The Unbreakable Bow

"Ok. I hope you get now what the different types of magic are. Now, I will show you the different usages of each magic type ."

She turned the page. It had a big title,'Time magic', with a rectangle containing Ti next to it. However, what caught Aefrine's attention was the black and. white sketch of a giant face of an old man with a horse moustache smiling and winking covering both of the pages. There were some small words here and there that he couldn't read.

"So, can you read it? It's still your Celtonic lesson ."

"Fine... give me the book ."

Aefrine looked at the words and used all of his brain, plus his incredible memory to read.

"For ... the time being...?"

"Yes.."

"There is no... practical....usage of natural time... magic?"

"Well done! Tell me why do you seem to read like a toddler while you can understand and communicate orally swiftly? "

"I don't know..."

Aefrine was indeed a good talker in general, he could understand people easily but when he met plain words on a page, he felt like each word needed to be examined in its own way in order to crack down the code.

"So, there isn't any way to use time magic?"

"Well, naturally, no, they use it in enchanted tools to set timers to a certain attribute of the tool."

"And who is that person on the page?"

"That is Yuang Yuang, an Elfansjean magician and the author of this book. I never read his books. I hate him with a passion. "

"Why?"

"He thinks he's funny by publishing half-empty books with his stupid face on them. He gets away with it just because he is a big deal between the dwarf magicians ."

"What is a dwarf magician?"

"A magician is someone who studies magic and its uses, Mr caveman. And a dwarf is a humanoid, I believe I already told you this. "

"Oh.."

"Dwarfs are generally smaller than humans, just like humans are generally smaller than orcs. But they have longer lifespans than humans, just like humans have longer lifespans than orcs. "

"Wait, what? I don't get it..."

"Eh, ...sigh...Dwarfs become mature in their thirties and die around the age of one hundred and fifty. Humans become mature in their twenties and die around the age of eighty. While we become mature after only ten years of our birth and die around our forties. This clown of a magician is sixty-five years old. I will be a living miracle if I ever reach his age. I made it as clear as possible. Do you understand? "

"Yes...wait, do you mean you can't bypass forty ?"

"Just like you can't bypass eighty, and just Yuang can't bypass one hundred and fifty. "

"Wait, how old is Ishop Claus?"

"Probably, like the old man, in his thirties ."

"And, and ...what about his majesty?"

"Dad? , twenty-four....I guess?"

Aefrine couldn't believe what he heard. The king was only like five or so apart from him?

"Wait, and what about you ?"

"Me? ...well....can you guess?"

She started adjusting her hair like she was looking in a mirror.

Aefrine didn't know what to answer. He felt like anything he would say would be wrong. So, he just said:

"Er.....nineteen?"

Alma's face quickly changed in a rather annoyed way, but she replied in a polite way:

"You mean if you were a human, right?"

"Er..yes?"

"Fair enough, I guess ... Just so you know, I am eleven years old. "

"WHAT?"

"Yes, I am a grown orc woman...stop staring at me like that."

Aefrine couldn't look at Alma the same. He seriously couldn't believe that Alma was as big as him in everything by the age of eleven. He also didn't like the fact that an eleven-year-old was better than him at phys magic. Speaking of magic, he noticed a small note in the bottom corner of the page.

"What is that ?"

"Oh, let me read it ...oh my god, it's just one of his stupid comments. "

"What does it say ?"

"Argh, fine: Don't worry, if you are skilled enough, you might be able to expand this page with your mythical time-controlling abilities. Wink ."

"You can control time ?"

"No, only in fiction and legends does such power exist. But still, maybe one day it might become true..with an enchanted tool that is. No way someone can do it naturally. Let's go to the next."

She turned the page. Luckily, it did have some paragraphs and small images that did not include Yuang 's smiling face.

"Temperature magic. Well ، as you can see their many uses for it. It's even written here that it is the second most used magic after phys magic. You can use it to warm up or to cool yourself down, good when in a snowstorm, or just to warm up old food. And if you are an expert, you can generate fire, steam or ice in small quantities and in a short range. Enchanted tools are still better in this case, but they can always come in handy in dire situations. The old man told me that he would teach me some steam moves if I mastered phys magic."

"Do you think he will teach me too?"

"Well... you still have a long way to go in phys magic..."

"....Yeah, I know..."

"Just don't think about it. You know what? Let's skip to soul magic. "

She turned the pages quickly, but to Aefrine's dismay, the huge face had returned.

"Oh.."

"Let me guess..for the time being, there is no use practical usage of soul magic?"

"Yes... but there is a small note here. It says: Don't worry, if you are skilled enough, you can expand this page with your mythical natural spirits. But you can technically do it."

"Really?'

"Yes, ...if your glowing bow is indeed a spirit, but I hate to break the mood, but I never heard of a bow spirit. "

"Why? "

"You will get it once we finish with this book. Next! Material magic. Argh,.. just skip ."

"What again? No practical use ?"

"Yes...light magic, good, there is something useful ."

She showed him some images of glowing hands.

"It can be used to make some body parts emit light like here the finger is glowing light, useful in dark places, I guess...Next! Oh my.."

