Chapter 17: Confidence

Chapter 17: Confidence

After asking if he needed help in killing Edward, Nathan was unfazed.

"I have a plan that should probably take care of him. I'll tell you how it ends up in a few days and if I need your help."

With that, I asked no more about that. After eating my second serving of pottage, I felt quite full, but there was still stuff I wanted to talk about so I got another even though it would probably give me a stomach ache.

"I think I found out why Bryson turned evil. There was this book that tried to take control of me in the mansion. It seems to have cast some sort of spell on me that makes me think about it."

Nathan frowned slightly but passed it off as though there was a bad flavor in the pottage.

"Isn't that bad?"

Was it bad? I don't know.

"This may be part of the spell, but I'm not really worried about it for some reason."

Nathan responded quickly.

"Then I'll slap you back into shape if you end up going awry for any reason."

Right after that, he let out a loud sigh.

"Man, that was tasty! Thanks for the food!"

I waved my hand dismissively.

"No problems. I'll try to be here often, but I won't be able to make it tomorrow."

Nathan gave me a thumbs-up.

"Got it, I'll see you later."

Surprisingly, we did end up finishing what we cooked as several of the servants went for seconds after seeing me and Nathan take three whole bowls.

From there, we packed everything up. As they were getting things back in the carriage, the butler bowed toward me with a bitter smile.

"It appears your plan didn't work but don't worry! I'm sure the next thing you try will work out!"

I smirked while giving him a casual wave.

"What do you mean? It worked fine."

The butler blinked a few times, looking at me strangely.

"Eh? But... nobody came."

I shrugged my shoulders.

"Hey, you guys came to sit. And that included the one guy too."

The butler tilted his head to the side.

"But is that not your friend?"

I laughed as I stepped into the carriage.

"A success is a success no matter how pathetic it looks. We will be doing the same thing many more times from now on."

The butler was rendered speechless.

Not waiting anymore, I just stepped into the carriage and let it take us back home. Feeling the pain from eating too much, I took a bath and went to sleep a little early. Upon waking up, I didn't eat all that much for breakfast, though Jess was glaring at me the whole time.

In fact, even on the carriage ride to school, the very same thing happened.

It made me feel quite uncomfortable, but I just ignored it the best I could.

During magic class, the teacher further elaborated on how to use mana to manipulate spells and showed the specific step-by-step process of how to summon a ball of water.

There was a drawing on the board as he explained it all.

In the back of my mind, I couldn't help but feel nervous that I was going to fail. After all, I was seen as someone that was incredibly smart, and if I failed miserably on the basic spell then it would look rather strange.

Regardless, I decided to try anyway.

Following how Harold explained everything, I tried to manipulate the mana in my body, but had difficulty doing so. How exactly did this whole thing work?

I peeked at Nathan, and from the frown on his face, it looked as though he had a similar problem as me. However, there were several people that were not having trouble with it, which was almost half of the class.

Raisa had already begun forming the spell, and so was Ela. In fact, even Sam was working on it, though he looked like he was having difficulties in properly forming the mana. Harold noticed that most people had not yet tried to cast the spell, and he didn't look surprised.

I guess it was normal for people to be unable to do it at first.

However, when Harold saw I hadn't tried casting yet, he looked at me with curiosity.

"Why haven't you begun casting yet? I imagine you've already figured out how to manipulate mana?"

This fucking... why did you have to call me out specifically? Just let me go unnoticed, you insensible teacher!

I blinked a few times while my mind scrambled for some answer.

"I just... wanted to see the proper method of doing it."

Harold simply smiled and nodded.

"Haha, I see, I see. Then I suppose I should demonstrate just that."

He cleared his throat before sitting cross-legged on top of his desk. He did so without any reservation, despite how crude it looked. From there, Harold put his hands onto his knees and began speaking in a rather calm voice.

"Mana is ever present in our bodies. It is normal to find it difficult to catch, as the mana in your body is essentially fused with you, making it hard to distinguish. It is known that blood is able to store mana the most easily, but you should be able to draw mana from every part of your body assuming you have given it time to soak mana in."

He then took a deep breath before closing his eyes. The surface of his body suddenly began glowing slightly, until a very thin layer of blue mana covered him. It almost made him look like he was some sort of iridescent lamp.

"To get a proper feel for the mana of your body, the most common way is meditating. By trying to empty your head of thoughts and ignoring all other sensations, you draw on the incredibly subtle presence of mana. As you get more used to it, then you will no longer need to meditate."

From there, many other students began meditating, sitting on top of their desks. I noted that the nobles seemed to hesitate for a bit longer, but did it anyway. Naturally, as I had no idea how to sense mana, I did the same.

