"You ready for your first day of learning?" I hear Sylvic say after I finish washing my hands. I look at him with expectations in my eyes, "Yeah, what are we learning today?"
It has been two weeks since I became part of their lives. Elanor likes me the most out of my siblings. We play tea party in her room every now and then. And we just got finished eating lunch. Today is supposed to be my first day of training.
Sylvic looks at me, "First, we shall teach you to control your mana and affinities, then we will teach you stuff like history, math, magical history, and the magic language." My ears perk up at magic language, 'So that's what he was speaking when he was casting that light magic on me. It's an actual language and not just some gibberish.' I think, looking forward to being taught that the most.
Sylvic and I go outside through a set of glass back doors. I am wearing a black coat that Sylvic had lended me till we get to a tailor shop apparently, 'I have no idea what we're gonna...woah.' I am stopped in my tracks, in his backyard is a target range with dummies of people, surrounded by a fence made of metal. Sylvic looks at me with a smirk on his face, "I'm also the only fighting instructor in town that doesn't work for the military." I look at him, "A healer is also a fighting instructor? No way." "Wanna test it?" Sylvic says as his face gets slightly serious, his tone slightly threatening.
"No thanks." I say calmly but my brain is.... 'Me?! Fight a fighting instructor untrained?! You trying to kill me?!' "Ok, so onto our first lesson, taking in mana from the world and using it to increase your mana containers hold more mana. The world has pure, raw mana, every time we breath, we breath the mana in the air, but we never control it, unless we focus on it. My method is I close my eyes and breath calmly..." as he says that he puts his legs in a fighting stance, his feet crunching on the snow, and closes his eyes, his breathing slows, and I see his hot breath blow away a few snowflakes. He continues, "....focusing on the world's mana entering my body and molding the container to become bigger in its size...." I see a drip of sweat roll down his face. "...although it can be taxing on your body if done constantly for long periods of time." And as he finishes his sentence he stops what he was doing and stands regularly again. "Everyone's container can be increased, but there is a point for everyone where they must stop and it happens at different points in their life. Give it a try."
Elva, Estel, Aeron, and Elanor are standing and staring at us through the back door, interested in seeing their new siblings abilities. Elva says with a groan, "Dang it, they are training with world mana, trying to increase his mana pool. This is boring as heck."
"What's world mana?" Elanor asks, confused and curious. Estel explains, "World mana is allows us to control magic so well, without it, we wouldn't have magic. He is using it to increase how much mana he can hold." "Oooooohhhh. That sounds interesting, will I ever get to do it?" Asks Elanor, looking at Estel with wide eyes. Aeron butts in, "Not till you get older."
"Oh." Elanor says looking sad.
I sit down on the snow and cross my legs. 'I am gonna try this Buddha style.' I focus on the blue world mana entering my body through my mouth, melting my mana container and reforming into a bigger version. All of a sudden, Ping! Ping! In the top left of my closed eyes I see two messages.
———————————————————————
New ability unlocked!
———————————————————————
———————————————————————
Mana container reforming....using shadow mana as compensation....Done!
———————————————————————
'Shadow mana? Not world mana? Perhaps it's from the new ability I got....now that I think about it, it's quiet out here, very peaceful. The only thing I can hear is Sylvic's breathing and snow crunching.' Outside of his body, he is lucky he is in a shadow or his family would of seen the shadow of every object being consumed by his shadow.
But Sylvic notices something unheard of, he currently has his eyes closed and is focusing on the mana around him with his mana sense. Because of his constant training, he can see and sense the mana of things if he focuses hard enough. What he is seeing is the mana from shadows, not world energy, entering Kurayami.
'His body collects the shadow energy around itself and is using that instead of the world's mana! I have never seen anything like this before, this is fascinating to watch. But what is up with his life force.....that's not normal, just what is Kurayami?' He notices curiously, excitedly, and confused.
In this world, life force is represented as spheres and each species has different life force formations. Elves have the unique ability to see life force, but it must be trained extensively and they need to be born with the ability. Sylvic was one of the few born with it.
After about ten minutes of Kurayami doing nothing but meditating, everyone is shocked, the longest someone was able to do it for in the family was two minutes before having to stop or collapsing from the strain. Kurayami opened his eyes slowly, unfolded his legs and got up slowly while thinking things over. 'I don't feel any stronger, so doing this is different than moving shadows into mine forcefully. I'm more letting them enter of their own choice. Interesting... Stats.'
—————————————————————
[New] Mana Container Reforming Technique (Active): After being taught how to absorb mana through other means, you are now able to increase your mana container through meditation.
—————————————————————