Mana Shot
Mana Shot is an archaeomancy spell described in Monster Girl Encyclopedia World Guide III: Sabbath Grimoire.
Guide Book Entry[edit | edit source]
A spell to conjure and fire mana. Conjuring and firing mana is one of the most basic techniques of mana manipulation. This “mana shot” is mainly the basis for attack spells which lash out at one's opponent with mana. However, since that which we call mana originally has no mass or attack power, and it's basically just striking a foe with mana, it doesn't have much power at all, although some kinds of mana such as mamono mana have the property of exhibiting an effect even just by pouring it inside the target's body.
For that reason, when using mana as an attack spell, the usual process taken is to materialize it into something that has mass and attack power and manipulate that. We can say that spells that conjure and launch fireballs and spells that shoot icicles as lances, and so on, are all derived from “mana shot”.
Each caster has a different image of the vague invisible energy called mana, and these differences result in the different directions and attributes each caster specializes in. The image of the spell which is one's specialty reflects the mind state of that person himself and the environment in which he has lived, and in the case of monsters, race also has a huge influence. A caster born to a blacksmith who grew up seeing fire and is an impulsive type would tend to be inclined towards specializing in flame spells, while a caster with a calm personality who grew up in a snowy country would tend to be inclined towards specializing in ice spells. Also, the potency of attack magic isn't decided just by the strength of the mana. When conjuring mana, it's also crucial to boost precision via concentration and advanced thinking.
Also, even if we categorize them all as flame attack magic, the effects differ depending on the caster's image of flames. Spells conjured based on a human's image of flames will in most cases have searing heat and cause burning, which will be used to attack. On the other hand, in the case when monsters use flame spells, they don't have the image to harm humans, and at the same time, elements such as “the flames of love and passion” towards men burning inside them and “heat building up in the body” due to the pleasure of sex overlap with their image of flames, and therefore the spells they conjure also mostly take effect by making their target's body flush and burn, heating up their heart, and igniting their passion. Moreover, only the image of brightness goes into flames conjured just for illumination instead of attack magic, so even if the flames look the same, there are also cases in which they don't have the power to burn anything. In this manner, “mana shot” is one of the most basic spells, but at the same time, it has endless variations depending on the user, and we can even say it's one of the spells that most reflects individuality. The child prodigy that Sabbath boasts of, “Momonika”, the lovely goat of the playground, uses “if it's not cute, I hate it!” as a catch phrase, and prefers conjuring magic in a heart pattern, be it flames or whatever, but when “Shirokuto”, the white goat of wisdom, one of the archmages who represents the baphomet race, uses her flame magic, rather than flames, it's horrifying hellfire that looks like a gigantic monster clad in flames.
Furthermore, mana is intrinsically invisible, but granting mass and attack power to something invisible is extremely difficult, and so even in the case of spells that fire pure energy, it is conjured in the form of flashes or spheres of light, etc. Invisible attack magic by means of purely formless “void” mana, undetectable to the eye, is a feat that only a handful of extremely exceptional casters in the world are capable of performing.
“May you continuously gasp in agony amidst my incessant flames...”
~”Shirokuto” the White Goat of Wisdom~