Mana

Mana (魔力, maryoku) is the magical energy that fuels magic, magic tools and blessings. While all humans have trace amounts of mana, only the nobility possess enough mana, and have the magical tools required, to cast magic.

Mana is present in all living creatures, including humans, animals, plants, and even some inanimate materials. However, in the vast majority of cases, the level of mana is so low as to be effectively nonexistent. Therefore, commoners are typically referred to as "not having mana." The same is true for many animals and nonmagical plants.


 * Nobles typically have higher amounts of mana. They can learn to channel it through magic tools, control it with a schtappe, use it to power magic circles, and dedicate it to the gods in order to give or recieve blessings.
 * In the rare case that a commoner is born with mana, they do not have magic tools used to siphon off and store their excess mana. They typically suffer symptoms of severe fevers and die at a young age. This is called the Devouring.

Unlike humans, flora and fauna that have mana (called feyplants and feybeasts respectively) have naturally adapted and do not require magic tools to survive mana exposure. The distinction between "fey" and "nonmagical" plants is not always as clear as separate species. For example, the magical Kurhaize plant is the "evolved" variant of Eise, a common plant.

Anatomy. The humans of Yurgenschmidt have an internal organ which stores and processes mana within the body, which Myne guesses is equivalent to the real-world heart. Mana is carried in bodily fluids, including blood and tears. Because commoners have no way to channel their trace amounts of mana, they typically use blood to operate basic magical tools. When an organism with mana dies, including nobles, feyplants, and feybeasts, their mana gathers and hardens around their mana organ and forms a feystone. While human feystones are generally laid to rest in a funeral, the feystones of plants and animals are an important material for magic tools and potions.

Birth and Fertility. The amount of mana a child is born with is based primarily on the mana capacity of the mother. Mana capacity also has an impact on fertility: Those with very different levels of mana typically cannot have children.

Mana Exposure. A child's mana capacity grows as they age. However, humans are not well-equipped to deal with the mana they possess; they rely on magical tools to siphon and store excess mana to stay alive. When too much mana builds up in the body, it causes symptoms including stunted growth, severe fevers, and boiling or bubbling skin. According to Ferdinand, those who lose control of their mana die in a horrific manner (by explosion). To prevent this, noble children are given magic tools that absorb their mana until their baptism, when they begin to learn to channel mana.

Fatigue. Mana is a form of energy, and expending mana can lead to physical symptoms of tiredness and fatigue. Food and sleep are both important elements in restoring mana, and using mana with very little nourishment or rest can cause a person to become dizzy or fall ill.

The social hierarchy within Ascendance of a Bookworm is harshly dictated by mana. Those who are born into existing noble families, with a visible amount of mana from parents who possess mana, are regarded raised in their noble families, whereas those who aren't are considered commoners. However, nobles can also be born with little to almost no mana, leaving the choices to become a servant to their family or being sent to the temple. Commoners can be born with a significant amount of mana, which makes them suffer from the Devouring due to missing magic tools.

Nobles are taught not to show emotions and to control them at all times. Mana is tied to emotions and if they become strongly emotional, mana will leak out of their body. This works the other way round as well, having too much mana inside you makes one emotionally unstable. Noble children are given magical tools from birth to absorb their mana as they can be highly emotional, which can be dangerous.

Although possessing mana is a prerequisite for a noble, one must graduate from the Royal Academy to be regarded officially as a noble. Within noble society, mana influences the rank of nobles, breaking them down further into: laynobles, mednobles, and archnobles. If a noble child does not possess mana fitting of their noble rank, they will be kicked out of their family; if they're lucky, a lower ranked noble family will adopt them, otherwise the child goes to the temple for the rest of their lives. As such, it's custom for nobles to not announce the birth of their child until their baptism at the age of 7 to determine their wealth of mana. Succession within a noble family is determined by mana capacity rather than by age.

By forcing mana from the rest of their bodies back into the mana-storing organ, mana-users can compress their mana into a higher density, allowing them to gain a larger mana-capacity, since they can store more mana in the same amount of space so to say.

For adult's who's body has already stopped growing, this will only affect the density of their mana, but if this is done by someone still in their growth phase, this will cause their mana-storing organ to grow faster than it otherwise would.

There are risks involved in compressing one's mana though.

First simply having mana above a certain amount dispersed around the body, which is a necessity to compress it, carries risks of it's own: It will stunt the physical growth of the body and depending on the emotional state of the person can go out of control, which can result in others around the person being "crushed" by the mana or the mana harming the body, usually in the form of high fevers, though in extreme cases this could even mean exploding parts of the body. For these reasons nobles do now allow the mana of their children to build up, but instead give them magic tools that constantly drain their excess mana.

Only upon entering the Royal Academy at the age of ten are noble children taught how to compress mana in a controlled environment. Even among those already experienced in moving mana around their bodies, it is not unusual for their mana to go out of control during the first compression attempts. For this reason multiple professors are present during those lessens to immediately deal with such accidents. Every year there are several students per class that faint on their first few tries.

The way to compress mana depends on the person. They need to find a mental image allowing them to manipulate their mana in the way they wish. Some of the methods that have been mentioned are imagining stuffing the mana into a box, boiling it to remove impurities or folding it like a piece of cloth.

How much a person is able to compress their mana is a combination of how well suited their mental image is and their willpower. If the mana is compressed too much in too short a timeperiod, it can lead to headaches, dizzyness and nausea similar to a strong hang-over.

See Rozemyne Mana Compression Method.