By the time the sun fully rose above the horizon, Tide was up and ready to go. He started out by washing of in the stream, letting the cold-water help remove his drowsiness. Once he had finished drying off he began to take wood out of his storage ring and made a circle of wood around his hole, besides where he had the trench connecting it to the stream.

Tide looked at all of his preparations and nodded in approval, this would do. Eager to get started Tide jump into the hole and found comfortable sitting position. He took a moment to stretch and scratch any itches he had because he wouldn't be moving for a while after this. He reached his hand out to some of the loose soil he took out of the hole and began to push it back into the hole onto his lap. He continued to do so until the soil was packed in and reached his lower stomach. He made sure it was all packed in and stable before resummoning his shovel into his hands.

Taking the shovel in one hand he began to jab it into the mound of soil blocking the water from the stream. As the dirt broke up water started to trickle through until the soil gave way and a steady flow traveled from the river into the hole and filled it up to the top of Tides chest.

Next Tide finished his set up by taking out his fire starter out and lighting the wood around him in various positions. He gave the wood a minute or two to spread creating an almost complete circle around him. Soon the dry would was being consumed vigorously by the fire and created large flames.

He took one more moment to make sure none of the fire would go out or fall into the hole burning him, before closing his eyes and activating meditation. Soon he felt his thoughts and emotions fall away. Only his awareness of himself and his surroundings were left. He willed those two things into focus until he could feel the ambient mana saturated in himself and the mana flowing around him ever present in the world.

Last time during the safety period it took him a while to notice the differences between his mana and the mana in the earth. This time sense he knew what he was looking for he knew exactly what he was looking for. Mana flowed differently when present in a medium. Inside himself mana was just steadily flowing like blood, coursing through his body and reinforcing it. In the earth it was much more slow and focused. It all flowed in one direction, the rotation of the planet. Tide felt the interaction at his legs where his mana met with earth’s mana. They repelled each other due to their differences. In order to increase his affinity with the earth Tide had to begin to dispel this repulsion between himself and the soil. He manipulated the mana in his legs and waist to slow down and stop flowing in a cycle but instead just in one direction. While it wasn't as purposeful and uniform as the mana in the ground, it was enough for the repelling force to weaken. Soon small amounts of Tides mana was able to flow out of him and merge with the earth’s and the earth’s mana was able to flow into him. Once this flow started Tide was able to loosen his control on his mana and let the transfer occur.

Taking his consciousness, Tide looked upwards and moved on to the water surrounding his arms and chest. Unlike earth, Tide didn't know much about waters mana and had to take a while to just study it and reach a certain level of understanding. Unlike earth's mana, it was much looser and flowed swiftly. It was cyclic in nature, similar in that way to Tides naturally occurring mana, but was much more elegant. He watched the mana and began to internalise its flow until he felt comfortable with it and reached into his mana in his chest and had it attempt to replicate the waters flow. It took him a couple attempts and some strenuous concentration, but eventually his mana was able to mirror enough of the waters mana for the flow to commence.

Tide stabilized and facilitated this flow before moving on. He quickly checked on the earth’s flow into himself and was happy to see that it continued without his attention. Actually when tide looked closer the transfer was slightly larger than before.

Next up was fire. Making his way to his head and shoulders he found that there was no fire mana present. Confused, Tide exited his meditation, to find that his fire had all but gone out and that the sun was quite high in the sky. It took him much longer than he thought to facilitate his connection to the earth and water. Slightly upset that he would have to reconnect them once again once he got the flames back up and going.

Lucky Tide had thought ahead and collected a large amount of wood. He just need to pull some of it out of his ring and place them on the dying fire around him. Once the fire was up and roaring once again, Tide enter his meditation. He started out by reconnecting the lost connections, which was much easier this time, before moving back up to his head and shoulders.

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This time the was a large amount of fire mana in the air around his head. It was violent and didn’t flow like the other kinds of mana it, just dispersed. Its mana was quickly lost to the air around it. The mana in the air in kind began to act more violently having absorbed the fire mana.

