Heup!
Raven charged at Eve with his axe at insane speed, using only his memories and basic combat experience from back on Earth.
He always planned his attacks back on earth, and mostly did sneak attacks, so he barely had any combat experience himself.
He swung his axe with full power, aiming at her head, which she instantly blocked with no effort whatsoever.
'The other axe now.' He thought as he swung it right after, aiming for her guts.
Clang!
It was blocked effortlessly as well.
If this were done against a normal human being, he would've died already.
But this world was different, and Raven could feel it clearly now.
His speed and strength were on a level incomparable to even professional fighters back on Earth, but Eve was blocking them like he was a toddler.
'I should feign now.'
He put out a feint and used the other axe to attack her.
"Halt!" She shouted, frowning as she examined him.
"What is that?" She asked, her tone confused.
"What is what?" Raven asked back, confused as well.
What was she talking about?
"Your form, your attack, and your movement." She spoke out loud, "It feels like you know what to do, but you can't instinctively do it."
Bingo!
'Are all strong people mind readers in this world?' He thought.
How was she so spot on?
It must be the experience, but it was still crazy.
"..."
Raven couldn't utter any words to that question.
What was he supposed to say?
So he left her mind to draw conclusions of her own.
"Let's… let's just move on." She sounded tense, "Use your magic."
Raven nodded.
This would be better.
At least compared to the physical combat.
He scourged through Raven's memories on how to use magic.
From what he could remember, Raven was a crystal mage.
Something quite rare in this world.
He concentrated, drawing mana from his mana conduit, channeling it through his veins.
It felt quite natural to him, but it required some concentration that he was having a hard time doing.
But it was only downhill from here.
Extracting was the easy part here.
Actually manifesting it into a usable spell was the hard part.
Apparently, there were three parts of this: Imagination, which creates a matrix for the spell, Instincts, which decides how the spell should react with reality, and finally, Fueling and release, in which you feed the mana into the matrix, and it manifests into a physical form.
"Wait, what?" Raven suddenly broke his concentration mid-spell-casting and frowned.
Eve's brows rose, "What happened?"
"This is too long," He sounded disoriented.
"Yeah," She affirmed his claims, "This is why you practice it, so you can do it instinctively."
"This is also why many people choose to avoid being a mage."
"Can we not pre-make the spells and release them at will?" He asked curiously.
'This is why you should've stayed at the College,' She muttered under her breath.
"What was that?" Raven could swear she was bad-mouthing him, but he didn't catch that properly.
"Nothing!" She replied, "The reason why one couldn't pre-fire it is that mana is a form of energy, and it dissipates outside the insulation of your mana conduit."
Raven started scouring through his memory bank again.
'This dumb guy.' He berated the original Raven.
He basically never read anything.
He only had basic knowledge of everything used in practical combat.
"Tell me, Rae," She called him out, "How the process of mana refinement works?"
Raven was relieved that at least he had memories regarding this. "One takes in unrefined mana from the atmosphere through various methods like breathing exercises, meditation, or even expending it in a fight or practice."
"Then, they channel it back into their mana conduit, which refines it for you, stores the refined mana, and the body excretes the rest."
"Well," She scrutinized the answer for a second, "That's way too simplified, but that's basically the gist of it."
"What's a spell?" She asked him another question.
"A physical manifestation of your intent, mana, nature of your mana, and imagination." He answered again.
"And, what is a Matrix?"
"The…" Raven flailed his fingers, since the answer he had from his memories was very vague, "mould for the spell?"
It was awkward.
"I would hit the library today," He sounded defeated.
Sigh!
"What you need to understand about matrix currently is simple," She started, "It is the incomplete form of spell, right before you inject mana inside, and release it."
"Simply put, it is the skeleton for your spell, and the mana would be the rest of the body for it."
Raven nodded, making a mental note of it.
"And this structure is made up of?" She sounded like an elementary school teacher right now.
Raven flustered, blood rushing to his face. "I d-don't know."
"Mana from the environment. Since that's faster, to put together. But the drawback to this is that, unrefined mana disperses even quicker than refined mana."
Raven then made his point, "So, you can pre-fire a spell if you form it with refined mana."
"Theoretically, yes," She affirmed, "But it'd just add to the time you want to decrease so much, and it would barely last a second longer."
He frowned, as if he couldn't understand something.
They both went silent for a minute, as he was digesting the information and thinking about something.
Finally, after a minute, Eve broke the ice and said, "You look like you have got something to say?"
He nodded.
"It'd be faster if I showed you."
As he said this, he started preparing something.
Eve looked at him with curiosity.
'At least he's trying.' She thought, feeling a mix of emotions about him.
She even considered sending him back to college, but she immediately removed that thought.
He would be mocked for attending college at this age.
"I am ready." He said, his face unsure if it would work.
Eve waited for 10 seconds, in case he was trying to pre-fire the spell.
"Go!"
Just as she said, go, he launched a crystal lance immediately, without even a millisecond of delay.
'Huh!'
"Huh!?"