Some hours later, Rai realised that Aunt Elly didn’t cover half of what they were meant to in his magic lesson earlier. They’d only covered half of the stuff about external mana manifestation, and also didn't talk much about internal mana manifestation.

For the next few hours, Rai thought about the other main elements. Wind and earth.

Through trial and error, he managed to manifest them externally. Not perfectly, or even well, but he did it. It took him way longer than he expected though, given that it was already past noon. After doing so, Rai decided to rest.

He sat on the ground just outside the house, staring out over the farm and fields beyond. There was a soft joy in his heart. He was excited about growing up and one day being able to control all of his mana without it being completely sealed. Rai knew that it had to be sealed for his own safety, but a part of him felt like it was being held back.

All his life, Rai knew only that releasing his seals completely would be dangerous. Because of that, his aunt made a rule. Rai was only allowed to release up to a fifth of his mana. The only time he was allowed to fully release his mana was if their lives were in danger and Rai had no other choice. He shivered. I don't want that to happen...

On second thought, Rai was fine with not having to release all of his mana.

His thoughts began to drift, and he thought about his sword lessons with Jin. I’m not able to use two swords, at least until I learn Balance... or whatever that is. I’m still not sure what old man Jin means, but if I could...

A thought struck him.

Rai leapt to his feet.

A eureka moment. Internal manifestation, Rai thought about the characteristics of the elements and what they were best at. He then thought about how he imbued his muscles with raw mana to strengthen them. What if...

He had to test it.

Rai set himself up on the field just next to the house. First he timed himself running from one end of the field to the other. Just over a minute. Then he imbued mana into his whole body, knowing from past failures that if he only imbued his leg muscles then he would feel pain afterwards. He ran the same distance, timing himself. Just about forty seconds.

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This next part was tricky since he’d never tried it before.

Rai knew how to avoid the pain from the backlash, but he was still trying to figure out how to start and hold the manifestation. He started by simply channelling mana to manifest it externally in a form he was all too familiar with.

Lightning.

Tendrils of lightning curled outwards from his body. It surrounded him and left charred marks on the ground wherever it struck. It was raw, powerful, and fast. Rai imagined something similar, except this time the lightning was to stay in his body and strengthen his muscles.

He felt it.

It had taken a few minutes to figure out how to infuse it into his body, but he felt the explosive power welling up in his muscles, raring to go. Rai mentally prepared himself. He readied himself to count.

Rai pushed off the ground with his right foot.

BOOM!

The world flew around in his vision, and before he knew it, Rai was way past the other end of the field.

He landed flat on his back with dirt and grass all over his body. Rai stared deadpan into the sky as he tried to figure out what happened. He managed to slowly lift his aching body off of the ground. Upon looking back at the starting point, Rai saw a series of shallow holes in the ground, and a deeper hole from where he set off.

Did I... skip across the ground like a stone on water?

It all happened in an instant, and Rai wanted to try again. He might have managed to stand up, but his body had a different idea. Rai's muscles screamed in agony as they tensed up. They begged for rest. Rai fell back onto the floor, and gave his body what it sorely wished for.

After about an hour, he got back up to try again. Mum and Jin will be back soon, so this will probably be the last try I get. This time he would use less mana, to try and use the same spell but weaker.

Rai stood beside the original deep hole. He prepared himself.

BOOM!

The same thing happened again; a new line of shallow holes were left in the ground just next to the previous line.

Rai remained on the ground as his body was now writhing in pain. This much pain was something that he couldn’t ignore, so Rai laid there with tears flowing from his eyes.

While he let his body recover, Rai thought about what on Zenith was going wrong. This should work... I should be able to use lightning to make my body move faster. To make my muscles stronger! For the first time in a while, Rai was stumped. Everything about magic normally came easily to him.

He sighed. Since it’s about the body... I should ask Jin for advice.

Rai knew that Jin wasn’t fond of magic, but he always tried to help whenever Rai asked for it. In his sword lesson tomorrow, Rai would ask the old man.

For now, he was content to lay here basking in the light of Zenith's twin suns. They were reaching the horizon, forming a beautiful sunset.

Rai watched the sunset as his body was recovering from the pain of his experiments. It won't be the last painful experiment, Rai giggled to himself through his pained tears.