Johan had been doing quite a bit in the past month. He had started learning about magic from Nath, as well as receiving martial arts lessons from Markus.

Markus was a gruff man. He had black hair that was starting to turn grey in some areas, though his stubble was noticeably more grey than the rest of his hair. He was generally polite despite his somewhat rough appearance, and he was shockingly strong. Though if he wasn't strong he wouldn't have made a good guardsman, Johan supposed.

His sister had also been learning about martial arts, although Anne wasn't as good as Johan when t came to their training. This was simply due to the fact that she wasn't used to a large amount of physical work like Johan was, at least not in this way. Anne had also been getting therapy from Nath, who had noticed how reticent she seemed of everything, and had started to become more vocal, much to Johans delight.

Johan still hadn't told her about their dad, but he kept planning to and, of course, putting it off. He saw her getting better day by day, and just couldn't bring himself to do so in the end.

Aside from training, Johan and Anne were also expected to help out by doing chores around the town. They had become accustomed to putting nails into boards as the town seemed to be perpetually falling to bits, as well as replacing boards every now and again as sometimes people would cause trouble. They also had to help gather water and feed some cattle that had been brought to graze in a nearby field of yellowed grass. It felt rather therapeutic overall.

-

Today Johan was sitting in class, going over theory.

"Johan." Nath called out.

"Yes, teacher?" Johan responded.

"What do you call the feeling of magic?" Nath asked.

"Mana Sense, the ability to sense and feel mana." Johan responded. He was pretty good at theory, it seemed that, although Ambevelance was very good at making up history, fantasy writers had somehow guessed a few things, and Johan had been deep into fantasy books, and it truly translated well.

"Good, what about the feeling of casting magic?"

"Spell Cognition? I think that's what it was called. It is the strange tingle you get when you are casting a spell, you become very aware of it, thus it's called Spell Cognition, is that right?" Johan asked

"Yes it is, very good. Now then, let's talk about spells. Your spell that you had developed naturally, what is it?" Nath nodded to the boy, signaling him to answer.

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"It's Muscular Strengthening, also sometimes called Muscle Strengthening. As the name suggests it boosts the strength of the castors, and at much higher levels of casting another persons, muscular strength. This happens because you simply push mana through the muscles in the body moving the blood faster, and also simultaneously having the mana get stuck to muscle fibers, and the spell can also be augmented into what is referred to as Partial Muscular Strengthening. Using it in such a way can give large boosts of speed or strength at the cost of the overall strengthening effect when cast over the entire body." Johan answered.

"Correct. Entirely so. It's truly unfortunate that you struggle with mana control once it moves past the skin. Though it isn't that rare given that you are a natural at using mana internally, mages like that usually struggle once the mana is out of the body." Nath sighed, "But still, you are very talented in at least that portion of magic so that should be considered fortunate. Once you fully understand the theory behind it you will be learning about Bone Strengthening, which, to remind you, requires much finer control since you need mana to flow in your marrow so when blood is produced it is also slowly strengthened too, that is, after all, the basics of Blood Strengthening."

"Yes sir. I'll try to study more about it. I wish it were something that I could just be shown instead. It sucks that magic doesn't work so conveniently." Johan stood up as he closed his book that he wrote some notes into and then stretched. He was thinking of all those cool books from his past.

He had been in this room for the past five hours learning more about mana and basic mana control. He had been able to quickly grow accustomed to internal mana control as he had been using it, if unintentionally, for a few years, thus it became significantly easier for him once he moved it in some different ways in his body, having learned to reinforce his organs recently.

Unfortunately this did not extend to marrow which is where blood was produced from. It did give him great advantages in learning martial arts however, as he took less damage from most attacks he was thus able to train longer and harder, not to mention that mana acted like blood in the way that it carried what he needed to heal through his body healing him approximately 2-3 times faster than a normal person. It was like having extra blood. of course all those materials to heal had to come from somewhere, so he also ate a bit more too which was a bit of a problem in this town.

Nath was hoping to be able to teach the boy some things to be able to grow crops quickly and more efficiently than they could currently. Nath may not have been a slouch, what with being a retired Gent Highmage, but he just didn't have the ability to do all of that while still maintaining his current form and actually providing water and protection. Even more so in a mana poor environment such as this wasteland.

That didn't sound too insignificant until one realized that Nath was *old*, like ancient old, older than a couple of now fallen kingdoms old, if he were to be believed. He maintained his current appearance through a rather strong magic that consumed most of his mana gained everyday.

"Yes... I do believe that would make magic easier. Unfortunately magic that involves the mind or its physical counterpart are both hard and highly dangerous. It's illegal in most places for a reason." Nath explained, "And, well... I *could* teach it to you and help you along, I don't have the mana capacity to do that and do everything else that I need to do. Water needs a lot more mana in a place like this, after what Ambevelance did to it and all..." The man continued on for a while while Johan continued to get ready to leave to visit Markus, Anne had been working hard as had he, and he had some ideas for his daily spar this time.