My Enigmatic Life

  I stand directly in front of Naoya, whose eyes are covered by a blindfold. Behind him is Akai, and right next to him is Gege. The three of us do nothing but merely stare at him in anticipation, waiting for him to give his answer.

“Gege’s to my right, Govvy’s in front of me and Akai’s behind me.”

“Alright, remove it.”, Gege commands.

Naoya quickly and clumsily takes off his blindfold and then surveys his surroundings. Upon seeing that he was correct, he excitedly claps his hands together.

“Yosh! Now I’m really getting it!”

If you can’t tell, Naoya’s practising to get better at using Detection. Just then, he got it right seven out of ten tries, which is a vast improvement from only getting three of ten correct.

“Good job, Naoya.”, Akai smiles. “Now you’re finally making good progress.”

“Yeah, you’re getting close to Daisuke’s level.”, Gege yawns.

Surprisingly, Naoya contradicts with Gege’s claim.

“Nah, Govvy’s still stronger than me by a good margin. I still haven’t learned any Magic and my skill with wielding a naginata is honestly a bit dodgy.”

“Hold on a tick.”, I interrupt. “I may be stronger than you, but by a margin is a bit of a stretch. I can only use three spells and I’m really struggling with ⌈Void Gate⌋. Look.”

I turn ninety degrees and close my eyes. First, I try my best to visualise the spell and then I follow up by breathing in.

“⌈Heed me, o deep, dark shadow. Open and let us in, Open and let us come out upon the other side. Void Gate.⌋”

An incredibly dark hole that’s slightly taller than I am appears in front me. But, the moment I step forth into it, it crumbles away and evaporates into nothingness. What is it that I’m doing wrong? Am I not using the Concentration principle correctly? Or am I messing up with Visualisation?

“See? I still have a lot of work to do myself.”, I gesture.

“At least you’re getting something to appear.”, Naoya grumbles. “Akai and I have got absolutely naught to show for hard work.”

“Yeah, compared to us, you’re a master, Daisuke.”, Akai says, putting on his trademark wry smile.

‘At least you’re getting something to appear.’? What are they on about?

“What exactly are you two doing when you say your Chants and Incantations?”, I ask carefully.

“Well, we bring up our mana and then say the spell, of course.”, Naoya replies plainly.

I blink.

“Are you saying that the both of you have spent nearly a month just saying words and wasting your mana?”

They blink.

“Uh…yeah…?”, they mutter in unison.

I stare at them, my mouth agape. I’m in complete and utter disbelief at that news that they’ve been doing basically nothing for so long.

“I told you that you should’ve gotten some help.”, Gege sighs. “Judging by Daisuke’s reaction, you two have just been wasting time.”

“Yeah, we already figured as much, mate.”, Naoya retorts bitterly. “Thanks for the input, though.”

“Why didn’t you ask Sunni for some help, man?”, I ask, utterly befuddled.

“Well, I wanted to see if we could do it by ourselves.”, Naoya expounds. “Fat good that did for us.”

“We had planned to ask our senpai about it when we were learning about our healing compatibility, but we decided to change our minds.”, Akai adds.

“Honestly, we wanted to show that we were capable of fending for ourselves. We struggled against just one random thug, whereas the rest of you each took down someone by yourselves.”

Naoya’s putting on a brave face, but I can tell just how frustrated he is. Perhaps little things like that is what’s part of being family, eh?

“I understand wanting to get stronger, Naoya. But you have to remember what granddad used to tell us.”

Naoya gazes at me for a moment before nodding his head in silent, but strong conviction.

“‘No man can be a mountain, because no man can stand tall on his own.’. Alright, I’m ready to go and ask for help, even if I have to look to that bastard Yonaguni. What about you, Akai?”

“Well, I honestly wanted to do that from a fortnight ago, hahaha…”, Akai says meekly.

“Alright, let’s get to it then.”, I say. “When it comes to using Magic, one has to understand the Principles of Magic.”

“Principles of Magic?”, Gege echoes.

“That’s right.”, I nod. “The Principles of Magic are the four fundamental rules for casting Magic, they are as follows: Visualisation, Adaptation, Concentration and Deliberation.”

“V.A.C.D, got it”, Naoya says simply. “Go on, give us the rundown.”

V.A.C.D, eh? I never heard it referred to like that before, but I’ll let him stick with that for now.

