Chapter 61
To start with, Zeth decided to teach Sophie what Erza had taught him—mana fields.
He drew out a small ritual circle on the ground, not giving it any sort of sacrifice so that it wouldn’t have any effects, and presented it to Sophie in the dark room. He closed his eyes and focused his sixth sense on the chalky lines, and sure enough, he found that familiar covering of mana that all magic objects had around them, absolutely filled with holes both big and small where mana spilled out of it. These holes were what gave his lines their signature glowing effect.
“Okay,” he said, “so, do you have any points in Shaping at all?”
“I only have three,” she said. “The book you gave me said I should spend exactly one Skill Point to buy three points in it to start with, since you have to have at least a little bit to unlock some of the Skills for magic Classes. But when I got them, I couldn’t figure out how to actually unlock the Skills.”
He nodded. “Alright. Well, I’m not sure how much just three points will do you for what I’m gonna ask, but it should at least let you see some of this stuff. Basically, what you’re gonna do is…Hm, so, just, like, look inward. As if you’re trying to perceive yourself.”
“What?”
Zeth frowned. He hadn’t ever explained how to do any of this stuff before. He’d just figured it out on his own. How would a teacher explain something like this? “Think of it like…Like there are two worlds, right? There’s the physical world, and the magic world. Everything we see exists in both worlds, like they’re mirrors of each other. But mana only exists in the magic world, and it collects in the areas that magic items exist in, and around people. That’s how we have mana, and how we infuse it into things. We aren’t really doing anything in the world we can see, but we’re moving mana around in the magic world. So what you’ve gotta do is stop seeing the physical world, and start seeing the magic world.”
“But how do I do that?”
“Well, your eyes can only see the physical world, so you don’t need them. Shut them, and focus on your mind. Your Shaping Stat is your eyes for the magic world. You haven’t used it before, and you don’t have much of it, so your sense will be really weak, but even the tiniest bit will give you some amount of sense for this other world. You’ve gotta find it in your head, and focus on it.” Zeth didn’t know if what he was saying was true on a theory level—he had no idea if there really was a ‘magic world’ or not—but it was how he thought of things, and he imagined for Sophie, having some sort of frame with which to think of things would be better than nothing.