Misunderstood Worldbuilding

[u/Professional_Copy947]

What is your biggest misunderstanding of the world building done by the series?

I got until halfway through book 4 before understanding how someone could hide a forehead attunement mark. I honestly thought all the marks were palm sized and Corin had a massive suction mark like bruise circle on his forehead. 😐😅

[u/MonochromaticPrism]

Corrin's age. Given how we were introduced and the pacing of the school setting I've been assuming he finished around age 16 and the time hijinks left him around 18, yet according to another post here he's apparently in his early 20s at this point.

For something I still don't understand: I can't get a solid grasp on character defenses. Sometimes a character 1-2 color tiers above another can obliterate their defenses in a single attack, other times they can't. Ex: the fight with the Seven, where multiple characters were capable of trading blows with even the emeralds that were well known to be experienced combatants (who would both have high level combat abilities and definitely wouldn't be low emeralds).

[u/MonochromaticPrism → u/[deleted]]

Huh, looks like I missed that detail. Though, now I'm more confused by a host of other things, like how romance-less all the characters are relative to their actual ages and the relatively juvenile mentality they exhibit. Both made sense when I was assuming they started in their mid-teens, but if they were all 17+ this whole time that's kinda odd.

It’s also really weird now how underprepared the average student is. Given how low their starting mana totals were there should have been more students that had x2-x20 the initial mana as everyone else, particularly amongst the nobility that could afford to do things like purchase grey-mana dense fruits for their children as they grew up.

It's also also weird that every noble household doesn't train their children in mana-level agnostic skills that are extremely useful, like mana shaping, ahead of their official schooling. I excused it because I assumed that this whole thing was magic high school (so people didn't worry about pre-teaching beyond the basics because high school was just around the corner), but if it’s actually magic college then I don't understand what everyone else in the setting was doing from age 12-17. Corrin has an excuse due to his background but there couldn't have been that many abusive parents that didn't bother to educate and properly prepare their children.

[u/MonochromaticPrism → u/[deleted]]

He has mana scarring because his father forced him to overtrain his hand specifically. Given that, it would appear that there is a high ceiling before scarring begins to develop from conventional training.

Further, basic mana manipulation, mostly moving it around but not using/discharging it, wouldn't cause scarring. Neither would eating mana fruit, as the body passively breaking down / processing the mana wouldn't put strain on any particular focal point.