Meditation, huh?

...

Before I started I looked around to see what the others were doing.

Luna seemed to be praying. She even put her hands together. She must have been a religious girl before. The image of a Vampire praying was oddly hilarious.

Torrik just closed his eyes and seemed to be concentrating. Hope he doesn’t fall asleep. I have a hunch that Sister Minerva wouldn’t like it much.

Uriel was just spacing out. Maybe he too didn’t know what to do. Or maybe his race had too big of a drive to be concentrating. Possible, since I only saw one Succubi training magic, with the others nowhere to be seen.

I decided to go with the traditional meditating. Cross legs, close eyes, deep breaths and concentration. I left the crystal on the chair. I would first try to actually find the mana first, and then infuse it.

Breathe in…

…

Breathe out…

…

Breathe in…

…

Why am I running out of air?

Dammit, manual breathing is on.

I totally lost concentration. Spent several minutes trying to control my breath. Am I that bad at ‘Breathing’?

Well, second try.

…

…

Ugh, now my tail hurts. Trying to ignore.

I opened my eyes.

Luna was still concentrating. Torrik was positively sleeping. Uriel seemed to get the hang of it, and was meditating alone in a corner of the room.

I awoke Torrik.

He was embarrassed. I waved off his thanks.

Now back to meditating.

What I had to find? Mana.

But how to find it? No idea.

I tried to recall what Sister Minerva told us and what I already knew.

Mana was all around. And inside of us. It can be used as energy. And energy could be exchanged into mana.

So, energy? How would I detect it?

I thought about the other world. About my family I couldn’t remember. About my friends.

And ended up thinking about school. Strangely, I could remember some classes. Math, arts, biology, history, chemistry, physics…

Also remember a little detail about energy. In some situations, when a body lost energy it would lose it in the form of heat. So heat = energy = mana?

I smiled and concentrated the same way Torrik did. I put the crystal on my right hand.

And focused on my heat.

More concentrated on my torso and head. How to move it?

I tried to move it to my right hand.

…

No sucesss…

It seemed to slip if i went too fast.

I decided to go back to the lotus position. And held the crystal with both hands.

Now, I would try slower.

First acquire the mana to move… got it.

Now slowly move to my shoulders… It took more time but I got it.

Now, even slower move both manas down my arms and into the crystal…

Slow…

Calm…

…

Can’t believe it… I did it!

I opened my eyes to see how the others were doing.

Luna crystal was emitting some light. She already had figure it out, it seems. Uriel was almost getting it too. He sometimes gave a small smile, maybe for getting to move mana, but frowned when he lost control. Torrik was observing the others too. Maybe he was at the same point as me.

Well, back to infusing, I guess.

Now that I know how to do it, it was easier. Laughably easier.

I finished the infusing and opened my eyes. And got immediately worried.

My crystal was emitting a dimmed red light. I looked at Luna’s. It was shining but without colors.

A blue panel appeared

Congratulations!You have acquired Fire Proficiency

…

Fire? But it was Arcane Mana…

What did I do wrong?…

Uriel was getting the same as me. I could see his crystal slowly getting redder. Torrik got a yellow light, and looked as confused as me.

And then, our time ended. Minerva was back at class.

She looked at everybody's crystal. And went to where she was before.

“Good. All of you infused the crystals. But only Luna got to infuse the Arcane Mana.” She said and pointed at me. “Gyp, how did you take the mana?”

“I ussssed the energy that wasss on my heat.” I answered. Did I get it wrong?

Uriel nodded. It seems we had the same idea, at least.

Minerva looked at Torrik. “And from where you took your mana?”

“From my breath. You said Arcane was exchangeable with the surrounding mana, so I thought it was through breathing.” She nodded at his answers. “Have I done it wrong?”

“No, no child. It’s a common mistake.” She looked at Luna. “The odd thing is Luna getting it on her first try. But I do have a theory of how she did it.”

She made a pause.

“Luna is a Vampire. Vampires have a different… body… compared to other races.” She started. “They don’t need to breath, don’t generate too much heat and don’t sweat. Torrik, using your breathing you channeled the Arcane Mana that was changing into Wind. Uriel and Gyp did almost the same, but with Fire Mana. Now, let’s hear from Luna how she did it”

Luna was getting embarrassed.

“I felt that something was off ever since I came to this world. It was like a different feeling, like something inside me was changing. When you gave your class I discovered what it was. It was mana. And the changing feeling I got was from it changing into the other mana”

The teacher put her hands together, looking pretty happy. If we weren’t here I bet she would be hopping.

“Exactly! From talking with the others pilgrims, I theorized that your old world don’t have mana. How this works, I don’t know, but there isn’t any mana there. Luna felt it, because of her race slow exchanging rate. And that’s what I want you to do. Find this strange energy that you didn’t felt before and tomorrow we will continue.” She looked outside the window.

It was already getting dark.

“Now, go eat! Until tomorrow” she waved a goodbye and exited.

We went downstairs, still thinking about the class.

The others were already dinning.

And the food! Carrot cake with chocolate icing again! Some sweet bread! As always, well prepared!

These people really know how to cook!

I sat down with Luna and Piper again.

Broox was with the Orcs again. Arm wrestling. Battle maniacs, I guess.

Uriel was back with the other demons.

