"You see," Instructor Blair began to say, "Everyone here knows how you get stronger normally right?" Everybody in the crowd nodded their heads and the instructor continued. "Well tearing and rebuilding our muscles through your body's natural healing can only take you so far. You'll eventually reach a peak with just pure physical training."
Most everybody there knew that fact but he explained anyway. "Anyways, the only way increase the strength of your body past what the physical laws allow, you have to infuse yourself, your muscles, with mana." The trainees face were filled with curiosity hearing what the instructor said. "This is where lesser healing comes in. At its core, lesser healing, or any healing spell for that matter, is a spell which temporarily infuses the body with mana in order to accelerate, or even change, its processes. Once the spell is finished most of the mana will leave your body but in places where damage is healed trace amounts of mana will be left behind"
"Because it's impossible to directly infuse your body with mana, we use healing as a work around. Unfortunately this also means you will have to damage your muscles to get stronger."
"What!" Nine exclaimed quietly. Many of the other trainee's were shocked as well. It seemed as if he was encouraging self harm.
Seeing the shocked rookies' expressions, the instructor quickly explained himself. "You tear and damage your muscle fibers through physical exertion, like this small run you all just did. Under normal circumstances I'm all you would have a hard time walking tomorrow." Hearing this the rookies shock turned to understanding. "I trust that you all are smart enough to understand what this means." Instructor Blair said calmly. Everybody nodded their head at his words.
If one worked themselves to the point that their muscles will regenerate stronger through natural means and used a healing spell, small amounts of man would be infused in their muscles granting them strength beyond that of a normal human.
"Well now that you understand it's time for you to learn a simple stripped down version of lesser healing." He said looking around at the exhausted group, "But first I think I'll let you rest for a little while. You have half an hour to rest." It was an odd moment of kindness from his uncle but Nine took it graciously and quickly took a spot to lay down in the grass.
The rest of the trainees also went to the grass and formed small groups of people and began talking with each other. It seemed as if everybody had joined with a friend or two. The exception was the 3 standouts from earlier who stayed standing by themselves. Nine's own friend made his way over to the resting figure.
"Still tired?" Wit asked, looking down on Nine.
"My legs feel like noodles. Noodles that are on fire."
"Is that so." Wit replied with a slight chuckle. He then proceeded to take a seat next to where Nine was laying down. A cool gust blew through the grass which was nice considering the sun was reaching its peak and there was no shade around.
"Sooo..." Wit said trailing off, "You know anything about Magic?"
"Nope." Nine replied in a straightforward manner. "But it can't be that difficult to learn right." Nine's tone was confident. He was dedicated to making this exploring thing work and with Wit doing it with him it'd be all the better. "Who knows, maybe we'll be adept enough to become wizards." Nine suggested
"Yeah...I don't know about that but I guess it'd be cool." Wit replied. The two boys continued talking back and forth casually until the half hour was up.
"Times up." Instructor Blair shouted out. Everyone who had been talking with their friends stood up and turned to face him. "Since I'm going to assume a lot of you have no idea how magic works, I will briefly explain the theory behind how magic works." He continued on, "Magic, or mana is something that can break physical laws in numerous ways from simple earth manipulation to element or energy conjuration. Healing works on the basis of Energy conjuration, supplying your cells with a large amount of chemical energy to work with and making them forcibly repair your body at a faster rate."
'How strange' Nine thought to himself, 'It really makes the impossible possible'
"Now we as humans can't directly manipulate the world's mana so instead we use our innate prana, something we all have a certain amount of, to manipulate the world's mana for us. The scientific process still can't begin to make heads or tails of how visualization affects prana or why mana even works like it does but all you need to know is to visualize your prana manipulating the mana instead of you."
"Awfully complicated," one trainee muttered under his breath. Most of the trainees were perplexed by the instructor's explanation and it showed on their faces.
"Just keep that in mind and use the mana to supply energy to wherever it hurts the most. That's the basis of the spell." At his words Nine looked down at his legs which were in quite a bit of pain.
Nine closed his eyes and tried to imagine what his uncle had just said. He pictured a stream flowing through the air and ending at his legs. Within the stream tiny unseeable particles were pushed by the stream's current, down to Nine's leg. When they arrived the water of the stream crushed the tiny particles, making them release the energy within.
