The Magic System

Mana - the will and a manifestation of the The breathing universe. This force breaks the structure of laws, bends rules, makes a mockery of normality. Those who wield Mana don't adhere to casualty or need to worry about cause and effect, if one has the capacity to do so, one could speak fire into existence, heal death, destroy worlds, and so, so much more. In exchange, all The breathing universe wants is to be spread around via Mana. Mana itself is very plentiful and multiples from itself, as long as there's even an iota of it, Mana will multiple VERY quickly, to expand its reach onto different universes or timelines.

What is Mana?

As previously said, it allows one to break the laws of the universe. But, by itself it doesn't do anything. However, almost anything can use Mana to some degree, even cells can eventually adapt to incorporate Mana into its evolution. Mana is a highly adaptable source almost anything can call upon in someway.

Raw Mana

Most of those who use mana, take it in from the surroundings and convert the Mana into something else as Mana in its raw form is hard to use and unfocused, making raw Mana weaker against itself in a specialized form but only because most can't use raw Mana that can overwhelm specialized forms of Mana, it takes a lot of effort to use raw Mana to amount to anything other than a last ditch attack or defense since raw Mana can at least effect all forms of specialized Mana in some capacity. Think of raw Mana being used as a solid passive protection against anything. In fact, a passive defense is the most common form of raw mana usage, since raw Mana doesn't need to be channeled it can be expelled almost immediately and continuously. This is why magical creatures or people can shrug off attacks that would harm or even kill others, raw Mana will either outright prevent harm to you or mitigate damage until your raw Mana defense is completely overwhelmed. Anything that has Mana can and does benefit from passive defense. In short, raw Mana is stored and converted, but beings can use a small portion of that Mana before conversion to effortlessly leak it in a form of universal defense or exhaustively expel it in a last ditch effort to survive.

While raw Mana is seen as weaker due to its difficulty to control, if there was a raw Mana user with the same efficiently as anyone else they will overpower them.

Mana control

Most races do not generate Mana, typically that is reserved for races that are magical in nature such as Dragons for example. Due to this limitation, the basics of Mana control were made and are as follows.

• Absorb
  The ability to gather ambient Mana and draw it in.
• Store
  The ability to hold ambient Mana within like a storage tank.
• Channel
  The ability to change Mana into something else.
• Expel
  The ability to use that transformed Mana.

Why is raw Mana harder to use?

While the why is still being figured out by Mana users everywhere, what is known is that it's actually really hard to output just raw Mana. Most users have seen, felt, and can imagine what magic they specialize in like water mages, but what is Mana? How can you fully control something that is conceptually something that should be an impossibility to you? And this only the tip of the iceberg on why conducting raw mana is hard since if this were the case, creatures such as Dragons would be able to wield raw Mana but they can't use it better than a Mana user on the same level can. But raw Mana converted to a different scale like to lightning is exponential easier to wield, factors better. Like a 1 to 20 ratio.

Mana born races

Some species have evolved with Mana to exist. Mana fueled creatures tend to understand concepts of something instinctively and don't need to be taught what something is to be able to use it. For example, Humans need to learn what Mana is before they can use Mana than need to know what fire is to be able to conjure something. A Mana born creature will just know it. This comes with drawbacks. Mana born races have a hard time channeling Mana to anything other than what they were born knowing.

Power from Mana

Mana is all about defying logic, but to defy logic you need to understand the logic to it. You need to believe what you are doing will work, imagination is a strong force multiplier but that is far from all you need to win a fight. If two people were to cast fireball, the one with the better imagination will not always win, if one just launched super heated air at their opponents while their opponent casted fireball on a highly technical level to create than launch the fireball, the later will almost always win. Not because they understand how to make a fireball but because in their mind they believe they made a perfect fireball spell. Imagination, self confidence, skill, and power are key elements that dictate your mana potential.