Persistence of Divinity

The raindrops is falling down on the rooftop and the ground, birthing a natural symphony. Nature's most abundant subordinate, water, brings upon the surroundings a cold that some enjoy, but the unfortunate fear.

Inside the wooden shack, I am sitting in a lotus position, with the last low-grade magic stone in hand. I almost took the entirety of the morning, just to properly use the previous 2 low-grade magic stones.

I just finished eating lunch, and currently forcing my meager amount of magical energy to try, and use the low-grade magic stone to its utmost potential.

Closing my eyes, I can see nothing but the fields of darkness with the occasional wandering thoughts, I cleared my mind to calm it down ,and start with my cultivation session again.

From within my body is a small amount of magical energy, meager for even a rank 0 mage that can only be considered inside the intermediate stage of rank 0, just staying in the flesh and bones of my abdomen.

It is particles of light, constantly moving and interacting with each other, like a ball of yarn, but instead it is constantly passing through each other.

With my will, I made a small thread of magical energy from my mana pool and slowly direct it towards the hand holding the low-grade magic stone, until it made contact and entered the stone, like a ghost that disappears into walls.

The light blue stone started to barely let out a blue light, causing the environment's magical energy to be pulled into it, and after which, going inside me.

This is one of the purposes of a magical stone, to increase the attraction force for the magical energy floating in the surroundings.

A magic stone is made from the forceful condensation of the environment's magical energy by powerful experts, or at least people that is powerful enough to be able to condense one, either due to raw magical power or skill in magical stone condensation.

In fact, everyone that is considered within the realm of magic or people that are already called mages, is able to try to condense a magic stone, the difference is in the quality and the success of the attempt.

As one can see, I need to rely on a magic stone to greatly enhance my speed of cultivation, using its stored energy and natural force at tugging at the environment.

Directly using the stored magical energy inside is less efficient than if I would use its attraction force, since the overall magical energy procured would be higher.

The low-grade magic stones are usually condensed by the rank 2 and rank 3 members of the Golden Light Clan, working hard to maintain a proper growth for the youth, to continually rival the Ice Silk Clan and the City government in power.

Rank 2s and Rank 3s usually stay at the mansions of each settlement or the relatively good houses inside the manor, while the Rank 4s stay at the Clan Head's mansion settlement, specifically staying in the Elder houses.

Due to my low quality of talent, it is hard for me to even maintain the usage of a low-grade magic stone, already feeling the formation of some drops of sweat on my forehead and other parts of my body.

The low-grade magic stone is already glowing much better than when I first made my magical energy flow through it, glowing a bit brighter as I vigorously make my magical energy move into it, while I command the magical energy imports to go towards the center of my upper abdomen.

Inside the upper abdomen is where all of my magical energy resides, and the place where I refine foreign magical energy to strengthen my body's flesh in that area, improvement on how much magical energy it can naturally handle on its own without strain.

I can feel the warmth of the foreign magical energy strengthening my magical energy capacity, making me feel comfortable despite the tiresomeness of using the Magic Stone Attraction technique, and the tax on my will for suppressing the natural movements of the foreign magical energy.

Remembering the day where I can barely finish half a magic stone in the same timeframe, with my body soaked in sweat made me chuckle a bit, further pushing me to continue despite the hardness of the situation.

Hours passed and the rain goes away, the sun's ray once again hitting the ground and roof of the manor, heightening the level of the heat.

After 3 hours of absorbing the last magic stone, the magic stone in my hand is no longer there, fully depleted, my body soaked in a bit of sweat.

I sigh a bit, and stood up to stretch my body, trying to alleviate the soreness.

I go back to sitting down in the lotus position, and try to naturally absorb magical energy through my skin, checking to see if the natural speed of magical cultivation for me has improved.

And just as expected, it is still as slow but I can feel a tiny improvement because of my hard work this morning and early afternoon.

