“WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DIDN’T INTENTIONALLY TELL ME!” Logan roared. His voice was so loud that it passed the walls of the small rented house he was in.
The current situation consisted of Logan calling Maxwell about a certain subject. To understand, you need to know what he went after.
Thanks to his quick butchering backed by Arashi’s sharpness, he was among the first to sell hides of Ironhide Rhinos. Because bleeding also affected the skin and improved it a bit besides the areas of damage that had to be removed depending on each specific hide, he still ended up with a total of over 140,000 tip.
He kept two full hides for himself to process at a later date when he wasn’t so pressed for cash.
He quickly headed to the mage tower and asked about the training techniques and headed there.
“A limit of 125,000 is up to here, for foreigners.” She said revealing a bookcase for him. He thanked her and checked one of the books out. Besides a basic diagram showing how it impacts the body he saw that the cheapest at 60,000 weren’t actually that good and only focused on the main channels.
He went to the 125,000 ones and saw that besides the main channels he also improved the mana pool and it included a process to help compress mana.
“Huh?” he muttered. He blinked and looked at the books which cost this price for people of Iteno and checked out the description and was shocked.
The techniques couldn’t be compared. The technique starts specifically as a mana absorption technique to fill the mana pool before forming a vortex which compressings the mana to allow it to occupy more space. Once it does one compression, that mana is consumed by having it feed the mana pool and all the mana channels, though it doesn’t go far beyond the main channels until it develops them all and the maximum is just the secondary channels.
Still, this was a huge development difference and he asked the receptionist about it.
“Oh, mana training techniques involve compressing mana, digging out and feeding the mana pool to expand the internal space, improving the mana channels and the best actually help clean impurities in the mana to free even more space.” She said. She smiled at him, "I would honestly suggest you not waste money here. If you can, you should go home to get a proper technique. Maybe even your father has it, if someone could find your magical talent then as long as he is C rank, he definitely has some form of mana training.” She said.
“What do you mean?” Logan asked.
“Oh, don’t you know? A human’s peak limit in just pure bodily strength can’t surpass D rank. Once you hit D rank, it is hard or even impossible to reach C rank without trained mana pool and mana channels because then you need to also start feeding your body mana to supply the power to expand.” She said.
When she said that, Logan nodded slowly and returned the book in his hand and went to his home and accessed a visual communicator to call Maxwell.
“Dad, I am in Iteno and learned about mana training. The woman said that anyone over C rank definitely has a technique…” He said.
“Yeah, I have one.” he said.
“Yeah… why so why did you not teach me… Better yet, why did you not even teach me mana absorption.” He asked.
“Because it is part of my legacy and naturally your sister is the true heir.” He said. "I intentionally didn’t tell you so that she can perfectly inherit everything.” he said.
And so, we are back to the beginning where Logan roared at his father.
“Boy, don’t raise your voice at me.” Maxwell said, unpleased.
“YOU WANT ME TO NOT RAISE MY VOICE! I LOST 10 YEARS THAT I COULD HAVE BEEN TRAINING!” he shouted even louder. “WHY DIDN’T YOU GET ME A DIFFERENT STYLE!!” He shouted.
"I taught your sister to carry my legacy to the future, you on the other hand aim for revenge because of what happened to you. Giving you the totality of my legacy and aiding you in training your mana would have resulted in you just going to your death faster and smearing the name of my sword art as a technique of slaughter.” He said.
“WHO CARES! I LOST 10 YEARS! You could have at least taught me to actively absorb mana, that would have done so much!” He said crying.
Maxwell looked at him through the communicator. "I don’t regret it, Olivia was my true heir from day one. You have talent for both magic and swords but your mind is focused on revenge.” He said.
“My mind is focused on rescuing anyone that is left of my blood family!” He said, hissing at his father.
“Watch your tone.” Maxwell said. “If you want to get the technique, come home and you can get the book. You are already old enough anyway.” Maxwell said.
