Published: January 22, 2026
None of the three of them could come up with an answer to my question.
This wasn’t due to a lack of knowledge on their part.
For humans, mana is something so natural that it’s taken for granted.
Even people with no involvement in magic know that mana exists in the air.
It’s what you’d call common sense.
Few people would question something that seems so obviously present.
“Now that you mention it, what actually happens to magic after it’s used? We just use it without a second thought.”
“Yeah, I can’t really explain it… The more I think about it, the more mysterious it seems…”
“Hmm, even the two of you who are knowledgeable about magic don’t know? When Rain-neechan taught me magic, she never talked about that either.”
All three of them looked confused.
“It’s no wonder you don’t know. Don’t be too discouraged. In fact, it’s rare for anyone to even question this. Even among advanced explorers, there’s probably no one who knows. Ms. Selma and Ms. Rain, who are the top magic users of the silver rabbits of the night sky, and Lucre probably don’t know either.”
“Even Neechan…?”
“Probably. So you don’t need to feel ashamed for not knowing. You can become a top-class explorer without understanding this. And knowing it doesn’t suddenly improve your magic skills either. What you do in the end doesn’t change. But, there’s no doubt that knowing this helps you handle magic better.”
Why am I talking about this when the lecture is supposed to be about spirits? It’s because spirits, magic, and mana are closely connected.
I think they’ll understand better if I explain this first rather than only talking about spirits.
“I’m not blaming you, but you probably thought you understood magic, right? But in reality, your understanding is still shallow. But don’t be down about it. If you don’t know now, you can learn from here on.”
“““Yes!!!”””
Their gloomy mood from not being able to answer my question lifted a bit after my encouragement.
“Alright, now I’ll explain. Let’s start with the answer to the problem: What happens to magic after it has fulfilled its role? It… returns to mana.”
“Returns to mana, you say?”
Log repeated my answer in surprise.
“Think of mana as an ‘all-purpose worker.’ For example, when we cast a fire bullet, from the mana’s perspective, it receives the order ‘Burn in a spherical shape and move to the designated location,’ and it faithfully carries out that command. After completing the command, it goes back to standby, waiting for the next instruction. We call this standby state ‘mana in the air.’”
Strictly speaking, there are conditions for returning to this standby state too, but explaining that in detail would just cause confusion, so I’ll leave that out.
“I thought the mana disappeared when you cast magic. So it doesn’t disappear after all…”
Sophie murmured, clearly convinced.
So far, everyone is following along.
“This is where it gets a bit complicated, so just take this with a grain of salt. Mana is executing our techniques — in other words, our orders. Now, what do you think happens if most of those orders are fire-type magic?”
By the way, offensive magic is divided into six categories: fire, water, wind, earth, lightning, and ice.
Recovery and support magic also have categories, but that’s not relevant here, so I won’t explain further.
“Hmm, probably nothing special? It just carries out orders, right?”
“That’s right. Ten or twenty times won’t make a difference. But if it repeats those orders hundreds or thousands of times, the mana undergoes a change.”
“…Does it mean the mana can only execute magic of that type then?”
Log offered his guess.
“Close. Even the changed mana can execute all types. But the altered mana becomes better at executing magic of that type. Humans are the same, right? If you repeat something enough, you get used to it. Think of it the same way. And we call this changed mana a ‘spirit.’”