Machua attacked me with a combination of moves. Each move she made I parried, but each one of them flowed into another, almost like a dance. This made them a little predictable, at least to me, so I rapidly upped the speed to get her to stumble. Machua followed after me, but once I swept her legs, she fell over and nearly crashed into the ground if it weren’t for the soft landing she made for herself with a dimension. I figured she would though, so my fist was already almost about to hit her face.

  “Let’s stop here then. Take a few minutes to rest and then we can continue at a higher intensity.”

  Machua slowly stood up then entered a resting stance and let out a deep breath. She calmly circulated her mana and allowed her body to calm down.

  A whirring noise approached her from the back. Machua turned around to find a flying stag beetle carrying a bottle of water for her.

  “Thanks, Plu!” She shouted.

  Plue, who was on the other side of the training room practicing magic gave her a thumbs up. Her flying stag beetle also performed a barrel roll. Momentarily, I wondered if they could do that normally. Probably not.

  I glanced at the other side of the training room. Carmine was busily engaging Rasa in a close quarters encounter, who was barely fending off her attacks. Her rampageous onslaught eventually got the better of him, and he collapsed to the ground in defeat. Carmine sat on his back to proclaim her victory.

  The five of us were currently in one of the Bureau’s training rooms. We had just finished eating and after a light walk, we decided to take the extra time to train before tackling the next mission. Well, we had to write our report tonight, but Machu didn’t have to know that.

  “Machi,” Machua said, while not looking at me. She was looking in Plue’s direction, who was casting magic at a few moving targets.

  Plue swiftly moved her hands to shoot out dozens of insects. Butterflies, wasps, beetles, flies, the works. Quickly, she took out her scythe and spun it around, generating a stream of wind, sending her swarm forward. The swarm rushed to attack the training dummy, biting and stinging it with impunity. Plue then lunged forward into the windstream and sliced the dummy’s head off, skidding on the ground behind it.

  “I know you said to wait, but I think we should move on to magical lessons.“

  I closed my eyes to consider it. Galas only started teaching me magic after this month long mission, because he wanted me to grasp the fundamentals of martial combat and internal control of mana before that. Machua’s progress wasn’t bad, but I wasn’t sure if now was a good time.

  “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  “Back on that airship, I felt useless. All I could do was run behind you and fight the bats that came near me. Everyone else was able to contribute. But not me.”

  It was the same way for me too back then, but I didn’t have a teacher to voice this complaint to. This did force me to develop my dimension making and movement abilities, but there was one major difference between now and then. I was here. The best teacher possible for her.

  Still, the intention of letting me figure it out for a month was for me to develop my own critical thinking skills. I was supposed to go slow and improvise under a real battle. Though, he did say my training regiment was a ‘speedrun’ instead of a normal one.

  “Mmm… If you still want to go ahead after listening to all I’m gonna say, then sure.”

  I’ll just let her decide. Magic was definitely a very complicated topic for us. If she could understand everything I said to her, and have the will to keep going, then I could try.

  “Machua,” I began.

  She nodded rapidly.

  “Why are you so bad at magic?”

  Machua’s face instantly became dismayed.

  “Um, uh… What did the doctor say…?” She mumbled.

  “Ignore the doctor. When you try to cast magic following the instructions from a textbook, why doesn’t it work?”

  “I-I don’t know! It doesn’t, that’s all! All magic textbooks just suck!” She exclaimed.

  I gave Machua a wry smile. She sighed deeply then frowned.

  “It’s my fault isn’t it? I don’t put enough effort in actually learning the spells in the books, so I get left behind while everyone rushes ahead,” Machua moped.

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’ve got a rare condition that 90%, no, 99% of the world doesn’t have, after all.”

  “It’s a condition!? What is it!? Can you cure it!?” Machua ran up to me and said with a shaky voice.

  “World. Your Trait,” I responded. "Or should I say, the issue is, Traits in general.”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “Huh!?”

  “Why don’t we go through the Soup Metaphor first before we talk about how having a non-Standard Trait works? Do you remember it?”

  Machua made a thinking expression. “It’s the one about Aspects right? Each one is a different type of utensil and not everything can scoop a soup?”

