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r/tbatenovel • … • u/Rugenio

Aether/mana relationship theories

We all know that mana and aether in tbate have some kind of influence on each other but it's not super clear how; we have the cup and water analogy but it's insufficient if not outright wrong as an explanation. Let's look at a few examples of aether-mana interaction:

1)Teleportation portals and dimension rings are the most straightforward application of aether you can think of, yet not only they're operated with mana, they can't even be used with just aether.

2) It was said that Arthur could only see the aether in Realmheart despite being a human because he had an affinity for all the four mana elements.

3)The marks, crests, etc. that Alacryans use are based off godrunes, but they produce spells which only use mana.

4)The cane used during the bestowment cerimony on alacryan kids is ripe of aether.

5)The black flames vritra-blooded humans can use are very similar to the aspect of destruction and even Arthur notices it, but they're called a deviant mana art and used by people with mana cores.

6)We know that even lessers have some talent to influencing aether, as shown by emitters, diviners, and the ascenders who end up in weird rooms of the relictombs because of some innate talent in influencing aether they didn't know they had, like those in the mirror room. This might be related to having Djinn ancestry though.

7)Plant deviants are weirdly similar to vivum users, especially that girl who helped Arthur when he was training in the castle; her skills allowed her to accurately grasp the mana flow of people, not something you'd associate with plants but rather with "life". Also the way Alea passed her memories to Arthur in the last chapter of the comic is not something we've seen anyone else do with mana (in the sense that there are no "memory tablets/marbles" or anything that implies passing memories other than this exemple, except for maybe Sylvia's message, and even that is unconventional). Sure, it might have been simply a detail changed in order to make the scene flow more smoothly, but at the same time the comic storyboard is done by Turtle himself so it makes sense that, instead of creating plot holes when there wasn't the need to, he'd make the change with a possible explanation in mind. Or maybe I'm just overthinking it, idk.

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There's something peculiar with all the exemples I've given here; it's that it's never "moving the cup to move the water" but rather "using the water to alter the cup", which is the one implication that was said to be impossible. Aether should be the "superior" element, the one that brings the indrath clan closer to true gods, yet it gets thrown around by mana a lot, and we've never seen evidence of the contrary, except for maybe when Arthur used his pseudo-phase 3 against Nico and Cadell.

The first explanation would be that you can convert aether and mana into one another, just like you can convert energy of different types into one another; this theory doesn't have much evidence directly supporting it, as we've never seen it done, but it's not impossible either. However we don't really need this to explain dimension rings; they could just be activated by mana and draw on ambient aether to function.

You can probably think of it as turning on a lightbulb by pressing a button; even though you use a mechanical movement, through the device you get an electric tension, which seem two completely different phenomena in the natural world. Of course just zapping a light switch won't turn the light on, so you can't open with brute force a dimension ring through aether.

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So here's another theory. Every time mana is used, aether reacts accordingly. Maybe the effect is usually small, or it goes unnoticed, or is taken as a part of the magic phenomenon, but it always happens. If you think about it, space, time, life (or rather, existance) and fate are not calories you eat and then burn through like Arthur seems to treat aether nowadays, but ideas or laws of the world; of course if you're lifting up a boulder with gravity magic, the space aether around will react someway or another. You're quite literally changing the laws of physics in that area. The only ones who could notice this are the Indrath clan, as the only ones who can use Realmheart, but aether particles are generally fucking around doing their seemingly random strolls, and let's be honest the Indrath are not the clan to question and examine the world scientifically, so it's only natural that no one has thought of mana being able to influence aether as a possibility.

Finally, we also know that aether can, to varying degrees, be commanded through will, just like mana. The djinns might have been another race (like the elves, dwarves and humans) who had a particular affinity towards influencing aether with their will; however their bodies couldn't handle the stress, which limited them. They noticed randomly that sometimes the magic they used caused some side effects which were very similar to when they used aether, and by observation and trial-and-error were somehow able to recreate the aether effect by using only, or mostly, mana. The various contraptions and artifacts they built were a way to guide mana in a specific pattern (the rune) so that the aether reacts in the way you want it to. To give an analogy, it's like instead of trying to reach some fruit too high up, they thought of shaking the trunk. The indrath clan instead could simply jump higher so they never bothered to even think about a different method.

Then Agrona started studying the relics he recovered from the relictombs and thought that, if you can use runes to guide mana in a specific way, why not just use them for mana spells so that lesser can learn magic with ease and be a stronger army.

All the examples of aether-like mana arts, such as the soulfire scythes use, are then specific spells engineered so that the mana application causes an intended aether ripple, meaning that it's a spell comprised of fire mana who also influences destruction aether to mix with it. 7) is probably because plant deviants innately produce side effects similar to vivum in using their magic.

This also kind of explains why the runes Arthur has are described as being different from the ones the djinns used; from chapter 274 - The crystal: "While our people have mastered spellform in order to draw and manipulate aether, true mastery and the organic appearence of godrunes - such as that branch of spatium you have just received - only come through major insight". The djinns were just throwing rocks at a lake hoping that the ripples they created would move the boat forward, Arthur is pushing the boat directly.

Finally, if mana moves aether, it only makes sense that you could do the opposite. If you can control aether to push mana to form a spell, you can technically recreate any kind of spell from aether. If moving a boulder with magic has an effect on space aether, moving space aether in that same way should create the same phenomenon. Although this is a possibility, I'm not so sure if it would be even worth it for Arthur to go though such lengths just to learn to use mana again.

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Off-topic; both during the war and in the latest chapter, Aldir is seen teleporting despite him being a pantheon and not an indrath, and the fact that it was stated multiple times that only the indrath clan can command aether. This might be due to an artifact, but the indrath clan's understanding of aether is so basic that I really doubt they could produce something of the sort, so maybe it was something they plundered after killing the ancient mages? (and possibly the aether orb in which Arthur trains as well?). Does this mean they have a secret arsenal of artefacts stored up or are those just outliers?

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