Intrigued, Tide began to look at the interaction between himself and the mana. He watch as it hit his shoulder and to his surprise it simply bounced off instead of being absorbed. No, actually some of it was, Tide realised as he saw a couple motes of mana not being reflected. Instead they were caught by his own mana. The fire mana wasn't absorbed, though it was contained by his own mana and was eventually suffocated by his mana until it lost its violent energy. His mana brought the fire mana under control.

‘Wait a minute, perhaps that is it, control.’ Tide thought.

Unlike the other two elements where he had to manipulate and control his mana in order to get it to conform with the earth and water, he had to release control over his mana for it to act violently and uncontrolled. Fire was just the release of condensed mana, allowing it to be disbursed into the environment.

His mana fought, not wanting to leave their creator, but eventually he won out his mana began to slowly leave his body and disappear into the air. Not only that, but more wisps of mana were being allowed into his body due to this lack of control.

As the number of wisps entering him increased he began to burn up feeling uncomfortably hot. He kept going through until he felt his skin beginning to crackle and peel off in layers. Toning the transfer of mana the temperature stabilized and he found a equilibrium of exiting and entering mana.

If someone was to stumble upon Tide training at that moment they would have seen small yellow flames licking the outside of his head and hair almost like it was streaming out of his pores.

Tide began to have his focus leave his head and travelled back to the rest of his bodies, but he quickly felt the exchange of mana destabilize. He quickly willed it back into place before having to monitor it until the flames around his body began to flicker out.  

He let out a deep breath and was finally able to rest his mind letting the interaction fall apart. Tide quickly check his chest and waist to find that the water and earth attunement continued the entire time. He willed those interactions to stop also and opened his eyes.

The light of a low sun crashed into his eyes and along with it a sharp wave of pain rolled through his body. He instantly closed his eyes in an attempt to stop the migraine. After an hour of just trying to think of nothing and soothe his brain, he was able to finally open his eyes.

It was much less painful this time due to the fact the sun had dipped below the horizon. It took him a moment to steady his vision still and attempted to stand only to find that his body was to weak to move.

Groaning Tide let out a couple of choice swear words before admitting defeat and promptly passing out in exhaustion with his head slumping over into the wall of the muddy pit.

The next day when he woke up he was able to pull himself out of the hole with some effort. His muscles protested, but after stretching them the pain began to subside.

He washed off the mud caked onto his skin in the stream and while he was drying off he ate a large meal of rations to make up for not eating much the day before.

While he was eating tide decided to check how much progress he made.

When he first opened up his status he had three windows pop up telling him that he was the first person to build affinities with earth, water and fire. Each of these accomplishments rewarded him with five stat points in endurance for earth, five in vitality for fire and five in reaction for water. Along with this his mental stats also rose due to the strain and manipulation of mana.

Tide quickly brushed these notifications away, while stats were important it wasn’t the focus of his training. What he wanted to see was his affinities growth.

Tide Blackwater

Lv:1

Class: None

Health: 45 (Regen 9/h)

Mana: 60 (Regen 36/h)

Stamina: 45 (Regen 27/h)

Vitality: 9

Strength: 4

Endurance: 9

Reaction: 10

Agility: 5

Willpower: 9

Intelligence: 11

Wisdom: 12

Control: 13

Affinities-

Earth: 11%

Fire: 5%

Water: 7%

Looking at his progress tide nodded his head, this was what he expected. Of course his earth affinity was growing the fastest due to his knowledge in the subject. Honestly his fire and water progress was very nice. Normally it would take a couple of days to get to ten percent normally when just focusing on one element.

During the first week everything was much easier to increase and one of the most difficult things to train was someone’s affinity. Coupled with the fact that training multiple affinities was especially difficult due to the conflicting mana type, Tide hoped to make a large amount of progress before the week ended. He still had five days to go before the monsters would start spawning in.