Leo

Alea’s cabin, Germany

Leo exited his core space and found that dusk was setting around him. He had been training his mana channels and strengthening them for the better part of the day. Seeing that Heidi was not around, he decided not to look for her. He believed it would be better to progress further and share his insights rather than disturb his flow.

Leo got up from the grass and stretched. Sitting down for so long was not easy for him. He could feel that his back did not agree with such harsh treatment. Leo was not the sportiest person, but he tried to keep in shape by going to the gym and taking kendo and aikido classes. He was ashamed to admit it to people, but he got inspired by some Japanese anime when he was a kid and decided to give it a go a while back.

His grandparents were against it. Mainly for two reasons. First, it would take the precious time he needed to study and keep up with the house chores. Second, they believed it would be dangerous for him because he was a skinny kid when he was little. Leo did it anyway and found some old Russian teachers for the two sports in a nearby school.

After he met them, they took pity on him, given his tiny frame and the sob story he told them. That allowed him to pay a fraction of what he would need to join their gyms and rent the equipment required. That was when his life of training began.

In a way, this training within his core space was not entirely new for him. His teacher Dmitry, who taught kendo, had a similar method. He taught Leo to train in his head, recount the moves, the spars with his opponents. To train his memory and thus his chances of winning at the next spar. He applied his teachings not only in kendo but in aikido as well, quickly growing to the top of his class.

Leo sighed, ‘I hope the crystals will soon include some more real-life applications. My back will kill me if I continue to sit still all the time.’ Finished with his stretch, Leo walked up to the box of crystals and chose the next one. As before, he channeled some mana in the crystal and activated it.

‘Welcome back, initiate! I trust that the teachings you applied to strengthen your channels helped. As you are back so soon, you must have understood an important problem you will face momentarily. Not enough mana to temper the channels, am I right?’ the monochrome figure chuckled.

‘No need to answer that. You are in luck. In this lesson, we will move forward and talk about how one can gather the wild mana all around us and convert it to mana with affinity, growing the core. Also, what limitations your core will have at the lowest levels, and how they will change over time.

‘Let's start with how you gather wild mana and convert it. It is not that difficult, to be honest. However, the main problem is twofold. First, the mana around you will not always be saturated. Nature spreads it out evenly all around us. We believe it is so to equal the mana density.

‘Some fools try to use the mana-gathering arrays to speed up the process. That works, of course, if you have the gold needed to buy such things. If you do not, then it is not a problem. You just have to find a mana-saturated place in nature and meditate there. We are unsure what effects the mana-gathering arrays have on the natural mana around us. Please proceed with caution if you encounter one.

Secondly, if you manage to find a mana-dense environment, it will solve half of the problem. The second issue is not so easy to solve. As you must understand, the speed at which you can convert the mana you push inside your core cannot be affected by the mana-gathering array.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

‘The flow speed and how quickly you convert it will depend on your willpower and core's level. The higher both are, the quicker the process will go. Last, which I do not believe is a problem we can solve today, will be the mana retention rate.

‘Once you have gathered and converted the mana inside you, the next issue will be that you have a limited capacity for how much mana you can deposit in the core before it leaves your body. The core’s capacity, after all, is limited. Otherwise, what reason would there be to classify its development level?

‘Now, you might be thinking - but how do I advance my core? That is the right question to ask. The quick explanation is - gathering, converting, and storing mana. And do not forget - cycling it. I know that must sound too easy, but it is not.

‘Our core is a container. One which is not controlled entirely by us. In the same way, we do not control how our heart beats. It just does. All we can do is - train it. And only by stretching our limits do we progress.

‘Now, onto the practical part. To gather your mana, start as always. Breathe in and out. You will notice a funnel that connects your core to the world around you. Pull the wild mana toward your core and observe what process it goes through in your core. I believe it will make sense to you when you see it. Until next time!’

The figure vanished, as always, leaving Leo to contemplate. ‘How useful, he thought with sarcasm. Not wasting time, Leo went to the mana-gathering array that he did not use before and walked inside. There, he noticed that it had gathered a fair amount of mana he could see around him. Leo sat down and made himself comfortable in the middle of the array. Then he closed his eyes and went inside his core space.

Once there, Leo observed the progress he had made. A large tree-like structure stretched out of his core. Branches of various sizes and definitions painted a remarkable picture of his mana channels. Leo, of course, knew that he had managed to discover only part of them, as he did not have enough mana.

He stopped admiring his progress and looked toward the funnel-like structure above his core. As before, in it, he could see several blue-white specks of light falling slowly toward the core. ‘This must be how my body absorbs ambient mana around it. Damn, the progress is slow,’ Leo thought, observing how few of the specks were there in his funnel.

Remembering the lesson, Leo applied his attention to the funnel and flared his willpower. Similar to how he had done when he formed his core. He imagined grasping the specks and moving them toward his core. The mana in his funnel obeyed and sped up.

Leo moved his attention toward the core and noticed that the specks which impacted it were absorbed. Inside the core, he could see that the speck managed to keep its color for just a moment. Then it changed to the green of his core. He noticed that one of the specks did not make a difference in the amount of mana in his core. Then he applied the same approach to all the others he could see inside the funnel.

After a while, Leo could see that the amount of mana in his core had grown from around half what he had before he started to almost full. However, the number of specks available to him in his funnel also diminished.

‘There must be a way to increase the mana flow in the funnel itself,’ he thought. Exercising his willpower, he stretched his perception and felt where the funnel connected to the outside world, finding that he could make the connection stronger. As on cue, the number of specks increased tenfold, allowing Leo to continue.

In a few moments, his core was full. Then he moved closer to see what would happen if he deposited more untamed mana inside and saw that the specks would just pass through and vanish.

‘That must mean I cannot simply deposit the mana endlessly in the core,’ he thought. ‘There must be a way…’ Remembering that Alea mentioned willpower and how one should stretch his limits, Leo took another speck of mana and slowly moved it toward his core.

As before, the speck tried to simply pass through. However, Leo did not allow that. He applied all of his concentration and imagined how he would deposit the speck inside his core, thus stretching the limits it could contain. For a moment, nothing happened, and the speck simply hung above the core’s membrane. Ever so slightly, Leo could feel the membrane give and accept the piece of mana.

In another moment, he successfully deposited the speck in his core and could feel slight discomfort below his navel, as if he had overeaten. Focusing on it, he noticed that it had subsided in another moment. Turning to his core, he could not see that he had made any difference.

He shrugged his imaginary shoulders and got to work.