After spending a good 30 minutes convincing the guardian beast to not disclose his actions to the adults in Rito, Loren made his way back home exhausted. It turned out the mana surge did use ALL of his mana, he felt lethargic as to walked home, remembering to wash his hands and clean his clothes to not worry his parents.
Arriving home at 3 in the afternoon, Loren devoured a late lunch mixed with an early dinner before shutting himself in his room, his stomach expanded 3 times. He sat on his bed and impatiently pulled his notebook out of his bag, beginning to read the mana mastery technique, but he was stopped by Salrie.
"Wait, before you start tell me, what path do you want to choose?" Loren tilted his head.
"Path? Like becoming a knight or mage? You tell me, I don't know every path, only a few. I don't even know what a path is truthfully."
"A path is essentially the different directions of how to use mana and transcend your humanity, a knight will use weapons, a mage spells, though I'm severely simplifying it. When a person starts to master their mana, they usually decide what path they want to tread first, this is because many mana mastery techniques create a bias in your body, leaning to certain paths and making it easier to enter that path in the future." Loren nodded his head attentively as Salrie explained.
"There are actually an infinite amount of paths as there are an infinite amount of ways to use mana, but the orthodox paths in Saltera are knights, who use their mana in tandem with arms, mages that can cast a variety of earth-shaking spells, elementalists focusing on controlling an element of their choice, barbarians able to enhance their bodies to the highest degree possible, augmenters replacing their body parts with beasts and beast tamers which is self-explanatory. There are also prophets, but I doubt you'd want to become one."
Loren's eyes widened as he learned how vast mana usage was.
"Is it possible to multi-class, take more than one path? Just taking one path seems fairly basic and boring." Salrie pinched her brow.
"Sigh... You shouldn't decide your path based on how boring it seems, but yes, people with an abundance of mana can choose 2 paths reducing their strength to gain more variety in their abilities, though it's not recommended." Salrie looked Loren up and down holding her chin.
"From what you showed before, you have an extremely large amount of natural mana, so much so that it wouldn't decrease your strength too much if you did walk 2 paths. Usually, even in a mana surge, your mana shouldn't be visible when you use it, especially for a 9-year-old boy. But for now, you should focus on just one."
"Sweet! Now what path is this manual for?" Loren waved the notebook in his hand.
"It should be for knights, barbarians or physical elementalists, which isn't too bad since you've already learned some swordsmanship correct?" Loren nodded his head.
"Alright, becoming a knight as my first path sounds good, I already planned to become one. I'll start reading now." Loren opened the notebook to the first page and began to read.
Before teaching Loren any techniques the manual first summarized the stages a person had to go through before walking their path. The first, named the breathing stage, was about using body enhancement in a more complicated way, unevenly distributing mana and focusing on sending more to selective parts of your body.
The second, the storage stage, forces your mana to acclimate to one part of your body that correlates to the path you chose, permanently keeping your mana there even in a mundane state.
The final stage was the bond stage, where a person will link their mana to a foreign source of mana, changing their body and entering a path. Once they were in their path knights would gain the title of Weapon Master.
Knights focused on sending their mana into their muscles, strengthening their body, before linking themselves to their chosen weapon, creating a permanent bond with their weapon. The manual's approach for the first stage was fairly simple, doing fisted push-ups and jumping when you were at the apex, activating your mana at the last moment before landing. This was meant to temper your fists, the pressure in your arms would lead your mana to direct a larger amount to your hands. This was meant to be done until one could feel their mana moving through their body, then consolidating that feeling and trying to replicate the action while static.
The bias created in this technique made it easier to send mana to your muscles, but harder for the rest of your body. Salrie stated that mages and external elementalists send mana to the mind, while augmenters and beast tamers send mana to their bloodstream and bones.
Loren immediately went into a push-up position and began to use the technique but after the first push-up...
*SLAM*
Loren instantly went unconscious, his face hitting the floor.
...
"That was mana surge, not body enhancement dummy. Overuse of it drains you of all your energy." Salrie slowly shook her head.
***
Loren woke up the next day to find his parents next to him, concern on their faces.
"Loren my dear! What happened to you, we found you lying asleep on the ground yesterday, you had blood all over your face!" Loren's mother quickly pulled him into a hug while his father gently grabbed his shoulder, the two had been unmoving beside his bed the entire night, bags under their tired eyes.
'So much for not worrying them...'
"I-I have no idea Mom, I was just exercising in my room yesterday when well... look." Loren raised his hand and spread his mana throughout his body, this time to a lesser extent, only activating body enhancement. Blue wisps rose from his body, though thinner than the ones before, causing his parents' expressions to go from worry to amazement.
"B-body enhancement?! How?! You're only 9!"
"Could it be our boys a genius?! Hahaha, my son's a genius, that's the only explanation!"
