Lady Vena continued with a stern face, "I am taking this matter seriously, and so should you, because you can lose your life if you don't keep your mouth sealed about this situation. Do you understand the seriousness of this matter?"
He nodded quickly.
She was satisfied with his reply. She smiled and rubbed his unruly red hair. "That's good. Now start your exercise. It will help you regain control of your body quickly."
She picked up her black spear and stood. Then she said, "Your meal will be brought to you soon. You will also get your three pills so your training won't be delayed."
She began to leave, but he stopped and said, "I'll tell people that you're sick."
He thought about it and chuckled. "I'm sure that the neighbors will be glad to hear that."
His mother shook her head and smiled. Then she left him alone in the room.
With her gone, he thought back to what just happened and said, "I should be older than her, but she scares me sometimes. She looks like she has killed before."
He knows that killing is not a major thing here in the world of Ethera. In fact, there is no established legal system at all, much less one that forbids killing.
So killing is rarely called murder. But as a modern man, killing is still a crime he is not comfortable with.
He has done a lot of questionable things to achieve success in his last life, but he has never killed anyone directly. So the way his mother is willing to kill scares him a little bit.
Then he shook his head. "It is good that she is taking charge of things. I'll keep my secret from her while she helps me take care of the ones that I can't hide."
He stopped worrying and began exercising. This distracted him quickly because he found the exercises to be very easy.
He was truly flying through it. He is just a seven-year-old boy, but he has the strength of a bodybuilder and professional athlete, so the exercises that used to be problematic for him have become very easy.
The best part of his physical transformation is that it is all-encompassing.
A bodybuilder on earth would have uneven strength either in their arms, legs, or backs, depending on what they focused on during their exercise. They will have certain areas that they are lacking in, such as endurance and speed, but that is not so for him.
He also doesn't just have an advantage in endurance either. He is not like a runner who only knows how to run but not how to bench more than their body weight. He is a hybrid of a professional athlete and bodybuilder.
It is all thanks to mana in the air. According to general knowledge, mana, which is also called the energy of life, is what is responsible for transformations.
When those with potential add more mana to their bodies by being alive, or when those without potential add more mana to their bodies through exercising to increase their capacity for mana, mana will eventually reach a point of saturation that causes complete transformation.
So with his improvement to the second transformation, he has gained a boost to endurance, speed, physical defense, and strength. It is a wonderful experience that makes him feel as if he was shackled before and is flying now.
He had to increase the difficulty of his exercise by doing more push-ups and extending the time for planking and squats.
This increased the duration of his exercises, but it was only by an extra 30 minutes because his rest time had reduced from 10 minutes to 7 minutes.
So all in all, he exercised for four hours. Then he had his bath, ate, and took his pills.
He slept for four hours instead of five. Then he resumed his exercise, had his bath, ate, took pills, and slept again.
This continued the following morning when he woke up. The only difference was that it wasn't the maid that served him his food. It was his mother that brought the food to him.
He had just had his bath when he saw his mother being in a tray. This is something that maids do. To be specific, this is something that the maid who tried to help him up yesterday does.
So he asked curiously, "Mother, where is the maid?"
She replied as she dropped the tray off good in front of him, "She is busy."
That answer didn't satisfy him because even if that maid was busy, there were other servants in the house. There was even still the cook. It shouldn't be the turn of his mother to do something she has never done before.
So he asked, "Why are you bringing me my food?"
She replied with a straight face, "I wanted to use this opportunity to check up on you. Can't a mother check up on her son?"
He didn't believe her at all. Even if she was concerned about him and wanted to check up on him, she didn't need to use bringing him his food as an opportunity to do so. She can do so anytime she wants.
His mother saw that he didn't believe her. She said, "I just don't want anyone to come into contact with you until you can control your body."
He nodded in understanding. But then his eyes widened as he realized that his mother had lied about the maid being busy.
His mind began to conjure various possibilities about what had truly happened, all of which were worse than the last.
He was afraid to ask, but he was determined to find out, so he asked, "When you said the maid was busy, did you mean you..."
He didn't complete the question, but he did swipe his hand across his neck to indicate what he meant.
Lady Vena chuckled and said, "Who do you take me for? Some stone-cold butcher? No, I didn't kill her. I just sent her somewhere she wouldn't be spreading tales about you."