Since I had woken up earlier than everyone that day, I didn’t see anyone for a few hours, the first person that I did see wasn’t dad, as I expected since it was now a Monday, but Maia who was also dressed pretty lightly, but it didn’t seem like it was just because of the heat.

Crap… I’m still not sure how to talk to her after yesterday night.

But I couldn’t let it bother me forever either, so I gulped once and pulled out all the courage I had in me to actually be the first to talk.

“Good morning, what’s with the unusual dressing choice?”

Maia was wearing a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, nothing crazy but was unusual for her since she usually never wore shorts or just t-shirts alone.

“You should also go and get changed, since your clothes are too heavy”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

“From now on we’re both going to go on morning runs every single day, do some regular physical exercises like pushups, and at the end of the day meditate, about 2 hours at minimum. that’s gonna be your, no. Our training.”

Maia broke her poker face at the end, which was probably the biggest relief I could’ve gotten so early on in the morning, and it pumped me up enough to run and get changed, then head out with her.

And so our daily training had started. It consisted of:

* 10 full leaps around our village which was about a kilometer in length, so about a 10km run

* Resting for half an hour while eating and drinking enough to fuel our next activity

* 100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, 100 pull-ups

* Another half a hour break, plus eating again

* Another 10km run

* And without any further resting, 2 hours at minimum of meditation.

A full year had passed, and we did in fact do it every single day. I wanted to give up many times along the way honestly, but even if I wanted to, Maia would literally, straight up carry me out of bed by force and drag me outside for our training.

Saying it was hell would be an understatement, but that was how I felt only for the first few months, because it genuinely did pay off in the end.

Increasing your mana pool was a painful, time and energy consuming process, but it wasn’t impossible. One’s mana pool is stored in a second stomach, which isn’t actually inside us like a literal second stomach, but it’s on a spiritual dimension from what I understood at least.

Before increasing your mana amount, you have to strengthen your body in order for it to withstand the growth of its second stomach, and the increase of usable mana itself, hence why the intense physical training.

The meditation was where the mana actually did slowly increase, because in exchange of getting closer to nature itself, and the spiritual realm, you gain a small amount of droplets in your pool for every second you do so.

The goal of meditation is to enter the spiritual realm, which is a higher dimensional plane, with mana so intense that even within the realm was a challenge. It puts an immense amount of pressure on your body, and soul which also fatigues you extremely fast. For the record, I haven’t been able to stay in it for longer than a single second, but it still kinda increased my pool over the past year ever so slightly.

Even as my mana increased, an indisputable fact that proved dad wasn’t just saying it because of my low amount came straight to my face, the realization hitting me like a brick in the skull as I learnt that unlike everyone else besides of course the mana less ones, I had no innate element affinate to my soul, which was part of why I wasn’t going to be able to use it.

Learning general magic was harder but possible, unlike that though, it was impossible to learn elemental magic other than the one or ones you’re born with, because the way we get them was by a lesser spirit merging with our souls at birth, based off their own choice depending on what you’d have more affinity with, so me not being able to use elemental magic meant a single thing. No spirit had fused with my soul, so I wasn’t able to use it.

Stolen story; please report.

It did sadden me, and I did feel like everything I had done was a waste afterwards, but I didn’t give up. Because I still had an option besides learning non elemental magic, which had more or less been my main goal from the start.

Pure mana manipulation/output. It was generally the most valuable one, but it was exactly because of it that it was also the hardest one to learn, but it wasn’t impossible.

It had many boons, like strengthening your body, enhancing your speed, your thought process, enhancing your general stats, defense, and even allowing you to detach from the ground and while wrapping your body on a layer of it, you could fly. Then there were the offensive benefits, like creating your own weapon, which couldn’t be replicated by magic, since it had its own limits to what it could materialize, but there was no such limit on what you could actually create with pure mana. Or you could strengthen objects, change their shape, or most importantly, what I’ve always wanted to do, concentrate and release it either as it is as just a blast kinda like a “Gran Rey Cero” or just condense and release it from a weapon, like a “Getsuga Tenshou”.

So with a new goal in mind, I kept going with my training.

About a year and a half after my training started, I was now around 6 and a few months old, and we were on our first morning run.

I’ve gotten used to it, but man… I still hate this.

