As Isaac opens his eyes, he lies in a pool of black mucus, dry heaving to remove the thought of what just happened in his dream. The feeling of having something flow down your throat but having no power to stop it really cements Isaac's position in this world.
Isaac looks at his mucus covered shirt and slowly stands up. He removes the shirt, luckily it was only his shirt that was covered by a layer of mucus. His once pure white shirt, which had turned brown due to dirt, was now black on the front and smelled like vomit.
Isaac takes a drink of water to rinse out his mouth for any mucus that may remain. He then starts to walk back to the lake that he has spent the previous night at. The sky was illuminated in a pure orange, signalling the end of the day, so Isaac needed to head back to his hut for the night.
During the walk, Isaac took in the new view that he saw. The shirt in his hand radiated a black mist, the trees and plants produced a light green mist, while Isaac produced the same dark blue mist that was in the dream, but it contained a small blotch of indigo mist.
This new sight was due to his new ability to sense magic, since he used the second method to flow magic, it was the only method that he could use at his current moment in time. He knew that one of the last four plants was full of magic, but because he passed out, he wasn't able to figure out which one it was.
Isaac was taking his time while walking back to his hut, as the thought of the figures returning lingered in his mind, but considering they had left without any problem previously, he hoped that they wouldn't try anything tonight, but he was still taking things carefully.
As Isaac walked through the forest, he tried his best to list down the mist that each animal and plant made. The two that stood out the most were the squirrels and the blackberries, the latter produced brown mist, while the former made a light blue mist.
Out of all the mists that Isaac has seen today, only the squirrels have brown mist, which most likely was due to something that made up the squirrels biologically. The blackberries were also very weird. Isaac has seen a few things give off a light blue mist, but only those berries made such a pure light blue with no impurities like a second colour.
Isaac didn't know what the colours meant, but he was confident that the magic textbook mentioned something to do with it, as he remembers James talking about magic colour theory, or something along those lines.
Isaac had taken a few plants he remembered had positive effects, as well as a few of the berries, as the mist colour intrigued him since his own mist was dark blue. The sun had started to fade beyond the horizon by the time Isaac had reached the waterfall again.
After a couple of minutes of walking Isaac has reached his old camp sight and sat down at the lake's shore and attempted to wash it, the mucus was reluctant to part with the fabric but after some shaking and steeping in water, the mucus finally parted, the smell still lingered but he wasn't sure that was a bad thing considering it might ward off predators.
Isaac went over to his old ring of rocks and placed some dry sticks that he has prepared the previous night and used the same trick as last time to light the fire, each time he did this trick the wire would burn up and melt, so the amount of time he could do this was limited, but since he might be able to magic this wasn't a concern anymore.
Isaac laid out his shirt on some of the rocks that were not close to the fire so that it could dry and not catch on fire. He then took his tie off his hand to see the bite marks on it. Since some time has passed, they have scabbed over and don't seem to be infected, which was a positive.
Isaac looked at the berries before putting them back inside his bag. He then took back out the magic text book and flipped to the page of sensing magic and continued reading from where he last was.
But this was fruitless as it mainly contained parts on which safety precautions you should take before attempting to use one of the methods, which would have been good around half a day ago. After about an hour of reading, Isaac finally found the part he was looking for.
Once you do one of the methods to sense mana, you will start to see clouds of mist around you. These clouds are mana that is clumped together. Each colour of mana is for a different purpose, for example, the mana from a fire would be red, and the mana from water would be transparent blue.
Isaac looked at the fire illuminating the book, and then looked at the mist that it produced, and it was indeed red, just like the book had said. He then turned his head to his water bottle, which was surrounded by a transparent blue.
This gave Isaac a sense of motivation and hope in his current situation, and so he continues to read.
Wind and earth also produce colours, but they are very hard to see as they are not in mist form and are instead in the form of the element itself. If you were to cast a spell, you would see that the earth is brown in colour and the wind is yellow in colour.
Earth, wind, fire, and water are the only things that have an exact colour everything else is determined by the user and what you associate with it, but for most people, you will find that the darker the colour, the more dangerous it is.
This makes Isaac stop reading and then look at his own mist, which is dark blue, but Isaac doesn't read too much into it, as the book said that most people, and that doesn't mean everyone does, so Isaac continues to read the book.
One thing that tricks people when sensing mana is that they will see a plant or animal with the same colour as an element, and think that they just associate it with a similar thing. This is incorrect. Something has strong connections to elements and therefore produces mana that is closely tied to it.
Isaac speaks out loud, "So that's why the Squirrels had brown mana, they must be closely tied to it since they live in trees."
Isaac was about to continue reading when a figure stepped out of the darkness, and they oozed out deep purple mana. Isaac looks up at them and then gasps for air as they recognise the face of the figure.