“Now tell me, little princess, what do you know about magic arts?” He knew what she would respond with, but he had learned from previous disciples that it is always better to ask, just in case of some false notions or bad information can lead to more dangerous misunderstandings than knowing nothing at all.

  “Never heard of it.” Lila responded in between heavy panting. She still felt like a lung was collapsing after spending the entire day working out or learning martial arts.

  “That’s not surprising. Most mortals call them sorceries. Believe it or not most magic skills are actually versions the system designed to help. These spell skills are the best combination of efficiency and power. The flaw in these skills is they lack versatility, which is why those with their own magic arts still practice it. Not only to create new skills but to have a more versatile arsenal at their disposal. Let's take the spell Kekkai as an example.”

  With a simple hand gesture, a cube-shaped barrier appeared floating in the air. It was about a square foot or two but that was big enough for most situations. Lila was amazed that it was see-through, the only sign that it was physically there was a light blue tint that she was seeing through.

  “This is a defensive skill called Kekkai and as a skill the higher the level the bigger the barriers it can make. The evolutions of the skill are quite varied as well, making it common for yokai to learn. Now watch this.”

  Before Lila’s orange eyes, she watched the barrier change shape and stop changing in the form of a bird that flew in the path according to how Haruaki moved his hand. She watched it flap its wings around in awe of such a thing.

  “As a spell instead of skill kekkai also has an interesting ability making it useful as an execution technique.”

  With a quick side swipe the bird imploded. She was a little shell-shocked to see the pretty bird-shaped barrier do that but was impressed, nonetheless.

  “It’s useful considering this technique can help immobilize targets as well.” As he said this, he placed a new cube around Lila’s shoulder, and she struggled to move before she was released. “Remember this. Mysticism is a magic art that was made for support. Barriers and seals. Buffs and healing. Even summons. Everything is secondary in this type of magic art as it is made for the supporting role. Despite this, its original purpose was to allow humans to fight yokai. We just made it our own. For now, practice the spell Kekkai and if you learn it before the month is up, I will teach you about our summons called Shikigami.”

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  If Lila wasn’t so exhausted, she would be excitedly buzzing like a chihuahua on a caffeine high. While she didn’t like the idea of staying back and supporting others, her mind went to buffing and healing herself in combat.

  Haruaki also made it clear that he didn’t expect her to successfully make a barrier in the first few days of practice. The first part was to be able to sense and manipulate spiritual mana. He explained that the different affinities are types of mana and mysticism uses spirit mana. Because of this any passive skills that affect spirit-based skills will also increase mysticism.

  Lila assumed this also applied to other magic arts as well. It was something to be wary of when dealing with true mages.

  For now, she focused on guided meditation. It only took Lila five minutes to be able to sense spirit mana, much to Haruaki’s surprise. Harnessing it was another thing entirely. Many arguments and fits of anger were had over getting it to do as she wanted.

  While Haruaki expected something like this to happen initially, he had his hopes rise greatly when she could sense spirit mana so quickly.

  “Lila, what are you thinking about when you try to make a kekkai?” Haruaki inquired about this to glean some insight into how Lila’s mind worked. Perhaps if he did that, she might be able to form something before the day was over. Though he couldn’t deny that her talent for sensing mana was impressive. He wondered if this was an innate talent of hers, she didn’t know about or something unique to her current physiology.

  ‘What an interesting disciple you are my princess.’

  His pride wouldn’t admit it, but her tenacity impressed him. Never in the workouts did he have to try to motivate her or discipline her for being lazy, just cussing. The same is proving true here as she tried to grasp an understanding on how to make a simple cube.

  What he didn’t realize that every affinity she gains is a type of mana she instinctively senses as a havoc fox, and this won’t be discovered for years. She sees mana as an aurora that weaves around all things and the trick is to differentiate between the mana she can see. She just couldn’t understand the nature of spirit mana. It had an almost ethereal quality compared to the more subtle quality of lust mana.

  Spirit mana flows to help others and alleviate inner turmoil and spiritual impurities. That effect on spiritual impurities is why mysticism was so potent on yokai. A collection of species that ascended from humans, plants, animals, and objects by gathering spiritual power whether by losing oneself to corrupted mana or simply existing for a long enough period of time without utilizing the system.

  She will later find out that while lust mana is guided by desire, spirit mana is guided by raw intentions. This is why mana mysticism spells have such long mantras. They are to program an exact purpose for spirit mana. The more complex the spell the stronger the intent needs to be, but despite how focused Lila was her mind wasn’t quiet enough to focus her intent.

  The practice of mysticism would end up helping her relearn the discipline to keep her impulses under control once again, though her emotional control would take much longer, and a fae outcast to help.