Aryn had made his decision. His first trait would be Energy. He believed it was the only correct decision in a world where magic — an energy — decided everything.
Getting up from the desk, he made his way to his bed and laid down before starting to gather ambient mana toward his heart. He found it easier to focus while laying down rather than sitting up.
One thing Aryn could now say for certain was that his Crystal heart would have a far higher range than a Conduit at every stage of saturation. This would be a massive advantage in terms of both combat and sensory abilities.
Unfortunately this incredible boon had a rather unfortunate side effect. He realized that the amount of ambient mana he needed to push into his Crystal Heart to cause the stored mana to overflow was increasing too fast.
It wasn't a problem yet. But eventually, even all the ambient mana within the vast range that his heart provided him wouldn't be enough to continue to saturate it any further.
This didn't mean he could never fully-saturate it. It only meant that the density of ambient mana around the manor was insufficient to do so. He would have to go somewhere else when he got close to full saturation.
'That should work out. I would probably already be at one of the academies by then anyway.'
Until then, he would have to be diligent. If he wasn't, it would take him so long to reach Mage that he would already be too far behind to call those his own age his peers.
This may not seem like that big of an issue, he was mentally much older than them, after all. But it wasn't that simple unfortunately. At the academy — regardless of which one he went to — he would meet the children of many people in high places.
While he wouldn't be manipulating children to get what he wanted — that simply wasn't his style — he may be able to get access to better resources through their parents if he plays his cards right.
*knock* *knock*
He was interrupted from saturating his Crystal Heart by Michelle gently knocking on the door to his room.
"Dinner's ready." She called through the door.
"Coming!" He got up and headed down to the dining room.
***
Sitting at the dining table with a full belly and an empty plate before him, Aryn looked over to his mom.
"Can you teach me to fight now, Mom? My body is healthy again."
There were a few reasons he was so eager. First, he had decided on Energy as his trait. He couldn't take full advantage of that if he didn't know how to fight up close.
Second, since it would take him a long time to reach Mage, melee combat would be a staple for him until then weather he liked it or not.
Finally... He had just always wanted to. Hand to hand combat was undeniably cool.
His mother looked him over scrutinizingly. She did want her son to learn to fight like her, but she wouldn't teach him at a detriment to his health.
After scanning him a little longer and finding nothing wrong, she acquiesced.
"Okay, but if I'm going to train you to fight, I'm going to do it right. I won't let you slack off. So be prepared for that and meet me in the back after breakfast tomorrow." Those words were rather intimidating coming from her.
Aryn nodded to his mother and thought, 'This'll probably suck for the first month or two...'
If Emilia had known her son's thoughts, she would've thought it cute that he believed it would ever not suck.
***
As promised, Aryn met his mother in the yard by the pond after breakfast.
She was in her training clothes; a simple t-shirt and shorts. Both were gray and made of a material that was easy to clean. She had given him a similar set of clothes to put on this morning.
Seeing him wearing them, she nodded. "Good, let's start with a jog. Do 50 laps around the pond."
Aryn looked over at the pond. A lap was about 100 meters... A five kilometer jog was quite a warmup.
Regardless, he started without complaint. The way he saw it, as long as he didn't die, any exercise would just make him stronger in the long run. That was one of the upsides of having a Mage Heart. Or in his case, a Crystal Heart.
As he started the laps, Aryn expected to end them half-dead. But strangely, even as he approached his 30th lap, he didn't even feel a little winded. His Crystal Heart was only beating once every three seconds instead of four.
At his 40th, his legs were aching, but that was the only change.
By the time he finished his "warmup" of 50 laps, his legs were shaking and felt like they were about ready to fall off, but his breath was even and his heartrate went back to one beat every four seconds within half a minute.
He was sure this wasn't normal. A Mage Heart does help immensely during physical training, but it wasn't described as anywhere near this level. He felt like he had superpowers.
'That's a stupid thought... I do have superpowers.' Telekinesis definitely counted.
"Good, that was better than I thought. Now we start the real training!" As he watched his mom flex her muscles at him and say this, he started to feel dread.
***
Aryn lay in the grass, his limbs now noodles. His mother had caught on that he simply didn't seem to tire about half an hour in and the grin that appeared on her face would give Aryn nightmares for years to come.
She had made it clear with both words and actions that if he couldn't be tired, he would be worked until his muscles couldn't hold him up anymore.
He had actually reached that point over an hour ago. But he had the genius idea that he could practice telekinesis at the same time as he trained his body. He lowered his weight just enough to continue until his body reached the absolute limit that it was capable of.