All this took place in his mind but as he visualized it, his legs began to feel better, albeit slowly. "Hey Wit." He whispered to his friend next to him. Wit was also trying to heal his legs but he was making weird hand movements as if to heal his leg that way.
"Hmm?" he mumbled
"I think I'm doing it." Nine said excitedly. Wit opened his eyes and looked over at his friends legs to see the space around them glowing with a soft green light.
"Woah." Wit said surprised. Nine could only stare at the green glow wondering how he managed to make it work. Seeing the glow indicative of an active healing spell, Instructor Blair made his way over to his Nephew.
"Hmmm, surprising." He muttered quietly while standing in front of Nine. Nine tried to guess what he was thinking but couldn't read his facial expression. "Mind if I..?" Instructor Blair said as he reached for Nine's shoulder as if asking to set his hand on it. Nine simply nodded
"Go ahead" he said. Instructor Blair rested his hand on his nephew's shoulder and proceeded to close his eyes.
"Hmmm..." He hummed. It was a mystery what he was think and his expression remained neutral. He opened his eyes and took his hand off Nine's shoulder.
'Well?' Nine thought
"You seem to be extremely skilled at controlling your prana." Nine's eyes widened excitedly hearing this . "But," He continued, "You have a surprisingly small amount of it."
"Oh'" Nine replied, looking a little dejected but perked back up quickly enough. 'Well, you take the good with the bad' He thought to himself. His Uncle gave him a smile.
"Work hard and you'll do well," he said sincerely.
At that moment Wit, who was just next Nine, began to emit a similar blue glow from around his own legs.
"Oh." Instructor Blair said surprised. He made his way over to Wit and asked him the same question. He said yes and Instructor Blair set his hand on Wit's shoulder and closed his eyes. Nine waited for him to open his eyes and say something.
Finally after a moment or two He opened his eyes and gave Wit a smile. "You are quite adept at controlling your prana and you have a decent amount of it too. You'll do just fine as well." He told Wit. In response he smiled and said thank you. Instructor Blair then took his hand off Wit's shoulder and went to see some of the other trainees who managed to create the colored glow.
"Sounds like you're pretty decent at using magic." Nine said to Wit after Instructor Blair had left.
"Yea," He replied joyfully, "Didn't sound like you were too bad yourself. You were the first to manage to activate lesser healing after all. Well except those three but they seem to be in a league of their own." He gestured over to the 2 boys and the girl who stood alone and seemingly already had lesser healing activated. They all had bored looks on their faces as if they had done this a thousand times.
"So you've noticed them as well?" Nine questions.
"Yeah. It's likely they come from some important family and had prior training. The only reason they're probably here is because the law requires any who want to leave Bastion to be checked by the Rookies Training Camp."
"Oh well. No point in worrying about other people. It's not like this is a competitive thing" Nine said nonchalantly. "Anyways," Nine said, kicking his legs outward and hopping up and down, "My legs feel much better. How about you?"
"Same." Wit replied, the bluish glow fading from his legs. "It's amazing that simple magic can really do such a thing. So many minor cuts and scratches that can be fixed in minutes."
"Yeah, I'm sure younger me would appreciate such a spell for all the times I skinned my knees and whatnot." NIne said with a chuckle. Nine looked back down at his legs. 'They feel not only better but stronger' he thought, 'So this is the power of infusing mana'.
Eventually another hour or so passed and everybody seemed to get the hang of the lesser healing magic at that point. Some struggled more than others but they all managed to get the hang of it all the same.
"Now that you have learned the basis of getting stronger it's up to you to train." Instructor Blair announced. "I guess I'll tell you now that we will be doing this run everyday from start to finish." Hearing this some of the trainees let out groans but most still remained silent. "You will use healing magic after every physical activity we do and hopefully by the end of this you will all be a little stronger physically and magically."
"Since that's all you had to do for today I'll lead you all to where you will be staying or the rest of the week." Said Instructor Blair, "Follow me." With that he began walking toward the same way from where they had come from and towards the amphitheater. The rest of the students slowly began following him in a small crowd. Finally they arrived at a small clearing.
Sitting in the clearing were 4 small wooden cabins. They were rickety in a sense as if they had stood for a couple decades.
"So this is where we'll be sleeping." Wit whispered, "Regret doing this yet?"
"Of course not." Niine replied, "In fact, I'm starting to look forward to it."