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Days passed and Our protagonist continued honing his control over concentrating all his mana in his body in one spot.
Soon, it turned into weeks and he could now converge all his mana within an hour to his solar plexus.
His training had comprised of concentrating the mana, dispersing it, concentrating it and so on. The former took hours to accomplish while the latter was done within seconds.
It was like building a sand castle.
He had also gone to gather fruits and change locations only when he had completely concentrated all his mana inside his body as he didn't want an encounter like the one with rabbits again.
That one could have cost his life if he had made one mistake.
He even had a good level of control over the mana when he is sleeping or unconscious, such that not much goes away from his solar plexus.
About choosing solar plexus has the main point to gather mana? Well, it didn't really have any special feature other than the fact that it was near to middle of his body and could supply to all parts of his body.
The other factor is his meta knowledge and Chinese fics or novels he had read, which might lead to this bias.
Anyway, the solar plexus is not a unique place in his body for mana concentration as he could concentrate all of his mana at any point.
Our protagonist was currently sitting on a branch of a tree while biting on a red apple.
'These things are definitely tastier than my previous life, I could bet my pinky finger on it' He thought while taking another bite out of the apple.
He suddenly sensed a large explosion hundreds of meters away from his location.
This was not a new thing, as conflicts between stronger animals happened on a daily basis, but the thing that attracted his attention was that explosions were getting louder.
'Jeez, who is the being who can't let me eat in peace' He quickly swallowed the entire apple and focused on reducing his presence to utmost nothingness.
It has worked always till now for battles between stronger animals as they generally are not focused on their surroundings much compared to their enemies.
He still was prepared to run if his cover was broken in the unlikely situation.
However, soon the explosions suddenly stopped and calmed down completely.
'Did the battle get over? Or did a third party come making the other two stop fighting and choose peace as an option or something' He internally joked while trying to find something while looking at the direction from which sounds were coming.
A few minutes passed like this with no sounds coming, our protagonist hadn't moved an inch from his crouching position on the branch, hidden in the leaves due to his cautious nature.
'Should I move or wait a bit more?' He wondered about his next move.
"Oh, didn't expect a kid to be present here" A whisper-shout could be heard by the boy.
'What the fuck' Even without this thought materialized fully, he had moved his palm with a mana blade from where the voice came.
To his surprise, he felt the blade connecting.
He turned around to see what exactly was happening.
"Oh, you also have toys to play with? That really is an ingenious use of mana now" He looked at the spot where his mana blade had pierced and saw it hitting the palm of the speaker, yet, no scratch could be seen there.
'What the fuck, that thing could kill a normal human or mage more than 10 times, I didn't even feel any obstruction from mana, does this means that this is physical strength completely, like the durability of that body?' He was so baffled that he didn't even move.
He hadn't even looked at the face of the person who had sneaked upon him due to the absurdity of the situation.
"Well, you attacked me, so it's natural for me to attack you too, right?" He then saw the fist slowly coming at him.
No, slow would be a wrong statement, it was more like his brain was replaying the events of what happened slowly to him due to whatever happened during that time was very fast for his perception to catch up.
Just as the fist was a few inches away from his position, he released the maximum output of mana from his forehead forward such that the speed made him go backwards and his head downward.
He barely was able to dodge the punch.
Due to the sheer force of the punch, the air was thrust backwards, causing a loud boom to occur, he was hurled backwards due to that along with his initial momentum by mana burst.
He quickly back-flipped in the air and landed while doing a crouch and looked at the attacker with a grim expression.
'I almost died' His eyes widened as he finally noticed the attacker.
"It's Mereoleona fucking Vermillion" He blurted out as he noticed the attacker's face.
He didn't mind saying that out loud as during this moment, keeping his facial expression was very hard, and she would have deduced that he knew her beforehand already.
"Oh, you know me? I didn't know that my fame was that big now" She said in a chilling voice.
"I didn't know that either till now," He said while going over what exactly happened in the previous exchange.
"Still, didn't expect you to dodge that squirt, can you dodge this?" She disappeared from her spot and reappeared from above him, aiming an axe kick.
However, he had already mana burst out of the way before her kick landed on the ground and formed a crater.
'How annoying, not only I can't track her movements or mana, but her attacks could one-shot me' He ducked under another punch using mana bursts.
Despite doing only a few bursts, he was almost running out of mana, as each of them took too much mana as Mereoleona was too fast.
Soon, he was dangerously close to the bottom and stopped using mana bursts, making him not able to dodge the next move.
However, before it could land, she stopped the punch a few inches away from his face.
'Okay, as expected she won't kill me, I am sa-' He found himself getting a hit on his head from above.
"Ouch, what was that for?" he rubbed the part of his head, which was now resembling a bump.
"For attacking me earlier, what else" She smirked.
"You were the one who startled me like that, who sneaks on a kid?" He accused her while pointing his little fingers towards the big woman.
"I was expecting a spy or something, not a kid suppressing his mana fully, which most mages can't do properly" She shrugged.
"Tch, your flattery won't work on me, but I will forgive you just coz I am in a good mood" He rubbed his nose.
"Cool, kid so what are you doing here?"
"I am training duh" He took a moment to answer.
"In the middle of a grand magic zone?" She asked baffled.
She was brave/idiotic enough to go to jungles to train when she was young, but they never were grand magic zones.
"Oh, we are in a grand magic zone?" He asked baffled.
'No wonder I feel my mana rising when I ate those fruits, must be an effect of being raised in this region'
"As far as I know" She folded her arms. "How old are you?"
"I don't know" He shrugged. He didn't know the age of this body. Plus he didn't want to lie to Mereoleona, he had a feeling that she could tell if one was lying.
Plus she was a captain-level magic knight, she should be able to detect those due to some random way or just her experience.
"Oh, let's see, you seem like a 9-year-old to me, unfortunately, I don't have a spell to check that" She gave him her estimates.
"Oh, that seems young"
"Indeed, so? Would you now say why are you here?" She asked him
"Do I really have to?" he made a face which spoke troublesome.
"I might not look like it, but I am a magic knight, so helping people unfortunately comes under my duty, and I am curious enough"
'Oh, so she is self-aware, that she looks more like a thug than a magic knight' He thought and immediately got a bonk.
"Ouch, I didn't even say anything"
"Your expression says it all" She gave him an unimpressed stare.
"Well, I woke up being in a cage, with some other people in similar cages and a jailer who was transporting us in a carriage, all people were below the age of 15 as they didn't have a Grimoire, and the jailer had one"
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