“Alright, I’ll start with Adaptation, seeing as you two wield a combined singular element. Adaptation is the easiest principle to understand, simply because it’s more of a natural phenomena than anything. But you two should still listen well.”

The both of them nod at me, and with that I begin in earnest.

“Adaptation is the principle that the learning rate on your secondary elements will always be double that of your main element when you first start learning Elemental Magic.”

“So, if it takes you two days to learn a Fire spell, it’ll subsequently take you four days to learn a Lighting or Darkness spell?”, Gege asks.

“Exactly, but there’s a little more to it than that.”

“How so?”

“It's due to the fact that your mana wants to flow in a way that naturally suits your main element.”, I begin to expound. “So when you change elements, your mana’s flow changes as well. So if you were to just drop learning one in favour of the other, neither would work and the process will have to be reset.”

“Bloody hell, that sounds like a real pain.”, Naoya remarks brusquely. 

“It is.”, I concur. “Fortunately, once you master one spell from each of your elements, the double learn rate disappears, as do the other issues. Funnily enough, because of that happening, Adaptation ends up being the most easily forgotten principle, despite it being the easiest to understand.”

“Well, like you said, that’s a rule of no importance to us, Daisuke. What’s next?”

It’s unusual to see Akai being so forward. They’re definitely being serious about this.

“Alright, next is another simple one: Deliberation.”, I continue. “Another simple one, all there is to this principle is that you simply need to have your heart in it when you’re casting Magic. That’s it.”

People tend to forget that Magic is still based off of one's soul, thus it's still under the whims the human heart, per se. This doesn't mean that you can suddenly start using Magic despite having no mana left just because you refuse to give up, but a strong flow of emotion can easily give one a boost in power. Uncle Halman told Sunni and I that although we understand so much about Magic, mana and their rules, there's so much more that's just utterly unexplainable.

“Well, we have a lot of that, but no results.”, Naoya retorts.

“No doubt, but now we’re getting to the most difficult principle: Concentration. Concentration is the principle that application of mana must be consistently applied when using two-stage Magic.”

“Eh? There’s two-stage Magic?”, Akai asks.

I nod heavily in response.

“Of course there is. Remember my ‘Paralyse’ spell? That’s an example of two-stage magic. Using two-stage magic in battle requires immense concentration, which is why the principle is called such.”

“Well, I’ll be sure to stay away from any of those.”, Naoya shrugs. “I’m getting Visualisation has to do with imagining the spell that you’re trying to use, right?”

“Yeh.”

“Well then it’s simple, innit? Akai, try out that Magic Bullet or whatever.”

That’s not what it’s called, both Akai nods and gets ready to give it a go anyway. He takes a deep breath and swiftly raises his right arm.

“Magick Missile!”

A bullet of condensed mana shoots from his palm and collides with the wall, leaving a slight scorch mark behind. Akai stares it in disbelief before jumping in place jubilantly.

“IT WORKED! IT REALLY WORKED!”

“Awesome! Let me give it a try now!”

Naoya does some unnecessary flexing before ceremoniously overlapping him palms with each other and pushing them forward.

“⌈Whirl, spin and spiral! Ravage, uproot and destroy! Terrifying Tornado!⌋”

A sudden gust picks up in the room and it begins to swirl about violently as it manifests into a small, but moderately strong whirlwind. After a minute or so, it dies down and then disappears completely. 

“Yes! I finally did it!”

“Yosh! Good show!”

“Good job!”

“Way to go, Naoya!”

The lot of us get a little celebratory at this newfound progress. Having a single spell at one’s disposal can be incredibly useful in combat, so it feels like we’ve taking a major step forward as an Enigma Squadron.

“What the-? Are you idiots about to have a foursome or something?”

Of course, Yonaguni enters the training room and immediately tries to ruin the good atmosphere. Naoya offers a quick retort, though.

“Shut your mouth, you paedophile. Can’t you see that we’re having some camaraderie here?”

“WHAT DID YOU CALL ME, YOU SON OF A BITCH?! I’LL KILL YOU!”

Naturally, a fight breaks out. Well, I guess I’d better give it my best so we don’t get thumped.

As Yonaguni’s leg narrowly misses connecting with my left arm, I can’t wonder what’s happening at school with girls.

“Oi, why me?! I’m not even a Combatant, you bastard!”

Oh, crap. I need to help Gege out.

 

¹Update for denoting Magic types: ⌈⌋-Elemental, //- Curative, ' '-Chant, <>-TBA, 〈〉- TBA