  The Soup Metaphor was a common metaphor used in schools to help students understand the Aspect System and how it worked. It had been a long time though, and there was a lot that could be explored with it, so it was good to take the time to go through it again.

  “Let me refresh your memory then.”

  I grabbed Machua’s hand and put the both of us into a kitchen with a big cauldron of soup in the middle. The soup was slightly bubbling. I didn’t make the soup anything fancy, it was just a tomato soup I remembered eating recently. Not that I could even eat the fake soup, since it was made entirely out of mana, so there was no point.

  “Magic is like this soup. And an Aspect can be considered the utensil with which you use to scoop it,” I explained.

  I conjured a ladle and scooped out some of the soup into a bowl. The bowl was very nearly filled.

  “If we can consider the soup to be, let’s say, a fireball, then this ladle is the Flame Aspect.”

  I gave the bowl and ladle to Machua, who took a deep look at it. It looked like she almost wanted to try drinking it but held herself back just in time.

  “Uh-huh,” Machua responded. “Other Aspects are other types of utensils, and it’ll be way less effective if you don’t have the right one on hand to use. A fork can’t scoop soup at all.”

  “Everyone has only one utensil, but that is where Minor Aspects come in.”

  I conjured a small spoon and scooped the soup into the bowl as well.

  “It’s less efficient and weaker than the main Aspect, but it is still effective. Of course, everyone can only have one Major and one Minor,” I explained.

  “But you get to make your Minor Aspect, right? Major Aspects are something you just awaken, but if you try really hard, you can get your own Minor. So, everyone can choose what kinda utensil they want if they try really hard.”

  Machua conjured a fork, a knife, chopsticks, and the like into the bowl.

  “That’s right. And those who don’t have Aspects have to use their bare hands. They can manage to get some of the soup, but not much.”

  “You can technically cast every kind of magic, but without the right Aspect it feels useless to try,” Machua stated.

  “Scientists say if you consider having an Aspect as the baseline 100% efficiency then not having it is the same as 50%. A Sub-Aspect would then be 80%.”

  “Basically, a person with Flame Aspect could cast a fireball of the same strength as a regular person for half the cost or twice the power for the same cost. That’s without accounting for the unique benefits Aspects provide, like how we can anchor dimensions to ourselves,” I went on a bit of a tangent and explained.

  “Uh-huh. I get it. You can branch out if you want, but it’s best to stay in your category of magic,” summarised Machua.

  “The essence of using magic is to adapt spells to your Aspect of magic, so you can make use of your increased proficiency. A Chain Lightning can be adapted for a Storm user by creating storm clouds to serve as bouncing points, for example.”

  I could have gone further in depth with that statement, but Machua was going to get a further explanation from someone else soon anyway.

  “Essentially, the first thing you should ask when you look at a spell is how can I convert this into a Dimensional spell?”

  Machua nodded along. “Okay, okay. But where does the Trait come into this?”

  “Let me ask you this first. Where is the mana in the Soup Metaphor?”

  Machua thought on it a little bit. She set down her pot of soup and other stuff and began to pace around the small kitchen. Her eyes observed the soup, the pot, and various other things in the kitchen. Of course, I didn’t consciously make anything other than the pot and soup.

  “… I guess it would be the pot? Or maybe the fire that cooks it?”

  “I’d say you’re half-right. Mana is the energy we use to make the soup. Bringing out the pot, lighting the fire, cutting the ingredients, that all uses energy. So, now that you know 3 of the 4 parts of this, where is the Trait?”

  Machua gave the room another once-over but quickly gave up. I bet she figured that if she couldn’t get the last one, she couldn’t get this one either.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Your Trait is your body.” I pointed at her. “It’s how you control your mana.”

  “I know having a different Trait means you control your mana a bit differently, but is that really-“

  I cut her off and continued. “Now, imagine if you had a different body from everyone else. Let’s say you’re a cat. How do you make the soup? How do you scoop the soup with your little cat paws?“

  “Uhh…” She mumbled. “It would be really, really hard.”

  “It is. Because you’ve grown up in a world that doesn’t suit you. Every single spell, every single enchantment was created by and for those with a Standard Trait. That’s 90% of the world.”

