'How long was I asleep?'
[Establishing task]
[Time until completion: 0s]
[Task complete]
[29 days 14 hours 41 minutes 12 seconds]
'Huh… A lot longer than Pops expected, but that is fine. How much mana do I have in my body?'
[Establishing task]
[Time until completion: 0s]
[Task complete]
[The host should not have any left since all of it should have been used to support the body and keep the host alive. For a comprehensive analysis, it is suggested the host does a full body scan]
'But that uses mana… Well anyways, if it fails then I would know I have no mana left…' Kai thought to himself before telling the system to scan his body thoroughly.
[Establishing task]
[Time until completion: 10s]
[9]
[8]
…
[1]
[0]
[Task complete]
[The Host has exactly 3 Mana in the body. Mana is accumulated from the surroundings at 2% of the Mana in the atmosphere per minute. Current Atmospheric Mana is 10. It will take 1.67 hours for Mana to recover completely from having none in the body. Training can increase max mana. Absorbing External arts can also increase the max mana. 20 Mana is the host's current maximum]
[Host also has a scar on his right arm, stretching from the palm all the way to the chest. However, this has been hidden from sight through unknown means. However, it can be revealed if enough mana is inserted into it. The amount is not confirmed yet.]
'Well, this is good.' Kai thought as he had another sip of water and then laid back down on the ground. He continued this process of sitting up and having a sip of water every minute until he felt full.
Slowly standing up, Kai walked towards the metal doors of the training ground and pushed them open.
It had been about 2 hours since he woke up, and what Kai needed now was some food. Walking into the long passage which connected various rooms within the castle, Kai noticed something odd.
The normally bustling corridor was not completely deserted. There was no one here. Not a single maid or servant, not a single soldier or guest. No one.
Furrowing his brows, Kai decided to ignore this for now since his hunger was more important than this odd situation, and carefully made his way to the kitchen like a dying zombie.
Soon he found the kitchen, but that too was empty. Well, empty in terms of personnel. The food was all still there, and it would not seem too odd if one ignored the various pots and pans, and all the food which had all been thrown into the ground, and stepped over by a lot of people, likely most of the cooks and other personnel.
And Kai did exactly that; ignoring everything on the ground and heading straight for small soft bread on the wooden plates. He did not care if it was food meant for the soldiers, as he immediately took a bite.
However, he restrained himself and only took a single bite, putting it down and taking his time to swallow. Normally, it would take someone a few days to recover from dehydration, and a few weeks to recover from starving.
However, Kai had more or less recovered from dehydration within a few hours, and based on that, it would take him less than a day to recover from starvation.
His mana should also be at the full 20 by now based on the system's calculations, and Kai decided to try out the External Art he had just learned.
Normally, Kai would have waited until he was fully recovered before he tried this out. However, he was both extremely excited to try this out and was also under an invisible pressure. It was a feeling as though something wrong was going to happen soon, however, Kai's excitement had taken over that feeling of unease and converted it into more excitement, making him 'want' to try this technique out.
Although he did not know exactly how to do this, Pops had described the entire process to him before he ate the unknown flower petal. And so Kai followed his words, as well as what he had noticed during Pops' demonstration of the External Art.
'First, I must locate the Mana within my body' Kai thought to himself as he closed his eyes and felt around his body. The process was similar to how one could sense their body parts and where they were despite having their eyes closed, not just the external limbs, but also the lungs, the stomach, and others parts.
Similarly, Kai had to find the Mana within his body using this method. This was another reason for the requirement of having enough Mana in your body, other than not being able to supply enough energy to the External Art, you would also need enough Mana within your body to be able to sense it.
Unfortunately for Kai, he was not able to sense it despite having tried for over half an hour, so he decided to have some more food and keep trying.
Another three hours passed and Kai finally sensed the mana within his body. The moment he did this, he suddenly felt in control of the Mana. It was a similar feeling of having an additional limb which you only learned about now. Naturally, he had a rather awkward and rudimentary control over it.
But it was enough. Kai had another bite of the bread and then controlled the Mana in his body to perform the next step; which was to supply the runes carved into the palm with Mana.