Thera was busy condensing energy into her bones, like always, when suddenly the fizzing feeling in her bones became a boiling feeling. Her bones felt hot, painfully hot. Thera bit her lip to keep from making a sound as she continued to focus her gaze inwards.
Her entire skeleton had started to glow. It became brighter and brighter until Sora’s outward body started letting off a reddish-orange glow through her skin. It hurt to the point that Sora’s lip bled-she was biting so hard.
Then, after what seemed the longest time, but was really only five or ten minutes, the glow slowly went out, and the pain receded as well. Using her inner sight, Sora was shocked to see that her bones had become clear, like glass.
Thera stared for a long while, confused, but then remembered what her father had said. So this is the rumored diamond stage? Interesting~. Oddly, her teeth remained white, even though the rest of her bones were clear.
Thera didn’t really mind it, as it helped to keep her advancement a secret.
As she had started training since she was three months old, she quickly managed to accomplish this feat three years before the age of training, and had broken the record by an insurmountable margin.
Since everyone began training at the age of six or seven, and it took nine years minimum to break through,
Thera had broken through a good twelve years before anyone else, with a monstrous speed.
Now the youngest practitioner to accomplish diamond bones, Thera had broken through to first level, Green class.
Incidentally, developing inner sight and being able to freely control inner energy were the corresponding breakthroughs for white and yellow, which were considered beginner classes. But now that she had entered green class, she had graduated from being a beginner, since green class was the point from which one could learn martial arts.
Since the level of a martial practitioner could not be seen from the outside, without a measuring tool, no one would know that Thera was a Green class unless they fought with her, or saw her rank when she was measured for martial spirit level, which began as early as age six for nobles.
Thera was still below ten years old, and her martial spirit capacity had grown at an incredible rate to the point where she had condensed nine years’ worth of cultivation into a paltry four years. Moreover, it had shown no signs of slowing down.
Thus, Thera had a monstrous martial spirit capacity, which sped up her training, which in turn increased her spirit capacity even more, in an ongoing outward spiral even the peak martial practitioners did not have as great a martial spirit capacity as she had.
It was all due to Thera’s memories from her previous world, and her daily persistence that she had accomplished such a thing.
Of course, the significance of what happened had mostly escaped her. She was indeed pleased at having achieved diamond bone stage, for, now she could safely practice on her own without worrying about broken bones.
But the fact that she had a capacity so large that her progress was accelerated by over 200% those of others had completely escaped her.
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Mother mended her split lip later, when Thera came to her tearfully, explaining she had fallen down.
After that, Thera began getting up early in the morning, before Mother and the others were awake, and started practicing her previous life’s martial arts she knew in secret. She also carried a bag around with her that was filled with books. Not only did it help her to train her endurance, she could sometimes double up her training by read a book in one hand while doing something else, like one-handed push-ups.
Since no one knew she could now read even the difficult words, she camouflaged it by pretending to play as a kind of librarian messenger-postman. Whether there actually was such a thing as a librarian messenger-postman was unimportant. Children often try to mash things together when they play pretend, and it was quite an effective camouflage at making the rest pay no mind to her and her bag of books.
“How can you have so many bruises on you?! Do you dump your book bag over your head?” Helen, her mother, clucked at her as she healed Thera’s mysterious bruises that kept appearing every few days. Thera shook her head, quiet.
The house is not big enough for her to play in anymore. Her mother thought to herself as she watched Thera wander off again. It would be better to give her a play area away from any sharp corners or rock floors. Her eyes lit up as she went to go find James the gardener.
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A few weeks after that, Thera was brought outside to see what Mother had made for her. She had collaborated together with the gardener and had grown a huge dome made of bamboo, which had woven itself together under mother’s magic, and the gardener’s instructions.
Thera stared at it, admiringly. This kind of creation required not only skill, but a well thought out plan.
It even had windows strategically placed high up, and a rather large hole in the ceiling, so that it wouldn’t be dark inside the dome. But, she could see that they had gotten rather carried away, for the dome was the size of a large barn.
“Do you like it Thera? From now on, when you want to play, one of the servants will bring you here and you can enter. You can play in there all that you want, but if you need to get out, you’ll have to call for the servant again, because the entrance is enchanted so that only those whom I designate can open it.”
Thera nodded enthusiastically. It really was the perfect thing for her. She could practice her martial arts and magic in here all that she wanted.
She waited with impatient anticipation as her mother opened the door for her. Where they stood, it seemed as if there was no way to enter it. Then Mother placed her hand upon the wall and muttered something. The bamboo unraveled to reveal a fat teardrop-shaped entrance. Thera went inside and looked around.
The ground had been combed thoroughly, and there was not a trace of any kind of stone or sharp sticks. Soft mosses and gentle grasses had been grown over the combed ground. Tiny beds of edible flowers had been planted around the edge of the enclosure. Mother had been thorough in her desire to not deprive Thera, but to also keep her safe.
Thera ran around the whole dome, twirling and jumping and skipping. Her mother watched. It is as I thought. The house was too cramped for her. At her age, she should be outside more often. If only Maverick were here to take care of the estate, I would be able to watch her more. Her eyes followed Thera’s gleeful bounding.
Sir Maverick had not returned in the four years he had been gone. She still received a stack of letters from him every month or so, but still…Helen found that she had less and less time to spend with Thera as she dealt with the affairs of the knight’s estate.
She could find someone to do the work for her, but Sir Maverick had always taken care of the estate himself.
He didn’t trust any of the accountants that other nobles had recommended to him, since the people they recommended were often spies, or financial saboteurs. Sir Maverick had become tired of dealing with them.