At that moment, something clicked in his head, "I get it.” Logan said.
“Get what?” Maxwell said, frowning.
“You never wanted me to overshadow Olivia so that she wouldn’t have any sort of mental blocks growing up and you left me ignorant of it. It makes sense now. That is why you were so excited to get Hydra forged into a Legend sword and looked concerned when you discovered Raitoningu. It also explains why you made me train stupid forms such as dual wielding katana. You were distracting me so that Olivia would focus on one form at a time while you had me learn several at a time.” He said.
Maxwell instantly scowled when Logan said that proving that it is true.
“So it is true.” Logan said, his eyes losing the light in his eyes a bit. His tone of voice dropped, “I’ll go back… prepare the book.” He said.
“Wait Log…” Maxwell shouted but Logan just closed the communicator.
He never expected that he was only some kind of reserve for his father. Willingly training him poorly while taking extra care with his sister.
In his cloud of despair, he chartered a ride back to Eshen. He just sat there for nearly a week, just leaving to eat until he had to go to the airship to reach the international air station and take the rare ship to Eshen.
He just remained in his room until the end and got off and chartered the required boat rides to the island.
When he arrived at the dojo, Maxwell was already there and saw Logan’s appearance and his eyes widened.
Logan’s hair was messy, deep bags were under his eyes and his eyes were bloodshot because he had cried. Possibly going through his entire life over the entire week, he had noticed many instances where he was alone with Maxwell and would learn lots of things, a lot of which didn’t even pertain to sword techniques while other times, Olivia would leave and return much better in fighting styles.
Maybe because of his own talent, he had kept up with Olivia despite Maxwell’s distractions which proved the power of the unborn spirit bound to him to make his talents sore.
“Logan.” Maxwell said.
“The book.” He said simply.
“You need to relax.” Maxwell said, trying to get near but Logan harshly slapped his hands away.
“The… book. I don’t need your distractions anymore.” He said.
Maxwell looked at him and took out a book but Logan looked at it, “That isn’t the real thing. Books are used only for basic techniques. Someone who is B rank has a mana training technique with so much complexity that it requires a large scroll.” He said.
“Yes…” Maxwell said.
Logan looked at him and shook his head, “You gave the original to Olivia then.” He said.
“Yes.” Maxwell said.
Logan took the book and just reading it his hand burst with lightning and charred the book. "I may not be smart because you never gave me proper education but I can tell that what you wrote here, it will cause problems in the future.” He said and after charring the book he ripped it to shreds and looked at his father. “You really aren’t my father if you want only my sister to be famous.” He said and walked into the dojo.
“What are you going to do?” Maxwell shouted.
“I’m going to wait for Olivia.” He said and went inside.
Each room was built with locking mechanisms both physical and magical but it made little difference to Maxwell since he built it and knew the secret opening mechanisms.
In the room, Logan stored most of anything that actually mattered except the bed before taking out Arashi and closing his eyes and starting to carefully meditate.
All the Nodachi techniques appeared and Arashi was showing some worry because his anger actually reflected in this world. The normal purple lightning flashed a bloody red color.
He stayed there for a while until he opened his eyes and without any talking, he began to do the Nodachi forms with the complete mana movement. He went with full power and as with all his life, he felt many small points that hurt. This time his mind was keen and realized that they were blocked mana channels that never opened due to poor development.
The little he read in the book his father had tried to give him clearly ignored those points.
Arashi had tried to move the flow several times to avoid this but he was now using the most original flow and forcing mana into these painful spots using pure pressure to slowly open these points.
As you would expect though, as soon as he hit the final technique, every blocked channel in his body burst, breaking skin and muscles.
Instantly his body was coated in lightning and Arashi released the green lightning.
Storm, who slept in Logan’s bag, watched him as he bled out. Logan just walked to the bag and took some healing pills and got back to training using the full power. It pushed the healing winds and lightning into each broken area forcing them to heal up but they would break without healing.
After five cycles he sat down and just began natural absorption.