While Reana was worried, Riot was excited since he knew what this meant. Their town had a special class for aspiring knights, but the fees would have taken a good bite out of the family's savings, it wasn't impossible to pay for them but now that Loren had activated his mana earlier there wasn't a need. If a child proved to be a genius knight the town could half the tuition in hopes they could go no to bring the town fame, his previous talent with the sword coupled with being able to use mana 3 years early meant Loren was guaranteed the scholarship.
"Haha! You've always wanted to become a knight didn't you Loren? We were going to wait until you were 12 to send you to class but now you can go right away!" Riot picked up the child and pulled him into an aggressive bear hug in pride, forgetting his tired state.
"W-wait, Dad!"
"Riot! Put him down he was just unconscious!" Riot laughed before placing Loren on his bed, then he felt his eye twitch.
Loren had fallen unconscious again.
***
After waking up, Loren discovered it was already 1 PM, his father quickly apologised to him while his mother told him they were going to bring him to meet a teacher from the school, hoping to land Loren a scholarship.
Dressing up in his most presentable clothes, Loren was brought over to the school building. It was the largest building in town, spanning an entire 500 meters in length and width, albeit a large portion of its grounds were flat open training areas. Loren looked at the school in excitement, seeing multiple students practising their swordsmanship, sparing or running laps around the field. He'd always walk past the building imagining when he'd join, not knowing he'd be able to enter a whole 3 years early.
While Loren was staring in excitement, Salrie hovered behind him with a weary expression. According to her, she was unable to sleep unless Loren deactivated her summoning, meaning she'd been awake the entire time he was passed out.
Riot went forward to the guards in front of the school to explain the reason they'd come, after a quick discussion one of the two guards headed inside to ask the teacher for permission. When the guard went up to the teacher in the field and pointed to the family, some of the students paused their training to look over, curious about what was happening.
"Don't stop! Continue, I'll return shortly. Lory, watch over my students." A female teacher nodded her head while the man walked over the building, beckoning Loren to follow.
The inside of the school was fairly mundane, with grey walls lined with wooden weapons and various equipment. There were 2 classrooms, one each for students below and above the age of 12, each room was filled with wooden desks and chairs, with a large oval arena at the front of the class meant for demonstrations and small spars. The man was completely silent as they walked, making the trio feel awkward, once they arrived at the door of an office the man turned to the family.
"I hope you didn't lie, I hate to waste my time and it would cost you a fine" The family quickly nodded.
The man led them into the office and motioned them to sit down before standing in front of Loren, extending his hand.
"Give me your hand and activate body enhancement, I can feel your mana with my own." Loren only smiled.
"No need, look." Blue wisps came out of his body, making the man's eyes widen, he realized Loren wasn't just an early bloomer but an absolute monster in terms of natural mana capacity.
"Heh, 2 geniuses in a year, it seems our town has had a windfall." He then looked towards Riot and Reana.
"Could you quickly leave the room? I need to ask your boy some private questions regarding the school, it would be better if you weren't present."
Riot and Reana hesitated, wondering what questions couldn't be asked in front of two but agreed regardless. Once it was just the two of them, the man looked at Loren with a serious expression.
"Boy, how did you activate your mana early? What circumstances were you in?" Loren said the same story he gave his parents.
"I-I was just in my room exercising when I suddenly felt it happen, I don't know the cause."
"Are you lying to me, child? Be aware that you're parents can't hear our conversation." Loren tilted his head in confusion but panicked when he understood what he was hinting towards.
"What?! N-NO, my parents would never lay a hand on me-"
"So you knew how to activate mana surge? You did it yourself didn't you?"
'Crap, he got me!'
Loren scratched his head before meekly nodding.
"Did you ask Bort how he could control mana? What you did was very stupid boy, 3 years of early training is not worth risking your life. I'd usually kick you out of the building immediately, but..."
"But?" Loren's lowered head looked up.
"But you're talent is worth letting you join, if you didn't know you have a very high amount of natural mana, absurd almost. I can admit you into the school but never do such an idiotic thing again, I'll be telling every teacher to watch over you. Understand?" Loren exhaled in relief.
"I understand."
'Salrie wasn't lying about them regulating information about mana surge...'
"Good, though you're probably lying. It will take a bit to prepare your uniform and classes, so you can join in a week, next Monday. You'll be entering the above 12 class, congratulations. I'm the school principal, Rito, I am a knight in the bonding stage."
"You're name is Riot... Rito?" All of the previous tension left Loren's body.
"Pfft!" Salrie held back a chuckle while Rito only frowned.
"I came to Rito when I was already an adult, call it bad luck."
'He has it worse off than my parents.' Loren left slightly sorry for the poor man.
"Regardless that's not the point of this conversion, go outside and inform your parents to prepare your tuition, it's half of the original 1 gold, so 50 silver." Loren smiled and saluted to the teacher.
"Yes Sir Rito Rito Sir!"
Rito's frown increased, his body releasing killing intent.
"That mouth of yours will get you killed one day child."
"He's right you know." Salrie agreed.
'Haha... Worth it.'
Loren walked out to the hall in order to tell his parents the good news.
He was thrilled to join the school, not only because was it his dream but because it was a fast track to the Academy!