Torrik was back to the big group.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“Thinking about it, where’sss the other girlsss? The onesss from thisss morning” I asked Piper (Luna was back to her Cool Beauty act)

“Oh, them? They got tired of Luna being so talkative (lol) and went back to their own group.” She again said lol. And pointed to said group. They were giggling and pointing at Broox’s group. Obligatory plastic girl group.

I nodded and focused on eating.

But Piper had other plans.

“Hey Gyp, how old were you on the other world?” She asked, as if trying to keep the talk going.

“18, why?” as always, short answers.

And then noted that most pilgrims were hearing this little exchange.

“Ha!” Piper suddenly exclaimed “I said he was more than fifteen years old!” and looked at the human girl from Barbies club. “Pay up, Aphrodite!”

Aphrodite? Like the goddess of beauty? Just how much self-centered was this girl?

She sighed and gave a bag full of coins to Piper and went back to her place.

I stared at Piper. “How old she thought I was?”

She grinned. “Around ten”

Ouch. That hurt.

I spent the rest of dinner in silence. But still ate. A lot. First time I ate all the food since I got here. I wonder where I would store all the extra mana.

I got up and stretched a little. And gave my goodbyes to the girls.

Now, time to go to sleep!

At least was what I thought, until I reached the stairs and felt a hand holding my shoulder.

It was Brother Oliver.

“Hi Gyp” he smiled “There’s just one more thing before you go to sleep. Follow me.”

This dormitory really looked like the monk’s one. Except theirs, after you entered, had a library in front of you, their dormitory at the right and a dining hall at the left. But ours were different. There was the dormitory at right and a cafeteria at the left. But the “reception” hall was a little bigger, and I still haven’t visited the front room.

We headed to it.

I could hear people talking.

When we entered I saw a loft. Some chairs and some sofas, so people could have conversations. Two doors, one at the left and the other at the right. We went to the left one.

When we entered, there was a changing room, with low shelves were you could place your clothes. Yeah, it was the public showers, if I was not mistaken.

Brother Oliver pointed a room out, and said that I should relieve before going to the showers. I haven’t even noticed that I really needed to go.

Ah the blessing the goddess told me. The one that made all food be converted into mana. But liquids still needed release. Still, great part was converted. That’s why only now I felt the need to go.

Coming back, I took off my clothes. There was a small towel, that I saw people using to cover their parts. I wore it and went inside the proper showers.

Great part of the area had a big pool, steaming with hot water. On the sides were little showers with small stools, where the person had to sit down to clean themselves. It looked a lot like the ones from mangas.

Brother Oliver was beside one of stools, pointing me to sit down. I had no chance to run away so I obeyed.

“The maids that clean the rooms complained that your blankets were dirty. We noticed that you walked all the way from the forest to here, shoeless. And you didn’t take a bath.” He took a brush “So they insisted that it was my job to properly show you our hygienic customs.”

He pulled another stool and sat behind me.

“So let’s start!” he said with a terrifying smile.

I would like to say that I sat calmly during the whole ordeal.

Instead, let’s just say that he was strong. Really, needlessly strong. The brush seemed to remove some layers of my skin. Maybe he got a lecture from said maids for not taking me to the showers when I arrived.

It was Hell!

I can only imagine that it comically looked like a guy trying to wash a misbehaved pet.

I know that I look like a child, but I can take a bath myself!

But then two monks passed by us.

“Brother Oliver Got it easy” one of them said. These showers must be used by the whole monastery. “His protégé is quite small”

The other laughed “Brother Tristan was really unlucky, look at the size of that Demon”

I looked at where he pointed.

Uriel was passing through the same ordeal. Maybe some joke the monks had with the pilgrims. And it looked like the only thing that stopped him from running was the chanting the monk was using. Only a spell to stop someone of that size. At least it was not because of my appearance.

After the torture washing, he told me to go to the pool while he cleaned himself. My skin felt a bit redder.

The water was good! But it was quite deep for me…

Well time to train swimming!

I could hear some laughing (probably at the scene of a certain Imp in a rather small pool) but I was feeling good, so ignored them.

It felt good!

Well, good until I reached a deeper part of the pool, making a worried Brother Oliver come running to take a drowning Imp out of the water. This little incident gave the bathers more laughs and I received a long scolding from a half-naked monk.

After the bath (and promises to never return to the deeper side) we got out of the shower room. Brother Oliver used some magic to clean our clothes and took me back o my room. It seems that, with the little incident, he convinced himself that I would kill myself if he didn’t keep a lookout until we reached my room.

“Good night, Gyp. Please, go sleep” some monk would pass the whole night up, worried.

Waving good bye, I entered my room.

Syd was already sleeping, so with nothing more to do I changed into the large shirt and went to sleep.

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Author Note:

Aaaaaaand today's chapter (really, it's becoming a daily release)! A little smaller than chapter 5, but I felt I reached a nice point to stop. Chapter 7 is already being written!

Next we will see some physical training! And more characters! And some more (annoying to create) panels!

As always, if you find grammar mistakes (or any other kind of mistake), please, comment.

And thanks for the followers! Following this really makes me want to go on. We have 12 right now. Pretty good for a begginer (and without experience) writer.

(Goal: achieve 30 followers and make a Side Story based on a chosen character)

Thanks for reading!