Third Pov:

Once Itami decided to train his ether control, he got out of the shower and started to prepare dinner. Since his uncle hadn’t been there in a while Itami had to learn how to cook for himself.

At first, he sucked at it, but over the month he learned how to make food without burning the house down.

For today’s menu, he’d made roasted boar meat.

Thankfully, there were normal animals in the mountains because magic beast flesh, although nutritious, needed to be decontaminated before eating them.

This was because of the tainted aether that surrounded them from the Argonauts’ curse. The original curse that created the magic beasts and titans.

After finishing dinner, Itami went to sleep early instead of training because he’d already exhausted himself earlier in the day, and knew tomorrow might be more exhausting.

When Itami woke up he started the day like any other day and did his morning run on his uncle’s mountain trail.

Although it was still difficult for him, he’s now able to complete it in 4 hours instead of his old best 8.

Yes, Itami used to spend a quarter of his day just running because he knew that without endurance he wouldn’t last long if his fights went more than five minutes.

Once Itami got home, he cooked some eggs for breakfast and proceeded with his speed training.

Itami decided that the best way to learn how to cloak the body parts he needed seamlessly was to start on a macro-level, so he got in a lotus position and focused on not letting a single drop of his ether fall out of his body.

Quickly, Itami became astonished by the amount of ether he’d been wasting all this time.

Previously, Itami had a basic understanding of ether from what he observed from his mom and dad and the stories they’d tell him.

However, It wasn’t until recently that he started studying astral art creation, and as such it never occurred to him why he was letting his ether seep out of his body.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

It wasn’t like ether was invisible to the general populace. If one focused enough ether into their eyes they could see anyone's ether, and although Itami hadn’t been able to do it until recently, he could do it without much trouble.

The technique was the same as an aura fist but to one's eye, and it was much more sustainable because it covered less area.

After Itami got out of his stupor, he immediately tried to catch all the ether he’d let out by encasing it in a bubble using it.

Nevertheless, it was to no avail.

The bubble he created was full of holes.

After trying again by remaking another bubble the same problems occurred, so Itami retried it many times.

Thus began Itami’s futile relationship with ether control.

1 month later

Itami was currently at a loss, he didn’t know what to do.

Since that day a month ago Itami tried for two straight weeks to control his ether. After the eighth day, he figured out how to create an ether bubble without holes.

However, it was far from smooth sailing from there.

Because there were no holes in the bubble he couldn’t breath, so he had to find a way to let air in without letting his ether out.

However, this required him to change the quality of his mana to make it semi-permeable.

This was increasingly harder to do because to change the quality of ether one needed to have ridiculous levels of control.

Eventually, after two weeks Kage came back, and Itami asked him about it and he’d simply told him to give up because the way he was doing it would never succeed.

Then he continued to tell him “Before you ask, no I can’t teach you the family-style despite your achievements, but I will allow any other request from you”

Itami and Kage understood that Itami had already gone down a different path than him, so he settled for being sparring partners.

For the next two weeks, Itami gained experience by sparring with Kage and experimenting with different ways of getting faster, and although the spars had been very beneficial to him, the experiments only left him injured and exhausted.

Now Itami was sitting in his room after his 34th failure.

Itami’s pov:

‘ What am I going to do now? I think I’ve tried everything, but nothing works.

**ahhhhhhh**

It’s so frustrating. I want to hit something, but I probably shouldn't or my uncle would be mad. I don't want to imagine what he’d do to me if I broke something.

I don't think he’d torture me with his crows, but I can never be too sure.

I've got to calm down before I do something I will regret.

Honestly, I don't know how Everton failed 200 times and had the patience to keep going.

If it were me I don't know if the Titans could stop my rage.

All jokes aside, it's time to get serious.

I’ve got to go back to the drawing board, but from where?

I’ve tried making small holes, but ether kept escaping.

I tried learning how to hold my breath, but I don’t have the time to let my lungs expand gradually.

I must be missing something, but what is it?

Why don’t I go back to the beginning?

When I first started it was a mess.

I was such a novice.

Thinking back on how I couldn’t make bubbles that weren’t whole-ridden was embarrassing. It took me so long to figure out how to close everything off. At first it felt weird like having a skin tight suit, and it wasn’t until recently I got…..

Wait what if I expand my bubble?