Rose Kuroda, also known as `Sword Calamity` and `Sword Princess`.
She was one of the true geniuses of her era.
She had everything; talent, beauty, status. And she used it to it's fullest.
Being barely a thousand years old, she achieved the Mystic Swordswoman rank.
An absolute record, said to be never beaten again.
In her path to power, she killed millions.
Ruthless, crazy, but too powerful to complain.
She actually caused a world war to occur.
Three human emperors saw her, and wanted her for themself.
Their desire was absurd in the eyes of others.
They already had many beautiful woman by their sides.
It was until everyone saw Rose themself.
Long story short, emperors started a war.
And population, mainly nobles, started a civil war.
That is the absurdity of her beauty.
It wasn't long till other races joined, both for Rose and to gain benefits.
The world war lasted 3 years. Billions of lives lost, human empires become much weaker.
Thankfully, situation was deescalated by dragon race, the keepers of balance.
And Rose?
She gained the most, becoming one of the most powerful humans alive, and settling down in Solaris Empire, with the rest of the Kuroda family.
She didn't get a husband, not even a lover.
In fact, she beat up the emperor of her Empire, who was trying to woo her.
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"Mum, but can you really split mountains with just your sword?
I thought it was impossible without magic." Rei asked curiously.
"Hehe, how about I show you?"
"YES!" It would be his first time seeing powerhouse of this world at action.
Rose took his hand, and in the next moment, they were already near a mountain range.
'...What just happened? Teleportation?
But I didn't feel any changes in mana.'
He looked at her for a moment.
'It can't be pure speed, right?'
"Are you done being shocked?" Rose asked teasingly.
"...Yeah..." 'I will think about it later.'
"Fufu, watch then."
She let go of his hand, and took the nearest tree branch.
After swinging it a few times and nodding her head, she stood in a position very familiar to Rei.
It was technique his mother taught him, Flawless Sword.
It was pretty unusual, it wasn't actual fighting style, but rather a helper to create your own.
The technique consist of different pretty basic moves, but does not include the usage of those moves.
She moved the stick in her hand to the side, her movement flawless, with no energy wasted.
'She barely made a move, and I can already see just how big is the difference between us.'
And so she did a swing... And the three thousand meters big mountain was cut diagonally, slowly falling to it's side.
And Rei was mesmerized.
"So beautiful, so... complex."
'So fucking complex!!!'
He fell, and he screamed.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAA," his screams echoed in through the forest, only overwhelmed by the sound of falling mountain.
'TOO MUCH, TOO MUCH INFORMATION. FUCKING HURTS!!!'
He held his head with his hands. His eyes bloodshot, breath hatched.
"REI! What is this, what happened?!"
Rose immediately let go of the stick and gently pulled her son in her hands.
She was freaking out right now, unable to determine why he was screaming.
'His body doesn't have any injuries, so what happened?!'
Blood gushed from Rei's mouse, nose and eyes.
Never has he felt anything like this before.
Pain was so unbearable that he almost forgot to breathe.
And then it stopped.
Rei took a deep, sudden breath, as if he almost drowned.
His body shaking, heart beating like never before, blood with adrenaline rushed through his veins like crazy.
It took him a minute to come to back to his senses, only to hear Rose sobbing.
"Mum?.. I'm fine now."
She just hugged him strongly, warmly, without a word, and Rei hugged her back.
They sat like this, alone in the forest, feeling the earthquake from millions of tons of falling rocks.
'...Learning not to fall asleep came in handy this time, mum would've really freaked out.'
He thought jokingly.
The moment Rose swung the stick, many things happened. Many, many things.
And his mana senses caught it all. It was too much for his brain to process, so it freaked out, causing pain and panic for the whole body.
'Well, now I know a little more about mana.' He smiled.
It was a breakthrough, something he was very happy with.
One of the things he felt was mana frequency, 'hmm, no, it is more like a... spin?'
In quantum mechanics spin was not a well defined property. It was pretty difficult to describe.
Particle spins are quantized, meaning they can be represented with numbers.
It can only have two possible `orientations`: up and down.
And yet, spin can be represented with integer, rational and irrational numbers.
Spin is, in fact, property of particle in space more then a particle itself.
'But can I really call that property like this?
Hmm... Let's settle for `domain` for now.'
Mana domains — A property of mana, that decides what mana can interact with.
'So natural mana is at the domain of space or space-time.
Lets call it D0 or natural domain for simplicity.
But why? Can it be that mana naturally corrects space?
How many domains are there? And... how does that even work?'
He, of course, had many questions.
But one thing made him happy.
A few blades of grass moved gently. All in different directions.
'Material domain, D1, finally.' He was very happy, now he can actually use mana for things that currently mattered to him.
That also means that experimenting with it will become much simpler.
Influencing space is a lot harder than matter.
'And only now did I saw how unprecise my manipulations are.
I can't move things by the exact amount, there is always some randomness to it.'
To move grass, Rei converted part of natural mana into another domain, and them moved it to the grass.
Conversion was done by Rei `copying` mana domain he saw in the strike, and passing that data through his senses to mana.
It was instinctive and difficult to explain.
Velocity of that mana movement was constantly changing, it was not from a natural mana flow, but from something different.
Mana of different domains also can't interact with one another.
Which he speculated by how easy it was to move material domain particles through space domain once.
Of course, as everything else, it is only a theory.
'And the place where I took mana from is already full again.
It wasn't filled by natural mana flow itself, rather it was regenerated.
But mana is energy, and probably can't be created, so where did it came from?'
Mana he transformed dissipated in the air, and turned back to D0.
'Which makes me to believe that D0 is the lowest energy state of mana.
Interesting. A lot of experiments needed.'
Rose, of course noticed his doings, but decided to stay silent, again, like she did ever since Rei's birth.
'It is better he doesn't fall into clutches of current magic system.
With his genius mind, he can develop something completely new, just for himself.'
Aerthos', no Universes magic system was billions of years old, and is something Rei, being a fantasy fan, would instantly recognize.
But, his mother forbidden any magic usage near him, to not corrupt his mind with wrong ideas.
She only decided to show Rei the sword move, because magic, naturally imbedded in it, is extremely pure.
It is of completely different system and is one of the, if not the closest things to direct mana manipulation there is in all of magic systems.
'Hehe, I can already imagine the faces of `geniuses` in Aetherium Academy when they see him.'
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For tree days Rei barely left mansion, instead concentrating on experiments, and results pleased him greatly.
Mana can be created and destroyed.
First one was proven by experimenting with mana flow, and transforming chunks of it into D1.
By holding D1 mana for a long time, and sensing no change in density of the rest of mana flow, he determined that there was no equivalent exchange.
Mana was just created where it was missing.
Destruction was one of the things that he can just... do... His mana senses doing something for mana to disappear when he wishes.
It's not that he didn't try doing it before, he just wasn't able to.
Unfortunately, that requires a lot of energy from him, and he becomes real hangry real quick when destroying even small amount of mana.
Rei can also generate heat, by shaking small slices of material individually, they are starting to heat up from friction.
For example, to heat water up, he divides it in slices in his mind, and vibrate each of those slices in different directions.
That collision of slices increases the average velocity of individual molecules in water, which is also known as heat.
If he vibrates the water as a whole, it will just create waves, no noticeable heat up.
Another notable methods; to smash things together and to compress things. Those have more limitation, but easier to do.
Also, if he just put a lot of mana in food and eat it, his body will transform it into muscle efficiency.
It looked like the actual magic to him, and was probably work of the same organ that gave Rei mana senses.