Yulia had decided to go outside at night.

She had never done it before, since the grown-ups had said only naughty kids do that, and Al got punished one time for it, but she needed fresh air.

She had been cultivating for almost two whole days, but she seemed to have hit a bottleneck. Her manual talked about those, but it didn't say how to get past them, and her room had gotten stuffy. She was about to go back inside, when she saw it.

Al was flying over the fence, his body all beat up, and his legs the worst mess she had ever seen. She locked eyes with him while trying not to faint from the gorey sight, and he threw her something while muttering what she could only guess was "use this". 'use it? How?'

She didn't know, but then Al hit the ground with one arm below his body, and the arm turned the wrong way with a sickening crunch. She was about to run to call the adults, but then she remembered. This was her chance to redeem herself, to prove she wasn't useless.

She had to save him.

Then something changed inside her core, and all the uniform Ki it was made of seemed to turn warmer, like a warm embrace. It seemed to meld with her body, like removing an itch she never even knew she had. Now her core and her were attuned.

Wasting no time she pushed her Ki through the horn, as she had seen Al do many times before, and it seemed to wrap around him, slowly mending his cuts and bruises, even snapping his broken arm back into position.

But that was no good.

With difficulty, she willed the mana to concentrate around his legs, first snapping his bones in place, then mending them together as if they had never been broken in the first place.

But, at this rate, he would bleed to death. Al had taught her that blood came from inside the bones, which was weird, but she had to believe him. She had felt her control over the Ki improve gradually as she did the procedure, so she commanded a string of it to enter the bones near the heart, hoping it would help.

Al was slowly regaining color to his face, and meanwhile the majority of Yulia's Ki was concentrated on furiously mending his muscles, and when they finished and started on the skin, she let go of the string of Ki for making blood, her pounding headache not capable of maintaining it. When she was about halfway in regenerating the skin -she had finished everything from the knee down- she suddenly felt very weak. 'I ran out o-'

Then she collapsed on top of Al.

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Al woke up. The sun was peeking through the trees. His whole body hurt, especially his right arm, which was surprising since he was pretty sure what he had shredded were his legs.

He looked down, and saw that from the knees down he looked completely fine -although it still hurt badly- and from his knees to halfway to his crotch he only had a series of nasty flesh wounds.

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His arm seemed to be broken, but that would heal on its own given enough time. Then he addressed the elephant in the room 'or, well, in the open I guess'

Yuly was sleeping on top of him. He gently placed her down next to him, and tried to stand up, but a terrible itch like hundreds of needles picking at his legs at once attacked him. It wasn't completely unbearable, but he would have to tone it down on the training for a few weeks.

Then he woke up Yuly to hear what had happened, but it was a lot harder than he expected. He knew one thing that could cause this kind of deep sleep, mana exhaustion. He had been in a couple of parties with mages, and they would always be grumpy the mornings after hard battles due to lack of rest. Kinda like muscle laces but in mental terms.

This could only mean Yuly had done something to save him. Had she awakened the water element? Al knew it had healing properties, but you wouldn't be able to save a person in the state Al had been, since it only accelerated natural healing, like the Toughness stat did.

When he managed to wake her up, she told him what had happened. Al was impressed, to say the least. She had gotten her [F Grade Core] to High grade, and she was 5. However, he had no idea what element she had awoken. 

Al asked her to use a bit of her elemental mana on him to try to decipher it, but it was unlike anything he had ever felt on Earth. It also helped smoothen the wounds in his legs until they could barely be seen. They wouldn't heal anymore though, as several hours had passed since he got them. It would be a good reminder of his stupidity.

She also tried to heal his arm, despite his weak protests, but she had only regenerated about 20% of her mana overnight and had to stop at fusing the bones together, but she insisted on finishing it once she regenerated more mana. It seemed like she was happy to be of use for once,

Al told her to head back first, though he didn't tell her it was because he didn't want her to see him pathetically crawl his way back inside. It was cold outside, but he was used to it, plus it would help improve his toughness anyway.

He lied there for a while, moving his legs until they didn't itch anymore, which took about an hour.

Then he started putting weight on them, and after another couple of hours he could stand up normally. Walking around was a completely different matter however. He also tried using the [Body Enhancement] skill on his legs, only for the itch to turn into full-on pain. It was like going from muscle laces to a pulled muscle, with both the before and after being 100 times worse.

He wobbly and painfully made his way back to his room, and decided to cultivate, with a clear goal in mind: he wanted to get his element. From what Yuly had explained, at the third stage of the [F Grade Core], it attuned to your body gaining an element, though Al was perplexed since he was supposed to gain his element once his [Mana Manipulation] reached High Rank. 'Will I get two elements? That'd be dope' Al mused as he once again concentrated on his core, this time set to attune it with his body 'whatever that means'. 

After some time, he managed to grasp onto something with his mind. 'A strand of mana? Or is it a concept?' He started to tug at it and felt his whole core change into a state that fit perfectly with his body. His mana could flow much more freely now, and he was able to fit much more into the tiny marble-sized sphere.

When he opened his eyes he saw not one screen, as he had expected, but three.

[Mana Manipulation] has reached High proficiency. You have gained an element.

[F Grade Core] has reached High proficiency. It will add mana capacity and regeneration equal to that of F+ Grade Will and Intelligence. You have gained an element.

Congratulations! You have gained the lightning element.

"...Nani!?"