His floor was bloody because of the amount of blood he let out. The healing pills helped replenish his blood though.
The natural absorption slowly helped the healing process and eventually the mana channels finally healed but were frail.
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They were shriveled and undeveloped, it was a matter of flowing, the mana which constituted the flow needed to be replaced through development and it is why mana is consumed during development.
Logan just sat there and Storm came over worried.
He looked at it and forced a smile before forming some lightning on his hand and passing it along the lizard’s body.
He didn’t leave and every day he would do the same thing and heal for a few hours before constantly redoing it.
Maxwell was aware of all his movement and naturally the heavy iron smell didn’t escape him. He had gone up to see several times only to find Logan bloodied as he trained the proper form of the Nodachi despite his mana channels bursting.
It was to engrave into his body that those who were his family didn’t see him as worthy. Eventually, Maxwell was forced to call Olivia and she arrived half a month later.
When she entered his room, she was shocked.
The blood and the grizzly appearance of her brother was shocking but what really shocked her was the cold unfeeling glare from him, like the look of a stranger.
“Wh-what happened here? Dad, did you beat him up daily to be like this?” She shouted looking at Maxwell.
“No, I was just training to my fullest. Just like you, Olivia. Just like you, the difference between us though, in Maxwell’s eyes, is that you are worthy of his mana development from a young age.” Logan said, not even calling Maxwell dad or father like he normally used to.
“Logan… you're talking strange. Why did you call dad by his name and why did you call me to bring the technique back.” She asked both of them.
“Give me the scroll, I need to make a copy for Logan.” Maxwell said.
“Wait! Did you never give him one?!” she exclaimed.
Logan looked at them and just closed his eyes to start absorbing mana.
“Wha! He is using just natural absorption! What is going on dad!?” she shouted.
“You are the true heir to my sword art. Your brother isn’t, I put your training efficiency ahead of his and trained your brother with more open ended skills of an adventurer. Cooking, butchering, tracking and much more, these skills I taught your brother while you learned the core fundamentals of my sword art with far less of these life skills but not totally ignored either.” He said.
“Y-you actually played favorites! Why didn’t you at least get some form of mana development!?” Olivia shouted.
“Because I needed you to be the best! You were the one with the perfect talent for my sword art! That said, as you children grew, your brother training the same thing actually caused his body to slowly adapt and grow more talented. I didn’t know why at first it was clearly the unborn lightning sword he always carried. I didn’t want you to be covered in a shadow that you couldn’t keep up despite being the heir.” He said.
“So you sabotage Logan because you didn’t think I could handle him being better then me?!” Olivia said, completely pissed off this time.
Her mana was flowing intensely and it showed. The mana in the surroundings trembled and all the elements were getting agitated.
Logan just looked through narrowed eyes at the development power.
“Get out dad. I'm going to copy this for Logan, you aren’t touching anything so that you don’t screw him over again just because you think I can’t rival him!” she said and punched his gut.
Maxwell didn’t feel anything but this pissed her off to the extent that she spun around to build force and actually attacked his manhood.
This time he bent over because he had though she was going for the gut again and he nearly passed out.
She grabbed his leg and flung him through the wall out of the dojo huffing.
Logan had lost a lot of feeling for anything. Even if she was acting like this, he didn’t care.
She tried to talk to him but he just asked to get done with the copying so he could leave.
“Please don’t take this out on me. We grew up together and I didn’t even know. When dad took you out, I always expected him to teach you things that only you should learn because I wasn't a man.” She said.
"I don’t care.” Logan said.
She got annoyed at this, “What is with that face!? What is this gloom you have!? Is this the kind of attitude that you are going to have now? Is this how you will grow up and grow stronger?!”
"I will grow and save my blood family if any are left. I am going to make a new home and give them a safe life. I don’t care about the future of this sword art, I care if I have the strength to accomplish this.” He said.
