Sera began expining her troubles, hoping to organize her thoughts. Tia, Vina, Emma, and Aric listened with their utmost attention.

  "For the past two years, I've been trying to find a way for Vina and myself to use magic."

  Emma and Aric exchanged surprised gnces. To them, magic wasn’t a necessity. Most people lived perfectly fine without it.

  They wanted to say something, but Sera cut them off.

  "Before you try to convince me that magic isn't essential and that a rge portion of the popution lives happily without it, let me say this.

  “I know.

  “But in our case, I fear we'll face certain issues in the future. I will not expin them now, but they can’t be resolved without magic. For us, being able to use it is not an option. it’s a necessity."

  Emma and Aric hesitated. They wanted to argue, but seeing Sera’s determination, they held back and let her continue.

  "But Mother," Vina interjected, "didn't Teacher Kevin say that at the next Awakening Ceremony, we could apply for the ritual to break our artifacts?"

  "Yes," Sera admitted, "but I can't be sure if it will succeed. That’s why I’ve been searching for alternatives."

  She paused before continuing. "I've received information on various methods that others in simir situations have used to overcome this issue."

  ‘It must be from Countess Ravenna,’ Emma and Aric thought in unison.

  "After reviewing them, I narrowed it down to one method with the highest probability of success."

  Aric leaned forward, intrigued. "So, what is it?"

  "It describes a magic ritual that can help us break our dead artifacts we inherited. The source of our troubles."

  "That's wonderful! You found a solution then!" Emma excimed, her excitement evident. "What does it say?"

  "I don’t know." Sera shook her head.

  "Huh? What do you mean you don’t know?"

  "It’s exactly as I said. I don’t know.” Sera Shrugged. “Because I don’t understand it."

  Everyone tilted their heads in confusion.

  Sera chuckled, then took a piece of paper and wrote down a word consisting of two symbols. She held it up for Emma and Aric to see.

  They were mystified by the unfamiliar script.

  "This is how the word 'bird' is written in one of the magic nguages. It is pronounced as Tzipor," Sera expined. "Try to remember it."

  Intrigued, Emma and Aric focused on studying the symbols. Each character was simple, composed of three or more strokes—easy to write, yet unfamiliar.

  "Alright, we memorized it," Emma said. "What now?"

  "Now, write down what you just memorized on this paper."

  Sera handed a sheet of paper and a quill to both Emma and Aric, who took them eagerly. Vina and Tia, watching from the side, were still a bit confused about what Sera was trying to demonstrate.

  Emma and Aric carefully tried to write the letters they had just memorized.

  "...That's weird."

  Both of them hesitated, their quills hovering over the paper as a realization dawned on them.

  "I... I can't seem to remember what I was supposed to write," Emma admitted, gncing at Aric.

  Aric frowned. "Yeah, it's like it just slipped from my mind."

  "Sera, can we look at the word again?" Emma asked. Aric nodded in agreement.

  "Of course." Sera handed them the original paper with the word.

  Determined, they studied the symbols with intense focus, repeatedly tracing them in the air with their fingers. After several attempts, they were sure they had committed it to memory.

  They nodded at each other, then carefully wrote the word down.

  "Done!" Both decred triumphantly, holding up their papers like children showing off their homework.

  Sera smiled and took the sheets from them. "Alright, now tell me, what does this word mean? How do you pronounce it?"

  "It means... uh..."

  Emma opened her mouth to answer, then hesitated.

  "Huh?" Aric frowned. He knew he had heard Sera say it just moments ago. But now, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't recall the meaning.

  They exchanged bewildered gnces before turning to Sera for answers.

  She chuckled. "Don't worry. Why don’t you both try writing it again?"

  Nodding, they took fresh sheets and attempted to write the word once more, only to realize they had forgotten it completely.

  Vina and Tia, who had been watching closely, suddenly grasped what was happening. Tia, in particur, understood the core of Sera’s problem.

  "Sera, something is wrong," Aric said, scratching his head. "Maybe we just need to try again. It’s our first time, so maybe we just didn't remember it properly."

  Feeling schadenfreude, Sera smirked pyfully and handed them the word again, repeating its meaning.

  ‘She is enjoying this. Isn’t she?’ Tia thought, shaking his head, smiling.

  They went through the process once more, memorizing it, writing it down, only for Sera to distract them with a distracting question. The moment they refocused on writing, they realized the word and its meaning had vanished from their minds yet again.

  Now truly puzzled, they turned to Sera for an expnation.

  "The nguage you're trying to write is one of the arcane nguages, which can be considered as knowledge reted to magic." she revealed. "And arcane knowledge has a unique trait. An individual can memorize magic reted knowledge according to their mana capacity only.”

