"This is the more direct of the two, so I hope this works." He activated the spell he just learnt to see if the easier solution was the appropriate one.
The mana flowing in his head rushed into both his brain and eyes. It started to settle in certain patterns, with parts of it being more active than others. Some groups of mana were circulating around his brain, some were stationary but vibrating rapidly, others seemed frozen in time, only serving as structural support for the spell. He didn't know how, but these many different applications of mana that looked like they had nothing to do with each other came together to form the spell he was trying to use.
His pupils started faintly glowing a light blue as he used the basic spell 'Mana sight' which allows the user to see the flow of mana around them. It was a watered down version of the advanced spell 'Mana sense', but his perception wasn't good enough to achieve something like that.
"Hopefully this works because I am not sensitive enough to use Mana sense." Mana sense was the only other solution; if Mana sight didn't work, he was out of luck.
"Okay let's do this." He activated the skill [Body strengthening] as it was a very basic skill. It uses mana to strengthen the body, increasing your stats. No fire balls, no teleportation, no clones. Mana to strength, that's it.
After a while of looking at it, he didn't see what he wanted to.
"F*ck, this isn't going to work." With Mana sight he could see that a skill was being used, but that's all he could see. The mana around him was warped slightly by the skill, but as a third party, there was no way of telling what the skill was.
It was very two dimensional, but that wasn't what the spell was supposed to be used for. To a normal mage, the way in which mana flows is very critical information as they could use mana more efficiently by taking advantage of it. Mana is always present and always moving, like the ocean. And like the ocean, there are waves and currents of mana that flow in a particular direction at any given time. No one knows why mana does this, but being aware of it and more importantly using it appropriately has saved the lives of mages, cultivators and awakened for centuries.
Depending on how you use it, it would be like swimming against the current or riding on the waves. Both ways will get you to your destination but one is much safer, faster and efficient.
Sighing to himself he went with his only other option "This isn't detailed enough, Mana sense it is I guess."
He couldn't do it now, but with a bit of practice he believed that he could grasp it. After all, his talent made him learn things easier than other people. There were no limits to his growth and although that didn't directly increase his power, it did make it easier to gain strength. Plus there was the other effect of his talent, +1% per level, he didn't know what all it applied to but he could bet that it would work on mana sense.
"Then how exactly do you do this?" He looked it up and found that increasing your natural sensitivity to mana is very simple. You force your mana out of your body while keeping control over it and not letting it disperse. Using your own mana to mingle with the ambient mana, you would eventually gain an understanding of it, increasing your control of mana outside your body. The further away you can control mana, and the greater the detail, the greater the distance of your perception.
It was less of seeing mana and more like feeling. By using both your own mana as well as your control over ambient mana, one can construct a 3D image of their surroundings and if focused well, he could theoretically see how other people use mana and mimic it.
"It's considered mana sense if you can perceive everything in a 100 meter radius huh. That sounds like a far distance but I guess it's a goal." With nothing better to do, he started his perception practice. This may be a difficult activity for normal mages, but all of his mana is always available. There was no mental strain in converting it to liquid, no struggle in controlling it as a liquid and ever since the day that he perceived mana, he had been practicing his control.
What was an advanced ability for others was just an extension of his already present capabilities, and naturally he picked it up very quickly.
"Damn, Four hours huh." He said it with a look of dissatisfaction on his face as he looked at the time on his pc. "Guess I can't complain if I succeeded in the end, even if it took a long time."
This was a blinding fast speed, comically so. Because others have a problem with keeping their mana liquid, practicing perception for four hours was not only impossible, but even if they could it would still take a few months to achieve what he just did.
100 meters of perception is a milestone for any mage, be it awakened or mundane. It wasn't as simple as sensing mana 100 meters away; at that point it goes through a metamorphosis, changing from something fairly basic to something much more complex.
After spreading his mana to 100 meters around him and fully perceiving mana that far away, it was like a switch flipped in his head. It was like going from simply knowing if there was light or not , to seeing a full color 16k block buster. Like having to read with braille to having x-ray vision.
"That's a jarring transition but I'm not complaining. I can 'see' everything in 100 meters, maybe slightly more now that I am focusing on it. Guess that's +1% per level for you, how do I even increase my level though. John said that it depends on your understanding of your talent, but that doesn't really help me. My talent is always on, I can't turn it off even if I wanted to." He may have a large, ever fulling reserve of mana, but with his level of control, mana sense was feasting on his mana. He could only use it for maybe 10 minutes before running out of mana so he had no choice but to deactivate his new found sense.
He looked outside and saw that the sun was directly above him and sighed at how long it took him to grasp 'Mana sense'. He may have been the fastest to ever achieve it, but he just had no time frame for these things. Magic isn't taught in schools as there is no one size fits all solution and he never had a teacher.
All that he knew was that to achieve his goal of flying through the sky like a blazing phoenix hinged on whether or not his range of perception could reach 100 meters or not. And in his opinion 4 hours was a long period of time.
He activated [Body strengthening] again to see if Mana sense could solve his problem and was shocked. Using mana sense was even more detailed than when he vaguely tried to mimic the flow when using a skill. If before he was rather surface level, then now he was deep in the wood works and knew exactly how the skill worked.
"That makes the recreation easy, but [Body strengthening] is a very basic skill. I doubt it would be as easy for an advanced skill like [Flaming Body]. The only way I could recreate it is if I could observe someone who uses the skill, but I don't know if that's even legal."
He scoffed at his last statement. "When have I ever cared if something was legal?"
"But I'm stuck until I find someone who knows it or something similar. From what I have seen spells that are close enough are practically the same except for the element used. What do I do now?"
He looked around his room and noticed the skill book that was sitting on his desk for a month now, waiting for him to learn it.
"Oh wait, how could I forget about [Inventory]? It would be so convenient if I knew it."
He rushed over and before he blindly learned it like the other skills, what Guild Master Lotus told him the day before rang in his head.
"If she is trying to teach me how to ride a bike without the training wheels, then why am I here practicing with them on. This is the perfect opportunity to test if I can mimic a skill I haven't learnt."
He opened the book and with a combination of 'Mana sight', 'Mana sense' and pouring the tiniest amount of mana in it to activate the words, he tried to understand how it manipulated mana to create its effect.