Thankfully, the next three days were all simple, every day my father just had me meditate, focus on controlling and concentrating my mana, as well as expanding my capacity.

At night I still practiced my skills with the dark magic, strengthening them with meditation moving my soul's energy to different parts of my body. Eventually, I realized I could even travel to the rift on my own, even if Rafi was nowhere to be seen…

The longer I stayed, and the deeper I went, the more pressure I felt, how much I could take was my mark for training. Of course, without a teacher, I was almost just stumbling around in the dark, literally.

Still, with each passing day, the Ghoule’s next attack grew closer. Everyone seemed to be pretending like it wasn’t coming back, but my nerves started to show as my progress stagnated.

My dark magic allowed me to feel it through some inexplicable new sense. I could tell it was nowhere near me, and I still had plenty of time while it recovered, but with my magic not improving, and my dark magic teacher nowhere to be seen, my nerves were on fire nonetheless.

“Your manna capacity and control have both improved enough for us to begin practicing sustained spells, so we will be changing the training today.”

I let my head fall to the side with a sigh. He knew as well as I did I wasn’t making much progress. It was like I was a fine steak he was cooking, the longer you marinate it, the more the returns start to diminish. ‘I guess a change of pace wouldn’t be bad…’

I stopped thinking of him as my father the moment he struck me, regardless of his intention. From that moment on he became nothing more than a robot designed to teach me magic through any means.

It was pretty fitting, as he didn’t even bother telling me to follow him anymore, it was just expected. It was like he was intentionally using as few words as possible.

In complete silence, I followed him to the training courtyard.

“First we will work on toughness. Your body must stiffen and harden in order to absorb each impact without breaking.”

‘That shouldn’t be hard.’

A surge of power ran through my whole body, stronger than I had ever felt before. It coursed through me like a flaming hurricane, pressure releasing all around me. My hair began to fly as though I were in a wind storm and I could feel the air rushing out of my lungs with every breath, almost like it was afraid of me.

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‘Too… Much…’ Slowly condensing it and focusing on a smoother, steadier flow of manna, I controlled it until it was more like a steady river.

“Your power really has grown, but it means nothing if you can’t both sustain AND conceal it.”

My nerves dulled slightly like I was feeling everything through a thin fabric, and my skin stiffened.

“I want you to see how long you can hold this state. Your body will be screaming at you by the end of it, but I want you to hold the spell anyway. Hold it until you are completely out of manna, until not even a drop is left in your bones.”

“I thought manna deficiency was bad though.”

He tapped the side of my head with a wooden sword. “Focus. Just hold it.”

My brow furrowed. ‘If you say so I guess…’ After a few minutes, I felt the pain he mentioned surge through me. It was like my blood was being pulled out of my body by a magnet, and before long my vision began to turn red. I could feel it coming from my ears and my nose just like all the other times, but I continued to hold the spell like he had told me to.

I felt my body start to seize as it suddenly felt impossible to hold steady.

My father had taken a seat, but upon seeing me start to convulse he stood up, and slowly began walking over to me. “That's enough now Siya.”

I heard his words but didn’t process them at all. Only one thought ran through my mind. ‘Keep going, longer, I can go longer.’ I fell to a knee and coughed blood on the ground. ‘I'm not done, I have more in me.’

“Siya!” He yelled my name, wrapping his hand around my neck, and strangling me.

I snapped out of it, only then comprehending the words he had said earlier. I canceled the spell and collapsed. “Was that long enough?” My breathing was shallow, and my body burned all over just like it did when my gates opened, but other than those two things I was fine.

He pushed me back onto my feet and looked me in the eyes once again. “No… But any longer would have killed you.”

I was dizzy and could feel myself wobbling around, so I walked over to a nearby wall and sat against it. “Figures…”

“There are some mages in this world that can convert their own life energy into manna. They can use this ability to cast devastating and horrifying spells that no normal person could ever hope to.”

‘Not the power I would have chosen if it hurts this much…’ “I guess I'm one of them?”

“Indeed… You are… To put it simply, you are terrifying.”

I wiped my eyes only then to realize that it wasn't water rolling down my cheeks but blood. ‘Even from the eyes? It's stopped already though, so I guess that’s a good sign.’

“That power is strong, but your life force takes a great deal of time to recover. This time it was fine, but if you're not careful it will kill you, or at the least take years off your life.”

I chuckled. “When you find something that won't kill me let me know.” The pain had subsided, and besides the discomfort and anxiousness of the event, I seemed fine, so I felt unaffected generally speaking. I just needed a minute to regain my bearings.

“Right, I have some work to do so I’ll leave Mara in charge of supervising you. Train until you can hold the spell for at least half an hour, and don't let yourself drain your life force.”

‘Easier said than done…’ I placed my hand around my neck, gently touching my skin. ‘Counting the poison, and the strike to my head, I might as well count that too… Three then? Yeah, that’s three.’ I stood up, slowly regaining my feeling of balance before I stepped away from the wall, my thoughts moving on as fast as my feet did.

‘Mara…’ While I knew how I felt about my father, how I felt about her was still… Complicated. Since she was so different and hadn’t trained me in a while, it was easy to momentarily forget about how cold she had been in the past.

She was suddenly compassionate, but as much care as she had shown me the past few days she wasn’t there to stop him from nearly crushing my throat. ‘She just thought we were meditating though… So I can’t blame her if she got misled I guess…’

My thoughts and feelings started to get jumbled together. I couldn’t decide what was being fair or unfair towards her anymore. I did know one thing though ‘At the very least she’s more caring than my father… It almost feels ironic now that I call him father and her by name.’

I looked around, and while I was lost in my own thoughts he had already left. ‘I guess I’ll go and get her, explain the situation. I somehow doubt he would have…’