'Well, that is not what I expected.'
Ezren had already known that he would be able to choose a reward once his level increased since Alexia, who had already reached level two the day before, told everyone about it. Thus, he was not very surprised about that.
He was, however, surprised that he had gained a total of 21 points spread across the different categories and not just the 7 points of 'Magic' he had chosen.
'Did the same happen to Alexia? Why did she not tell us about it?'
He tried and failed to come up with any logical reason why Alexia would hide the information. This just caused his suspicion to grow stronger with each moment until he had another idea.
He walked up to Andy, who was currently sitting on the ground and patted him on the shoulder to get his attention.
"Your level must have increased to level two after this battle, right? By how many points did your attributes increase?"
Andy turned around and looked at Ezren in confusion.
"What are 'attributes'?"
"Ah, it's the term I use to describe the different categories like strength, agility and so on."
"Ah, that's what you mean! Including the 7 Agility points I chose when my level increased, my attributes increased by a total of 21. Is it the same for you?"
"Yes, I also gained a total of 21 points."
"Alexia told us yesterday that her points also increased by 21 after she reached level two. Now that the same happened to all three of us we can assume, that everyone gains the same number of points when their level increases."
"Yes, it seems that way."
After that, Ezren excused himself and went back to his previous spot.
'What is wrong with me? I mean, I know that a lot is wrong with me currently but still!
From Andy's words it is clear that Alexia openly shared the information about her attributes yesterday. I just missed her explanation because I wasn't really listening to their conversation yesterday and was more focused on exploring the limitations of my skill.
And yet, my first thought earlier was not that I missed Alexia's explanation, but instead that she purposefully hid the information from us which doesn't even make sense!
When did I become so paranoid?
Ah… I really need a psychiatrist.'
Ezren's gaze wandered around the bloody field where they had battled the rabbits, and a wry smile found its way onto his face.
'Hmmm, I suspect that I will not have the opportunity to meet a psychiatrist for long, long time.'
Ezren then opened his Status again and tried to come up with an explanation for the 14 additional points everyone had received upon leveling up but soon realized that he simply did not have enough information to come up with any valid theories.
He decided to stop thinking about it for now and come back to this question once his level had increased a few more times.
There was a more interesting topic for him to research anyways: Jason's magic.
Without further delay he walked up to Jason who was currently trying and failing to flirt with Alexia and dragged him away to talk about magic.
"I saw you casting this fire spell earlier and I am really interested in how it works. Can you tell me about it?"
Jason looked very annoyed after being dragged away but decided to cooperate anyways.
"Sure, what do you want to know about it?"
"Everything."
"Everything? What do you.."
Before he could finish Ezren interrupted:
"How did you learn about these symbols? How did you manage to compress your mana into such thin strings? Why is your mana orange? Why.."
"Alright, alright I understand. I will tell you everything I know, but you have to promise to leave me alone afterwards."
"Sure." Ezren answered without hesitation.
The idiot was the last person in the group Ezren would choose to spend time with anyways, but idiot or not he was the only mage in the group and Ezren was too interested in magic and mana to pass up on the opportunity.
Jason took a deep breath and started his short 'lesson' on magic.
"As you already know, my class is 'Fire Mage' and with the class I got the innate skill 'Knowledge of Fire'. The skill grants me some knowledge and an innate understanding towards fire magic.
After a bit of practice, I managed to acquire the 'Basic Mana control' skill which is a prerequisite to casting fire magic and probably magic in general.
Thanks to 'Knowledge of Fire' I know the structure of a few elementary fire spells. This includes the geometric shape of the mana circle, and the runes needed for the spell to work.
The skill is a bit weird since it gives me raw knowledge which I then have to translate into our language myself if I want others to understand it as well. The symbols you saw earlier could be called 'Runes of magic' or 'Words of power'. I will just call them runes for now since it is convenient.
The spell I used against the rabbits earlier is called 'Fire ball' and the two runes represented the words 'Fire' and 'Ball' respectively.
Any questions so far?"
Ezren really felt like he was once again in university listening to the lectures, it made him feel a bit melancholic since it was likely that he would never return to university.
This sense of melancholy was almost immediately washed away by the excitement of learning about magic. He was even more enthusiastic since until now, it seemed that Jason's innate skill did little more than give him knowledge which would imply that Ezren would also be able to cast magic spells if Jason shared his knowledge with him.
"No questions so far please continue."
"The first step to casting a spell is to form the magic circle in your mind using your mana. This was the step I had the most trouble with since the magic circle needs to be almost perfectly executed for the spell to work.