I internally mourned my clear displeasure towards our daily runs, but it was a daily occurrence so I obviously just kept running alongside Maia without any vocal complaints.

We had finished our first leap, and we were at around half of the banana shaped villages on the southern gate, which was the main one and to my greatest surprise and pleasure, for the first time since our training started, something had stopped our run.

About 100 meters away from the gate, there was a quartz pedestal, which had a few golden stripes on its corners which all started at its flat top and went towards the land beneath. I never bothered to ask what it was before, but it didn’t matter since I had overheard Maia ask dad about it once, and I already knew the answer.

Throughout the entire planet there’s a magical circuit that activates a single spell. Every single village, town, or city had a pedestal somewhere around it. In order to activate the spell, whoever wanted to use it had to simply pour some of their mana inside, and once the spell got activated they could choose any point they thought of to be put on the big hologram like giant screen that popped out upon the spell’s activation, and even choose which pedestals to transmit it from. To make it short, it was like an instant live-streaming spell, which allowed you to put anything you wanted on screen.

The screen had popped up as we were about 300 meters away from it, and we had to stop, not because of curiosity or anything like that, but because the spell was generally used for mainly 3 things, which were either continent wide communication, either just towards the kings which had special custom made pedestals in their castles; a big announcement wherever it was specific for our kingdom or continent, or the final scenario, which seemed to be the case this time. A captain was about to fight a sworn sword sent by the dragon king himself.

We walked a few more steps just to position ourselves so we could see the screen properly, then stopped completely and I immediately took the occasion to sit down and breathe.

Thank… god.

I took a deep breath as I finally managed to relax a bit, surprisingly enough Maia had also sat down next to me, though Maia didn’t seem nearly as tired as me.

“Never thought I’d see one of these so soon, swarms sent by the dragon king himself are so large in powerful threats that only a captain can take care of them…”

Ever since that night, Maia had changed. She was still her usual self as the caring older sister, but something about her was different. She was more composed overall, was prone to making more logical and strict decisions, and was actually acting as mature as a prodigy like her would normally be. I didn’t really mind it, because at the end of the day she was still Maia, but I could feel it at that point, her usual excitement I was used to, burrier deep in her throat as she spoke, but at the same time she also wasn’t able to completely mask the glow of her eyes of pure excitement, so I knew that even though her comment was seemingly unemotional, she was genuinely excited, and it made me glad that she hadn’t really changed deep down.

“It seems like it’s from the Jolfar Kingdom, so that means…”

“That’s right, Cael. It’s her. The Strongest Captain excluding the Commander, the last of the Primordial Sentinels, the Elfen Queen of Nature… Sylara Wynsorin.”

A few moments later, the spell had finally started showing us the scene. The elf kingdom was placed on the western side of our continent, which was directly parallel to the dragon king’s continent, so it was usually the first choice whenever he got bored enough to send a few troops, but sometimes he’d also order them to take the longer route and land in other kingdoms just because he could, but this wasn’t the case.

The Queen of Nature was standing on the top of what seemed to be a giant Tree, it’s diameter was around 10 meters and was about 100 meters tall, and on its flat top she was sitting on a wooden throne, smirking as she looked ahead to the swarm coming towards her, which was still about 500 meters away above the sea.

“How nice of you Vorathar sweetie. Sending what seems to be around 300 Wiverns all just for me! I need to remember to pay you back one day… don’t I”

The spell allowed us to also hear anything its activator wanted us to, so we could hear her very well. Her playful and almost seductive tone was just as described. She was a beautiful woman, with long green hair which she left untied, besides a few strands which were tied so she wouldn’t have any hair in her eyes, her figure was that of a tall woman, with a voluptuous upper body, or to make it short, she had pretty large breasts, of which the upper part were slightly exposed in the center of her chest. She wore an elegant yet light looking dress that seemed custom made to fit her alleged lazy but also luxurious lifestyle, and was seemingly pretty easy to move in so it was also fit for combat, although…

If the rumors about her are right then…

As the wiverns approached closer and closer, she still didn’t even get up from her throne, she just kept looking at them with a devilish smile on her face, as if she was waiting for them.

The Queen Of Nature Sylara Wynsorin, the Woman that won every single recorded fight, without ever getting up from her seat.