She sighed, she had heard this many times but the goal was different before. It was to bring them back here where it was safe and grow up together with an old and new family. He clearly didn’t regard Maxwell as a father for what he did anymore.
“Are you just going to abandon us after 10 years of living together?” she asked.
“Olivia, do you know what trust is? Trust is when you believe in a person despite their obvious strengths and weaknesses. He didn’t trust either of us. He didn’t trust you to grow even stronger to match my pace if I actually ‘had’ more talent because of Arashi and he didn’t trust me with the most basic common sense of growth. I didn’t even learn basic absorption from him, I learned it from a random soldier from Iteno in the middle of a battlefield after exhausting myself. Do you get the problem he caused me, he never trusted me so I am not going to trust him.” he said.
A deep sigh came from Olivia and understanding that Logan had likely fallen into a deep depressive state. Trust is hard to build and easy to lose and Maxwell lost it in a spectacular way that it isn’t likely to be fixed easily.
If Logan ever talks to Maxwell, that would be a lucky interaction for sure.
She left and purchased a large scroll and began to copy the massive scroll containing all the steps for the development. There weren’t few and she also hadn’t even reached part way through.
Maxwell was very intelligent because he formed steps between development of specific strength groups. He ranked each step by adventurer rank. Rankless was step 1 and F rank was step two.
Even now, Olivia was catching up on F rank to enter E rank development.
Logan would have an even harder time because he needed to do Rankless which consisted of completely switching out and doing basic development of the mana constituting his entire mana channel and mana pool system. After that, F rank needed compression and purification of higher levels to do the same steps in a rinse and repeat manner.
It wasn’t a lie when Logan screamed that he lost 10 years, he really did because it takes a lot of time to complete this.
She took nearly a month to copy the entire scroll and she even talked to him to figure out what each of them learned that the other didn’t. Surprisingly, shrinking magic had been something she learned and he hadn’t but ironically she passed along. That said, they understood why. He had a katana and she had a Nodachi originally so she actually required that magic while he didn’t.
Still, they each were shocked by the different depths that they were taught in the same skills. Logan could easily live in the wild alone but she would have trouble and even now, she aimed for easy to find monsters because she sucked at tracking monsters.
Logan calmed down after getting the massive scroll and together they made many books of the skill they were better at for the other to learn from.
It took several more weeks as they used printing and electronic writing to make them quicker.
Finally Logan left without looking back and decided that he wasn’t ready to actually go into the world like this. He needed at least a full year of training to open his mana channels properly.
With some thoughts, he headed to Elas and explained the situation he was in.
A deep sigh came from him, “A man who wished to be remembered through his children shouldn’t be blamed but I see how you wouldn’t trust him much. He didn’t want you to go off to your death.” the wise elf said.
“If he didn’t want me to go to my death, he still could have trained me like Olivia, she hasn't even passed the F rank step. Does he think that just because I have talent, development is a quick process?” Logan said.
He smiled and nodded, “True but he is an awkward man, he never married or had his own true children. All he had were his mercenaries and he might have subconsciously regarded you two as members. Habits obtained in life are hard to let go.” Elas said.
Logan shook his head, “If he wanted mercenaries he should have never left the job and trained his replacement, not children.” Logan said and looked around. “Are there any cheap places nearby? I am not going to leave until I have at least opened up my mana channels. I also need to complete my shitty education that he never did or I will be an idiot country chick when I travel.” He said.
Elas looked at him and shook his head, "I would suggest you go to live in Thunder forest’s edge. Despite the chaotic nature of the mana, the development technique is quite good. The compression should be perfect for stabilizing that mess.” he said.
“Yeah but the purity is shit.” Logan replied.
“Purity isn’t important for rankless development. The important is sufficient mana to feed and replace the mana of the system. After reaching F rank, you can purify all that wild mana into a pure one and get more out of it.” He said.
Logan sighed, “Not like I have much choice now.” he said.
He took out the ironhide and showed it to Elas, “Can you make some armor out of this? If you need bone or blood I have a lot.” He said.
