The Sinful Saint

When Si Sheng got back, Bythre wasn't in her office. He didn't know where she had scurried off to, but that wasn't any of his concern.

After returning, Si Sheng did exactly as he said he would; he read some books from Bythre's library and practiced controlling his mana, while he relaxed and thought about the day. While many people disliked reading and thought of it as a chore, Si Sheng would always unwind for the day by reading an interesting book or article.

While he was reading he decided to organize his thoughts and review what he had learned that day, so he could digest it all and further his understanding of it. It was a routine activity he would perform so that he could actually understand the information or knowledge he had received to further his understanding of what he had learned and possibly have further insights regarding the learned material.

First came the lecture. There, he had learned about mana zones and mana traces, and about their peculiarities. Mana zones were dangerous existences if left unchecked but were rare due to the nature of their formation. Mana traces were useful and tricky. On one hand, they could be used to track and find the whereabouts of a target, and, simultaneously, they would make it easier for pursuers to find you. You'd need a way to erase your trace if you wanted to reasonably escape. Additionally, if a mana trace was of sufficient size, it would form into a mana zone.

There were other possibilities Si Sheng came up with during his time of reflection. If one were to have achieved sufficient mana manipulation, those mana traces could be used as a sort of injection where the person could reabsorb the residual mana instead of wasting it. This would cause the caster's spells to be more cost-efficient, due to the reduced loss of mana upon casting, as well as give them the ability to gain mana from opponents through the residual left over from their spells. This also solved the issue with the tracking problem since it eliminated the mana trace and covered one's tracks. However, he didn't know what people who didn't have mana manipulation would do to cover up their traces.

Additionally, this led him to think about ambient mana absorption. If someone could absorb the mana traces, then couldn't someone absorb the ambient mana in the world like a mana zone did? However, he didn't know if it would be efficient or feasible. For one, the density of mana in an area would determine the factors around the efficiency, and, secondly, he didn't know if it was possible to absorb the ambient mana consciously. At present, he didn't have the ability to consciously mold and interact with mana, so he didn't know what was required to turn mana used by others into his own. Using the mention of absorbing mana traces, he didn't know if there was some sort of willpower connected to the trace, so whether or not he could absorb the mana against this willpower was up in the air; the same went for the ambient mana. The ambient mana was an even greater mystery; he didn't know if it had a willpower attributed to it or not. If there was, he imagined it would be the will of the world or some higher power, like a god. If this were the case, it'd be virtually impossible to absorb ambient mana, if it wasn't, then that would be the best case and his abilities would reach a staggering height with such an ability. But, Si Sheng wasn't optimistic.

Secondly, his encounter with the prince. He needed to be more careful until the king announced that he was a friend and not a foe. Until that point, he needed to be wary of who he interacted with since he didn't know if he would run into any other elves who knew about humans, or the humans of Fujin specifically; he wasn't too worried about this, however, since he didn't plan on spending too much time wandering around. Furthermore, the elucidations regarding the Pointless Conquest helped piece together some questions Si Sheng had had since he arrived in Ljosalfheim. From the very first meeting with the Council of Elders, the Pointless Conquest had been alluded to, and it hung over the upper echelon of Alfheim like some sort of plague. Now that he knew the situation such a war caused, he could imagine why the Council was so downtrodden over the war and the feelings they held towards humans. Still, more questions opened up as a consequence of his learning about the Pointless Conquest. Mainly, the suppression of outside information. It was strange that the leaders of the elves would purposely restrict information regarding humans and other countries. He didn't know what they were thinking when they did this, but he ultimately didn't care too much. It was their decision, not his. Even if he asked, they wouldn't tell him, he believed. Another thing that bothered him was why a fair amount of councilpersons were friendly to him, despite him being a human. This included mainly Bythre and Fenulis. One was the king of a nation, effectively, held hostage by humans, and another was a victim of humanity's deeds. No matter how he looked at it, it was odd that they were so quick to okay his stay, even with the World Tree's blessing.

Thirdly, his understanding of magic. From the main book on magic that Si Sheng read, "Theories and Understandings of Mana and Magic," he knew about "magical affinities," which, from his understanding, were simply magic skills gifted to people either during their baptism or at birth, and how these "affinities" allowed people to cast magic due to the incantations they innately provided. Additionally, he theorized that if he could consciously manipulate his own mana, he would be able to cast any magic, with the exception that he had to know how the phenomena ascribed to the magic worked. Furthermore, thanks to the old man, Renith Maril, Si Sheng was able to further expand his understanding of the capabilities of magic.

