Johan managed to finally make a good enough mana sphere to please Nath. in the last three weeks Johan had been practicing his control anytime that he had available to him. It had become a nearly obsessive behavior.

"Jeez kid. I wasn't expecting you to actually succeed before you managed to make a mana heart. I can't teach you any actually useful spells until then. So it'll be another week or so." Nath smiled. "That's not to say that you didn't achieve something impressive Johan. In fact you did too well. A mana heart is, well, the heart of most spells. Thing is, without a mana heart most people simply can't cast any proper spells. Mana needs to be purified by the mana heart for a little while before you can use it to effectively cast spells, otherwise the cost of casting is too high."

"So what I'm hearing is that I can't use real spells yet since I need to make a mana heart first." Johan sighed. "Wish you'd explained that a few weeks ago or I'd have taken more time to do this. Ah well. Guess I'll just keep practicing control, it'll probably help anyways over time."

"Haha. That's true kiddo." Nath laughed a bit, "I really didn't think you'd improve your control so quickly. Most people take months to even a few years to achieve this much progress."

"Well, I am somewhat used to controlling mana though. Muscle Strengthening might be internal, but it's not like internal and external mana are completely unrelated right? The methodology might be different, but in the end, it is still mana." Johan said.

"Well, technically yes. but usually people have trouble controlling external mana when they start with internal mana and vice versa." Nath began, "The methodology, like you said is different after all, but even then, the way you see it as simply being mana is odd to me. after all, internal mana is attuned to you, almost like your essence is a dye to your mana. Using external mana is like trying to dye a piece of cloth by smearing the one you dyed already against another piece of cloth."

"Huh. I usually think of it like sculpting with clay. I have a bit of clay that I own that I will use, and then I use that clay to stick it to other chunks until I have enough to use. It's worked so far, but I guess it might cause trouble later when it comes to elemental magic..." Johan mumbled off as he began to think.

Nath himself was also thinking for a moment or so before he eventually continued.

"...I hadn't ever thought like that before, but that could definitely help with non elemental magic. Usually with magic I kinda sieve my mana to get what I don't need out of it. That includes non elemental magic as well, since that was how I learned it. Thank you Johan, you've given me something to think about." Nath nodded to himself.

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"Same here. I think I'll need some time to figure out the sieve method of mana manipulation before we move into elements. Ugh. Magic is hard. But at least it's cool." Johan stretched a bit. "Alright, I think were done for the day, right Nath? since both of us have stuff to figure out."

"Um, yes. It's a shame that the manaspace doesn't allow much manipulation of perception of mana." He sighed. "Alright, have a good rest of your day Johan. Good luck in your spar."

"Heh, yeah, I definitely need that when it comes to Markus." Johan stood up and left.

Johan arrived at the training grounds to find Markus and Anne still sparring. Anne seemed to be much better at fighting physically than Johan, though she also had the advantage of simply having more training time as well when it came to this aspect.

Well, better based on technique anyhow, Johan had a massive physical advantage against her, being a man in his late teens his hormones helped a lot with his physical abilities, not to mention how he also had physically enhancing magics that were semi permanently active. In that regard Johan was much better at the strength part of fighting. He was even able to now take on a medium strength attack from Markus and not get instantly bodied by it.

Johan watched as Markus aimed to hit Anne's shoulder, but missed as she stepped out of the way, and then let the attack slide against her shield. It still sounded loud, but Johan knew it likely didn't hurt much, if any, since most of the energy in the attack was shifted due to the shield. Then Anne moved her own sword, which went past Markus' head with a stab, It would've been under Markus' eye if he hadn't dodged out of the way of it.

Markus wasn't fighting at full strength or speed of course, but also wasn't necessarily pulling punches, rather he kept the combat on the siblings individual level. Anne received more technical training, getting into the nitty gritty of how to parry and utilize the strength of an opponent, while Johan was still getting the proper ways to utilize a spear down. He had gotten pretty good at things like stabbing and distance utility, but was pretty bad at parrying and moving attack with it, which was fine so long as he never encountered any actually skilled bandits so Markus had said.

It was a few moments later when Anne had made a bold move of slamming her shield into Markus, who was genuinely shocked, though he quickly recovered. Anne had moved just a touch too slowly and was caught by Markus' foot and then tripped being forced to yield since there was no escape that close to the enemy.

"That was a splendid move on your part Anne. If that had been a real fight or if my back to to a slope you would likely have won there, if I were someone else of course." Markus said as he helped her up.

"Thanks. I just did it because I knew you wouldn't expect it, and I was starting to get tired. I need to learn how to interfere more with my shield. like pulling on my enemy and such." Anne had gotten used to being around Markus enough that she now talked to him in the same way that she could talk to Johan.

Markus laughed a bit at this. "Well, I suppose that could be useful. We can start on that next time." He then turned to Johan, "Are you ready for your spar now Johan?"

Johan got up, from where he was sitting on the ground, and grabbed his training spear. "Yep. I'm gonna try to move your weapon at least once in the spar."

Markus grinned, "Good, I hope you can."