Both of them spent quite a lot of time to warm up and train their bodies, working up quite a sweat. Samuel did as much bodily training he could, improving stamina and muscles with whatever activites he could come up with.
While Ulma did the same, although slightly less as she had less stamina than he did inherently, mostly because he had spent quite a lot of time improving it when he trained his sword skills, Faleah grinded into him all kinds of tough training no matter the weather, to be a strong swordsman you also needed some muscles and other training. He had also worked at a lumbermill for more than a year, so he had always been quite strong. But recently it felt like his body was on the verge of evolving even further.
He kept running and doing pushups for a while longer, while Ulma had sat down and started meditating. Connecting to the forest in her mystical ways that Samuel couldn't quite understand yet. He assumed it was simillar to how he connected himself to the world mana, almost like finding the correct rythm of breathing.
Soon enough Samuel had ran himself out of stamina and sat down to rest for a bit. Night had silently been watching the entire time, enjoying herself some nice shade under some trees. She wasn't the only one spectating either, plenty of natures creatures held their distance and looked.
After catching his breath for a while he quickly found some fruit and water to consume, funnily enough it was assembled on a table that had magically formed out of tree branches. He didn't know wether it was Ulma's doing or the tree, he did of course take some time to check that it was actually edible and drinkable, his last encounter with grove trees was not so pleasantly remembered.
But it turned out fine, so he then turned to his rythmic breathing and started inhaling and exhaling before finding the correct rythm quite fast. He was more than used to it by now, he literally started inhaling the mana in the air. Calling upon it to come to enter his body.
He had not used much mana so he didn't take more than a full breath or two. Before looking at his surroundings again, it was quite a large circular grove after all... so he had plenty of space to train his moves. Samuel casted the flight spell and the gravity spell that he had used to catch up to the dragon Sonya, on himself.
He slowly started hovering in the air before hovering back down and using the ground as a starting point he reared his body down almost as if to take a running start. With a single thought and push off the ground with his feet he created a shockwave that broke the soundbarrier behind him as he flew forward really fast.... too fast.
"Woooah!" He suddenly reared his hands forward like a shield as he crashed through several trees on the other side of the grove breaking many branches in the go. He managed to get out of it fine with just scratches and bruises, because the gravity spell was of intricate design that would break the laws of physics if it wasn't for the magic supporting it.
The gravity spell made his body essentially weightless, but it was more like a body tight barrier of gravity that negated his gravity inside of it but carried all the mass and force on the outside. Even as a spell many would be confused by how it worked, it was the type of spell that only 0.1% of mages would ever succeed at creating.
But Samuel had a very good understanding of how his body would work with magic because he was a walking conduit of mana for the world. The breathing technique also inadvertedly helped reveal more in depth how magic could be used.
Samuel groaned and stood up feeling the bruises on his body. "Ow..." He sighed out slowly. He had lost concentration on both spells from the impacts, 'Here we go again!' he inwardly thought to himeself and casted both spells again.
This time he planned to not push away as hard, but alas that did not help as he flew back in the opposite direction and crashed into more trees, losing concentration and focus once again. The same story repeated itself for several more tries, he had to stop and use his mana breathing to replenish the spells that consumed his mana.
After continuing to fail for about two hours and getting more bruises on his body he took a few more minutes to relax again. He was amazed that Ulma still sat there meditating, with small branches around her arms. It's like she had heard none of his struggles or managed to completely block it out.
He thought to himself that since she was trying so hard that he shouldn't stop either. He took some breaths worth of mana and casted the spells again, this time he would almost instantly prepare to reshift his direction as soon as he made the first. He reared himself back and hunched over slightly towards the ground and cast off.
The minute he cast off he instantly reshaped the magic and used the flight spell to almost kick himself in another direction, he once more hit tree branches and leaves but managed to land on his feet as his speed had exponentially been halved. He slid for a few more meters before stopping. He was so surprised that he dropped his spells again.
He had kicked the air with his spell and instead of crashing right into trees he had reached the end of one side of the clearing and the kick had changed his angle in a 90 degree angle. Making him fly to another side of the grove with less speed. Night came out of a nearby shadow and looked at him with a toothy grin, "It seems like moving so suddenly in another direction halves your speed but it is still very quick. My question is why don't you start by practicing those moves above the trees?"
To which Samuel looked at her and slowly started nodding, "That might be a better idea!" He said after a while. He took a minute to get his bearings right before looking up into the open sky, recasting his spells he took to the skies this time and stopped about twice as high up as the highest tree.
What followed was another hour of several shockwaves from breaking the soundbarrier occuring in the skies above the grove, he trained his general mobility in several directions. Switching direction suddenly always slowed down the overall speed but it was an amazing tool nonetheless.
After he started feeling tired and his mana felt like it was running out he decided to land, it took him a short while to find the correct place again as he had flown about and almost gotten lost, but it wasn't too hard to find a huge open grove in the middle of a forest. Night had rejoined his shadow when she realized he would be flying far away. So the moment Samuel landed she jumped out of his shadow again.
Samuel walked over to the table and sat down in the grass and looked at Ulma who was still seated in the same place. He did not want to disturb her so he sat there in silence and allowed himself to rest for a while.
"You are quite the interesting one!" A deep voice suddenly spoke. Samuel turned in its direction and saw nothing, saw nothing until it moved. Blending in with the trees and leaves a large dragon slowly came walking into the grove. Samuel instantly raised his guard as he processed in his mind.
(A forest dragon, usually very kind as long as you don't disturb the woods, guardians of nature...)
He relaxed a little bit where he had jumped up ready for a fight. "No worries, I do not mean you any harm... you are someone the queen cares for... a lot!" The scaly brown green dragon slowly walked into the grove and walked past Samuel before lying down nearby.
"How do you know that...?" Samuel questioned when he felt no animosity or danger from the dragon. "In human tounge you would call me, Ber Asgarox and I know because you smell like one another... but it's strange! You smell simillar to the life tree in this grove, distant but simillar!" The dragon slightly shook its head before laying it down in the grass.
"She is my teammate and partner, my thief, my queen!" Samuel responded and the forest dragon exhaled before sighing. "Please do try and keep forest damages to a minimum or we will have a problem!" The dragon snorted before starting to sleep.
Samuel nodded, one of the reasons he had trained his control over the spells movements up in the air was so that he would be able to fly around without crashing into things in the grove. But he still had a long way to go.
Some rest and then some more training! Ulma had also started channeling magic at that point. Slowly training her own control of the magic forces of nature.