Another two silent months passed after the negotiations with the Monless merchants. Jien continued his training without interruption as the seasons changed. His seventh birthday and and the unsealing rite had occurred in the early spring. Without anyone realizing time seemed to slip through their fingers. Winter was approaching swiftly, the air was chilling, and the trees had already lost most of their leaves. The fall harvest had been completed weeks prior, keeping Lord Losler busy with the management of the process. All of the harvested grain and various resources from the gardens outside the manor had been stored and preserved, ensuring that unless the winter was longer than usual the city of Afrem would have no difficulties throughout the season of cold and snow.
This morning Jien woke early, as he had learned to do after the first few weeks of his training routine. Mark had long since stopped having to wake him up and Runa no longer intruded on his room unless it was necessary, waiting for him patiently outside his bedroom door. He rose from his bed and stretched with a yawn, exposing that his thin frame was now more defined. The workout and daily training with the blade had built some muscle on his compact frame.
He walked swiftly to his wardrobe and withdrew his usual training outfit of a linen shirt and pants. He slipped on his boots and made his way to the bedroom door and was greeted by Runa as he was every morning. He nodded to her, wishing her a good morning before making his way down to the kitchen. There on a table was his usual breakfast already in a basket and waiting, though there was an added thermos of hot tea in addition to his bottles of water. This was his new usual routine, having to grab breakfast for himself as Mark would eat in his guest house before waiting for Jien on the training field.
Jien took the basket without a word and left through the back door, closing it quickly so that the cold outside would not affect the kitchen. He was immediately hit by a wall of freezing air, causing his muscles to tense, his body to shiver and his cheeks and face to become rosy. Once would wonder why he would walk outside with such light clothing while the seasons were truly on the cusp of winter, but the truth of the matter was that once he got going, he wouldn't need any warmer clothing, in fact it would become a detriment to his training due to restricting his movement. A body with its mana unsealed would naturally be more resilient than one without, but this was also training on how to better control the mana within him as well.
The training was simple. He had to circulate mana through his body to adapt it to the environment without losing mana in the process. It would require constant concentration until it became a habit. This wouldn't make one's body stronger, it would simply adjust the warmth of the muscles. However, if you lost focus or control of the mana your body would try and absorb it, draining you before you found a proper use for it. This was one of the various training methods that Mark had added as the seasons changed and Jien improved. He would need to be able to adapt to all situations going forward and not always would he have the proper materials of clothing. It was best to teach him skillsets that would allow him to survive with just his mana and body where possible.
Jien began to circulate his mana through his body quickly, focusing on keeping his body from leeching off of what he was sending. Like everyone else, he did not have a massive store of mana, in fact given his age his store of mana was a lot less than any adult who had had time to work on their accumulation. With time if one did not use all of their mana they could slowly build up a tolerance to having more in their body. The soul core could expand to allow more, could being the operative term as it was never guaranteed to be able to handle such a process, but this took consistent accumulation until your limits were passed to get even the smallest gains. Most would never go too deep down this path because of the time investment, though those in a more passive position had the ability to. The issue is that you needed to be at your maximum occupancy of mana stored before you could attempt pushing your limit and most were always using mana faster than their body could ever distill more, hence the need for efficiency when using mana manipulation or arcane arts.
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Jien continued to circulate his mana as his body became more adjusted to the cold as he walked out to the training field. There he saw Mark sitting on the dirt, drinking from his own thermos of tea. Jien sat across from his mentor and ate in silence, making sure to eat every morsel that was provided quickly, but doing his best to not give up on etiquette. Soon he finished his meal and emptied his thermos of tea before standing up to start his jog. In these past few months Mark had to yet again increase the difficulty. He challenged Jien to increase the size of the laps he ran to encompass the gardens outside the manor as well. Though Jien still didn't like the physical aspect of this training, nor the added challenge, he still accepted and continued to push forward.
It didn't take more than a few hours to complete the entirety of his jog and some of the other basic muscle training that Mark had him doing. At some point along the way Mark had begun to add some small weights for those exercises so that Jien could continue to improve without pushing the number of reps and amount of time spent, up endlessly. It was after these exercises that Jien took a short break to drink some water and eat a light lunch so that he could get into the weapons training.
He wanted to move as swiftly as possible through that step to get to training with mana again. He was still struggling to figure out the Personal Library spell the lich archon had provided him. He badly wanted to learn it since it was a spell given by the follower of his chosen god, but that did not mean he ignored other spells. He had been training in the body casting version of spells along with the verbal casting during his time training with Mark. Mark had made his main focus body casting as it would be better in any fight. With verbal casting you would announce your purpose to any truly knowledgeable opponent, but body casting would allow you to hide your spell until it was cast. Likewise, though the bar to entry was higher for body casting, once the caster had learned the spell thoroughly, the casting speed would be greatly reduced, making it one of the most efficient ways to cast in a fight.
Despite his eagerness to get through this portion of his training, today something different occurred. Today a petite woman with wavy raven hair that reached her lower back was walking towards them from the manor. She was roughly 5'8" with creamy white skin and sharp brown eyes. She wore a simple yet elegant blue dress that lacked any frills or ruffles and a pair of brown leather boots. To her left hip was a slim leather sheathe, from which an intricate guard in a spiraling pattern that looked like rose vines and a simple metal handle wrapped neatly in brown leather. She walked toward Jien and Mark with the grace of a dancer during a performance. Her movement was simple yet seemed to hide something profound. There seemed to be almost no waste of movement or energy even in her simplest of steps.
The woman made it to the pair in a matter of minutes despite the fact that she had been a fair distance away at the manor. It was as if she had skated on the earth with her steps to arrive faster, and yet Jien couldn't see any hint that she had done anything other than walk normally. Once she had arrived the gave an elegant curtsy to both Jien and to Mark. "Greetings young lord Jien, my name is Emily Bujrim and I have been hired to train you in the noble art of fencing and how to use the rapier in combat." she stated in light tone that to many may have sounded like the voice of an angel.