The thought that the speed will increase is another brick of hope added to the rest, but when the thought that almost everybody has a higher speed than me in this clan, at least naturally, is dousing that fire.

Not all people inside the manor is officially part of the Golden Light Clan, with some being servants or guards, with varying degrees of talent and level of authority within the Clan.

The most prominent among these is the 2nd Honorary Elder, a quasi-member of the clan.

The Clan is a bit stringent on accepting non-biological people to be officially part of the clan, with the most important condition being married or even just being the sibling, or parents of the pair of a marriage.

But lets be honest, power is the unwritten most important requirement, the only reason why the 2nd Honorary Elder isn't an official member right now is because the current Clan Head and the ones supporting him does not want to accept her, considering her relationship with my mother.

I should probably stop thinking about the family matters going on in this manor, it is a bit stressful thinking about them, why do I always think about them when I am doing nothing? I am just making myself unnecessarily suffer mentally because of this.

After some time of naturally cultivating through just my skin alone, I took a small shower and left to eat dinner.

I had a fried egg and a round bread, with a single glass of water. To think that my once luxurious lifestyle would turn into this.

After finishing, I thanked for the food and went back to where my shack is, but instead of going inside, I proceeded to continue on and enter a part of the manor where thick and large trees are present.

The gentle moon already dominates the night sky, in unity with the twinkling lights of the stars, lighting up the dark night and waking up the ones that lurks within the dark.

I went in front of a large tree, the usual place.

As I look at the tree with focus, I slowly made raised my arm and opened my hand in the direction of the tree's rough and large trunk.

I can feel a certain amount of magical energy go into my raised hand, to ready the magical energy needed the magical spell I am about to cast, something I have training on for quite some time.

After reaching my hand, the energy suddenly came out instantly and formed a single berry sized ball of light, flickering a bit because of the amount of magical energy poured into it, and the difficulty of maintaining is dense mass.

"Light ball" I mutter lightly into the wind

The tiny ball of light suddenly started flying through the air and hit the trunk of the tree.

My face did not change, still maintaining a calm and stable demeanor, already used to this daily routine of eat, cultivate, and train.

After a moment of observance, I slowly go nearer to the tree which is just 10 meters in front of me, and analyzed the damage of the light ball I just casted.

The sight of impact had a small 1 centimeter deep hole into the tree, with the same size as the light ball I just casted.

My aim seems to be improving, I only deviated from my 1cm target by approximately 1-2 centimeters, it's good but not good enough, who knows when I need to have a perfect aim and this is even considering that the tree trunk didn't move at all.

The damage to the tree is also satisfactory, it is as good as I expected. Concentrating the light ball, despite the increase in the magical energy cost of casting it, made it more lethal, turning the pushing force of the original light ball into a piercing one.

It also made up for the low amount of energy that I have, making the damage increase even more valuable.

Once again, I started to cast another spell, a different spell from light ball. I put my index finger just above the hole I made through the Light Ball skill, and ordered my magical energy to once again move towards my hand.

"Healing light"

After a moment of wait, a soft and gentle light started to flow from the point of the index finger and went to the the wound of the trunk.

The hole slowly started to heal, making new wood to restore the hole until a few seconds later, the hole completely disappeared, with the only evidence of it not being there is the slight wetness and freshness of that particular part of the bark.

Though the inconsistencies in the bark will definitely be noticed considering that the new plugged hole is not the only one that is out place, considering that there are a lot of unusual patches of bark, with varying degrees of abnormality compared to the surrounding normal bark.

"This is good, unfortunately my hands are limited when my magical energy pool is this small"

I slowly admired the beauty of the starry sky for several minutes and started to home after, only sleeping after a few hours of cultivation.

The thin bed I am laying on, brings me to sleep, the lands of dreams, and the point where the soul is most open to changes.

A green-gold light suddenly flashed for an instant above the sleeping boy's head, with no one to notice its fleeting appearance.