CHAPTER 4

With his mood sour because of his failure, Nick went back home, ate dinner, and went into his room to practice his magic.

He first tried the control practice. He tried focusing as much of his mana as possible into his palm, then slowly released it out. It quickly dissipated. He had failed to hold it, but that didn’t stop him from trying again.

He continued endlessly till the middle of the night, endlessly trying till he was finally able to give some shape to the mana ball on his pal. The efficiency was terrible, and his mana leaking everywhere, but he had succeeded. He then went to bed.

Like most people who sleep late, he overslept. Rushing to get ready to school, He dashed out of the house like a gale, bag in hand, and used his bicycle for the first time in a long while. Pedaling like his life depended on it, he navigated the streets on the way to his school. He was no longer so far from school, when his bicycle hit a rock and capsized.”

“Why is there a rock on the road?” He asked the air in front of him. Looking over to the condition of his bike, it was almost gone. The pedal was off, the chain was out, there was no way he would be able to fix it in time. Luckily there was a place to park his bike, so he ditched it and started running.

Noticing he might not make it, he resorted to magic. Using the minimum possible amount of man and channeled it throughout his body. He instantly began feeling lighter. Trying his best to look inhuman or run out of man, he used the barest minimum amounts of magic, and did it mostly just to keep himself from getting tired or not being fast enough. Luckily enough, he reached the school gate just before it was closed. Running through the gate, he greeted the security guard about to close it, and caught his breath.

Surprisingly, his breath was a lot steadier than he thought, and he was not sweating as much as he thought he would be after running that distance.

He made his way to his class and he was late. Entering the class, he ignored the gazes being sent is way by his classmates, and made his way to his sit.

“Stayed up late?”, Liz asked as he took his seat.

“Yeah, I couldn’t get past a level, so I spent time grinding. The quest is literally a beginner trap, but I’ll get past it”, he replied with determination in his voice

‘The things boys waste their time on’ Liz thought with a sigh, and took her attention back to the ongoing class.

Nick on the other hand, while taking notes as much as he cold, tried practicing the mana building exercise. It was a lot better than some cultivation or meditation techniques that require extreme levels of concentration.

He focused most of is mana out of his body at once, and just as it was about to disconnect from him, he reabsorbed it. Naturally, with his level of mana control, the reabsorption was quite inefficient and a lot of mana, wasted. The mana amulet, that boosted mana recovery helped the process a lot.

When the mana leaves and the recovery starts, the vessel is seen as empty, and the body starts absorbing mana from the air, though slowly, when reabsorbing mana, a lot of mana from the atmosphere is mixed in. Normally absorbing this mana directly from the air is impossible without insanely high levels of skill, because the magical energies inside and outside the body are different and needs to be converted before being absorbed, but his father discovered a loophole. When you release so much mana into the air at once, a lot of it is mixed with the mana in the air, and the mana around you, gets branded, as yours. So, when you reabsorb, you’re actually getting in more mana than you let out. Normally, absorbing more mana than your capacity usually has problems, and that’s where the timing comes in. By absorbing the mana just before it gets disconnected from you, your body perceives that the mana never left the body, and the vessel will just conveniently expand to accept the extra mana. Normally, this technique wouldn’t have been beginner friendly, because, a beginner wouldn’t even be able to control their mana to the extent of releasing and reabsorbing all of it. There’s another loophole that is exploited then. As the mana leaves the vessel, The natural recovery starts. And when the mana comes back in, it adds to the amount of mana that has been recovered. That’s where the amulet shined. It recovered is mana so fast, that his mana was increasing by a good enough amount each time, despite all the wastes. By the end of school, his mana was around ten times its original amount, and his mana control was incomparable to the day before. This growth was quite impressive. But ten times the amount of mana as a regular human, though it sounded impressive, wasn’t a large amount.

Leaving school immediately the bell rang, we went back to meet Eden.

Opening the door and looking at her with determination written all over his face, said, “Ok, send me to the Labyrinth”.

“Ok”, Eden said with a beaming smile as she opened the portal, “You’ve grown a lot in a single day, let’s see if that growth is enough.” She added as he walked through the portal.

Looking at the hall in front of him, he knew that neither his mana, nor mana control, was his mana enough to get him to the end; walking that is.

Taking a few steps back, he channeled his mana for body enhancement. He felt a lot lighter than the last time; almost as if he was floating. He took a deep breath and set of running. Reaching the cue point, he took a leap. He landed a little past where seemed to be two thirds of the place. Taking a few more steps still with the force and speed he had gathered from the jump, he reached the end which opened up into a very wide room, seemingly as big as a football field at first glance. The ceiling was completely dark and was impossible to see and though there was almost no visibility, with his magic eyes activated, he could see at least the limits of his room in terms of length and breadth of the room. Before he could complete his appraisal of the room, he heard a whooshing sound, and managed to catch sight of something flying towards him with astonishing speed. Instinctively, he side-stepped but as his foot touched the ground, it gave way to a pitfall. He managed to grab on to the edge in time to avoid falling into the trap. Looking down, he found spikes about two meters high, ready to impale him if he were to fall. He took a big gulp and climbed up out of hole and saw that there was an arrow pierced where he stood. It was about as long as the spikes, pierced into a floor that seemed harder than concrete.