  Emma and Aric's eyes widened.

  "Since neither of you has awakened your mana yet, you physically can't retain magic-reted knowledge. Even if you manage to remember something for a short while, it will inevitably slip away."

  Emma stared at her in shock. "Does that mean... we’ll never be able to remember anything about magic?"

  "You can remember," Sera said, "but it would take years of effort and repeated practice just to retain the basic alphabets."

  Emma and Aric exchanged uneasy gnces.

  “Because of this some people believe that this method can increase the mana capacity of the person, thus resulting in improvement of memory power. As a result, in olden days, people used this method to train their children before they awakened their mana within them.

  "But how much you can retain still depends on your mana capacity," Sera continued. "For example, since neither of you nor Tia have awakened your mana, you can barely remember anything."

  She turned to Tia. "I haven't checked recently, but Tia has been practicing arcane nguages for a few years now. Because of that, she should now be able to remember the alphabets, but only for two or three days at most. After that, they'll start fading from her mind.

  “And she has to relearn everything once again or, regurly revise what she learned, day after day to retain the letters from fading from her memory.”

  Tia nodded thoughtfully.

  "Vina and I, on the other hand, have already awakened our mana," Sera went on. "So we don’t need effort to recall the alphabets, and we can retain some words. But our dead artifacts prevent us from cultivating mana further, so we're still limited by how much mana we have, in turn affecting how much we can remember."

  "Wait. What are dead artifacts?" Emma asked.

  Sera expined what dead artifacts are and how they prevented her and Vina from using mana.

  "After awakening mana, people normally use some kind of cultivation method to absorb it from their surroundings," she said.

  "But dead artifacts disrupt the flow of mana, thus disturbing that process.

  “No matter how much mana exists around us, we can’t absorb it. As a result, the mana in our bodies won’t increase."

  “If we are to still try it forcefully, it causes backsh, in worst cases, death or crippling us mentally.

  Emma and Aric listened intently, now fully grasping the severity of the problem.

  "In other words," Sera continued, "it’s not just that we can't grow stronger. Our connection to mana itself is severed. Without mana, forget using magic, learning itself becomes nearly impossible."

  She sighed, frustration clear in her voice. "That’s why breaking these artifacts is so important. Without that, Vina and I are stuck."

  Vina unconsciously clenched her fist.

  Emma's eyes widened as she processed the information. "So even if you manage to memorize a section of the magic ritual, the moment you try to read another section, you’ll forget the previous part. Leaving you confused and back to square one?"

  "Exactly," Sera nodded, satisfied that her students have understood her lesson.

  Aric frowned. "But can’t you improve your memory with enough practice?"

  "I can," Sera admitted. "But the improvement is painfully slow. It would take years just to remember a few more paragraphs.”

  She leaned back, her frustration evident. "The magic I'm researching is high-level, typically cast by people with a much greater mana capacity. Learning ability is directly tied to mana levels. That’s why lower-level mages may try to learn mid-level spells, but they can’t even dream of learning high-level ones."

  “Simply put, a person can only learn magic which is within their capacity. They can’t learn anything much higher than their level.

  "So your only real solution would be to increase your mana capacity…" Aric reasoned.

  "Yes. But, due to our dead artifacts, we can't increase our mana. Without mana we cannot learn the magic to break the artifacts. And without breaking the artifacts, we can’t increase our mana.

  “In this way, we're trapped in a paradoxical cycle." Sera let out a sigh.

  Listening to Sera’s expnation, Emma expressed her doubts, “Sera, what exactly is mana and magic?”

  Before Sera could answer, Aric interjected, “Magic is like the miracle Kevin performed during priest Benedict’s farewell party.”

  “And mana is what mages and priests use to perform magic. At least, that’s what I was taught during my training.”

  Emma nodded in understanding.

  “There seems to be a process through which a person can increase the overall mana capacity within them.” Sera continued.

  “And all the mages undergo a process called inversion, following which the mana capacity will increase by many folds. But everyone seems to be born with a fixed limit on this capacity for Mana.”

  “Think of it like each person having a gss with different sizes. And mana is like water we can fill it with. But the gss has a capacity and can’t store beyond its limits.

  “There’s a process through which a person can increase their overall mana capacity.

  “All mages undergo something called Inversion, which can drastically expand their mana reserves. However, everyone is born with a fixed limit to how much mana they can ultimately contain.”

  She paused, then continued with her previous analogy. “No matter how much water is avaible in a ke, the gss can only hold so much before it overflows.”

  “With Inversion, we can enrge and reshape the gss by reforging it,” she went on. “But even that has its limits. Ones that are set at birth.