"No practical use"

"No practical use"

"You know what, let me check all of them..."

She folded the pages quickly, and after a few moments, she closed the book and thundered it on the table.

"So,....gravity, space, chaos, order all have no practical uses except for sound magic. By the way, he called the reader crazy for even seeking to use natural chaos and order magic. And before you ask, sound magic has one use, which is increasing or decreasing your voice, which is why nobody bothers to learn it."

"Ok.."

"So, do you think this book is worth anything?"

"I guess not much.."

"I will take that as a yes. The only use of this is that it shows how useful enchanted tools are, I can't imagine how life was before its invention. But don't worry, I have an actual book that explains spirits in general. Here it is: 'The Alternative Forms of the Soul and its Otherworldly Applications' by Al-chacid. "

She pulled out one of the two remaining big books and opened it.

"Let's see if we can find your bow,"

"Are you sure that we might find it here?"

"I know this is an old book, but it is still quite reliable in terms of soul magic. If we don't find it here, then it is not a spirit or...."

"Or....?"

"You have just invented a new form of spirits and a special one as well. A weapon spirit, its name alone sounds cool. You know you could make a fortune if you can teach people how to make one."

"Well, I myself don't know how I do it. Let's see if it isn't in the book first."

"Oh, well.."

As they went through the pages, Alma quickly stopped.

"Hey Aefrine, you do know what a spirit is, right?"

"Er..a glowing thing that I can make from nothing?"

"Eh...no, listen, go read Al-Checid 's definition of it, I am tired of teaching you common knowledge. Here."

Aefrine read the page Alma gave him. After what seemed like an hour, he had to read the first part of the book multiple times, and Alma had to interfere to help him too. After all of that, Aefrine only understood that a spirit is an extension of the soul and not a summoning of creatures of alternate worlds like what people believed before, whatever that meant. It changes from one person because the soul differs from one person to another. Emotions may play a significant role in the creation of a spirit. Finally, spirits are believed to take the form of celestial beings that reside in the other world where souls travel after death. Which made the theory of his bow being a spirit at the very least questionable.

"Ok, now you get it. Let's check out the different forms of spirits ..."

Each couple of pages made an explanation of a spirit from the small mice to gigantic fish. They were all different animals that didn't exist in this world and that Aefrine had certainly never seen before.

Like what on earth is a giraffe?

Aefrine took a particular focus on crows :

Their core is between its eyes. They need a bare minimum of 1,5 mana concentration in the enchanted tool for making a single crow spirit. He asked Alma about it as always, and she told him that she herself didn't understand it much. She just knows that it determines the quality and quantity of the magic. Their abilities include interacting with the physical world using their claws and pecking souls using their beck.

It doesn't do any serious harm to the target except it generates a hostile feeling of being pecked without leaving a physical trail on the target. Is that what happened to me?

Some emotions that might help with making a crow spirit may include fear, insecurity, envy, loneliness, curiosity... Aefrine didn't understand that at first but when reading other spirits he understood that each one has a range of emotions that help with summoning them but that doesn't mean that you need to-be in the state of one to make one. If you are skilled enough, you can summon what you want. But what surprised him was that they mostly were negative emotions. After reading most of the spirits and discovering their abilities that vary from simple pecking to certain death.

"What are soul attacks ?"

"Eh..what? Just read it, you will find it somewhere ... yawn ... I am tired of answering your long questions... Yawn...."

Replied a half-asleep Alma.

It took him a while to find something on the matter. At last, he found some explanation :

Soul attacks are the only way to harm a target using soul magic. It doesn't affect your physical body except for your brain. It makes illusions and forces your soul to feel a certain sensation. The soul can unconsciously regenerate easily and quickly, but the exposure to multiple attacks or one huge attack might lead to the extinguishment of the soul, thus killing the target's brain. Moreover, some spirits have the ability to interact with the physical world. In this case, they might inflict physical damage but that make them exposed to physical attacks. Spirits are not affected by physical objects, which means you can't destroy them unless you have a specialised, enchanted tool or you target the core of the spirit that defers from one spirit to another. The core of a spirit is very fragile, as fragile as glass it states.

Aefrine put the book down and got lost in his thoughts. Was his bow really a spirit? Well, there wasn't anything that might come even close to a bow-shaped spirit in the book. But depending on the definitions, it didn't seem like a spirit, but it definitely had its attributes.

Firstly, the bow did have a soul attack that resided in its head. He can generate a feeling of being shot by an arrow without actually getting shot. He used it before to distract people, and he never saw it cause injuries. He tried to defeat Ryuji with it. That didn't go well as we all know...

Secondly, it did have a physical interaction,the body of it could be used as a rope, and his bow itself always interacted with the physical world

And thirdly, Duke Rudolf was standing in front of them with a not-pleasant grim.

"Hello, I hope I am not interrupting your book club.."

"Oh ... no no .. Eh psst Alma!"

"Eh....oh hey old man, I was trying to help Aefrine with his phys magic...eh look 'The magical capabilities of the human body' by Otto ."

"Ah, good, well come with me, you two, I found a better way to learn than sleeping in the library. "

He pulled them both from their ears out of the library....