At this point, he realized the kind of room he was in. It was completely filled with traps; any wrong step might be instant death. What he hadn’t noticed however, was that albeit at a slower rate, his mana was still being absorbed, and faster than it was recovering. With the most caution he had displayed so far, he took a step. A bright flash covered his eyes and he was back in the office, laying on the floor.

“You went a lot farther than I expected” Eden said, honestly impressed by his performance.

“Never expected you to be able to pull it off, but you did” She added.

“What is that place?” Nick asked, without getting up from the floor, “It’s like everything wants to kill you”.

“Don’t worry, you have a big advantage in that second room, enough to call it a cheat”, Eden said with a smirk, “Normally, you’re suppose to rely on your ability to sense mana and mana flows to detect traps. Most people’s mana detection is non-visual, so this is usually a very big challenge. With your ability to perceive these mana flows visually, it should be easier for you to detect the traps if you just pay attention.”

Helping him get up, Eden opened up the portal and sent him through with a pat on the back.

He arrived at the beginning again. It wasn’t as convenient as games where you lad where you stopped last; He was dropped at the very beginning. Using his body strengthening and holding his mana inside, he made it past the first hall with less mana lost than the last time. Looking into the second room, he activated his magic eyes and looked round he room for irregularities. Soon enough, he found a lot of them, littered all around the room, in the air, on the floor and seemingly from the ceiling that was too far to see clearly even with his magic eyes. His mana was still being drained, though a lot slower than in the first hall, he wouldn’t be able to stay for long. Halfway through the room there were what seemed like multiple capsules in the ground; they seemed to be part of another trap. ‘I should be okay as long as I avoid everything’ he thought as he took a step; suddenly, the whooshing sound came again which he avoided, by stepping to the side to where he had determined to be safe ground. As he landed, a hand came out of the ground beside where he stood and grabbed his leg. Before he could even react, spikes came out of the and stabbed into his leg. He screamed in pain and his consciousness fa away.

“Oh, it’s not just about seeing the traps, the traps are all different, and have different activation requirements. You can’t get though by just seeing the traps, you have to be able to tell when and how the traps will activate, or be able to avoid at the last moment”, Eden said as he regained his consciousness.

“Don’t you think you should have told me, BEFORE you sent me to that death box?”, Nick said with a tired expression still sprawled on the floor. He didn’t even have the strength to sound angry. His foot may have been in perfect condition, but the pain he felt was real. He could still feel the cold hard hand on his leg and the spikes digging through his skin and bones. Then he heard a loud laughter. It was coming from Eden, but it didn’t sound like her. It was very loud, almost to the point of a maniacal cackle.

“Did you really think it would be so easy?”, She started, “You think there’d be no pain involved?” She said as she laughed even harder. After a few seconds she stopped talking and on cue, the atmosphere around her became cold, along with her tone

“This path is a harsh one with many obstacles. It’s anything but easy. If you lack the resolve, you may quit.”, She turned her back on him and opened the door using magic. It opened into the front door of the old house.

“If you can’t bear a little pain, there’s no way you can become a master of magic”, she said with literally no emotion at this point. Laying on the floor, Nick gritted his teeth. He felt weak, angry, both his heart and pride had been broken along with his spirit.

Standing up, Nick clenched his fists. He was weak and he got ahead of himself because of his growth, but he wasn’t going to back down; for the sake of his father.

He walked over to the door – and closed it. And looked over to Eden. And with newly found determination, he called out.

“Hey, what do I have to learn next to clear that annoying room?” He said with a slightly arrogant voice. Eden beamed a bright smile; one that made it seem like the cold attitude just then was a lie. It didn’t fail to catch him off guard and crashed his expression along with the front he was putting up.

“You’ll have to learn another sensory-type magic. It’s a basic one, but it’ll take some practice in order to use in the labyrinth. You release your mana into the air, without breaking its link from you, that allows you to be connected with your mana in the air. With this, it’ll be easier to sense movements and presence, especially those related to magic.” Eden explained.

Nick tried as she said, but was unable to reman linked with his mana as it left his body.

“It’ll take a few days to get it down. We’ll be growing your mana and practicing your mana control wile trying to get it down.” She suggested.

“The aim…” She starts as she pointed to the ceiling, “…is hundred times your current amount of mana”

“Hundred times? Wouldn’t that make it one thousand times the normal amount of a human?”, Nick asked confused

“Yes of course, and you need to be able to control all that mana, else it could get unstable and make you go kaboom”, Eden answered with a matter-of-fact tone.

And this, would be the start of a journey; one that Nick had never before imagined was possible.

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