Chapter 6

It had been another week since learning of the correct method to gather mana, I must say progress is.... abismally slow. I've only managed to increase the diameter of the mana pool by roughly 2 centimetres and even after pulling an uncountable number of star-like orbs towards my centre, the next day they seem to have replenished! It makes me question whether this is actually worth continuing. This is something that has never bee practiced, I may end up with a large mana pool by my awakening but what if I'm delaying it by allowing my body to produce more?

Questions like these plagued my mind as I continuously clamped down on the nail of my thumb. Unsurprisingly I had ripped it off once and gotten a scolding off my mother.

"Eliiiiii" the playful voice of my sister roused me from my thinking as she stormed into my room.

"Mum and dad have something to show us" she continued in her playful fashion. 'Wonder what it is'i thought curiously as I followed her to the garden. I was surprised as I'm normally not allowed out of the house due to my mother's overly caution nature. There my parents stood. A competitive glint in their eyes as they face each other, momentarily forgetting about our precense as my mother looks down her nose. Almost as if she's looking down on him despite being a head shorter than him.

"Oh! The kids are here. Well then honey, should we get started? Last time we did something like this, you ended up in a rather embarrassing state." my mother reminded mockingly. That seemed to stoke my father's competitive fire as he grinned.

"Unlike you I've still been training" he retorts. My mother then tilts her head to the side and places her hand on her cheek, giving off an innocent and cute aura that greatly contrasted herself previously.

"Oh my, do you really think I needed to continue training to defeat someone like you?"

I take it back, she's as snake hidden in a garden of roses.

"I think they're about to fight" I mutter on my breath with an excited sparkle in my eye.

This is going to be my first time witnessing a fight between 2 mages, and from their attitudes it would seem that my mother is stronger, or at least was.

"Wait really?" my sister expresses, shocked at my revelation.

"Watch closely big sis Ella, this will be helpful for both of us if they're that much stronger than you and me" I say and flash an innocent and childish smile, almost like I hadn't said something well beyond my age.

With that my sister turned her attention to the fight to be, just in time to witness the wreath of lightning lashing around dad like whips, and to see both the air and grasp frost over in my mother's vicinity. Despite not even having a fully formed mana pool I could practically taste the mana charged air, which only seemed to make my blood boil in even further excitement. I don't know why I felt like this but I knew I wouldn't forget this for the rest of my life in this world. Simultaneously I knew this would help lay the foundation for my own future.

"Ready" mother

"set" father

"go" at this simultaneous statement, my mother covered the area around her in a thick permafrost while dad becoming further electrically charged and bolted forward

[A/N: Haha get it]

Mum further expanding her domain of ice and skated around I'm elegance similar to a swan on water. With this movement she dodged all forms of attacks from my father, and the more she moved the faster she got, like she was shedding away a layer of rust on her already polished skills. My father threw a jab from his left hand to her head. Spinning to her left to avoid the strike, she used her already dizzying momentum to send a round house kick at father. Just in time to block with his arm, father gets away with a kick to the arm instead of a heel to the midriff, sending him skidding along the ice for a few meters. My mother erected a pole of ice to which she latched herself on to, stopping her from moving to far away from her position, while still skating around it to maintain some speed.

"You're going to need to do a lot better than that if you want a reward darling" my mother bit her lower lip slightly, and I immediately understood her implications. My father smirked slightly, but only just realised there was a layer of ice forming around the arm which blocked my mother's kick. Like how he had been dealing with the ice previously, he sent out a bolt of lightning while forcefully moving his arm. To deal with the ice beneath his feet, he forced his legs down with enough force to crack the ice while sending a bolt of lightning to sent away splinters of ice, none of which could cut his skin, giving him enough of a foothold to continue his assault.

As he stood there smirking at my mother's taunt, my ears started burning slightly.