On paper, it didn't sound too hard. Meditating was something I had done before, but honestly, I was wondering if somehow our Earth brains would make it harder or impossible for us to sense mana.

Yet, the moment I closed my eyes and calmed my mind, I found that worry was unfounded. Though it wasn't strong, I could feel the mana in my body. It was rather elusive. As Harold said, mana seemed to meld with one's body, easily making it incredibly difficult to notice normally.

It took a couple of tries, but I was able to 'tug' the mana out of my body. Immediately I could recognize that the mana had been depleted from that part of my body, and coalesced into my hand.

I opened my eyes to see Nathan also with a ball of mana.

...But it was maybe ten times the size of mine.

Nathan was also looking at the ball of mana in surprise. This was the clearest result of a difference in magical affinity. The reason why having a higher magical affinity was so valued was because that was what determined your mana capacity, ease of manipulating mana, and also what spells you were even able to cast in the first place.

After shaking my head I began to follow Harold's steps in casting the water ball. They were relatively easy, thus despite being my first time manipulating mana, I was able to do it on my first try. There were a few hiccups along the way, but a small ball of water appeared above my hand.

Out of curiosity, I brought it close to the black walls of the classroom and the water dispersed like it never existed after getting closer than ten centimeters.

It seemed that this stuff was really effective.

Nathan had a frown on his face, a bit discouraged to cast the water spell with that much mana, but tried anyway.

The end result was a rather massive ball of water formed above him. He looked up in surprise.

"What the, wait, isn't this going to fall on me? I gotta move it!"

Harold seemed to sweat a little.

"No, no, all you have to do is cancel the spell or bring it close to the wa-"

Nathan was listening, but also panicking a little too much.

"What? Wait, fuck, fuck, fuck!"

He lost control of the ball of water, causing it to splash down on him, covering him in water as though he had just gotten out of a pool. He still had one finger raised in the air, while his lips were pressed into a flat line.

He blinked a few times, having accepted his fate.

I couldn't help but laugh out loud, after which Nathan pointed at me with anger.

"Shut up! It's not fair, you're right next to the wall so you can make the spell go away easily!"

With a smirk spread out across my face, I shrugged.

"Huh? I didn't say anything. What are you talking about?"

Nathan's eyelid twitched.

"...Oh yeah?"

He proceeded to get out of his seat, walk to me and flail his sleeves, showing me with droplets of water.

"Take this!"

I blocked with both hands, closing my eyes while laughing.

"Ok, ok fine! I'm sorry." n--O//v/-e(-l--b.-I)/n

Nathan crossed his arms with a scoff in an overly pretentious way.

"It's good you understand."

From there, he got back into his own seat without a word. The whole class seemed to be staring at us once more.

Oh, right. This wasn't Earth, so goofing off like this was kinda weird between a noble and a commoner. Eh, whatever. We gave up on that pretense earlier anyway.

Nathan looked at the teacher and pointed at himself.

"Do you have some sort of drying spell? This is kinda inconvenient."

Harold smiled bitterly.

"Apologies, but I am unable to cast that sort of spell."

Nathan's eyes widened.

"Eh? Is the drying spell super advanced or something?"

Harold let out a helpless sigh. He slowly shook his head, before clasping his hands together. His eyes were looking up and to the left, seemingly thinking about how to say his next words.

"It is not that drying itself is all that extraordinary, but because of the nature of how that spell works, it is incredibly difficult to learn, and means one has access to far more powerful spells as well."

Nathan looked down at himself before looking up once more.

"So am I just supposed to go around like this?"

Harold coughed awkwardly.

"Perhaps... you have a change of clothes?"

Nathan blinked a few times.

"I guess this will just be my life now."

Magic class ended a little later, and Nathan was still quite wet. Even after math class, he had only dried off a little bit. However, he still proudly went off to the cafeteria while casting droplets of water everywhere he walked.

Other than staying a little further away from him, Raisa and I followed.

When we got back to class, our English teacher was already there. He was a middle-aged man with brown hair and a beard. Dennis was his name. There was a natural frown on his face, and it only deepened further when he saw the wet mess that Nathan currently was in.

"This is the problem with commoners! They simply bring filth into what is normally a pristine school. If it weren't for this school being so lenient to give you pieces of trash a chance, then our reputation would've soared far higher!"

I opened my mouth to defend him, but Nathan put a hand on my arm.

It was probably intended to be on my shoulder, but... he was too short to reach it comfortably.

I closed my mouth right after as I remembered. Nathan didn't need anyone to defend him. The only reason that thing happened with Karin was that he had a weakness for older women for some reason. In fact, her lecturing might've even been endearing to him.

Wait... that was probably the main reason he got a perfect score in the first place.

But the smile across his face now was confident, and a little domineering.