Monty led Jack out of the giant auditorium-like room that they used for his “Induction”, motioning for Jack to help with some of the airlock-like doors as they followed the path out. Jack followed Monty in a daze, his mind still reeling. His body felt different... more alert.

  He was so focused on the new, faint tingle of mana circulating over his heart that he walked straight into Monty's back. They stood in front of another room that was similar to where they had just come from, this giant white complex seemed a little shorter than the last, being only two storeys tall.

  Monty looked back at Jack and shook his head, opening the door and motioning for Jack to go through. Monty didn’t speak; he was happy to let the silence sit, which Jack appreciated. About five minutes and ten turns later they came out into a very similar room as the testing chamber, but this one was smaller and seemed to be much more thoroughly padded.

  “This is a very basic training facility, Jack. The same as the last room, it is designed to keep any mana used in this room contained and to safely extract it. On top of that it is reinforced to allow for strength training and any accidents that could occur from overzealous newbies going overboard.” He gestured to the padded walls and ceiling.

  “Look, Turrel is going to be running through possibilities using his Tier Two trait to do it all as quickly as possible. I am not going to explain any of that, either. I will tell you what you need to know to be safe and get some basic practical experience, Turrel can do theory.” Monty stepped back and took off his jacket, revealing a thick vest underneath and an upper body that would put a peak Arnold to shame.

  “We do not generate mana.” He looked at Jack for a moment. “Normal people do not generate mana. It exists in the atmosphere or is captured. All we do is give the mana shape, purpose, and strength. Take this for example,” he reached out his hand in front of Jack.

  There was a moment where nothing happened and then Jack felt something almost like a pulling sensation from around him. Then around the hand that Monty was holding straight, a thin translucent green shimmered around it, tapering out to a point as if his hand had become a blade.

  “I took the mana that you have been purging from your body. I gave it the shape, forming this on my hand.” He waved his hand around and the glow moved with it.

  “I gave it a purpose; I want it to be sharp.” He reached up and grabbed a tiny lock of hair from his head, holding it out with his hand. He brought the mana hand up and cut across it, slicing cleanly through.

  “I gave it the strength to be able to cut something like my hair but not enough to cut my arm,” he said as he sliced down to his other arm with the blade but as it connected it simply shattered into a green light.

  As Jack saw this, his eyes opened as wide as saucers; there had been so much talk of mana and magic, but to finally see it—to be so close to something that was so mythical to his mind, and to know that he was about to learn how to do it as well. His whole body shook with excitement, as if he was a child on Christmas morning being told to wait before he could open presents.

  Monty looked down at him as a slight smile touched the corner of his mouth. “Seems pretty simple, right? To be able to do that, it would likely take you at least a month of training. Your body has these pathways, but it doesn't know how to use them properly yet.” Monty flexed his arm as he continued.

  “Just like training your body, when you first start to use your mana pathways it will tire out your body. If you push too hard, it will cause pain and you will have to wait for it to heal before you can start again. People call this many things but most commonly it is called “Mana Etching”. It is painful and time consuming but it is something everyone that wants to use mana ends up going through.”

  “Wait but I did that already didn’t I? Don’t I have the Tier One modifications? Will that help at all? It has to, right?” Jack asked as he thought back to the burning sensation in his veins and the compressed feeling in his bones.

  “Hahahaha” Monty laughed loudly as he patted Jack on his shoulder.

  “Ahh Jack. No sadly that was just a very small part of the process, I love the confidence to assume your pain tolerance is just that much better than a universe's worth of people, but no. To use a metaphor, what you went through was like an acid wash, it revealed the outline of your pathways. Then the 'Mana Etching' is where we use acid or in this case, raw mana to carve those pathways deeper.

  “As for your Tier One modification, no, it won't change much about this needing to happen. You can’t send mana through your system until it has somewhere to go. At the moment a trickle can pass along your lines—enough to make you feel a little tingle and your body feel energised. To be able to give anything shape, you need to be able to push more mana through those paths and to do that you have to widen or etch them.”

  A slightly sadistic smile crossed Monty’s face for a second as he said a scary word.

  “But, the Tier One change will allow you to have more mana in your system in general. It is the main reason why you haven’t gone boom and you are probably thinking Turrel was over-exaggerating the risk. Let me assure you, if that little convenient accident had not occurred, you would be in a lot of pain and we wouldn't even be considering training right now.”

  Jack was about to ask if something could be called an accident if it was caused by an intentional interaction but was interrupted by Monty gesturing at the wall above the door and a screen that was there.

  “Jack, these rooms have no mana in them, they have extraction systems that work to ensure that they are “Mana Tight”; I did not turn them on when we came in here. That screen there shows what the ambient mana level is in this room, along with the type of mana.” He motioned at the screen which showed a few symbols with a slight green tinge to them.

  “Look, if that was meant to be a dramatic reveal, I can't read any of that so I don't know what it says. I am assuming that just me being here with the feeling I have of something still circulating on my body, the number is going up and this is where you point out why I am in trouble.” Jack muttered. He had already noticed that when Monty demonstrated his blade, he didn’t use any storage mana. The pulling feeling he felt around him reinforced the fact that the mana that was used had obviously come from himself.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “Hmmm, smart man. Yes, that was part of the point, but not all of it. You see there are a few reasons why the mana etching process takes so long. One is obviously the pain tolerance and healing capabilities of the people going through the process. Healing is not too difficult to do but it is very mana intensive and by association generally very expensive. The second point is the amount of mana that can be safely in a person's body before it adversely affects them.”

