𝐈𝐧𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫

1.3 || Hello, Little Ones

The week passed by quickly. Seungmin developed a schedule during the few days he became Prince Sion, and though he hated the part where he woke up at 7 in the morning, the rest of his days were spent with leisure. He would eat breakfast in his own dining room in his wing of the imperial grounds, study history and language (he found that it was like refreshing his mind instead of learning new subjects), meet up with Henry, take a nap, eat lunch, take a stroll, learn customaries, and finally learn magic.

He liked magic.

All beings in the world have a relation to magic in some way. Nature is affected by the source of magic, growing well in places with plenty of mana and dying in those without. Animals are sensitive to mana as well, affected by the aura of mana around them.

Different from typically classified animals such as dogs or horses are beings called beasts: monsters that have the innate ability to use magic. They are much larger than animals and aren't anything like any animal from Earth, and Seungmin found himself thinking of them as the equivalent of dinosaurs should they still have been alive. He learned that magical beasts have been in the world for as long as time itself (or so it is said in the history books), living everywhere before humans began killing them to protect their towns. Currently, it's illegal to hunt beasts of any sort unless it was time for the yearly held Hershian Hunt to keep their population at a desirable number. The other condition is that killing is allowed if the beast is corrupted.

The reason why beasts weren't allowed to be hunted anymore is for moral reasons and also because humans needed to be on good terms with fairies, which are under the umbrella category of beasts. Despite being so powerful that no mortal could see them, the fey act as a catalyst for magic in humans, so it was crucial for them to harbor good feelings toward humans.

That leads to the question: why can beasts use magic when humans need the help of fairies? Both have mana, and humans are more intelligent.

Although unsatisfying, no textbook gave a conclusive answer. Seungmin could only deduce it as some difference in DNA sequence (a concept this world had yet to discover), or even the possibility that the world was simply made that way. This wasn't the Earth he grew up in; the world's laws may not apply at all in this one. Who was the say that magic simply existed because a god made it that way?

Something that Seungmin found fascinating about magic was that all living beings have certain magical cores that they're born with. Though there doesn't seem to be a clear understanding of how it originates, Seungmin found it similar to the idea of souls.

While beasts are able to harness any magic within their core attribute--for example, water or fire--humans have to rely on another factor: their compatibility with the fey. Not one specific fairy is assigned to a person, but fairies nearby will respond better to a person's wish if they're compatible with the aura and attribute of a human's core. Further, the strength of one's magic is directly proportional to how much mana they have. In other words, it's much more complicated for a human to conjure a spell than a beast who can will it however they want.

Excluding the very rare dark magic and healing magic, there are four major groups of fairies: earth, fire, water, and air fairies who can harness those respective elements. However, if a person is compatible with more than one element, they can manipulate both to wield secondary elements like ice, lightning, metal, etc. This was what intrigued Seungmin the most because theoretically, you could even make use of other things like light, gravity, growth, and probably more that he hasn't even thought of. But first came figuring out his attribute.

It would be foolish to ask the Emperor for a compatibility test because that would imply that he lost his memories. And if his hypothesis was correct, his attribute could now be different because his soul is different from Sion's.