Si Sheng was aware of magic like fire, water, earth, etc. But when he checked Renith's status, he realized he had been too short-sighted. Telepathic Magic, something that didn't directly manipulate the elemental properties of the universe, like water or fire magic. By Si Sheng's guess, the telepathy part of the magic wasn't actually telepathy in the psychic sense, but a translation of the brain waves of the target. From Si Sheng's knowledge, he knew that living creatures that had a brain or some nervous system would have brain waves that were measurable and in turn could be interpreted, similar to how microphones and speakers interpret and translate sound waves. So, magic that didn't necessarily manipulate the elemental properties of the universe but instead interacted with them was possible. He immediately thought of magic like telekinetic magic, transformation magic, or nerve dulling magic; different types of magic than the traditionally thought of types, like fire, water, healing, etc. Through this revelation, Si Sheng was able to broaden his knowledge and understanding of magic and what was possible with magic. In theory, he would be able to control anything with magic, if he understood the underlying principle behind what he was trying to control. He could grow trees, create castles, raze mountains, all with the simple understanding of how they could be controlled. However, he was far, far from that realization, both in control of mana and quantity of mana controlled.

Now, with the organization of his thoughts done, Si Sheng decided to rest and continue to read from Bythre's collection.

***

As time would have it, the end of the week was nearing.

Over the week, Si Sheng had finished most of the important books in Bythre's library. After the first day, Si Sheng didn't wander around and focused on studying these books and training his mana control.

Bythre thought Si Sheng was odd for doing so. If it was her in Si Sheng's position, she wouldn't have been able to sit still for more than a day, let alone a week.

Si Sheng's mana control had improved, but not by much. He was able to move his mana a whole six centimeters after activation of a spell, a one-centimeter improvement from a week ago. With no frame of reference speed-wise, Si Sheng didn't know if this was a fast or slow improvement, but it was an improvement nonetheless. His 2.5% body height movement increased to 3%, a 20% increase in movement. However, if he took these calculations as a constant growth rate, if he wanted to move mana the full length of his body once, it would take him around 194 weeks to accomplish that; a bit over three and a half years. It was a long time, given Si Sheng's short time spent living; it was roughly the amount of time he had spent in high school. If he kept his training regime, he'd be over 21, maybe 22, years old by the time when he finally would be able to simply move mana throughout his whole body, not to mention externally emitting or manipulating it. The road seemed long, but Si Sheng was willing to put in the effort to gain more in the long run if it meant gaining more knowledge.

Aside from the mana, Si Sheng was able to familiarize himself with the nature of other skills, mainly, martial arts skills.

These martial arts skills were the biggest thing that Si Sheng studied during this period. With these types of skills, they all had subskills, which were basically moves for the particular main martial art, sort of like unique strikes or stances for the overall style. However, these subskills weren't as integrated with one another, usually, as martial arts from Earth. Usually, a martial art on Earth would integrate a wide range of body movements and techniques and use them together to be able to adapt to a changing fight, but, with martial arts in this world, there would usually be one technique or move for each branch of techniques like kicks or slashes, where there were subskills like Wind Slash or Flash Step, the move the prince used. They weren't as sophisticated or broad, and they would be very specific, in most cases, and only perform a singular function, being inflexible. Additionally, they were many times integrated with magic, like the previous Wind Slash, which used compressed wind magic to slash at a distance.

That isn't to say, there weren't subskills that weren't more encompassing. Typically, the more encompassing a subskill was, the harder it was to learn due to the complex nature of the skill. Si Sheng had learned about the martial art subskill the prince was practicing and it was called the Royal Flowing Strike, a pugilist technique of the elven royal family with water magic incorporated into it. It was of the more encompassing type, where the technique could be applied and extrapolated to other skills. That is to say, the technique was capable of being incorporated into other body skills and, if one were skilled enough, into weapon strikes. Despite this, these subskills, or techniques, were rare and usually controlled by nobles or the royal family due to the power the skills granted.

In contrast, typical subskills were only able to be applied for one use. For Wind Slash, it could only be used as a slashing attack, it couldn't be used with a punch or kick unless it was in a slashing form, which was difficult to achieve and redundant since the same or better could be achieved with a weapon meant for slash attacks. Furthermore, these subskills functioned in a similar way to chants, where the name of the technique would be required to be spoken for it to be activated, especially in the case of magic integrated techniques.

One thing these subskills had in common with magic was the history and gifted nature to them. A lot of subskills were gifted to people with the respective martial art super-skill, and their "talent" for it would be discovered once they practiced it. Additionally, they couldn't be used without a chant.

