In the following year that I discovered my two magical attributes, wind and lightning, I continued to develop my mana control and my spellcasting. This was key. Gaining adept control and understanding of your attributes allows for more confidence and a less shackled thought process that freezes up in a tense or stressful environment.
Also, it set up another thing that was necessary for me to acquire before I enrolled at the academy. An essential step to destroying that shitty undeserving Hero!
So during that year, I celebrated my 11th birthday and there was officially only five years left before the start of the game. My body had made good progress physically, to the point I could easily run up a mountain in a fairly short amount of time without sweating. My muscles were also starting to tone up, but the amount of mass on my body was still limited due to my age and small composition.
There was another thing I started to progress with, in terms of my physique.
Conditioning the body!
And no, I don't mean more cardio. When I say conditioning the body, I refer to what Muay Thai practitioners from my world did. That being hitting trees continuously with their fists, elbows, knees and shins to harden and condition their bodies.
And so day by day, I began spending roughly two hours purely hitting the bark of the same tree with my body till it bled and bruised.
It hurt like a bitch, but I knew it was vital that I raise my body physically to its peak just in case my mana training either slowed down or I struggled to perform it even with the accumulated knowledge and theory about it.
However, that wasn't the highlight of this years training. I finally built enough mana control and studiously expanded my mana reserves. It was time to embark on the journey of learning mana enhancement.
Or in this world known as, Armis.
Armis is the application of mana externally to support the users body. Armis can also be used on weapons and armour that the user wears, but that depends on mastery of the users ability with Armis.
And so grabbing one of the horses from our stables, I headed for the forest just a kilometre past our house. It was a quiet place without animals and I didn't have to worry about destroying anything there. It was the perfect place to begin learning.
After dismounting the brown and white patched stallion, I firmly tied it to a tree and fed it an apple. It's hooves slowly lifted and fell as it announced its pleasure.
"Now stay here, boy. I'll be back once I'm finished." I proceeded to leave the horse and delved further inside.
The luscious green that intercepted the rays of sunlight created a dark and cool shadow within; only apertures of light slipping past.
"This spot should be more than good enough."
I then astutely planted my feet slightly separated, and took deep breaths in and let deep breaths out.
Soon, the ivory light of mana filtered from me, roaring like a calm storm ready to pounce at any moment. The ambient mana around me began reacting, hoarding at me with unrivalled vigour as I haltingly started the process of exerting my mana as a coating layer.
The white and blue aura growing from me exerted unevenly, in certain places spiking with more power concentrated and others areas simply malnourished without mana. The stamina this process extended was far more draining than I could have imagined, and unable to evenly distribute Armis, I cut off the mana.
"Ughhh..." I winced in pain. "Armis is even harder to maintain than I thought. But it shouldn't be that my mana reserves are too small, it seems to be more or less the case of me wasting mana because I can't manage the shape of Armis. The image of mana simply coating me has discrepancies or just isn't strong enough and seems to cause an overload of mana in certain places. But how do I fix, let alone approach this?" My mind wandered off to the events of the game.
From the knowledge I remember in the game, our Hero first learned Armis during his fist year at the academy in the 2nd semester. Armis was explained as mana that had been manipulated externally to work as a cloak that enhances the users physical abilities.
"Fuck! Why did the protagonist have to pick Armis up just like that!? Because of his fucking plot armour there were no other hints about Armis!! It just went straight to applying an attribute to Armis by using a mental image to harness the...power. Oh my fucking Goddess, that's it!"
I immediately returned to filtering my mana through my body and luring it outside to begin wrapping me like a cloak.
If I can't envision Armis with just pure mana, why don't I learn Armis in reverse? Substituting the form of pure mana for either of my attributes that I excel constructing an image for and executing them might just be the trick to help me form it.
The azure and snow-white aura began manifesting around me erratically and as the ambient mana continued to fuel my endeavour, I slowly began changing the output of my mana.
"Let's try lightning first!"
My eyes snapped open and a blitz of ethereal lightning coursed around my body, clinging to my unstable aura that gradually soothed. It's haphazard movements decreased and the illustration of myself coated in a cloak of lightning exteriorised.
The intense process of building mana halted as I looked around.
"I did it. I fucking did it, I'm a genius!"
My body felt sharper, more sensitive, stronger, sturdier. This was the application of body enhancements.
Armis!