47 – The Art of Magic

After only a few minutes to resupply my mana, I tackled the next test. What I had to do was obvious – trace a circle of mana with my thumb. This had some additional complications compared to a simple line.

For one, it no longer just required movement in a single direction. Which raised the complexity significantly. I was pretty sure my previous ‘cheat’ of having the bat push my finger wouldn’t work nearly as well here. I was certain I could manage on my own now though.

Also, the line probably had to connect to itself and complete the loop to count. Meaning higher precision was required.

Once I was ready, I touched skin to ‘paper’ and took a deep, steadying breath.

Let’s do this.

It took only a minor hitch to start moving. Once I started, my finger glided freely across the smooth surface. The closest comparison I could come up with was the need to overcome friction before pushing an object. Just mental friction instead.

Or the push you need to start working instead of procrastinating. Something like that.

Tracing the circle bordered on easy. Once that initial resistance was overcome, I could apparently move just fine while channeling mana. Which made the near-insurmountable block I experienced before ‘cheating’ even harder to understand. I guess it’s similar to how the mana channels are quite responsive now that they’re activated as well.

Despite the ease of movement, I still took nearly half a minute to slowly complete the circle. That was owed more to my wish to be careful and thorough. Accidentally going too fast and making the line too thin would be an unnecessary setback. And I was currently on a roll.

Not that I could afford to go too slowly, since I had an issue with regulating my output. Specifically, lowering the flow below a certain minimum wasn’t possible without having it cut out. This minimum was pretty high, in my opinion. Even just this one circle had nearly wiped me out, and that was with me trying to use the least possible mana.

When the circle closed, the line making it up nearly perfectly uniform, there was a change of some kind. Was that movement? That wasn’t quite right. I couldn’t detect whatever was happening with any of my physical senses. No, this was a reaction in the surrounding mana. To my limited perception, it had been almost like the world had partially tilted towards the book. It ended quickly, which didn’t help with figuring it out. A moment of single-minded focus later, I had an idea.

The circle had exerted a slight pull on atmospheric mana. That was my best estimation of the sensation’s cause. Which was weird, since I couldn’t exactly feel this surrounding mana. I could tell when it was present due to the rate of replenishment. But so far my external detection of mana was limited to touch.

As if pausing for effect, the book didn’t morph the page until this pull was gone for over a minute already.

My expectations for what came next were once again subverted. Instead of any multi-finger setup like I’d expected, there was instead a single line on the page again. A moment of confused inspection revealed the difference – this one had a thinner line, implying I needed to use a different digit to trace it.

Following the logical conclusion, I placed my index finger at the top. It fit well. I didn’t begin immediately though. My reserves were still mostly dry, since only a minute or two had passed since the previous exertion.

After taking a breather to refill, I traced the line without issue. Apparently the breakthrough I made earlier on moving while channeling applied to other fingers as well.

The next page configuration was what I expected after the previous. Another circle. What followed was nearly an hour of proceeding through the same ‘line, circle’ setup for each of the fingers on my right hand. My speed kept improving as this went on, so most of the actual time was spent on recovering my mana.

In the breaks between magic practice, I did a little physical exercise to take my mind off things.

Interestingly, the thinner circles created weaker ‘tilt’. Not by a lot, but noticeable nonetheless.

When I’d finished all the individual lines and circles, it showed something I’d expected earlier. Five parallel lines were arranged next to each other, ordered in size to fit my fingers. Why this hadn’t appeared before the circles I didn’t know.

After taking another few minutes to refill, I placed my hand in the correct posture. Channeling all five fingers continuously was going to be draining. Luckily, the individual lines were shorter than before. I might just manage. No other way to find out than to try.

I learned really quickly why this came after all the individual fingers. The difficulty spiked significantly on multiple fingers, more than for the stationary five-finger puzzle I’d done earlier.

It was quite the mental balancing act to keep all five fingers both channeling, moving and in contact with the page. I had a false start where my pinkie lifted off because I wasn’t paying attention, so I had to restart. To my relief, this test was more lenient when it came to that and didn’t make me repeat all the previous steps first.

Once I was refilled again two minutes later – I hadn’t been fully emptied – the dark spots had already faded. I tried again.

To my growing frustration, it took nearly another two hours just to manage this one page. Coordinating a single finger and the corresponding mana veins wasn’t the simplest thing ever, but it paled in comparison to this. By my estimation, the difficulty increased more than five-fold with five fingers. Significantly more.

Over and over, I’d make mistakes while moving, like slipping out of bounds or accidentally lifting a finger or two off the page. Alternatively, I interrupted the mana flow somewhere or – and this was particularly common – was too lax with my mental grip and ran out of mana too early.

A small mercy was that I wasn’t kicked back to previous tests every time I failed. If that had been the case, I might have tried tossing the book into the stratosphere at some point. Even taking frequent breaks to clear my mind by exerting my body couldn’t keep me from getting annoyed.

What ended up allowing me to succeed was something a little beside the test’s point. Since it just made me fail each time and didn’t set me back in any other way, it was probably okay. My winning idea was very simple – just complete a few fingers at a time to practice.

Two lines at once was very doable. Three was also fine enough. And after enough repetition, I worked myself up to being able to do four and then eventually all five at once. I did have to redo it until I could do them all together for it to register as a success.

Staring down at the five complete lines on the page, I let out a sigh of relief. Redoing this one exercise over and over was getting a bit old, so I was glad it was done.

Strangely, the page didn’t resolve itself into another test. The metal lines just crisscrossed and tangled chaotically, just like the areas around the actual puzzle spaces before. After some more inspection to check I didn’t miss some hidden test, I concluded this might actually be the last one. For the right hand anyway.

So, before I lost motivation, I closed the book and reopened it. Revealed on the first page was the expected five-finger spot puzzle for the left hand again. Completing all the same exercises again with a different hand was even easier. I practically breezed through the line and circle portion. Unfortunately it also wasn’t the most engaging way to spend my time.

When I got back to the five line arrangement, I had to invest some actual effort. Even so, the time I spent before helped lay the groundwork. To forestall bashing my head against a wall for hours again, I began with working my way up from two fingers.

This time it took less than half an hour. It really showed the value of proper methodology instead of mere brute force trial and error. And previous experience, can’t forget the value of that. The improvement was gratifying. I was also eager to see what came next. Though if it was another set of puzzles and tests, I’d probably have to postpone them. There wasn’t much time left in the night.

My anticipation only rose as the book seemed to take another pause for effect. The metal lines appeared to be liquid as they continued rearranging themselves. Coiling, clumping, seeping into the ‘paper’.

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Over the next minute, the page resolved itself. It was unlike any time before. Now, instead of empty spots framed by tangled, messy lines, it was nearly entirely empty. With the exception of, for the first time, words.

What a thing to be surprised about in a book, of all things. I chuckled to myself.

There, in the middle of the page, in neat handwriting – though still made up of the metal lines – was a short paragraph.

‘The Art of Magic