aura of persons experiencing their awakening would temporally increase. When she saw me she smiled and waved at me, resulting in flames soaring up in the sky, when she saw the result of her waving she immediately retook the position she had before and tried not to move to much again, resulting in flames/ice/light/whatever to burst out in our direction reaching dangerously close. Seeing her wink made me less worried and I winked back, at least her life din't seam in danger.. only potentially everybody around her.

I quickly found my brother: He was talking with a reporter, standing by a camera team.

The news is already here? man.. that's quick. I was thinking, and approached them.

(Martin) “Oh hey brother, you finally arrived”

(Me)“yeahh..Holy shit, how long has she been at it?”

I still had a hard time believing what I saw.

Martin look at his watch:

“About 8 minutes and… 35 seconds, give or take 2 seconds. I started counting as soon as it began”

My brother was huge nerd, of course he would know how long it had lasted.

(Me) “sh*t that's close to the world record isn't it? Holy F*** she can carry a lot of mana, doesn't this mean that she could potentially become one of greatest magicians in the world?”

it wasn’t as much as a question as it was a statement.

(Martin)“Normally I would say yes, but since it’s our dumb sister probably not”

Martin joked. I punched his shoulder and laughed.

The reporter, who had been quiet during our conversation until now, began to speak.

“Citizens I was just informed that the longest recorded mana leakage up until now has lasted for 8 minutes and 45 seconds. According to her brother, Martin kelnen, Mathilde kelnens aura collaps should have lasted 9 minutes by now making it the new world record and it is still rising! She is 16 years old, that's 6 years older than the average which in itself is unusual but not world record. There is currently 2 local certified mages working on controlling the wild mana”

I looked towards Mathilde, there was indeed to mages, trying to uphold a barrier. Wonder where they had been before?

The reporter turned towards me, as well as the camera, and I immediately tried to look clever or something.

(Reporter) “I understand you are the older brother to Mathilde, how you feel about your sister showing such potential”

(Me) “uhm… I’m very happy for her, she always wanted to be able to perform magic, and it seems like she is finally able to.”

Words were exchanged back and forth for the next minute or so, before the mana leakage finally rapidly began to decrease in magnitude until there was only some fire and some lighting crackling around her, until that stopped too. It had lasted 10 minutes and 12 seconds.

What happened next was interesting to experience but would properly be boring to read. In short what happened was that my parents appeared to. Mathilde was further interviewed, and everybody was basically excited out their sh*t. The holiday wasn’t postponed, but Mathilde agreed to meet up to a talk-show afterwards. The day wasn’t specified. Then everybody just went to their home. From what I understood Martin already wanted to teach her a simple light spell that consisted of letting a chosen body part, in this case her hand, to emit light. The only simpler spell would be to just emit random mana like when she had her aura collapse or maybe a [Heat emission] spell. it really depended on the person, but a general rule was that [Emission] spells were the simplest to perform. I could cast a few [Emission] spells too, including [Light Emission].

I have to admit I’m little jealous of her mana reserves, but I’m fine. I myself got above average mana reserves, It’s not enough for me to ever be something more than a mediocre amateur magician, but it is enough for me to have an advantage on the magic parts of swordsmanship and self-defense that I’ve been doing. I am quite skilled at extending my aura onto my blade, hardening my skin, and applying [outwards force].

I feel that it is time to teach you more about how mana works:

The good things about those techniques I just mentioned is that it doesn’t consume mana, as the mana never needs to leave the aura to work. The amount of mana helps and proportional with you talent, but it’s really about technique and practice. It’s harder practicing hardening you skin and applying outwards force when you have a high mana recovery rate, it has something to do with the mana entering messing with the mana you’re manipulating inside you aura. Luckily I got extremely low mana recovery, which would definitely suck if I wanted to become a magician, but lucky in this case.

