Leon spent a few hours talking things over with his parents, they all agreed that him going to the magic Academy at six years old would cause far too much If an uproar and in a few more years it would seem more acceptable. He needed to learn some spells apart from the basic fireball and breath of fire he knew from his past life. Although he had a lifetime of knowledge he hadn't been interested in combat or using mana in any other way than inscriptions. So his combat ability was practically zero, the best place for him to learn was naturally the Academy.
In order to use a spell, it required the user to not only learn an incantation but also to know the specific spell path the mana needed to be traced in within one's mind. The usage of spells would speed up with practice as you become more familiar with the spell path. once you could have been said to have mastered a particular spell it would only take the name of the spell and the rune path, rather than the lengthy incantation which helped you understand the principle behind it.
Leon and his parents planned on leaving the next day and as night was now settling in they travelled back to the Inn, they rested for the night and woke to a bright but chilly day. His father hadn't forgotten about his desire for alchemy and left early and returned with the best quality equipment he could find, once Leon had thanked him he stored it in his ring and began to think of preparations he needed for the future.
Kane collected the cart and the horses and began preparing for their departure. Leon decided with some of his new funds he would buy as many different types of food as he could for the journey, although time still passed in a storage treasure it was at a completely different rate. If he put in a hot meal it would take months for it to cool down which made it a must-have to enjoy good food on a long journey.
After their busy morning of preparation, they began their journey back home, Leon spent his time during the day examining his mana core and learning the use of basic mana through it, the power was many times greater than with his basic fire core in his last life. During times they were alone on a road he would experiment with the basic mana usage and began his practice of the fireball spell, although he had all the knowledge it was different applying that knowledge to his new life. Even though his progress was exceptional it would take some time to get to single word usage.
His knowledge from his previous life on Earth also came as a huge boost to him as well, coupled with his senses via mana the wind element could be used to sort through the different atoms and separate the oxygen and hydrogen and collect it. he began testing out how to apply it to the fire element in order to create a more intense flame, Periodically it would flicker with a pale blue at its core but controlling everything at once left him sweating copiously, it seemed a lot more practice was needed and more mana to steady the process.
He started thinking of his path to getting his next mana core, the process involved drawing the mana in from the surrounding atmosphere and condensing it in his first core until it naturally started to split. Both halves would turn into a gaseous form before re solidifying, one would stay in its first position while the other would move into a secondary place elsewhere in the body.
His next one would form in his abdomen and be a perfect replica of his first, this would double his mana capacity which would allow the use of more powerful spells. At the moment the basic rudimentary fireball spell could only be cast twice with his mana, if he knew the basic spells of his other elements it would also be two but they would be independent of one another.
He had also had an idea involving the inscription methods for repairing a damaged core, it would hasten the process of mana accumulation by ten times its normal rate and allows for better control which is the main reason it could repair a core. Could he use this to speed up his training? If he added the tattoo onto his chest over his first core, then wouldn't he be able to gather mana at ten times the rate of a normal person? he had tested his natural accumulation rate and compared it to his memories.
It seemed to be slightly over three times its usual speed but he didn't know if that was because of having more elements or because of its increase in size. Either way, he was impatient to get stronger faster and began to revise the skin inscription to encompass all the elements at once rather than just a single element.
Their journey home was peaceful and uneventful, Leon began his practice with drawing runes in order to perfect it properly before attempting the tattoo. His theoretical knowledge was fine but he had to train his motor skills in order to avoid any mistakes, he started with some basic carving on wood.
He practised what was essentially a firelighter for none fire spell casters, it involved a series of six different runes in a circle surrounding a seventh rune in the centre which was shaped like a stylized crosshair from a gun sight from Earth, he chose this as it contained some of the runes he would need for the body inscription. He used ordinary ink for the first few weeks until he was sure he had the runes perfect according to his memories, after this process he began the carving section which was even more meticulous and took him a whole month.
He was finally sure that there were no mistakes and began mixing the Specific Ink he needed for the fire runes. He chose a piece of smooth stone as the material and drew the runes, he followed this rune pattern and carefully carved out the indents according to the standard needed for these runes. Once he double and triple checked the carving he picked up his rune brush and dipped it in the ink he had prepared, it gave off a red lustre due to the ground ruby that had been in the mixture. He carefully filled in the runes while watching to make sure it didn't overflow, after each rune, he infused give element mana into the ink and watched it solidify.
He checked and double-checked to make sure that everything was as he remembered it should be and sat back and let out a long breath. The anxiety and stress had put a lot of strain on him, the slightest mistake and it would have blown up, his nearly 2 months of work had paid off. Leon pulled out a small bit of kindling and pushed it next to the central rune, he once more passed mana through the runes and instantly the kindling lit on fire, he tested it with every element and was pleased to find there were no problems, the runes themselves converted whatever mana passed through it into the fire element and would always light up the wood. For his first inscription, it could be deemed a success!
Leon spent the next few weeks working through different inscriptions from various elements and combinations to ensure he had a good grasp of rune carving and drawing, he failed a few times but managed to get to a proficiency level to a point were he thought the body inscription was now possible.
He had spent at least an hour a day over the course of the two months since his return and found his first mana core was beginning to show signs of becoming a gaseous substance. This was a sign that he was nearly at the second rank of apprentice which would be a speed that would shock anyone, but he still felt it wasn't fast enough.
He prepared the tattoo ink very carefully as he didn't want the slightest mistake. His first test would be on a live abject, namely himself, he couldn't afford for this to go wrong. His constant revisions of the runes needed and in what order had brought him to the brink of perfection he thought, nothing could go wrong.
Unlike standard inscriptions, he didn't need to carve into his own body thankfully, but the process was not simple. For this to work it required him to form a needle made of mana and slowly push the ink into his skin while also uniformly infusing mana at the same time. For the fire runes, he would need his fire mana and water runes his water mana and so on.
