The Rise Of Calamity

Chapter 7 - Learning The Basics

In the last month of my new life, I have been constantly trying to resonate with the elements around me. Even though I have been doing it for the last month or so, it's a lot harder than it looks.

Fire I have to have to be in a complete meditative state and not be interrupted by anyone for at least 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, I have about a minute before I get a severe headache which I had learnt the hard way to avoid.

The first discovery I have been able to accumulate from my resonation with the particles is that resonating is not the same as manipulating. Resonating with the particles seems to be the first step to becoming a magic-user in this world while manipulating the elements needs you to be able to emit a magical aura from any limb on your body.

From what I have seen from both my mother and sister, manipulating magic requires you to move your limbs while they sometimes chant a few words before exuding aura.

Even though I don't understand why they would need to chant, it wouldn't hurt to try, right?

After 2 months of being alive and rejuvenating myself through the consumption of food, my body had started to grow and enhance my body at a rate faster than what I would expect from a normal human.

I had started growing teeth as well as more refined baby muscles, to the point I can now crawl. The thing is, I don't want to give my biological mother a heart attack from seeing her baby crawl at such a young age, but I don't actually know what age babies are supposed to grow teeth or even crawl since I had never planned to have one of my own, so I just estimated 4 months.

I couldn't hide the growth of my teeth, but the least I could do was to fake my inability to crawl.

Speaking about family, my mother and sister started to grow on me a little, even though they are strangers to me, I can not ignore all the affection that they are relentlessly giving me. I do find their pestering quite annoying, but I'm willing to go through it if it would make their shallow personalities happy. Another reason was that my birth mother reminded me of the good times with my original mother, which of course, I had a soft spot for.

Due to my 'slight' daddy issues, I couldn't see past my father's constant pestering. Even though I could see the genuine in his eyes, my original father was the same before my mother's death and he still changed, no, he never changed. He was always a scum yet he somehow deluded my mother into the illusion of a perfect family while he was sleeping with other women.

If I were to follow the same principle, I would probably hate my sister too, or at least be annoyed by her, but instead, it was quite the opposite. At first, I was quite skeptical about her but over time she had grown on me as much as my mother if not more. I had no idea why, but it was like I could feel an almost nostalgic familiar aura around her.

The same goes for my present twin brothers who I just see as nothing more than an insect on the sidewalk. The cocky smug one is the most annoying, making me constantly curse my weak body for not allowing me to make his brother my only male sibling in the family.

After 2 months since my birth had passed though, it seemed like every member of the family had become slightly busier. I started to barely see my father and sister while my twin brothers would go outside for around 6 hours just to, fortunately, return.

My father would leave in the morning and return before sunset, kind of beaten up.

My sister, on the other hand, would leave for most of the week just to return on what I'm guessing are the weekends. She would try to spend a lot of time with me and mom, while trying her best to ignore the bickering of the twins who were a lot more open to each other than to other people, to the point the quiet one would be shouting and the smug one would be quaking in his boots.

Anyways, due to the absence of everyone but my mom, (and even then, she had a social image and a group of friends to deal with) I would usually try to find ways to breathe elemental particles into my body or to try and manipulate those same elements to creating a wind, a candle sized fire or even a small bubble but it seemed pointless.

I was advancing so slowly in magic that I was questioning how the hell anyone could use magic at the young age of 15 or if I was just bad at magic in general.

***

A week later, it seemed that I had made a breakthrough, sort of?

It was not a breakthrough in magic per se, but it was a breakthrough nonetheless. One day when I was looking at my mother while she was washing the dishes while I was just enjoying the view in front of me, I saw a small flicker of golden light slightly under her chest and above her belly button area.

The golden flicker started to increase in size slowly and turned into a golden flame around the size of an adult's fist. The flame was burning steadily inside her but was not causing any pain to its host.

The brightly Burning flame was plain yet like any other flame in appearance if you ignore its golden glow. Nonetheless, to me, it strangely resembled my birth mother/ present mother from its gentleness to its brightness.

6 and a half days after the breakthrough, I was able to check on everyone's flame since everyone had one, but it took a lot of concentration on the specific place where I know the flame is located.

What I found out is that my sister had the brightest and largest flame in the family, while my grandmother had the bright yet smaller flame.

Even though this had ticked off most of my assumptions, it didn't mean that the older you are, the smaller and dimmer your flame will be. From what I saw, my father would have a dim and slightly small flame that would burn weakly after he gets home. The catch was that when he woke up, the flame would be bright again and slightly bigger than it was the day before when he came back.

This indicates that the larger and brighter the flame is, the more healthy and energetic you are.. While the brightness of the flame would indicate a person's mental health, the size would indicate their physical health or strength which explains why old women like my grandmother would have a smaller flame while my brothers who have not fully developed their bodies would also have a smaller flame than their sister yet slightly larger than my mother's.