38 Plan or no plan? (1/2)
I am sitting inside the living room while reading a book. It's good to distract my mind. Celes is sitting across from me.
”You don't have a plan, do you? Don't you want to train? I will help you! The coronation is next week you know? There isn't much time left and that bastard will try to kill you.” She is pestering me for days now.
Train this, train that, come up with a plan. I sigh and drop the book. ”I have more knowledge and power than most people in this world. What can a week of training change now?”
”I don't know. I am afraid. I couldn't defeat that bastard! Even if I would fight a perfect fight, I would run out of mana before him. It's unfair!” Celes covers her face with her hands.
”That's because of your fighting style. Your only strategy consists of breaking the enemy's defence with sheer force. And I have to admit, that's enough for you, because you are a genius in inner mana manipulation. You don't waste any of your power, while fighting. But our opponent is cheating in this case, so it's not really a fair fight of power between two persons.” I try to cheer her up.
”Cheating!? How? Can we expose his trick?” -Celes
”No. I guess he received mana from the Meltheim's ritual. They must have found out how to store the stolen mana inside a person.” I am just guessing here. I have no proof.
”B... Ugh. But I thought there is still a maximum to the mana a person can store?” -Celes
I shrug my shoulders. ”Then he is very talented and got his possible mana household filled up to the brim. Some people can store more mana than they could ever generate on their own. He could be such a talent. I will just have to fight with my brain and not with muscles.”
”How do you think you can defeat that monster!?” -Celes
”I already fought more powerful opponents and won. You are a perfect example. Though you have much more power at your disposal, I killed you in our fight.” I grin at Celes.
”You died too.... ” She looks at me with a grim expression.
I shrug my shoulder and lay back my head. ”Then I need to try harder this time. If the fight lasts long enough, I might get past his passive defence and pop something important inside him.” I muse to myself.
”You know how unlikely that is. It's almost impossible to enchant a person against his will. Your mana inside and around your body is protecting you passively against any outside influence. Someone, who wants to manipulate mana inside your own sphere of control would need to tune his own mana perfectly to your own. Healing is just possible, because your control is already gone. And it just restores something to the state it should originally be in. So the natural defence doesn't interrupt it. But if a healing spell would disturb the natural order inside your body, it would be just cancelled.” Celes explains.
I chuckle. ”Perfect explanation, but not entirely correct. Many people think of it like you do. And they are right..... in a very rudimentary way. But the natural magic resistance is a little bit more than that. It's the unconscious refusal of every living organism to be influenced by another's will. But that unconscious protection isn't without fault. If you get disturbed by a strong pain, or are very focused on something, this defence tends to drop. During my days as soul-mage, I did nothing else than feeling the minds of others. And if you are adept at small manipulations, you can slip past that defence. Tell me, how can I lift you up with my telekinesis? Aren't I manipulating the mana inside you?” I lift Celes up into the air, until she is hovering a little above her seat.
”Huh? But you aren't manipulating the mana inside my body. The protection just stops you from doing something inside my body!” Celes tries to explain.
”That's the error most people fall prey to. I am manipulating your mana. I changed it's location, didn't I? It's just that I am not rearranging the natural flow of mana within you, so your unconscious defence doesn't recognize my intervention as harmful and didn't activate. So I slipped past your defence.” I explain.
I continue. ”I could do everything I want, as long as I don't rearrange the flow of your mana, I could teleport the air out of your lungs, or heat up the food inside your belly to cook you from inside. If you are distracted strong enough, I could go farther and manipulate something small which really belongs to your body. But that's enough, I could pop a vein in your head, or slice the nerves inside your spinal cord.”
”So why don't you do it all the time then?” -Celes
”Because everyone gets indoctrinated to set up a magic shield as the first thing to do during combat. Fighters do it by coating themselves inside mana or an aura, mages cast a real shield. Lower class magicians and fighters just think of it as the first line of defence. But to an experienced soul-mage, it's the last line of defence. It's everything that stops me from executing Markorn on the spot.” -Me
”Then you have a big problem, he activates that thing every fight. It's the first thing he does. And it's his best weapon. It's not a problem to keep it up either.” -Celes
”I just have to make him drop that stupid mana aura for a mere second. One second is all I need and I could dissect him in a thousand different ways.” I stare into the fire.
”What if you lift him up like in your first fight and spin him until he looses consciousness.” -Celes
”It would be nice if it would work. But I fear he has at least some possibilities to attack from afar. Mother said that his father is a smart guy and everyone knows how I fight. It would be stupid to send someone against me, who couldn't escape something like that.” -Me