[Mana Manipulation] was too important a skill not to have. It was the one skill that everyone had at some point during their path. The advantages it gave were too enormous to ignore, and only an idiot would not gain the skill.
Was it strange that Julius wanted to try it anyway?
Edwin taught him mana manipulation techniques that had him pull a small amount of mana from himself and try various activities, such as writing his name in the air with it or making general shapes. All the while, trying not to waste a single bit of it. If he lost control for even a second, he would have to begin again.
After several days of practicing for several hours every night, he finally got the prompt.
Would you like to learn the skill [Mana Manipulation]?
Congratulations, skill [Mana Manipulation] acquired.
Edwin was right. The difference was substantial. It wasn’t like [Spatial Perception]. [Spatial Perception] didn’t feel like it became more effective after he received a skill for it. The skill mainly lightened the mental load it had on him. However, in this case, Julius could feel the skill activating and assisting him in manipulating the mana. The best thing he could compare it to was the difference between playing a video game with aim assist on versus having it off. It was slight, and you still needed to do the majority of the work. But some of the smaller adjustments were taken care of thanks to the skill.
It was an amazing skill.
So obviously Julius decided to get rid of it. It was painful to remove a skill, but he finally managed after an hour of attempting.
Would you like to remove the skill [Mana Manipulation]? Notice: This action will remove [Mana Manipulation] from your current skills.
[Mana Manipulation] has been removed from your current skills.
***
Several months went by like this, and during this time, Julius had finally gotten into good enough shape for Edwin to decide to teach him how to fight. They started with unarmed combat, an important skill that many nobles didn’t focus on. Julius didn’t blame them for not wanting to. Getting hit sucked.
One moment you think you’re fine, then all of a sudden you overextend and take a fist to the face. Or sometimes you get tripped up and take a foot to the face. There are other times you are just too slow to react and take a spinning backhand to the face.
What was Julius trying to get at? He got hit in the face a lot. However, the second he overprotected his face, Edwin would punish him and land a shot in his gut.
For those who had never been hit in the liver. You feel like you just died. You forget how to breathe and how to stand on your two feet. For several hours a day, Julius would get folded like a lawn chair in the training yard. Some of the other members of the house who wanted to train in the mornings often watched them from the sidelines.
It became a game to bet and see how long Julius could last against Edwin.
Julius knew in his head, that he was improving rapidly. His tolerance for abuse had certainly gotten better. The problem was that whenever Edwin thought he had as well, he would raise his strength and start hitting harder and faster. So, although Julius was incomparable to himself before, he somehow continued to get even harder beatings.
Edwin was truly a sadistic teacher; he would make him run around until he was ragged. Heal him. Beat him senseless. Heal him. Beat him some more. Heal him. It was an endless cycle of beatdowns.
With that being said, Julius had to admit that Edwin’s training paid off. He looked at the most recent notice he got after the last spar.
[Unarmed Combat] has reached threshold. [Unarmed Combat lvl 3 -> Unarmed Combat lvl 4]
There was something undeniably satisfying about seeing his progress quantitatively. Julius was getting a bit worried for himself. At the beginning of these sessions, he would actively avoid getting hurt. Now, he didn’t care about getting beaten up; he became desensitized to the pain. All that mattered to him was managing to land a hit on Edwin.
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Not that it ever happened, of course. The only hits Julius ever got in on Edwin were the ones that Edwin allowed him to. Edwin would purposefully leave an opening for Julius to exploit, but Julius had not managed to catch Edwin off guard on his own.
***
Julius found himself eating lunch with his uncle, Lukas. This has become a daily occurrence for both of them. While both he and his uncle had busy schedules, they decided to make time for lunch and dinner together every day, if possible. Edwin also ended up joining them, who took a brief respite from his trainer mindset and just relaxed with them.
During this time, Julius had learned many things about each of them. He learned stories about how the two of them met while traveling. They met while doing an extermination mission that the Adventurer Guild had posted. His uncle was still a Tier 4 at the time, and Edwin was with a separate group that was all Tier 3s. The extermination was for a colony of Stonegorging Ants, a threat that could vary from Tier 2 all the way to Tier 5. It was important to deal with any colonies before they grew to such dangers. Otherwise, the local environment and nearby towns would be in danger. Luckily for them, scouting reports put the ants at around Tier 3 or, at most, low Tier 4. As such, his uncle was one of the leaders of the extermination party, where he noticed Edwin’s talents.