The last one had been an assassin, which he had swiftly dispatched.
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It was hard to find accountants that were not allied to a particular noble or house in this world.
When Thera returned to the entrance, she hugged her mother. “I love it, Mama! Thank you soo much!”
Helen smiled.
“You’re welcome~ I’ll leave you here for a while to play, then. Mama’s got some more paperwork to finish before supper. Remember to call Jean or Martha if you want to come out.”
Thera nodded. “Mm! I will!”
After Helen closed the opening and left, Thera explored every nook and cranny, then she started her training.
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After two hours of hard physical exercises, Thera lay down in the center of the space and sighed, satisfied. It had been hard, but she could visibly see herself making progress in speed and stamina. This time, she was able to go for ten extra minutes before she had to rest.
She stared through half-lidded eyes up at the blue sky through the bamboo-fringed hole in the ceiling. A single white puffy cloud made its way slowly across the opening. Once it had disappeared beyond the edge of the circle, Thera sat up, still feeling a bit tired, but what she would be doing didn’t require much motion, so it was fine.
While martial practitioners trained their eyes inwards, magicians trained their eyes outwards, and soaked up the mana from the surrounding areas, collecting it in a spiritual organ in the dantian region of the body.
Strangely enough, no matter how much mana one absorbed, the organ itself would never expand. It was like a bottomless bag, except that only a certain amount of mana was allowed through the entrance.
But, in the same way that martial practitioners changed how much they could absorb through continued meditation and absorption during their early years, so too magicians could increase how much mana they could absorb and use if they meditated during their early years.
The only difference was in the meditation pose. While, for martial practitioners, the meditation pose didn’t really matter, Magicians’ palms faced upwards towards the sky and the surrounding mana. The mana was drawn in through their hands, up through the arms, down through the magic median vessels, and into the dantian, where it was absorbed.
Thera was in the magician’s pose, palms facing upwards as she concentrated outwards towards mana, which she could see as flitting specks of light surrounding her in the air, like dust motes in the sunlight.
With her mind, she opened her spiritual organ. Like a vacuum, the nearby floating specks were sucked into it. When the organ was filled, it closed, allowing the remaining specks to dissipate in the large area.
Thera concentrated. She stretched out her hand, and with a flick of her wrist, a four-fold barrier spread out from her until it fitted itself to the inside of the dome. This was the first thing Thera had learned to make.
Unlike Maggie, who work only on the things which were easiest to her, Thera had worked diligently only on barriers until she could make this perfectly.
The first layer was a physical one; it blocked any forces within it from escaping outside of it.
The second layer was a sound barrier; it prevented any noise from being release outside of it.
This was mainly how Thera was able to practice in a storeroom early in the morning without waking anyone up.
The third layer was an illusion barrier. It filtered out all signs of magic being used.
And the last barrier was a watered-down version of a time-altering barrier This made it so that the amount of time spent inside the barrier was two times as fast as that outside the barrier. That being said, it did not accelerate Thera’s physical growth. It only accelerated her perception of time, and reflexes.
Moreover, these were all one way barriers. They didn’t allow certain things out, but anything could come in. The barriers themselves were all standard ones, but Thera had figured out how to make it so that the one-sided barriers were reversed.
Only after she had mastered making and maintaining the barriers to the point where she reached the [No Chant] level, did she attempt to practice any other kind of magic. And the time barrier had been the trickiest to learn.
Anyone who merely looked inside would only see a little girl dancing a weird dance and making gestures, and would think of it as a mere game of pretend.
But, what Thera did not realize, was that-even though barrier magic could be used throughout all of the classes after novice class, only someone of journeyman class should have been able to cast even a watered-down version of a time-changing barrier, as it required a large amount of mana.
The fact that Thera could create and maintain a barrier of that size for so long showed how great a mana capacity she had.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t mana capacity alone which raised ranks. Magic practitioner ranking depended upon one’s understanding of the elements and spells which one used.
You didn’t have to understand every single last spell that was in your class. But the spells you did know had to reach a certain level of proficiency before you could advance. Thus, there were many who only focused upon spells in a single element, such as fire, or water. These were known as elemental magicians, and leveled up faster than others.
However, most magicians agreed that it was better to have a more balanced variation of spells.
Mana capacity did aid you in understanding your spells quicker though. For example, think of someone who had a capacity of ten units as opposed to someone who had a capacity of one hundred units.
If each practiced a spell that used one unit of mana, the first one could only practice the spell ten times before he would have to rest and meditate to regain the lost mana, while the second could continue practicing the spell uninterruptedly, gaining ten times more proficiency in the skill than the first.
Or, the second one could economize and practice ten different spells that each used one unit of mana. While he wouldn’t have any more proficiency than the one who only had a capacity of ten units in the particular spell that they both practiced, he would have nine other spells that the first one didn’t have.
In this way, you can see how great an aid a larger mana capacity was.
After magic practice, Thera would dispel the first three of the four barriers, and take out the books in her bag to read. She read many different kinds of books, learning geography, herbology, astronomy, history, currency, zoology, etc. The estate’s books were her teachers.
As for family time, even though Thera hardly saw her mother any other time, they still had meals together, and mother would listen to Thera talk about what everyone perceived to be a simple story-the kind that children tell about their imaginary friends, or their amazing feats.
Thus, even when Thera told Mother Helen that she was able to do big magic, Helen had only smiled and said,
"That's nice dear, now eat your food."
In this way, Thera often spent all of her time in the play area.
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