Using telekinesis on living beings was much harder than inanimate objects. Aryn wasn't exactly sure why, but that fact made this method a particularly effective one for practice.
'This was certainly a good workout, but I want to learn to fight. How can I do that if I can't stand up?' With great effort, he turned his head over to his mom, who was doing squats while holding a stone that looked really quite heavy.
"Mom, I thought I was supposed to learn to fight hand to hand?"
She stopped and dropped the rock in her arms with a loud *thud* on the grass, leaving a dent.
"You will, but not until your body is up to my standards. Until then, get used to laying on the grass." She smirked down at him and picked the big rock back up before continuing her squats.
'Everything's going to hurt in the morning.' He wasn't looking forward to it.
At least he still had lunch and dinner to look forward to. He was promised an especially large and delicious diet from now on. Dunn would have his work cut out for him, that was for sure.
***
The rest of the day was taken up by lessons with his dad, eating a disturbing amount of food for his size, and saturating his Crystal Heart with mana. When it came time to turn in for the night, Aryn slept like the dead.
To his great surprise and no small amount of joy, he woke up feeling perfectly fine the next day. This time he wasn't sure if that was normal for a Mage Heart or his version was once more proving its superiority.
That wasn't what was at the forefront of his mind though. Instead, he was wondering how far he could push this borderline miraculous recovery of his.
'If I take a nap after lunch, could I then go right back to working out before dinner?'
In his previous world, that would have caused more harm than good. But in Tellar, things were different.
There was a problem with that idea though. There were only so many hours in a day. It would bite into the time he spent saturating his heart, and that was paramount.
He did have an idea to get around this though. It was simply to do both at the same time. This wasn't the first time he had this idea by any means, but it was so difficult to pull off that he wasn't sure it was actually possible.
'No harm in trying again, I guess.' He shrugged and got out of bed to do his morning stretches before breakfast.
When he was done, he slowly made his way down to the dining room while simultaneously attempting to gather enough mana into his heart to saturate it.
It was an uphill battle. He had trained extensively to split his attention and use telekinesis on multiple objects at once, but this was different.
The ability to walk upright was an underappreciated ability of humans. The number of muscles you use just to take a single step numbers around 200. Normally, when you walk, you use these 200 muscles subconsciously.
This wasn't quite the case when focusing on sensing mana for one simple reason, balance.
Sensing mana was a taxing process on the brain, and as a result, your other senses would dull when sensing ambient mana. Balance especially suffered from this in comparison to one's other senses.
To compensate for this, Aryn had to learn to compensate for the lack of balance by focusing on the distribution of weight across the bottom of his feet and tensing the corresponding muscles to right himself.
With the sense of touch being almost entirely unaffected by the difficulty of mana sensing, this was what he believed to be his best option until sensing mana became second nature.
*thumpthumpthumpthump*
"Ouch..." He had fallen down the stairs.
***
After embarrassedly explaining to his parents as to why he had fallen down, and that he was in fact fine, he ate breakfast and met his mom outside by the pond again.
"The same warmup as yesterday Aryn, but 55 laps this time." Emilia was already running by the time she finished her sentence.
Joining her in a jog, Aryn once more started to attempt to multitask.
His first lap, he fell twice.
By the tenth, he had fallen 18 times.
By the 25th lap, he had fallen 38 times.
By the time he finished the last lap, he had fallen 63 times in total.
He was improving quickly, but throughout that entire time, he hadn't gathered enough mana to actually saturate his heart at all. But that was fine, Rome wasn't built in a day.
'Once I stop falling, I can start to worry about gathering more mana. One step at a time... Literally.' He chuckled, confusing his mom.
"What's funny? Not hard enough?" She side eyed him as they did pushups side by side.
His hands slipped out from under him as he flinched, leaving him with grass in his teeth.
"No! Not too easy at all!" He continued his pushups enthusiastically.
It was much easier to balance with three points of contact on the ground, so he only fell that one time.
***
To Aryn's great joy, he could indeed exercise twice a day if he slept for a couple hours after lunch.
'And so begins my first training arc! How exciting!' He could finally start working seriously towards becoming strong and he wouldn't be wasting the opportunity.
With the full understanding that he was currently only laying a foundation for his future strength, and that simply training his body and saturating his Crystal heart wouldn't be enough, he was determined to reach and surpass his mother's high standards of physical fitness.
Then, he would learn to fight. And he would learn well, or he would die trying.