Once he was finally ready with all his preparation he sat down in his bedroom and took off his upper clothes, he set a number of mana potions from his storage treasure in front of him as well as the eight different inks needed. At his current level, there was no way he contained enough mana to infuse the twenty symbols for the inscription while also interchanging elemental needles, his practice with the mana needles was enough proof that it wasn't going to be an easy process.
Leon sat and brought his breathing under control, long steady breaths to maintaining his optimal concentration and physical condition. He then opened the first ink container, it was glowing with a faint red hue that would flicker occasionally, he took one more breath and drew forth fire mana from the centre of his core. With extreme concentration, he shaped it into a fine needle. He brought the ink towards his chest and using his will power dipped the needle into it, he knew from his past life that he only had to pierce through to the dermis layer of skin for the tattoo to be effective.
With sure and steady movements he brought the needle to his skin and pushed in, he felt a sharp pain but not something he couldn't deal with. he traced the shape of the first rune and began to fill it in, it was tiring work controlling the mana needle while pushing even more mana into the ink that was entering his skin. It took 5 minutes for his first rune to be complete which was neither too fast not slow considering the size of the rune being only two and a half millimetres in size.
He began the process with the next rune which involved the air element, it went just the same for this rune as well. the next rune to follow was water then earth being the last, after finishing these first four runes he found his mana being almost empty and reached for one of his more expensive mana potions, fortunately, it would bring his mana once more to full at the apprentice stage.
He spent a total of over an hour and five mana potions in total before he was coming to the end of the process and completing the twentieth rune. Every four runs completed he could feel greater harmonisation of mana in his core, it was of the density was changing. just as he finished the final rune he felt a concussion blast in his chest and heard an explosion from within his body, at first he was stunned thinking that something had gone wrong. Leon quickly used his senses to look at his core and realized the situation right away, he hadn't made a mistake at all.
Once the inscription was complete it had accelerated his natural mana absorption to the point his core had become saturated and naturally began to turn into its gaseous form and split. it had not even been three months yet he was already advancing to rank two apprentice! With how fast he could feel the mana in the air flooding in he didn't think it would last there either.
It took a matter of minutes for his cores to solidify again, one in his chest and the other in his abdomen. The absorption still didn't stop here though, five minutes later he felt the same concussive force as both of his new cores once more turned into a gas and began to split. The two split evenly and began to merge into one and compress together, the new gas began to flow towards his left leg before settling within his knee joint.
His third core had formed rapidly after his second and his absorption rate finally began to balance out after it did, consecutive breakthroughs were definitely not a normal occurrence. He was now officially a rank three apprentice and his mana capacity had multiplied massively as a result, as a rank one he could cast two spells from each element mana pool but as a rank three that had become eight. It was effectively double the capacity per rank!
Leon sat and thought about his experiments with element combination on his journey home from Keytown, he felt like he could continue this train of thought now with his current mana capacity. He wanted a few secret moves prepared and a more potent and powerful flame spell would definitely count.
Leon could hear movement from outside his room and a few moments later came a knocking sound.
"Leon is everything ok in there? me and your father could feel the surrounding mana fluctuate wildly." she no longer spoke to him as if he was a child as she realised he might look like one, but his mind was advanced beyond even hers due to his memories.
"Everything is fine mother, you can come on in." the door opened and both of his parents came into the room, they could both sense he had progressed but after feeling it out further were even more shocked. at breakfast that morning he was still a rank one yet now he stood before them as rank three.
Neither of them could think of how consecutive breakthroughs were possible.
"No need to look so confused" he finally said with a chuckle "I've used the body inscription to speed up my mana absorption capability, see?" he indicated to his chest.
"I thought that was to be used for repairing a mana core though son, it can also be used like this?" Can't was very surprised but also excited, not only would it help his son get strong quicker but it means he could be healed sooner too.
"Originally no it couldn't, but I've been working on it since we got home and I made enough progress that I thought it was time to try it, it appears I was right as it pushed me up the rest of the first rank and up the entirety of the second."
"Does this mean when you heal us that we can get also improve quicker as well Leon?" Lily was crippled early on in her life and should have made a lot more progress than she had which had always frustrated her.
"Well that's something I will need to work on, this new inscription focuses on external absorption only and won't draw the mana through your damaged core. But it's feasible that I can get it to do both, the other inscription also needs to be drawn directly over the damaged core whereas with this one we only need one over the first core as that's the primary core after all."
Both of his parents saw hope for not only being able to advance once more but to do so at a much more rapid pace than they could have hoped for, a person's mana absorption was set by the quality of the core and their own body's potential, so a method to speed that up would be something any spellcaster would literally kill for.
Since his advance to rank three, nine months passed by in a flash and Leon had not long had his seventh birthday. he was out of the village just a little further south of the forest, periodically violent explosions could be heard breaking up the peace of the surroundings, Leon had advanced only once more in this period of time and was currently rank four, but his combat power had already stepped far past what a normal seven-year-old boy should be capable of.
'It's getting there, it combines flawlessly every time now but finding the right blend of fire and air mana to use is troublesome.'
During these past months, he had once more began to experiment with the fireball spell. He started to recite the incantation while tracing the spell path in his mind with fire mana, at the last interval he injected one-sixteenth the amount of wind mana into it and between his hands formed a violent blue ball the size of an orange. He gestured towards a far away pillar of stone and in the blink of an eye the blue fireball shot into the distance, half a second later a violent explosion took place that left the stone pillar and the surrounding area of twenty meters incinerated.
"Seems like that's still a bit too much, it's not exactly a spell I can use in a close-range fight.
"Well, I guess I should keep at it for now then."