To apply [Outwards force] is a technique that involves making the mana inside you apply outwards force, it’s that simply, but more advanced to learn than light emission. What force you ask? Well Newton of course! Let’s take an example: you know how the gravity of earth, at the surface, pulls everything towards itself with about 9.82 Newton pr. Kg? Well now you do. If I were to lift an object that weight about 2 kilos I would need to apply an upwards force of about 19.64 Newton. If I was to apply let’s say… 10 Newton with my mana, then I would only need to lift the remaining 9.64 Newton with my body, making the object seam lighter and me stronger. I haven’t really measured how many Newton’s I’m able to apply, but the technique is quite fun to use! If you have enough outwards force you create a wind around yourself, as it pushes back the wind too. There is also the counterpart [Inwards force] witch lets you push yourself instead of the surroundings. I can do that as well. It can also make you jump higher and faster. In professional sports that is of course illegal.

Oh and btw: yes I can apply outwards force to my sword, but it would only be useful if it was actually a club, believe it or not, but pushing things away from your sword isn’t very effective if you want to cut something. At least not for me, I’m not precise enough to only let it apply to the edge of the sword. Hmm maybe it would be useful in case my sword would get stuck in the flesh or bone of the person I’m attacking, it would remove resistance and I could easily remove the sword to then take another swing…. Wait…What am I thinking!? I was living in a modern world! Not in some monster infested fantasy world! As if I would ever need to do that. My swordsmanship would probably never get out of the dojo.

My brother got almost zero mana reserves, if he used up all of his mana he would probably be able light a cigarette or something, but nothing more. A shame, he is really clever. He does however have a very high mana recovery, so at least he would be able light as many cigarettes he wants in a row, unfortunately he doesn’t smoke. The mana recovery also means that he would never be able to be good at any of those aura techniques I’m capable of. I know that you should never say never, but it would be like telling a person with a shit voice that they could become a great singer: sure they could get decent if they started practicing hard right now, but who honestly believes that?

It is of course possible to actively increase the maximum amount of mana reserves. It is also possible to meditate in order to recover mana faster. Doing this for a long time will also increase the passive mana regeneration.

I only meditate if I for some reason have lost some of my mana, since I would otherwise have to wait at least half a year to recover it. I mostly try to avoid meditating as I don’t want to permanently increase my mana recovery. That would only mess with my aura techniques. I think there actually is a way to decrease the mana recovery, but I don’t know how.

Magicians meditate all the time. For some reason I can’t imagine my sister meditate, she is simply to wild. I don’t think that she would ever need to anyway. Her recovery got to be very high.

How do I know that? Well I just told you about the collapse! It doesn’t matter that she collected mana in 6 more years than most other people before she “exploded” Even considering that, the amount of mana she released was extreme, which meant that she had to suck up mana her entire life with a tremendous rate. The only reason that I have low mana recovery despite having above average mana reserves is because.. uhh, I’m a exception . Sounds goofy but that is how it is, it has something to do with my aura. The doctors said that is a rare one in a million aura syndrome or something like that, and it is isn’t in my family, so the chance of Mathilde having the same is extremely low. Ugh learning about magic is like learning about grammar, nothing but endless exceptions to endless rules. At least it’s the reason I’m one in a million!. Yay!

Back to the present, were I was sitting exhausted in my chair. I got up and went to make myself some pasta. I dint want anything fancy, to experience 4 minor to mayor life events could make anyone tired. I ate my paste, while I noticed that it was kind of lonely to eat alone, but it dint bug me, besides I had to get used to it. It would happen more often in the future. I took a cola, cause why not? And then I spent about an hour on the computer .Checking up on stuff, reading a little, watching some mindless YouTube videos, and stuff. Afterwards I took bath, shaved and went straight to bed. Despite that I was very tired I had a hard time falling asleep. I couldn’t help myself from grinning a little when I thought about the day I had, it was very hectic, but god it made me feel alive! It was a god day.

And tomorrow I already had to go to holiday.