Shi focused in on his body, feeling every muscle fiber and tendon in his legs. He then flowed all of his mana through them, but nothing happened. He then sunk the mana into his muscles, willing them to improve and be more powerful. Immediately, Shi felt stronger so he summoned a small boulder and punched it.
He made a couple tiny fragments of the boulder break off but he was only about three times as strong, that wasn't good enough for Shi. He tried again, and realized that he was a tiny bit stronger than the last time. Emboldened by this, Shi started forcing all of his mana into his muscles, forcing himself to wait a while after each attempt for his mana to replenish.
Even though it sucked having to wait so long in-between attempts, Shi could see yellow cracks forming in his mana core as he worked. Shi checked in with Shiryoku to tell her that he had formed the basics of a technique and wanted to take some time to completely master.
After she gave Shi the okay, Shi went back to the meadow and continued practicing the muscle strengthening technique. Shi spent a month strengthening his legs over and over again, until he could use barely 5% of his mana and be able to leave a crack in the boulder with a single punch and could run 30 feet (approximately 9.14 meters) in a single second.
But the skin on his knuckles was cracked and his legs were on fire after his display. So he did the same thing that he had done with his muscles to his whole body. At first, he was forced to use all of his mana for each attempt in order for anything to happen, but after a month he could strengthen himself and toughen his body to be as hard as the boulder with only 10% of his mana.
He was also close to breaking into having a yellow core, which would make the mana drain no problem. He then returned to Shiryoku's house and demonstrated his technique to her. "Interesting, most wouldn't choose to augment their body, they would rather develop more methods of attack rather than improve their defense and close-quarters fighting, at least not this early.
Let me give you some advice boy, name your attack. This will give you an association between that name and what you do with your mana. That association allows you to improve your casting speed by a lot since your body automatically casts the spell when you think or speak the name of the spell. It also allows you to do other things while your body casts the spell for you."
Shiryoku advised. "Alright, I'll name it war cry then." Shi said. "As good a name as any I guess." Shiryoku said with a slight frown. "You now have no need for teachers unless you want to quickly learn a new spell. I will be moving back to the castle tomorrow so this is likely the last time that we will see each other, goodbye."
With that, Shiryoku quickly ushered Shi out the door and quickly shut it behind him. Shi returned home and got his first full nights sleep in about 2 years. He woke up the next day with an epiphany, he was stronger than most now, and he could become stronger than anyone given time, so why should he be stuck in some backwater village? Why not use his strength to become more than just a simple mage.
He could move to the castle easily in a few years with his skill, but then what of his parents? If they stayed in the village then Shi couldn't protect them. But if they moved into the castle then there were too many people there who could just kill them while Shi was away. Also, either way Shi would be like a dog on a leash, with either his family shackling him or the lords in the castle.
Shi decided the best way, no the only way was to conquer the villages and the castle and be so god d*mn powerful that nobody would dare f*ck with his family. With his goal set, Shi went towards the town's main workplace, the mines. Shi waited for night and the day shift to move out before he went in, he would have 4 hours before the night shift were roused and brought to the mines to work, so he had to use his time wisely.
Shi sent his focus into the earth, searching for metal that would be good for weapons. His father didn't have the quality of materials that Shi needed for his next few projects. As he searched through the earth, Shi suddenly felt a force pulling at his mana. He followed it to it's source and found a vein of a strange metal.
It was a dull silver color normally, but when his mana flowed into it it turned a bright gold, glowing with power. Shi immediately headed towards the strange metal, and found it in a small cave littered with the stuff. He took the pickaxe he had stolen off of his back and started mining the stuff.
Even without any magic in it the metal was much stronger than the pickaxe so Shi had to slowly mine the rock around it until only the chunk of the strange metal was left. Shi picked it up and quickly left the mines, mentally noting down the location of the veins he had found.
He went to his father's forge, and looked at the chunk of metal in his hands. He had enough for what he was planning to forge and a little extra for something else. "Might as well get started on this." Shi said to himself, walking over to the kiln.