Kaiser listened intently as Sentry expressed his desire to learn sorcery. "You want to learn sorcery?" Kaiser repeated, a thoughtful expression on his face. "Well, I can teach you, but you need to unlearn whatever you've learned up to this point."
Sentry's eyes lit up. "Sure! I would do anything to learn sorcery."
They headed to the training field, a quiet corner where they wouldn't be disturbed. Kaiser began, "Remember one thing: sorcery is not like magic. Unlike magic, which bends reality, sorcery uses the environment's nature to create phenomena that looks like magic."
Sentry's brow furrowed. "What do you mean, 'create phenomena that looks like magic'?"
Kaiser scratched his head. "Actually, the person who taught me sorcery said this, but even I wasn't able to understand what it meant. If you ever understand that, tell me as well. Now, next lesson: as long as you possess knowledge, you can do anything."
Sentry chuckled. "These are such corny lines."
"I mean, yes, it is," Kaiser admitted, a slight blush creeping up his neck. "But it's just that I'm not good at saying it."
"So, are these lines supposed to be cool?" Sentry teased.
"Yes," Kaiser affirmed. "By the way, the next lesson is: practical knowledge is no good if you don't know the knowledge of what you are using. So, your first task is to learn about how wind works."
Sentry sighed dramatically. "You really don't know how to tell these cool lines. Fine, now I have to learn how the wind works, right?"
"Yes, and I can teach you now how the wind works, so get ready." Kaiser's tone was firm. Sentry looked at Kaiser, a flicker of doubt in his mind. He can't teach me anything, Sentry thought. I have to learn this on my own. He still believed Kaiser wasn't truly knowledgeable.
"To understand wind," Kaiser began, completely unaware of Sentry's internal skepticism, "we have to understand earth."
"Earth?" Sentry asked, baffled. "Why would we have to understand about earth when we have to learn wind?"
"Just listen, ask doubts later," Kaiser instructed. "Earth, as we know, is solid, right? Which sometimes feels dry. Rivers feel wet, and air feels hot or cool. There are reasons behind it." Sentry listened, albeit with a skeptical expression. "Earth consists of various particles, very small particles that can't be seen by eyes."
"If they can't be seen by eyes, how would we confirm it?" Sentry challenged.
Kaiser picked up a rock from the ground and handed it to Sentry. "Break it," he commanded. Sentry, with a grunt, broke the rock into several pieces. Kaiser then took the smallest piece. "Break it," he said again. After much difficulty, Sentry managed to break the smaller piece. Kaiser took the even smaller piece. "Break it," he instructed. This time, Sentry found he couldn't break it any further.
Kaiser held up the tiny fragment. "Look at this piece and tell me, could it still be broken?"
"Yes," Sentry replied, after careful consideration.
"How many pieces can it be broken into?" Kaiser pressed.
Sentry thought for a moment. "Who knows? Maybe infinitely."
"If infinitely," Kaiser continued, pushing the point, "then how small can it become? Where is the endpoint of this object? I mean, every object has a starting point, but where does its ending point lie?"
Sentry was deep in thought. He had never considered an "ending point" for something so fundamental. "It's like answering where the ending point of this world is," he mused. "Plus, if it is made up of particles, won't everything be destroyed as soon as those particles drop?"
"Fine, let's simplify it for you," Kaiser said, seeing Sentry's confusion. He gathered some dust from the ground. "Look at this dust. It's formed of such thin particles."
"Yes, dust is always like that," Sentry agreed.
"Now, consider you are capable of holding the particles of dust and want to put all the dust in one place so that they would not be separated. What would you do?"
Sentry thought for a moment, but nothing came to mind. "I don't know," he admitted. "I never thought like this."
"Sew the particles," Kaiser stated simply.
Sentry's eyes widened. "Yeah, that is correct! Sewing them would help."
"Similarly," Kaiser continued, "like I said, how small particles exist, they are all sewn together by a thread."
"That is just absurd!" Sentry burst out, his skepticism returning. "How can it be sewn? Which thread is even small enough to use it?"
Kaiser sighed, realizing the difficulty. He tried to explain the concept of attractive forces that hold things together, forming an atomic structure on the ground. But Sentry denied all his claims, his face set in disbelief. Kaiser wondered why he wasn't understanding it.
Finally, Kaiser said, his voice tinged with frustration, "I can't teach you sorcery if you are not open to new ideas, Sentry."
"But there are just many flaws," Sentry protested, "I can't seem to understand."
"This was the same case for me," Kaiser explained patiently, "but I remained open-minded. You should keep an open-minded approach too."
Sentry sighed, a grudging acceptance in his voice. "Fine. I will learn this for sorcery. However, don't expect me to believe it."
"Sure," Kaiser replied, trying to hide his own confusion. Why is he having such a hard time understanding it? Kaiser didn't realize that he himself had learned these concepts at the tender age of seven, a time when everything was believable, when a child's mind was a sponge for new, fantastical ideas. Sentry, at eleven, had already begun to form his worldview, and anything that contradicted it was met with fierce resistance. (it is similar to how you would feel when a person would say that earth is flat)
Kaiser then continued, teaching Sentry about the concept of atoms, then about centrifugal force, and finally about Newton's Laws. In some cases, like centrifugal force and Newton's First Law, Sentry surprisingly agreed. But in others, he remained stubbornly unconvinced.
As night fell, Kaiser told him, "Now, go home and practice what I taught you."
"But what about learning sorcery?" Sentry asked, a hint of desperation in his voice. "When can I use it?"
Kaiser shrugged. "At the speed we are going, it will take you a month, or probably more." Kaiser left, unaware that Sentry's desire to learn sorcery quickly stemmed from a deeper, more urgent need to protect his friends.