The next morning, Daron woke up and had his breakfast at the ground floor of the inn. He ordered some heavy soup, some light salad, as well as some juice, since even out here, they did not serve beer to kids, even though Daron looked like her was 12, but was actually nearing 8 years of age.
While eating, he spoke to Sirious.
'Now, explain everything again, in brief'
[Master…. That was brief]
'… Then explain it in extra, extra, extra brief.'
[The space in between all plains had something called chaos energy which hates everything but itself, and those that use it. Also, this energy hates mana even more than normal things, however, mana is just as powerful as it, and so, neither side can win.]
[That crack was created by a creature that uses Chaos energy, who was trying to break into the World of Mages. It used all its energy to do so, without alerting the strong creatures on this plane like the mages. Naturally, it failed at that, since the church informed the mages, who came over]
[Mages call Chaos energy as 'Corrosion of the void', and after figuring out what the energy was, they could not do anything to it. On the other hand, Chaos energy itself cannot permeate more into the mage world, as the mana within is suppressing it. Even now, in order to maintain the control over the entire city, that creature is clearly using all its energy as soon as it absorbs some from the void.]
[Which means it is not a threat, and the mages left this place alone.]
[That creature senses that you were capable of absorbing Chaos energy, and tried to take over your body to try and enter this world. Thankfully, you had quite a bit of Chaos energy within you, which prevented you from fully coming under his control immediately, and I was able to take control before it could, and get you out of there.]
[It appears that Chaos energy is what runs the main system, as well as all the other systems. Which was why it destroys your body every time the systems absorb more energy.]
'See, so much better'
[Master, I also got access to a piece of information. Before you become an official mage, you should try and learn as many spells as possible]
'Why'
[No idea. But it will only be beneficial.]
'Strange, but sure, it won't hurt to learn more spells. But before that! I finished the mana absorption method. You just go through it quickly and I'll begin the process now.'
[Alright]
…
[Master Daron, this method has potential to be improved upon, however, I cannot do that due to lack of information, both in theory as well as practical. However, do not worry, mana is different from Intern energy. You can switch to better methods and spells with no issues at any point in time. So, for now, following this method will only be beneficial.]
'Good'
[Do you wish to rename it?]
'The Old man had named it Mana accumulation technique right? But Mana Absorption is better, since I am not just accumulating it, But I am first absorbing it then accumulating it.'
[Rename complete: Mana Absorption technique]
Alright, now, I will begin.
Daron sat down on the ground after he made sure the doors and windows to the inn's room he was in were locked.
'Set a plan for me to reduce my breathing to 6 breaths per minute. Also, do not disturb me after I begin.'
[Understood]
The absorption method required this as the first step. A normal human took on average around 13 breaths per minute, however, Daron needed to reduce that number to half of that number.
This was done in order to allow the body to reach an optimal state of efficiency in terms of energy consumption.
Following the instructions of Sirious, Daron successfully completed the first step after 10 minutes of trying.
After that, he did nothing, and simply waited.
The next step involved the mage apprentice controlling their thoughts to reach a state where they have almost no thoughts.
Naturally, that was really hard for most people to do, even if they were able to complete the first step.
This was actually one of the main reasons why the total population of the entire continent had such a miserably low amount of Mages.
However, Daron did not give up, and slowly, one after another, his thoughts began fading away.
His joy of finally learning magic, his thoughts on dying, his feeling for his new and old family, all of them slowly faded away into nothingness.
However, just before he reached that point, his stomach began grumbling and a single thought completely filled up his mind.
'Food!'
"Bah!"
Daron exclaimed as he opened his eyes and grunted.
'What the hell. I was almost there!'
However, he soon came to realise something. He had woken up in the morning, with few rays of sunlight entering his room from the West. However, now, the golden rays had become deep orange and were coming in from the East!
'Sirious, how long was I doing this?' Daron questions as he had a strange feeling about the answer Sirious was about to give him.
[36 hours]
'What!? Why did you not wake me up?'
Sirious did not say anything, but simply replayed a scene in Daron's mind.
…
'Set a plan for me to reduce my breathing to 6 breaths per minute. Also, do not disturb me after I begin.'
[Understood]
…
Daron was simply speechless at this. He could not say anything, and he was left with being rather disgruntled, as well as full of wonder at how the meditation method has made time pass by so fast, yet had also allowed him to remain without any food or water for almost 40 hours, since the last time he had any was just before he went to sleep on the night that Sirious restarted.