Chapter 6 – New Life (4)
There was nothing to do inside the carriage. The trip would take a few days at this speed, to be precise.
I thought to myself,
'What's the mean speed this carriage is going?'
[ System ]
[ Approximately 7 km/h. ]
Seven kilometers an hour, huh.
In this world there's no proper unit like that—they use cruder measures—but it's good enough. At this speed, I'll arrive in about three days.
Well…
In the meantime, I can practice magic. Alice is still asleep from the long ride.
This body—I know it too well. In my past life I tried every method I could think of to save the world: swordsman, sellsword, merchant, mage… and I failed every time. The simple truth was that I never had enough time to truly train. Worse, this body is absolute garbage for magic.
When I was twenty-five, my magical aptitude and mana were at the level of a three-year-old. There was nothing I could realistically do to boost my output to a level that could save the world.
"Ha…"
Still, this is good enough, I murmured to myself.
In this world, mana, aura, and qi are all the same base energy with different uses. Mana uses external environmental energy gathered and refined. Aura is basically mana in a much denser form—like comparing hydrogen to lead in terms of atomic weight. Then there's qi, seen in the Eastern Realm of the Safon Tide Dominion, a region guarded by seas that block the Argent Crown Empire from fully connecting the two empires, though limited trade is still possible.
I never really learned qi, but all I know is this: qi also uses environmental energy and forms a core, similar to mana control, but instead of one core there seem to be seven smaller cores.
Still, I need to learn how to handle all types eventually…
For now, I'll focus on mana and reforming my mana core.
Yes—my mana core hasn't formed yet. This body isn't meant for mana at all, only swordsmanship. And yet I'm forcing it with my entire being. The only good thing is that I'm at a stage where I can form my core properly, instead of half-assing it like in my older body.
***
The way to form a mana core is simple yet extremely difficult. You need to *feel* the mana around you and gather it into a spherical essence. If you lack three key elements, you'll make a mistake in the "equation," leading to a weak mana core like in my past life.
Gifted people can just feel mana around them and naturally gather a strong, dense core. I couldn't.
So I turned it into a formula.
The first piece of the formula is:
"Opulence," I said in my mind.
Opulence is the step that reveals all the mana around you, letting you feel what normal people would just call "the wind." To a mage, the wind scatters weak mana essence like spores. If you're "immune" to it, you never notice. But once you break that immunity, you can feel it clearly.
And like that, even without a core, I could sense mana around me, surrounding me on all sides.
The second piece is:
"Formation."
Formation is gathering as much mana as you can feel and condensing it, like turning water into ice. Mix salt into water and you get supercooled slush—do you stop at what it looks like, or do you look deeper?
Of course a mage has to look deeper.
The reason adding salt lowers the freezing point is a phenomenon called freezing point depression. The overall temperature drops. Why is that important?
Simple: gathering mana by itself isn't enough. We need to add something else to the mix.
"Amalgamation."
This was the last part of the formula—the one I only figured out near the end of my previous life.
Formation alone just makes a ball of mana. Useless. Anyone can shove mana together until it's dense and call it a core. That kind of core cracks the moment you push it too hard.
Amalgamation is different. It's when you mix it with *yourself*.
I slow my breathing and imagine the gathered mana not as fog, but as liquid metal slowly turning in my chest. Then I drag out the faintest thread of something deeper—my own will, my stubbornness, every failure that refused to break me—and twist it into that mass.
Not just mana from the air.
My body's strength.
My mind's focus.
My soul's refusal to bend.
When those three start to rotate together, the mana stops feeling like borrowed power and starts feeling like something that actually belongs to me. Impurities rise and burn away, like slag floating to the top of a smelter. What's left behind is heavier, tighter, meaner.
That is Amalgamation.
In my last life, I stopped at Formation. I rushed it, forced the mana into shape without binding it properly to myself. The result was a brittle, hollow core that shattered any time I reached too far.
This time, I won't half-ass it.