After a few dozen tries I managed to form a good enough magic circle and gained the 'Basic Fire magic' skill. Once the magic circle was properly formed the 'Neutral mana' used to create the circle turned in 'Fire-elemental mana'.
The last step is rather simple since you just have to expel the finished mana circle from your mind into reality. I used my fingers to expel the strings 'Fire-elemental mana' and used them to 'draw' the mana circle into reality.
That's pretty much it."
Ezren was grinning like an idiot because, as far as he could tell, there was nothing that would stop him from replicating what Jason had described as long as Jason showed him what the runes and magic circle looked like. Sure, it might be a bit harder for Ezren since he lacked the 'innate understanding' that was granted by Jason's skill, but that was something a bit of extra practice should be able to fix.
Before he could get too excited, Ezren's brows furrowed. There was one detail in Jason's explanation that did not make sense to him.
"Why is the whole step of forming the magic circle in your mind necessary if you have to draw the magic circle into reality afterwards anyways? Could you not just draw the magic circle into reality to begin with?"
"How would I do that? I lose control over my neutral mana immediately after it leaves my body, and it then dissipates into the surroundings. The only reason why I can draw a magic circle into reality using fire-elemental mana is that it takes a rather long time for it to lose its integrity and dissipate.
There is also the issue of drawing a good enough magic circle into reality. After drawing the magic circle in my mind, the mana remembers the shape of the circle and I just have to expel it in roughly the right shape and the mana itself will do the rest.
If I were to expel fire-elemental mana without creating a mana circle in my mind first I would have to expel it in the perfect shape of the mana circle since I can neither control it once it leaves my body, nor will it adjust its own shape."
"What are you.."
Ezren barely stopped himself from revealing that he could in fact control his neutral mana outside his body and keep it from dissipating for some time. Ezren would curse himself for years if Jason found out about Ezren's race because of such a stupid mistake.
"Thank you for the explanation, I think I understand why the step is needed now. Could you maybe draw the magic circle of the easiest spell you have for me? I would like to find out if I can cast those spells as well."
"Sure, do you have a pencil and paper?"
"Wait a moment."
Ezren rummaged through his backpack until he found the small notebook and pencil, he used to record his experiments and handed them to Jason.
After less than a minute Jason had finished drawing the rather simple magic circle into Ezren's notebook. Ezren thought that the drawing was quite impressive… did Jason have a talent for art?
Maybe he should use his drawing skill to impress Alexia instead of his lackluster flirting skills.
Jason immediately left after finishing the drawing and went back to bothering Alexia. Ezren was truly intrigued by how and why Jason managed to become so obsessed with Alexia.
But he soon forgot about it since it had nothing to do with him and instead tried to draw the 'Fire ball' magic circle in his mind.
He thought that it wouldn't be too difficult with his 'Basic Mana control' skill already being at level 2.
After five tries the shape of the magic circle looked almost perfect but the magic circle didn't activate.
After another seven tries Ezren was certain that he had executed the magic circle as perfect as humanly or rather inhumanly possible, yet it still did not activate.
He suspected that Jason had messed up the drawing of the magic circle and asked him to double check that the drawing was correct.
Jason was very annoyed upon being bothered again even though Ezren had promised to leave him alone, but he still took another look at the drawing and confirmed that he was 100% confident that this drawing was a perfect depiction of the 'Fire ball' magic circle.
Sadly, this did not change the fact that the magic circle did not work no matter how perfect Ezren's execution was. Since neither the magic circle nor his execution was the problem, Ezren himself had to be the reason why the spell did not work.
What about him prevented the spell from working?
His first idea was that one had to have a fire related class to cast fire magic, but he had no real evidence to support that theory.
His second idea was that the magic circle only worked for humans, and he would thus be unable to use it.
He had no way to disprove either theory, but there was also no solid evidence supporting either of them. Just when he was about to give up and add this problem to his 'Questions that will be answered some other time' pile he remembered something that he and only he had which might explain his inability to cast the spell.
His innate skill 'Separated from the arcane Elements'.
Ever since he had gained this skill, he had wondered what arcane elements were. The first thing he thought about upon hearing elements were the chemical elements in the periodic table of elements, but he was pretty sure that there was nothing 'arcane' about those.
When Jason had mentioned fire-elemental mana earlier he had not thought about the name too deeply just accepting it as a new term. But now it all made sense since, according to Jason and his skill, fire was an element. And since fire was certainly not a chemical element it had to be another kind of element.
An arcane element perhaps.
This would explain why Ezren was not able to cast the 'Fire ball' spell. Because he was 'seperated' from the element of fire and could thus not make use of any fire spells.