About a month had passed since Max's eventful awakening, yet Althea and Leonhardt were much worse off.

At the moment, what they were trying to do was an elementary mana education.

While it was meant to be simple, sadly, it was meant for mages around the age of three or four, so Max had quite a difficult time, given he was about a year old.

The first few days were spent trying to plan how an infant would have to learn, and they had come up with an okay solution.

Since Max was smart enough to know a majority of the words, explaining things was fine, yet he needed visual displays to keep him focused. The hardest part was trying to show him how to control his mana.

When the nexus core was newly formed, it would fluctuate in mana, due to it not being fully connected to the mana dimens. While it was weak and inconsequential in other cases, for Max, since he had a staggeringly strong strength on awakening, it was one for him.

So, what they had devised was a visual representation — like a projection — through mana of how to connect the mana dimens to the nexus core, with subliminal messaging, and things a Max could understand. Hopefully.

There was only one flaw with their plan. Neither knew shit about light projections. Any attempts would look like a blurred mess... Quite the dilemma.

So, instead, they used brute force. Surprisingly, Max helped in the creation of his own curriculum, as they used the mana auroras to project very simple and small holograms or larger projections.

Yet, using it for a whole four hours straight was incredibly taxing, even for manaborn like Leonhardt and Althea.

Having to maintain multiple elements was multiplicatively more taxing if you didn't have an affinity for them, and using four repeatedly for that long fit the bill for a hellish time.

So now, Althea was sitting down, her hands quickly contorting into various magic gestures, even completely separate signs on each hand, done at blazing speeds. It was her turn for this... Nice learning experience.

Stolen story; please report.

The product was a warm serenade of music, and a caring voice gently guiding Max along feeling mana.

Feeling mana was often one of the most difficult parts of elementary mana training, and it wasn't much different for Max.

What Althea did, was show diagrams of breathing in mana, then guiding the mana to Max's lungs, then his Mana Dimens, letting it use as little life force as possible to control.

Now, much to Althea's pleasure, Max has nearly gotten all the Mana.

Occasionally, at the start, he would get some. Earlier, it was a good portion. Now, he was about

"Leo, it's your shift now!" Althea was smiling giddily as her duties with Max were over, and she could tell he was almost there.

"Might be the last one!"

"Hahh... Alright. Finally." Leonhardt walked in with his normal deadpan and cold look. Emphasis on the dead, at least.

"Dada."

"Lil guy? You're making me work already?" Leonhardt was not allowed a moment of respite.

"Teaching! Teach me!" Max wasn't correcting him, yet it felt like he did for some reason...

While the idea had worked well, it may have worked too well.

"I do what the boss says." Leonhardt let out a deep laugh, which almost sounded evil in a way.

Leonhardt, performing a swordance.

He moved in sharp and angular movements, and the world seemed to hold its breath.

No... It was frozen.

For some reason or another, Max wasn't affected. This was deeply surprising to Leonhardt, as the only other people to resist the slowing of his abilities were people stronger than him, or people like Althea who were a direct opposite to his powers.

And so, Max was able to witness a scene of mana zapping around, with all colors, before merging into one rainbow, then white mass.

'Try doing that, Max.'

He heard the voice, and it sounded familiar. Recently, things had been easy to remember, but something about the voice told him he didn't need to.

And so, he did, with difficulty. Max focused as hard as his young inexperienced brain could allow, and clumsily guided the mana towards his core.

Coming a step closer to salvation, Leonhardt nearly lost focus, the sight of the light at the end of the tunnel nearly blinding him.

Yet the projection continued. It showed a small version of Max and then zoomed in to his Nexus core. It asked for him to hollow the sphere of mana out, and place it around his Nexus core.

What this would do was that the Nexus core would slowly absorb this shield, and then replace it with the most suitable mana, making for an optimal shell around the core to stop mana leakage.

And so, with the verbal guidance of Leonhardt, the mana sphere was turned into a shell, and it was carefully placed over the Nexus core. And After a minute... Freedom had come for the parents, Max could rest, and they could rest.