“Ironhide Humpback Rhino hide, bone and blood. Do you wish for leather or metal?” he asked.
“This flows lightning mana easily so maybe bone metal. It would be great if it could receive lightning clad as well considering how well it channeled lightning.” He said.
Elas nodded at the assumption. He took the hide and bones and treated the hide first before magically forging it into some kind of thin thread.
He produced a set of shirt and pants made of threads of Ironhide which was as good as E rank chainmail. The bone was made into full body light armor. It protected what it needed to and offered more protection with the two layers.
He thanked Elas and decided that since he had nothing to do except train, he would do it where he could train all his skills and went into the thunder forest where danger would be his teacher.
He went deeper where E ranks lived and dug out a cave home. He purchased a portable mana engine and mana stabilizer to feed the engine safe to use mana from the atmosphere. Then setting up lights and many luxuries and finally a barrier at the door to keep small creatures out long enough for him to wake up.
When he finished making his new home, he finally started training the rankless step.
It wasn’t following the natural flow in his body. Instead it used a lot of many strange things tied to human autonomy that he never learned. A lot of this came from Junpin. They had a very high development in medical knowledge pertaining to natural healing compared to the scientific alchemist healing of Nuntip.
Among the things is the knowledge of acupuncture. Surprisingly, the mana channels ran along thousands of acupoints which controlled basically all the functions of the body.
To absorb mana, Maxwell learned how to manipulate mana and discovered that spinning mana through the acupoints was actually more efficient to draw it as it caused an amazing effect around the body and would draw a crazy amount while partial compression was also done through these points and along the mana channel. When it reaches the mana pool it gathers into a vortex to complete the process faster.
Compared to ten minutes of natural absorption, Logan was full after a minute and had to slow down to compress the mana more and open space to fill.
He did this several times until there wasn’t much space left before he finally started development.
The compressed mana which shined various colors, something he noticed as he drew some of it out, a direct result of the chaotic mana in the area, he finally started development.
The mana drew up while spinning until it struck the apex of the mana pool causing him to gasp in pain but slowly the mana began to rotate in a circular fashion on the outside.
The mana pool felt like it was spasming as the mana was grinding. It continued to circle the entire mana pool and when it finally reached the bottom, at least half of the mana had been used but a slightly magical effect took place.
Despite only a tiny bit being ground into, the internal space seemed to very slightly distort and open a bit.
He huffed at the pain but he sucked it up so that he could catch up in training.
He channeled the remaining half while spinning into his mana channels which caused him even more pain because it began to force them open painfully.
When the mana was used up, he felt intense itching on the side it had gone through.
While he was huffing, he heard a humming and looking to the side, he saw Arashi actually trembling a bit.
Confused, he took it and meditated and appeared before her.
She was looking at him with some kind of excitement.
“Do you want something?” he said.
She nodded and showed what he did.
He took a while before realizing, “You want me to develop your mana channels as well?” he asked.
She instantly nodded excitedly.
He smiled, “okay but I need to do it first or it will be hard for me to do it for you.” he said.
She understood and he left and put her down before sighing and began to gather mana once more to continue down the channels.
An hour later he was doing it when he reached the very first closed channel on his shoulder.
With anticipation, he pressed against it and he felt an intense grinding like his teeth were put against a mill.
The spinning actually began to open the channel but it was also a result of literally grinding and replacing the mana in those channels with the more compressed one. The shocking part is that to reach it, he hadn’t used more then 20% of this load but just a small part took up everything.
“Opening channels is going to be a pain.” he complained and finally realized when people born in high concentration areas were more likely to have it. Without such high concentration, their bodies would never absorb enough. He had many closed channels and he knew it would take a long time to do even a single pass through his body and open every channel.
A year might not even be enough but he was determined to achieve it even if his body felt like it was breaking. Closing his eyes, he began to absorb more mana to continue so that he could at least reach the point to get Arashi some development and see what changed in her.