While Lillia was teaching Tina how to use mana, Blake went to another spot in the training room to begin working on trying to do as she instructed. He was attempting to replace the shape of his spell by using the image in his mind.
While the process seemed easy, it was not. He had to first understand how to infuse the image in his mind into the flow of mana. And this was the problem he was coming across at this time. It was different than just casting a spell that already had the basic shape implemented into it.
While each spell was quite similar across all elements, it was much different when it came to trying to cast a spell without a portion of it and then use the image in your mind to replace that portion. As of now, he still had to chant the spell in order to even cast anything. While it might be short, he still hated the fact that he had to chant anything. It was like giving away what you were about to do.
"What if I just infused the chant and magic circle in my mind along with the flow of mana? This way, it would make the process much easier than just trying to change the image, and I can keep everything a secret as to what I am casting. " With this thought in mind, instead of saying the chant out loud, he was picturing the entire chant and magic circle in his mind. This way, he could inject the image he had in his mind into the magic circle much easier.
He raised his hand and aimed towards the opposite side of the room, away from anyone. He stood there with his eyes closed, trying to picture everything and merging it with the flow of mana. He knew just imagining merging them together would not work, or he would have already done what Lillia told him to do. He had to actually feel everything merging together. He had to have a strong image of what he wanted and then turn that image into mana itself. Only by turning the image into mana could he then feed it into the flow of mana within him. But he had to be careful to keep his mana flow consistent with the correct mana output he had imagined, or it might not work. At least, this was the theory he had come up with.
Time quickly ticked by, and Blake stood there with his hand out in front of him. He was in some sort of trance. He was trying many different combinations over and over. Trying to find out the right method of merging everything into one.
Lillia, on the other side of the training room, turned to look at Blake with a strange expression. She felt a strange disturbance in the mana in the room. She had no idea what Blake was trying to cast, but it felt a different kind of flow coming from his mana. She did not dare to disturb him as she knew he was in the process of trying to figure something out.
To those who dived deep into the life of magic, such times when you feel like you are the cusp of making a breakthrough in something you are working on, it was very important to not be disturbed, or your train of thought might get disrupted, and at this time it was Blake who was in such a state.
Tina, on the other hand, had a mana crystal sitting in front of her, and she was still having a hard time trying to understand the concept of mana as it was all foreign to her. She was still having a hard time forgetting about her old human self and how magic was fake even though she had seen it many times with her own eyes.
She thought back to the times both Blake and Lillia had cast magic in front of her and began trying to use them as a basis for her new reality. She sat there with her eyes closed and her hands on the mana crystal. As her thoughts pictured the two over and over, she began to feel a warm flow within her which was different from when she took mana in. It was faint at first, but slowly and surely, she began feeling a flow different from anything else within her body. She could feel the tingling of some kind of energy flowing over her exposed arms.
"Then now try to manipulate it. You have been taking mana into your body this entire time, but now you need to try to move it at will. Once you can control the mana within you that you are taking into your body, you can easily manipulate it to create your first magic circle. Try to feel your mana pool first and then slowly take a string of mana from it and flow it around your body once." Lillia instructed.
"Mmmm, I will try." Tina began trying to move the mana she felt within her. She felt her mana pool and tried to imagine pulling a short hair thin strand of it out of the pool that was only a few drops at this time.
While she was busy doing that, an explosion was heard on the other side of the room, causing a shock wave to flow over everyone. Lillia turned to see a huge crater in the ground where Blake was just standing. Her eyes went wide with worry as she suddenly yelled out: "Blake!?"
"Cough!" Out of the dust and debris, a figure emerged from the pile of rubble and stood up. "Haha…Too much mana…. Wooah! I feel dizzy. I need to learn how to control that better."
"Blake, what just happened!?" Lillia quickly arrived at his side and began patting his body to get rid of the dirt that was all over him.
"Ah… I was trying to come up with a way of silent casting. For me, it is too hard to try to replace a single portion of a spell with an image, so I had to imagine it all and then try to turn the image into mana and use that to cast a spell. Although I kind of messed up with the amount of mana to infuse into the spell and the spell that was supposed to be a small flame ended up blowing up in front of me. Hahah!" Blake let out a loud laugh. He was happy. Because he had accomplished casting a spell without speaking a single word with no magic circle visible at all.
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