There weren’t many shadow affinity users in the Empire, but their usefulness was unanimously agreed upon. Not many were born with the affinity, and those that were usually belonged to Clan Genshen. Clan Genshen did not hold any noble title, but they were known for their strength and abundance of shadow affinity users. They were elite assassins, scouts, infiltrators, and typically those who ventured into dangerous places alone. The clan recruited many commoners who found out they had the affinity. It was known that shadow was an extremely difficult affinity to train on your own. As such, most chose to join Clan Genshen.
Edwin was different. He had learned his entire path practically on his own and had garnered a reputation for himself already. Coming in the top 50 of the Luminous Tournament was quite an achievement, and, on top of his affinity, it led to many offers from powerful groups before and after his graduation. However, Edwin didn’t choose any of them. Instead, he decided to become an adventurer with three of his friends. As fate would have it, when Lukas and Edwin met, two of his party members were expecting a baby and planning to settle down. Which meant their party would be disbanded. Therefore, Lukas made Edwin a very generous offer to come and work for House Hyperius. An offer that Edwin clearly accepted.
***
After lunch, Julius started on the most challenging part of his day. While he had been able to enter into a trance on occasion, he couldn’t do it consistently or for very long. With [Spatial Perception] active, it had taken him months to be able to do this much. On the bright side, using his skill in this way had done wonders for its progress.
Edwin also told Julius of a way to see his skill levels. Julius had taken to calling it his status. He mentally envisioned what he wanted to know, and it popped up in his mind.
Name: Julius Von Hyperius
Tier: 0
Skills:
- [Spatial Perception lvl 9] (Rare)
- [Unarmed Combat lvl 4]
It wasn’t too helpful now, but Julius expected that once he filled out his skills a bit more, he would be thankful for its existence.
For the past few months, Julius had been trying to meditate and enter a trance to begin absorbing mana and condensing his core. The few times he succeeded, he saw a space around a quarter filled with liquid, with the rest occupied by a dense fog. It gradually decreased as his attempts to manipulate mana failed, and eventually some of it dissipated. However, it wasn't too much, at least by Julius’s estimations. While some of the fog had dispersed a little, the liquid remained untouched. This led him to believe that the amount concentrated within the liquid was vastly superior to the other mana, both in quantity and quality.
Julius had been trying something different for the past week or so. Before, he had been attempting to meditate by clearing his thoughts and ignoring stimuli. However, he had an idea. Instead of clearing his thoughts, he wanted to find a balance. Just like a state he sometimes got into when he practiced mana manipulation, he would try the same for this.
Julius sat down and started to focus. Not on his inner core, but outwards. He used his perception to focus on everything around him. Every pebble, every drop of water, every crack in the stone, he focused on everything. Once he reached a state of total concentration, he took a deep breath, imagining the vortex from his baptism, and mana surged into him.
To his surprise, it worked, which snapped him out of his trance. But Julius understood something now. For Edwin and others, clearing their mind was easier them. For Julius, he almost needed to do the opposite. He needed to fill his mind with so much that there wasn’t space for distracting thoughts.
In that revelation, Julius heard a ding.
Would you like to learn the skill [Focus]?
Yes.
Congratulations, skill [Focus] acquired.
Julius immediately attempted to meditate again. To his shock, it baffled him how hard he had found it just mere minutes ago. Now it was like second nature. [Focus] allowed him to reach this state without struggling, and he could still think while in his trance. He should have gained a skill like this much earlier.
He was going to have to remember to ask Edwin about this skill later and how common it was.
For the first time since his baptism, he was able to cultivate mana. He would now be able to condense his core and reach Tier 1. This would allow him to practice more mana-intensive techniques without worrying about recycling it.
Now that Julius had cultivated, he sat down and got to work. He maintained the same method he used during his baptism, the only difference being that he didn’t have an orb that directly provided him with mana. From now on, he would need to learn to absorb mana from the environment, which was much slower and tedious. But after an hour of meditating, he received another notice.
[Focus] has reached threshold. [Focus lvl 1 -> Focus lvl 2]
The past several months had been a difficult grind, but now Julius felt it was worth it. This feeling was what motivated Julius to train harder. The feeling of improvement.