  Machua took a step back. I understood her reaction, I was the same way too when Galas broke the news to me. One little special difference that we had in our power set was the reason behind our failures. It was incredibly frustrating to understand magic theory and how spells were formed, to put in so much effort only to be told it was all useless. You were literally born different.

  “And what’s even worse is that there are different kinds of Traits. A cat can’t learn how to cook soup the same way a bird does. It lives in a human society, so it has a good idea how humans do it, but it cannot cook the soup just by following the recipe. It has to figure out its own way to cook soup. All on its own, with no help from anyone else. It practically has to reinvent the wheel.”

  Machua sat on the kitchen counter and hazily stared at the floor. There were so many implications to take in. The number one question she had to be asking herself had to be ‘Am I doomed to fall behind?’

  “We’ve lived on this earth for more than 2 decades, and the only other person with World we’ve found was each other. And that’s only because we’re twins. When it comes to magic, we have to reinvent every single spell we come across, and that’s before adapting it to our Aspect,” I finally finished.

  I let Machua take it all in, slowly. I had been in her exact position, but to be on the giving end of this was strange. Very strange. I knew the pain, so why was I handing it to her? She didn’t have to suffer this.

  No. I wasn’t at fault. I had to give it to her straight. Somehow, someway, someone would have to tell her all of this. Better it be me, her other half. Someone she knew was the same way.

  “Magic is a very hard road for those with Traits. That’s why I wanted you to focus on your martial skills first,” I continued, uncertain of what I was saying.

  Machua didn’t respond. She just looked back at me with a sad expression, as if some deep hope inside of her was just… extinguished. Something she had been keeping hidden inside of her for so long, rekindled by the awakening of an Aspect, only to be crushed by her own self.

  I regretted it. I regretted telling her everything I had just said. I didn’t want to see this expression ever again. Especially when I no longer had the option to look away from the mirror. I knew every single emotion that was going through her. I could feel my facial muscles moving to make the exact same expression. For a brief instant, I recalled that day.

  “If I may. As someone who has a Trait myself,” Rasa spoke.

  I quickly dissipated the dimension. We both turned to him, putting aside our feelings for the moment. We wanted the distraction. It was strange, it felt as if our feelings resonated.

  Of course they would, Rasa wouldn’t even have to do anything in our case. We were the same person after all.

  “My Trait is Symphony. I view every spell like a song and every Aspect like a different instrument. When I cast, I play my mana to the melody I know the spell to be.”

  Rasa produced a few music sheets from his dimensional bracelet. One was labelled ‘Fireball’ and was only one bar. Another was labelled ‘Resounding Screech’ and was two bars instead. It had a calm melodic tune before suddenly being flooded by notes on opposite pitches. It was the same spell he used to knock out the bats for a bit.

  … ‘Kaleid Blade’ wasn’t here. Of course it wouldn’t be, but… it would have been nice to see it. I wanted it to be here. There was this sense of familiarity at being handed his music sheets, yet that small change made all the difference. I felt that familiar tug at my heartstrings.

  “Symphony has made it exceptionally difficult for me to play spells of other Aspects, but it has allowed me to better understand other people. I can hear your mana, the melody it plays, so I can grasp the emotions you feel.“

  I took a deep sigh. Yes, he did. He was always unnervingly good at grasping my true feelings. I used to always like how he could understand me without me saying anything, but now that I was here, it was becoming a bit of an issue. Well, Rasa was the type to keep his observations to himself unless necessary, so I could count on him to keep anything secret.

  “There is melancholy, but there is something more,” Rasa continued. “He does not wish for you to… ‘hurt’ as he does. He has known the truth of both of your situations for a long time now, and he does not know how to put it lightly. I believe he intends to teach you what he can, but he only knows so much.”

  Machua let out a weak smile. I couldn’t muster up the energy to though, so I settled for a neutral face. Maybe there was a little bit of a frown. I took a deep, deep sigh. All the energy I had built up slowly released.

  “Every Trait has its downsides and its benefits. I am sure you have benefitted from your Trait as well.”

  Rasa looked at me with expectant eyes. He must have sensed that my mood was a little better. Better than Machu’s at least.

  “Machu, you already know what it is,” I glumly said. I couldn’t even bring myself to say anything comforting after that. They’d all just be empty words.

  I couldn’t bear to look at her anymore, so I took my leave.