The Villainess Will Not Bring Dishonor To Her Family

4 - A Matter of Sincerity

After calming down a bit I manage to gather my thoughts and decide to turn my attention onto something somewhat unrelated: Magic.

There is magic in the novel [Love is a Heartbeat Cadence]. As I have practiced magic before I died, this is of course something incredibly important but also interesting.

Thankfully I have been blessed by the same element as I was in my previous life, but I can only hope that water is connected to the same traits as they were in my previous life if at all. I'm not entirely sure, as the magic systems aren't the same.

I'll be using Lily's memories as basis for my understanding of their magic, though she cannot actually use it yet.

The novel I have reincarnated in, [Love is a Heartbeat Cadence], has their magic based on magical beings called 'Fairies' and 'Mana'. If you are blessed with the protection of one of these faeries, they will let you use magic in return for using your internal energy which is the mana that recharges constantly during the day and night.

The fairy-types fall into the groups of four elements and then light and dark. Your internal mana is generally attractive to one of these six types, and this can be refined by heritage. The more attractive your mana is to a certain group of faeries, the bigger the probability that they will find you interesting and thus bless you. The more powerful faeries prefer the 'purer' kinds of mana. Because of this, it's obvious that nobles have a bigger probability of being blessed, creating a natural hierarchy in the society. While it is technically possible to be blessed by more than one fairy, apparently faeries do not like sharing the mana from their benefactor.

I, as Lily, has been blessed with a Mana-type highly preferred by water faeries, meaning that I should be able to gain the blessing of a so called 'grand rank fairy' in the future.

Lily is eight now, but she hasn't been blessed yet. Honestly it's rather late, as nobles of high rank are usually blessed around the age of five to seven. If possible it would be a good thing to solve this one way or another to prevent people from looking down on our family.

As for the magic in my former life. There was no so called 'Mana'. Rather than these flimsy winged 'faeries' we spoke directly to the gods in the ground, water, fire or air. We prayed to these small gods for their miracles. How much they would accept to help us depended solely on the degree to which they favored us. For standardized prayers they asked nothing in return, but for answering questions, or specific requests, they would demand something in return. Something of benefit for themselves. I once had to pull a rickshaw out of a river because I wanted to know which direction my friend went to and the water god was sullen over the rickshaw hindering its movement.

The favor of these gods could be increased by getting better at things which the gods favored. In my case, water gods have a certain preference for physically strong and perceptive people. While Lily's body is in no way strong, I assume that the perceptiveness from my former life is brought along to some extent. At least I hope so.

Honestly, I would prefer using the same kind of magic as I did from my old life... the familiarity, system and honor of it cannot be compared to the magic of this world. Sadly, I'm unsure whether I can use it, as elemental gods are usually very weak outside the empire.

Before anything else I should find out whether or not I can even find any gods. In case that fails I will worry about those 'faeries' aft-

CLANK.

I glance to the door cautiously at the sound.

Someone just unlocked the door.

...I wait a bit, but the door doesn't actually open. I consider attempting to use magic just in case, but I'm not sure it would work, nor that this body could even use the same level of prayers I was used to.