Henry’s excitement was palpable as he heard those words. He would finally be able to learn how to utilize mana, and what mana was in general. He knew from his studies that mana was inside of everything, it was an energy source that permeated every bit of both energy and matter, and it was the only thing in the universe that was able to turn one of them into the other, which seemed to go against almost everything that Henry had just read about physics. Henry was still acclimating to his newfound knowledge, making it his own, but the basics of mana utilization was something that he could learn without needing to utilize that knowledge, at least for now.

Henry perked up, sitting at attention, his ears locked onto every word he was about to hear. “You know mana is everywhere, but specifically regarding the humanoid races, we have something in our bodies called mana circuits. Essentially this is like another nervous system, a series of organs that aren’t actually physical in nature, but it's more like the circuits are overlaid on top of our inner organs, much like a stained glass window barely changes the amount of light there, simply changes its color.” Nicolas waited a second or two for Henry to absorb that information, and hoped that this dolt would understand the analogy.

“The amount we have is set at birth depending on our parents, but can be increased through vigorous training. The same can be said about the control we have over our mana. The first thing you have to learn is a special meditation technique that will allow you to see your inner mana circuits. After this, it’s going to be a matter of personal willpower, as each person’s mental method of controlling their mana is different. Much like I can’t tell you how to visualize an apple in your mind exactly as I do, I can’t tell you how to control your mana. For now, here is the meditation method. Learn it, and then burn the paper that it’s on.” Nicolas then handed Henry an old tattered piece of paper.

Henry grabbed the paper, treating it as fragile as a child in his hands, sitting in wonder at how miraculous this all was, before realizing that his master had said to burn the method after. “Burn it? Shouldn’t this be more valuable? What about the people who learn this in the future?” Nicolas slapped Henry on top of his head, marveling at how stupid he was. “That’s just a piece of paper I wrote the method down on years ago. The true method will always be in here, so why would I care about some paper?” Nicolas pointed to his head before shaking it while sighing, wondering why he couldn’t have gotten a simpler pupil. Soon he was out of sight, and Henry was left alone with his thoughts.

Henry read the meditation method, and it was a strange series of visualizations. He had to think about energy, how it looked to him, even though it was invisible most of the time, and then different types of energy, and how it would look like if the first energy turned into the other one. The slower and more intricate, the better, and after a bit of that, it was visualizing that energy overlapping with his own body. Henry decided to get started, and hurried to his room, being possibly the first person ever to be excited about the prospect of meditation thinking of vague concepts for hours on end. He sat on his bed, legs crossed, and got to thinking about energy.

Henry, much like most others in his position, thought about fire as his first type of energy, as it was fairly simple. Heat, oxygen, and another fuel source for the most part, and one had seen fire hundreds of times in their life, either as lamps or fireplaces. This was fairly easy, and it was time to go onto the next one. His master had written that the number and complexity of the energy types one could visualize before gathering their mana was instrumental in their future development, but he simply couldn’t help Henry much on this. Some people in the past that utilized Synthesis Magic, although exceedingly rare, would sometimes show their students the effects of different energy, but that was detrimental.

You would put your idea of what the energy was in their heads, and they would be shackled by it, making it impossible for them to become stronger than you, as their only frame of reference was simply yours. The student needed to learn to become mentally creative to become truly strong with this magic. The next thing Henry was visualizing was light, as it was something that was around him all the time, even during night time due to the reflection of the moon. This was something else Henry found hard to come to terms with, that the moon was lit up because the sun was still there in the void, shining on it. Light was more difficult than he thought, because he knew it was simply little bits that shot around, but how to visualize it?

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Henry eventually just thought of it as a massive amount of sand that was made of tiny suns, as that made the most sense in his head. After thinking about those two, which were thermal and radiant energy respectively, Henry was sort of blanking out, not really remembering what counted as energy, or failing to visualize it as a solid thing. This continued for a while, before he simply grabbed the basics book once again, looking through it to see if he could get inspired. This proved to be a little useful, as he remembered the absolute power of lightning strikes, which was electrical energy, and that also made him remember that there was a tiny amount of electricity running through his nerves and brain all the time.

Henry kept at this for hours, slowly re-learning things and figuring out how to visualize them in his brain. Eventually he thought of the strange forces that he felt had to be energy types, such as gravity. That was something so significant that it needed to be one in his mind, and so he imagined himself as a massive weight on the world, with closer objects warping around him like what was taught in the book. Henry eventually thought of and figured out visualizations for all of the major forces, but this process took several days of getting stuck, thinking about it, and then figuring it out. The days stretched into a full week, and Nicolas was content with this, as even if he had a great brain for this, one needed to take their time.

Henry lost count at the previous pupils that failed at this part, only visualizing things like wind and fire, as these were the easiest to think about, before rushing into the true content of the magic, which made it so that they were extremely weak and were just worse versions of a fire or wind mage. Nicolas was nodding his head approvingly, when Henry came in, intent on trying the next stage of the visualizations, which was turning one energy into another. Henry simply wanted to check if the amount of energy types was enough, but before he could talk, it was as if his master knew what he was going to ask. “Only you can know if you’re ready to go on. Trust yourself.” Henry swallowed back his question, before heading out to the backyard where he used to train.

Taking a deep breath, he sat down and simply thought of all of the different energy types all at once, as if they were in a large room talking to each other. Henry had no other concept, as he had only seen mages use magic once when he was a child, and it was only an amateur earth mage that helped the town avoid a flood by erecting a simple wall. After a while of the energies dancing around in his mind, he started to think about how the book once said that everything was sort of connected. How could light feed into kinetic energy? How could gravity feed into radiant energy? These questions were strange, and it took a while to process.

Henry thought about nothing but this aspect for days, even sometimes forgetting to eat. This was purely visualization, and it didn’t matter if it was realistic or not, he simply had to think of it, although he had no idea that was the case. He kept referring back to the book, solidifying the concepts within his mind, and trying to figure out these strange, vague things, when suddenly, after around two weeks of almost constant meditation, it hit him. Gravity causes potential energy, which turns into kinetic energy when something falls, etc. Henry just had to think about how different things could cause different reactions, and the one thing he figured out from the reading was that the energy never dissipated, simply transformed into different types.

That was the key! If energy never truly disappeared, then it would have to turn into a different form of energy and go elsewhere. Soon, the visualization fell like dominos, and he could freely think of all of the different energy types turning into one another. He quickly went and told his master, who simply nodded towards him. “Alright, the real thing starts now.”