Shadow Monarch: Heroines Could Hear My Thoughts?!

Chapter 119- Forms Of Magic (Part 1)

That evening, Rin followed Emilia toward a place that he never saw before. Even when checking the map, it didn't show any information about this place and that made him even more confused.

They were now exactly in the northern part of the city that was known for being exclusive to professors and staff only, just like how students have areas that only they are allowed in, the other people that compose the rest of the academy body also have their own restricted areas.

'We passed through multiple guard patrols around here. It's a restricted area indeed. But, the security does seem to have increased greatly.'

The place they entered was a small building that seemed to be desolate of any human beings. The inside was empty but very clean. On the other end of the building, there was

This place was a rather big enclosed area surrounded by walls that made it impossible to see what was inside. There were no ceilings on top of it so Rin assumed that it wasn't made to be a building.

There were also no guards that guarded the door for some reason. All in all, it was indeed quite odd and very hard to comprehend.

'Why are we inside an empty, desolate area? Why is it like this in the first place when it's in a restricted area like this one?

When they reached the wall, Emilia rummaged through her belongings and then pulled out what seemed to be a huge key.

'It's similar to the key that Maria used back when we entered that demon prison.' Rin thought to himself.

"Huh, demon prison?" Emilia murmured beside him with a confused look.

"Did you say something, master?"

"No… Nothing."

Then, shaking her thoughts away, she approached the wall and put the key's end on it. A moment later, the key started shining with a faint blue light the same shade as the mana's color.

Then, miraculously, the key started penetrating the wall slowly as if it was a knife piercing a piece of butter. The process took a few seconds to finish. When it was fully inside, Emilia twisted the key counterclockwise in a gentle manner.

*Click*

The sound of something clicking echoed in the area before the key's light turned suddenly way brighter than before. Then, that light spread across the whole wall like a domino effect. Eventually, the whole light was shining in bright blue color.

After that, in the center of the wall, a blue portal manifested itself. The portal was circular in form and it looked similar to a whirlpool. The color of the portal was blue mixed with some black long strings in the middle.

"Go ahead," Emilia said.

After nodding his head Rin walked inside the portal. He was already accustomed to entering portals for a while now so he didn't feel nauseated or weird by any means.

The scenery shifted and he found himself inside a whole different place. It was unlike anything he had ever seen before.

'So white!'

The place was basically a vastly big place fully white in color. It was white to the point where it was hard to differentiate between the sky and the ground. He even had to look very closely to see the end of it even though it was right ahead of him.

It looked like some kind of futuristic virtual room he saw before in Sci-Fis. It was indeed quite futuristic looking that he almost forgot that he was still in a medieval world that has the most primitive forms of technology.

'Another thing that looks way ahead of its time.' Rin thought with a complicated gaze.

This wasn't the first time he had seen something like this. An object or a place that was very technologically advanced. One of them was something he had on his hand. The bracelet in and out of itself was nothing short of a miracle if he took this world's state into consideration.

No human should technically be able to invent these things until at least a few more hundred years. Yet, here he is inside one of these miracles of science.

Rin obviously had his suspicions because of this. Any normal person can see the fishiness of this situation. But, he can't really give a clear and decisive answer to these questions until he learned more about the origin of these things… the first founder.

"What are you so focused on?" Emilia snapped her fingers in front of his face to wake him up from his trance.

"This place is created by the founder, right?" Rin asked.

"Yes."

"Who is this person? I mean, isn't this place and everything else he left seems so out of place for you?" Rin asked.

"Well, it obviously is."

"Then, why is no one searching about how he made everything."

Crossing her arms in front of her chest, Emilia contemplated for a moment before answering.

"Well, the reason for that is…Most books that talked about his life and his achievements vanished a long time ago. Everything we know about him is from the bits and pieces of the legends we hear. In fact, we have no clue about what actually happened in that era. The blood moon massacre, the war between demons and humans, and the story of the founder, we know nothing about them. It's a mystery how or why everything that was written about that time vanished with no traces. As if someone manually got rid of each and every book, scroll, or even painting of that time."

Hearing that, Rin felt even more confused. Someone got rid of them? Why would they do that? And most importantly, who did that?

'It's so fishy. For everything they know about that part of history to conveniently vanish isn't normal at all.

"Anyway, many did question this. But, in the end, they gave up on trying to find anything. That part of history is basically empty and no one could do anything about it. Even the legends we hear about it are not certain or verified. They can be the truth as they can be nothing but a lie, we don't know. However, what we do know is that demons did end up trying to erase the human race completely but ended up losing the bloody war because of it."

"I see…" Rin wasn't fully convinced but he didn't try to ask any further as Emilia doesn't have the answer.

"Now, enough of the chit chat and let's focus on what we came here to do."

"Yes!"

After that, Emilia lifted the key up in the air a little bit and twisted it as if she was trying to open an invisible door.

"Now watch and learn… This is the difference between custom dungeons and normal dungeons."

*Twist* *Click*

The moment the clicking sound echoed, the whole room changed completely. From a fully white chamber to a dark, narrow tunnel. The atmosphere also changed along with it. The same eerie, cold and humid atmosphere found in dungeons loomed over them.

*Drip* *Drip*

The sound of water droplets dripping beside them along with the occasional gushes of cold air made it feel even more realistic.

'Amazing… This is even more advanced than the most advanced virtual reality back in my world.' Rin thought as he looked at the walls and the ceiling.

"Now, in the past few weeks, you learned about dagger techniques, close-combat fighting, mana camouflage, and mana control. Now, I will teach you about the other important part that constitutes a splendid warrior and that thing is…"

Then, Emilia extended her palm in the air, and on it a shard of ice appeared out of thin air.

"Magic."

Rolling the shard of ice in her hand, she said.

"I reckon you don't know much about the fundamentals of magic from what I can see." She said with a meaningful look.

"Well, you will still learn about it in the magic classes. But, I will still give a rough summary of what you should focus on without the other things that they teach in lessons. Magic is, in the simplest of terms, a form of manipulation."

"Manipulation?"

"Yes, manipulation. Everything we can do that includes our mana is a form of manipulation. If we want for example to create something with our elements, we manipulate our mana in a certain way to make it use that element we have. Look at this shard of ice."

She showed him the sharp ice piece and added.

"I used my mana in a certain way and made it create this cold, realistic ice."

"I see."

"But, while our elements can be different, the mana we use is basically the same for every human being. There are rare cases of someone obtaining a different form of mana but that's not something you should care about for now. The important part that I want you to focus on is this…"

She then pointed at her chest.

"Your chest?" Rin asked with a confused look.

"No, you moron. I am talking about your mana core. The thing responsible for every form of magic in this world."

(A//N: Fuuh, took some time to start creating the power system for this world. But, I need to set things up before doing this.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thanks for reading. Any support you give me is always appreciated no matter how small it was. Let's all keep it up :)