This morning I went to talk to the scholars about possible ways to help my young apprentice with her mana issues. Unsurprisingly, this is something that they commonly deal with when teaching particularly talented young mages.

They gave me several solutions to the problem, and it’s not like I can’t use more than one. The easiest one is probably to build a space with a very high density of free-flowing mana. It’s apparently a lot easier to absorb mana when it is able to move around freely as opposed to being compressed into a tight space, like what I do when I make rooms to trap mana in. With Requiem this one is easy, as I can just make mana at that location.

They also gave me a couple different meditation methods that should help with improving their mana pools. Most of them revolve around expelling mana from their bodies in careful, controlled ways to maximize the portion of it that goes to expanding their mana pool. Though there were a couple that focused on making the mana in the pool denser.

Another option was to give them exercises that are supposed to help you learn how to use mana more efficiently, I think Askos would benefit from these the most. These came in a variety of forms, like completing certain tasks with only a limited amount of mana, or shaping mana inside or outside of your body, those two were dramatically different. One that I thought was interesting basically had you throw a small package of mana as far as you could without it dissipating into ambient mana.

The next option was a number of techniques that I could teach them that would allow them to increase their mana production. At first they would require complete focus from the kids, but eventually, they would be able to do them near constantly, assuming they practice enough.

The last option would be to directly increase the size of their mana pools myself. It is something I am theoretically capable of doing, but also something I have never really practiced outside of evolution so I should probably not do that.

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The first thing I did was put a bunch of Requiem in the area surrounding where they normally practice. It was easy and straightforward and showed almost immediate results.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Then I took the most effective method to increase their production and told them to keep doing it constantly, if they ever messed up or stopped they were to immediately start again. Most people would think that it would be way over their heads to do something like that, and it definitely is. But I’ve been pushing them to do well beyond what I thought they were reasonably capable of since the beginning, and they have shown me that I was underestimating them before, so why not now? Or maybe it’s the other way around, maybe me pushing them beyond my expectations allowed them to exceed my expectations? Either way, I think it is safe to challenge them this way.

After making sure they got a filling and hearty breakfast I set them to the task. The exercise itself isn’t hard per se, but it does require incredible focus. Focus that they lost frequently because of things ranging from a shift in the wind, to an involuntary twitch, to no reason whatsoever. When it came time for them to eat I told them to keep working at it while I puppeted their bodies so that they could still work on while they eat.

To my surprise Junior found the exercise to be a lot harder than Askos did, though neither of them succeeded to keep it going for more than a moment. Though Askos was able to keep it going long enough to blink by the end of the day.

Askos did complain to me about not being able to see his other siblings today, I told him that he better learn how to walk if he wants to do anything other than sit there all day. I honestly felt a bit bad about that, but it should hopefully force him to improve faster as he is even more driven to succeed than before.

They are currently asleep, but I am going to get them back to work the moment they wake up.

Spending the whole day watching over them isn’t very productive when I can’t provide guidance, so I ended up working on the book for the whole day. It’s done, a book filled with everything I currently know about anatomy has been completed and given to the scholars for review. At the very least the stuff about Ents should be new or at least much more complete than what already exists.

Other than that we received word that Par is coming back to town. They are almost out of supplies, the troops deserve a short break, and they need to replace the dead. Of course, they are pretty far away from any teleportation gates in friendly territory, so it will be a couple days before they get here.

Speaking of I should probably start working on figuring out how to make those gates myself, I want to try to put one in every minor village and ultimately make it so that no place is more than a day’s walk from one of the gates. I figure easy transportation within our borders can only help us. Besides, if I am going to start taking the whole being worshiped thing seriously, like I told myself I would, I should probably start doing more for the people.

I don’t even need to implement them myself, I have enough competent plant manipulators that they can do the grunt work for me. It’s just that I am the only one skilled enough to really design something like that. Well, I mean Tiddol could absolutely figure it out if she wanted to, probably involving some kind of clockwork, but I don’t think she’s thought about it.

I’ll start trying to figure out designs tomorrow. With Requiem, it shouldn't be too difficult.

Anyway, Good Night Diary.