  “As, inversion can only occur once a person reaches a certain mana threshold.”

  Sera gnced at Emma and Aric, “It’s simir to how people are born into different social csses. A poor person can become rich, but their circumstances put limits on how far they can rise. Likewise, a rich person has more resources and advantages to grow even wealthier.”

  Emma's brows furrowed in thought. “So in the same way, someone with a naturally rge mana capacity has an advantage over someone with a smaller one?”

  “Exactly.” Sera nodded. “Not only for Inversion, but also for what level of magic they can cast, and how many times they can cast.”

  Emma asked. “Then how are you pnning to cast high-level magic if you don’t have enough mana?”

  “The ritual I chose seems to have multiple variations. One of them requires only a small amount of mana from the participants as a trigger.” She tapped the table lightly. “But the details on how it works are written further in the material, and… I haven't been able to fully understand them yet.”

  She paused before continuing, her frustration evident. “Even though retaining magic-reted knowledge is a major issue, that’s not what I’m stuck on right now.”

  Emma and Aric exchanged gnces.

  “My current problem is even more basic.”

  Copyright ? [April] [2025] [The Rainy Imp]. All rights reserved.

  Sera leaned back. “Even if I manage to learn the magic, actually casting it is another matter entirely.”

  Aric frowned. “Why?”

  “I’ve never practiced magic before.” Sera exhaled. “I don’t even know how to cast spells.”

  Emma blinked. “But… isn’t that something you can just learn through practice?”

  “You’d think so,” Sera murmured, rubbing her temple. “The magic I’m researching is high-level. I can’t just start casting it without a proper foundation. Fortunately, the materials I received include practice magic circles that go from basic to advanced levels.”

  “That sounds promising,” Aric said.

  “I thought so too,” Sera admitted. “So I started at the lowest level, Circle 0 Magic. Which is specifically designed for people with low mana.”

  Emma nodded, encouraging her to continue.

  “There are four basic spells provided in the material,” Sera expined. “But no matter how many times I follow the procedure, I can’t activate any of them.”

  Aric frowned. “Are you sure you’re doing it correctly?”

  “I’ve gone through every step multiple times. I’ve even compared my actions with the descriptions word for word. Nothing works.”

  Emma considered this for a moment before suggesting, “Why not ask the person who gave you the materials?”

  “I already did,” Sera said, shaking her head. “But they never personally tested these low-level circles. By the time they studied this magic, they were already advanced mages. So, they chose another variation which suited them.”

  “Did they at least try to activate them for you?” Aric asked.

  “They did,” Sera admitted. “But they couldn’t activate them either.”

  Emma’s expression turned skeptical. “Wait a second… didn’t you say you and Vina can’t use magic because of your dead artifacts? Then how did these high-level mages cast high-level magic despite having dead artifacts?”

  Sera shook her head. “No, this magic isn’t actually meant to break the artifacts. It was created for a different purpose entirely. Actually, no one knows what its purpose is either. But I believe it can be adapted to help us.”

  Emma slowly nodded in understanding.

  “Then why don’t you ask Priest Joshua?” Aric suggested.

  “I already did. Last week.”

  “And?”

  Sera sighed. “He tried them as well. His conclusion? They must be fake.”

  Emma and Aric exchanged surprised looks.

  “He said he’s never seen anything like these circles before. And the process of activation is completely different from what he knows. To him, that means either the circles are fake or crucial details are missing.”

  “But the person who gave me the materials insisted that nothing was missing and they were complete”

  She rubbed her forehead. “Even if I succeeded in learning the theory, if I can’t even activate the lowest-level spell, how am I supposed to cast a high-level ritual?”

  A heavy silence settled in the room.

  Then Vina hesitantly spoke up. “Mother… can’t we use an artifact to cast magic?”

  Sera caught the subtle implication. Vina was suggesting Lamia’s Embrace.

  She considered it for a moment before shaking her head. “Normal artifacts can’t cast magic. Only high-level ones can. But based on what I’ve gathered from the materials, it’s safer to use our own mana. So as to avoid contamination from external mana traces.”

  “For the same reason, we can’t have others help us set up the magic circles either.”

  Emma opened her mouth, then hesitated, as if debating whether to ask about this contamination. In the end, she remained quiet. It was clear she wouldn’t understand even if Sera expined.

  While everyone was lost in thought, Sera exhaled and continued.

  “Finally, my st troubling issue concerns Ravencrest’s Pact.”

  ‘The Ravencrest’s Pact?’ Aric, Tia and Vina were puzzled, hearing about it for the first time.

  Copyright ? [April] [2025] [The Rainy Imp]. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright w. For permission requests, contact the publisher at [[email protected]].