In regard to chants, gifted magic and gifted martial arts subskills differed. With magic, the gifted magic chants would automatically be imprinted in one's mind, and they could use it without much practice. However, martial arts subskills, when gifted, didn't have their chant inscribed in one's mind in the same way as magic. Many would go their lives without knowing they had a talent for a subskill, while others would be able to "awaken" their talent. There were some cases described in the book Si Sheng read where people would suddenly have the chant and movements pop into their head, like they finally remembered something they had been trying to remember for so long. If this were to happen, many would consider them a genius martial artist and, in many cases, their social standing would increase; it was all around a blessing. However, this was seldom the case and most would not have this happen to them. So, unless you had something like Si Sheng's Evil Eye, you wouldn't know if you had a certain subskill, and they could only be discovered later once they learned the subskill from the outside.

Of course, people figured out ways around having to just guess-and-check every subskill. In the records from Bythre's collection on the Kreis Empire, they detailed a way in which there was either a totem or person that could check what subskills one was gifted. The only problem was, the mentioned totem was lost to history, and the people able to check for such skills were unheard-of, even Bythre didn't know what kind of person would be able to figure such a thing out. Si Sheng's best guess was someone with either an Evil Eye like him or a magic that functioned in the same way his eye did. Due to this loss, people were stuck guessing-and-checking. Thankfully for Si Sheng, he didn't have to, and he was like a blank slate, waiting to learn subskills.

The aforementioned totems and people also were responsible for recording subskill's chants and movements. It appeared as if the chants and movements were displayed to the person or on the totem. This was the main source of subskills and why certain subskills become either lost to time or kept by nobles. However, Si Sheng could only lament that he didn't have the encyclopedia of martial arts mentioned that recorded many of the martial arts of the time.

While many people had subskills gifted to them, others did not. One could learn a martial art if they could properly perform the right motions and say the correct chant in the right way. The only downside to this was the usual difficulty associated to learning a non-gifted subskill. This was most prevalent in the more encompassing subskills, like the one the prince displayed. The atypical body movements combined with the complicated chants created subskills that were difficult to learn and master. Additionally, if one wasn't "gifted" in the area of magic the effects of the subskill were associated with, then the power would be lessened, but not to such a degree that they would be obsolete. They could also complement the subskill by learning the respective magic, which would further negate the power disparity. Despite this, as long as one knew the chants and movements, then they could learn a subskill with enough practice. Furthermore, when someone who was gifted with a certain subskill learned the subskill, it would be similar to an "awakening" where the chant and movements would be imprinted into one's mind, thus making it easier for them to learn and master it.

Si Sheng was interested in these subskills since he had the Swordsmanship skill already. However, he didn't want to learn skills willy-nilly since having too many skills could harm him in the long run due to needing to train too many skills. He still had to think about what skills he wanted to learn and would decide later on. Additionally, he had always been a minimalist and would prefer to not have a mess of skills. He already had a headache looking at the jumble of skills he had.

However, the prevailing reason he wasn't so pressed to learn subskills was because of his theory about mana. Subskills, magic integrated ones, required mana for their use. With this, he thought of mana manipulation. If you could cast any type of magic with mana manipulation, what was stopping you from using any type of subskill, or creating your own? Si Sheng wanted to wait until he got to that point until he either created or learned subskills using mana manipulation.

While this was extremely optimistic, it wasn't too feasible. Those that could use subskills would have a large advantage over those who didn't. If Si Sheng didn't learn any subskills for around the four or more years it would take to fully manipulate mana, he would be at a disadvantage in a lot of battles. However, Si Sheng was stubborn and didn't want to learn any low-grade subskills or a wide variety of subskills till that point. Thus, he shelved the idea of learning subskills till the future.

The book dating to the Kreis Empire's time also gave him motivation to not learn a lot of subskills. Many of their strong people only used one subskill form, which included strikes, slashes, kicks, etc. all of the same element and form. While a subskill of such dexterity was incredibly rare to find, even rarer than the Royal Flowing Strike, Si Sheng wanted to see if he could find one before learning anything else. What he didn't learn in martial arts, he could make up for with magic in the meantime.

Besides this, Si Sheng learned about historical "facts", cultural facts, and other things, none of which were more important than the subskills or magic. They were from half a millennium or more ago, so much of it was useless facts.

Lastly, towards the end of the week before Si Sheng got his uniform, the king called for Si Sheng to visit him so that he could announce Si Sheng's presence to the population in order to quell fears and anxiety his presence brought, along with a few other formalities.

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