  The scary smile reappeared on Monty’s face and for a second it seemed as if there was an actual sparkle in his eye.

  “I think we can significantly speed up your etching process.” His smile stretched and Jack could see teeth poking through.

  “In a very lucky occurrence, you happen to be able to tolerate a much larger amount of mana than people that normally go through this process. On top of that, this room is slowly filling with Life mana, being passively generated by you. I just so happen to be an above average healer and with a room full of renewable life mana and the way your own body reacted and is still reacting to the healing weave, there will only be one small thing holding us back from powering through.”

  Monty continued to smile as he stared at the screen above the door and then looked back at Jack. Jack began to worry as he pieced together where Monty was going.

  “So, Jack, tell me what is your pain tolerance like? We could set a record here, I think. That would be impressive, wouldn't it?” Monty asked as the smile remained on his face.

  Jack looked at this man who he was still trying to get a read on; he hadn't known him for long but he seemed initially like a very prim and proper man. There was a power and presence that exuded from him, and it scared Jack a little. After Jack saw his interaction with Turrel he seemed more human and over the last few minutes it seemed as if the guard was coming down a bit, but he seemed to associate it all with an excitement that seemed to be building in the man.

  Jack felt like a passenger but he was taking in everything that was happening around him. He understood how insane what was happening was; the sheer number of strange things combining all to produce this exact situation was an absolute anomaly; it was uncharted territory. Jack loved puzzles, he loved trying to understand things, learning how things worked and why things happened so he understood the feeling that Monty was having. That drive to experiment and understand, the problem he had with it so far was mainly that he was going to be the one that was being experimented on.

  Jack sighed and closed his eyes before looking back over at Monty.

  “I don’t know how this will translate but back home we have a saying that feels relevant.” Jack took a pause for dramatic effect.

  “No pain. No gain.”

  Jack looked at Monty for a second as his expression didn’t change.

  Jack felt a little embarrassed but waited a moment in case it needed to be translated.

  Monty continued to stare.

  Jack sighed and waved his hand dismissively at Monty.

  “Asshole, go on, let's do this. Where do I need to stand?”

  Monty laughed and patted Jack on the head as if he was a child.

  “Just there is fine. Closing your eyes might help. I will try to keep your body healing along with the weave that is already there. Try to endure as long as possible, and then we can rest while I heal you, okay? Now, listen carefully.”

  Monty put a hand on each of Jack’s shoulders as he continued.

  “I need you to focus; you mentioned feeling something flowing inside you. Try to ignore that for now. There is life mana in the environment around you right now. I want you to try to feel that on your skin. Nod when you can feel that.”

  Jack took a second and tried to ignore the feeling of the mana cycling through him and simply focus on feeling for anything that was outside of his body. It took him a second but he started to feel something, as if there was a slight breeze passing over the hairs on his arms. He nodded.

  “Good. Now try to focus on that feeling and feel the mana; it will be moving, vibrating at a frequency your body should be able to replicate. Just focus on feeling that movement on your skin, again nod when you think you can feel it.”

  Jack focused, and relatively quickly he could sense a tiny movement on his skin. It felt like there was a pattern to it, a slight repeating vibration that buzzed on his skin. He nodded again.

  “Good work, that was pretty quick. Oh, now this one might be harder, I need you to try to replicate that and make your body move at the same frequency. I don't mean your whole body, just your mana sense; take your time and try to move it slowly. When you get it right a connection will be made to the mana outside your body. You need to then try to pull it in, it might help to imagine you are breathing it in. Go.”

  Jack had already started to try to move his sense as Monty was speaking. He had no luck so far, he tried harder and felt something move. He realised he had flexed his arm. Trying to isolate this new sense he let go of the feeling of the mana on his skin, confident he could find it again.

  This sense felt like it was something all over his body covering him like a second skin. But there was obviously another part of it that was inside him as he could feel the mana flowing through his body just cycling over and over.

  He thought about how to make this skin vibrate, he remembered something he used to do as a kid. He would feel something at the base of his skull and tense his neck muscles to make his whole head shake. Attempting something similar here, he tried to pinch or tense the skin somewhere but had no success, he couldn't seem to grasp it to pull or move it.

  He thought harder for a second, his heart was obviously an important part of his body before mana was involved. It seemed to be important for mana as well, that seemed to be where whatever amplification was happening occurred. It could be a coincidence that the mana in his body was flowing to that spot but it couldn't hurt to test.

  He focused on his heartbeat, trying to feel each individual beat. It felt different to a normal heartbeat, almost as if there were two rhythms. One was the normal slow rhythmic beat he would expect. But there was another, slightly out of sync pulse behind it.

  As he focused on the familiar heartbeat, he slowly let it fade to the back of his mind as he isolated the other pulse. He focused and tried to grab that second rhythm. As he willed it to change, he tensed his mind, the pulse sped up slightly. As he relaxed, it slowed.

  Remembering the buzzing he felt on his skin he tried to match it. It was hard to keep both of these things in his head at the same time, but he slowly tried to sync the two pulses together. He made a change and there was a buzzing sensation on his mana sense as they matched.

  It felt like his sense expanded around him a little and he could feel the mana that was connected and touching him in the immediate area. He remembered Monty’s instructions and imagined he was taking a deep breath in, trying to pull the mana into his body at the same time.

  Pain exploded through his body, ten times worse than the last time. He held on long enough to start a chant in his mind. “No Pain.” He passed out.