The next day, Dad meets me at the training ground. And he gets me to do a few sets of basic sword swings and foot movement before we begin training.

Once I was done with the warmup, I hopped to Dad and asked, “So what are we doing first for aura training? Are we going to lift those rocks you showed me last time? Or try to outrun a horse?”

Dad chuckled and shook his head, “None of that. Your first aura lesson is to optimize your aura. By optimizing your aura, you will learn how to reduce or increase your aura output without wasting your stamina energy.”

Wait a minute, is that not the same as me just closing off or reducing the flow of stamina energy? But I can already do that. Confused by Dad's statement, I ask him as such.

Dad nods and asks me to ignite my aura. After I do so, Dad ignites his own aura and walks up to me. “Strech out your arm.”

After I do so, Dad brings his arm up next to mine. The moment he did, the comparison was clear as day, while my translucent aura was wafting off my outstretched arm like it was on fire, Dad's aura was a calm and smooth translucent layer.

“You see, son? All that aura wafting about is aura that is not doing anything and just burning away, that is stamina energy you are wasting, and the more you waste, the faster you get tired, and the faster you get tired the less training we can do.” Dad explained.

“Don’t you mean the faster I get tired, the more vulnerable I am to an enemy?” I asked.

Dad scoffed, “Son, you are not at the level to worry about that yet. Having an optimized aura is the foundation of a powerful aura practitioner. Wasting too much stamina energy when you don’t need it and you will get tired quickly, feed too little stamina energy to your aura and you will be overpowered by an opponent with better control than you. Now look at my arm.”

The aura on Dad's outstretched arm suddenly lost its calm and smooth layer and his whole body wafts with a huge translucent flame, when I compare our auras, Dad's aura is like a campfire compared to my candle of an aura.

“This is me without optimizing my aura, basically what you are doing now. Most of the third-rate aura practitioners you will see next time will have an aura like this.” Then I felt Dad doing something with mana and then the previously wafting aura compressed down to make it look like Dad was trapped in water within zero gravity but followed his body’s outline.

“This is aura optimizing done purely with mana manipulation. Most of the mages who practice aura stick with this method, while it does reduce stamina energy usage by quite a fair bit compared to not even optimizing it, most mages say they rather use their concentration on their spells and will only use this technique for running away in the case they are attacked.”

“Lastly,” Dad's aura calmed and settled close to his skin in a smooth layer. “This level of optimization is using stamina energy manipulation, and I will tell you now, it is very hard to do. What you see me do with my aura now is just the basic level of stamina energy manipulation, I have yet to advance further. Unlike mana, stamina was extremely hard to control, that is why we ignite it with mana so we can control our aura. First-rate aura practitioners and above have aura that looks like mine.”

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

I raise my hand to stop Dad, “Wait, so if we ignite our stamina energy with mana and control our aura with mana manipulation, why can’t we just optimize it with mana manipulation?”

I exert my will of mana manipulation on the aura in and around my body, I try to bring it all in as close to my body as possible, I noticed the aura around my arm looks the same as the demonstration Dad showed me when optimizing aura with pure mana manipulation. I could get it closer to my body compared to Dad's demonstration, but no matter how I tried, I could not get it as close or as smooth and calm as when Dad is using stamina energy manipulation to optimize his aura.

Dad just silently watched me until I gave up and said, “As you yourself have tried, mana manipulation can only take you so far, I have seen mages capable of Advanced Mana Manipulation trying and failing to replicate the results of stamina energy manipulation on aura, because, in the end, the base of aura is stamina energy, igniting it with mana is only to assist in controlling aura. Mana is passive and easy to manipulate, stamina is wild, it is what gives you and me strength and life, it does what it wants, controlling stamina energy takes great willpower and concentration, but in the long run, I promise you it is worth it”

I thought about it for a while and nodded my head. If I am going to practice aura, I can’t have people disrespecting me and saying I am some third-rate scrub, I have got to, as the saying goes, ‘Git Gud’

“So how do we get started?” I ask Dad.

The only reply I got was a creepy smile. I have a bad feeling about this.

***

Stupid training… stupid weights…

I felt my leg muscles burning from the shit load of running I just did, my arms are noodles from all the pushups I did and the weights I lifted, and my core is in agony every time I twist my midsection.

Why am I in such a sorry state you might ask… well, apparently the best time to feel the stamina energy truly interacting with my body is when the body's muscles are exhausted. So now that I am truly knackered, now is the time for the second part of the exercise.

I lie down and shut off the supply of stamina energy from the rest of my body. If I normally feel lethargic after cutting off stamina energy from the rest of my body, this time I almost blacked out immediately if not for Dad shaking and prodding me to keep me awake.

After I centered my swimming vision, Dad instructed me to release stamina energy onto my body and concentrate on how it flows into every fiber of muscle and every organ. As I opened the floodgate of stamina energy, I felt strength flow back into my energy-starved muscles.

My next set of instructions from Dad was vague as hell, “You felt the flow right? Now do it again, and use your willpower to seize control of that stamina flow.”

As I tried and failed a few times, I suddenly woke up with a snort in the bath while my personal maid Alice washing me, “Oh, Young Master, you are finally awake.”

Confused, I just answered “Errr… Yes? What am I doing in the bath, I was just training.”

Alice giggled and said, “Ah, yes, from what I know, your father said you fell asleep while training.”

Huh… well, every time I shut off my stamina energy I do become lethargic, I guess I really fell asleep during one of the reps. Dammit, why must becoming first-rate be so hard?!