In those months, magic was not the only thing on my agenda, ever since I showed interest in taking my aura train seriously, Dad gave me a slap on my back with a look of pride on his face, and then he proceeded to take over my diet and training schedule. He even got into a shouting match with Mum and her parents about time allocation for his training.

As they were arguing, I noticed the time in their schedule did not include much personal free time, this forced me to join the argument to fight for free time. By the end of everything, I managed to get 1 free day for myself.

So once the schedule was written up, Dad wasted no time and started on my training, “Ok son, we only have 3 days a week for our training, so here's the plan, 2 days of physical training and 1 day of stamina manipulation training.”

Hearing this, I scratch my head, “Err… what is the difference between physical training and stamina manipulation training? They are both physical training.”

Dad nodded and said, “Yes, in a way, I suppose they are, but here is the difference, during stamina manipulation training, you will exercise hard and fast to the point of exhaustion so you can better feel stamina energy flowing through your body, eventually when you manage to get a hold of your stamina energy, you will not need to exercise to exhaustion. As for your twice-a-week physical training, it will be less intense but spread throughout the day.”

“So what are we doing today?” I asked.

“Physical training, follow me, and do as I do.” Dad said as he started doing a slow jog around the training area, this soon escalated to running, and then full-on sprinting, after a few rounds of alternating between speed levels, we stopped the cardio exercise and moved on to other exercises.

And like that, we cycled the training between high-intensity interval training, strength training, and balance flexibility training.

During one of the breaks between training, I asked Dad while panting, “Dad, I know having a strong body is important, but isn't this a bit extreme? Could this effort not be better used for aura training?”

Dad nodded, “It is true that this training is hard and you could be training your stamina energy manipulation, but a strong body is another component of a first-rate aura practitioner. You can do stamina energy manipulation training a lot longer next time if you build up your body now while you are still young. And time is up, let's start our next set!”

I groan as I get to my feet and follow.

During physical training days, my breakfast and lunch are stacked high with meats, carbs, and vegetables, for dinner, it is only meats and vegetables. As for the days I am doing aura-optimizing training, it is meats, carbs, and vegetables for breakfast, and only meats and vegetables for the rest of the day.

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Naturally, sugar has been restricted from my diet, the only time I get some sugar is on my free day when sometimes I go into town and raid the local bakery.

After some time, my physical training started to include sparring with Dad. At first, I started off using the basic forms that he taught me, but after I got comfortable with the rhythm of the spar, I started slowly incorporating the fighting techniques I learned during my past life.

As my spars with Dad carried on from session to session, and I added in other techniques, I would occasionally see Dad’s eyes widen in surprise as I pulled off feints or struck from unexpected angles, but even after pulling off all the fighting techniques I know of, reality denies me any hit on my dad.

At the end of the day, compared to my child's body, Dad is bigger, faster, stronger, has more reach and life and death experience behind him, and somehow can tell which of my strikes are feints.

When I asked Dad how he could tell apart my feints from real strikes, he said, “When you get more life and death experiences under your belt, you will be able to feel your opponent’s intent, and at very high levels, fighters can strike without even showing intent, those are the truly dangerous people, the kind of people who live on the battlefield, or mad men without emotions.”

Note to self, stay away from battle junkies and psychopaths with pointy sticks.

***

Six months into stamina manipulation training, I finally got the barest of holds on my stamina energy, I quickly activated my aura, and when I tried to do as Dad instructed me to wrangle my aura, the sharp tongues of wafting translucent aura flames exuded from my body started to get rounder and closer to my body, but the closer the aura got to my body, the greater the pull of my stamina energy trying to break free.

As I brought the aura flames quarter ways down to my body, the stamina energy in my grip thrashed and broke my hold on it, and along with my hold, went the feeling I got for grasping the stamina energy, and that meant I had to tire myself out and try again.

Now that I was so close to grasping my stamina energy, Dad changed my 2 days of physical training to stamina manipulation training.

After 2 weeks I finally managed to get the feel for my stamina energy and was able to manipulate my own stamina energy without needing to tire myself out. From that point forward my stamina manipulation training days all turned into physical training days and I will be practicing my aura optimization while I train.

It was also from that point that all my training included an aura session of the same exercise I was doing, which also included my sparring session.

During the sparring session, while using aura, I realized something. While all the techniques I brought over from my previous life were all well and good for keeping a superior opponent like my dad on his feet, they would only work on non-aura users. Now with aura added to the mix, most of my techniques are not as effective when an aura user can use superhuman abilities to attack from above and every clash can easily knock each other out of reach.

I quickly realized I needed to rework all my techniques to work on anime-level fights.