End

Another few days of training passed, as Kane was now officially recognized as a Rank-4 manalite.

Since Kane was constantly learning and practicing new moves, his growth never seemed to slow

After teaching Rick that using entirely new moves increased growth far more than repetition, they made up.

Kane felt like he was still in the right, but it wasn't okay for him to sum up Rick's feelings as nothing more than shallow self-pity.

He knew feelings weren't always that simple.

Speaking of feelings, Kane was currently feeling winded, as Mark swatted him across the training room like a fly.

"I love that monstrous strength of yours Kane! Not having to worry about you going 'splat' makes training you a lot easier!"

Kane grunted while slowly getting up, "Yeah yeah, if you're so confident in your strength, then I might as well use you for testing moves."

Mark's eyes widened a little as he sputtered, "Y-yeah! Go for it."

Kane relaxed a little and began preparing his spell when Mark suddenly dashed towards him at blistering speeds.

Kane teleported into the air and used 'flight' to hang upside down, facing Mark's back as he narrowly avoided the tackle, Kane fired off a mana drill.

"O-ho, well that's interesting, you've learned quite the move here Kane," Mark smirked.

"What's it doing?"

Mark laughed, "It's rapidly draining my mana shield, never seen anything like it, it's like you're sucking the mana right out of me. I can't even feel it returning to the atmosphere."

"Well that sounds useful, definitely don't feel like trying it on someone with no mana though."

Mark frowned, "You might have no choice, you're being shipped out in two days. Ah- quit with that look, you'll be allowed to visit your family before you go. The military plans to go public with the existence of manalites during this operation."

"So I'm what? The poster boy of a new golden age?" Kane raised his eyebrow.

"That's what it's sounding like, I wish I could've taught you for more than a week before you got shipped out, but with how quickly you've been learning I think you'll be fine."

Kane smiled, "I'm just glad I didn't get stuck with some military snob."

Mark grinned, "I appreciate that, careful what you say though, those snobs are our bosses."

"I'll take it under advisement," Kane yelled while leaving the room.

----------

"So I finally get to go home, what a scuffed set-up," Kane bitterly smiled to himself.

There was something Kane needed to try first, however.

Walking down the boring white halls, Kane approached an automatic door.

He was thankful that nobody was inside the shooting range, now that he had the strength of a Rank-4, a failed spell from him would probably kill some newbies.

Kane's newest theory was recreating the process of a mana bullet outside of his body.

"If this works, I'll be renown as a god for centuries to come," Kane remarked while sticking his hand out.

Using space magic, he manipulated the mana in the atmosphere, making it create a small circular barrier.

Next, he filled this barrier with mana and condensed it, after concluding it seemed dangerous enough, Kane put just a little bit of normal mana into the very center, leaving a small gap in his direction.

Kane had to act fast, connecting wormholes to every target in the room and branching them to the sphere before the condensed mana shot out.

The result would make most trained marksmen gasp, as the orb suddenly disappeared, being accompanied by the shattering of every target in the room.

Although manipulating manilium with space was very taxing for his own mana reserves, in this particular case, it saved him a lot of mana.

It was also the only way he could form it up outside of his body.

Normally, he'd have to either condense mana in several different places, or use all of his concentration to have a mana bolt split out in two separate directions.

By using this floating sphere he could just pump it with mana and transport the shots to several targets at once.

Kane began making his way into the disk chamber.

"Uh, sorry Kane, there's a group already in there," a soldier tapped Kane's shoulder as he approached the door.

Kane laughed, "Oh, my bad, these rooms are all sound proofed so I can't really tell."

"What about that scanner thingy you were bragging about?"

"You tapped my shoulder before I could check."

After a few minutes of waiting, the group came out, completely exhausted and covered in some bruises.

Kane forgot that the elites (of the new manalites) weren't on the same level as him, and the normal manalites weren't on the same level as them.

Your average manalite from Ember would probably take a full minute to heal a bloody nose.

Kane was asked to wait while the chamber reset, while waiting he began practicing smoothly slowing down and speeding up his perception of time.

He needed to be able to mess with the ability without all the downtime.

Entering the now reset chamber, Kane asked them to leave it at its highest setting.

Almost immediately, a dreadful whirring sound erupted from every direction.

Kane hadn't been sitting on his ass these last few days however, he could hear the differences between each sound, feel their timing, and react almost instantaneously.

Leaving only 1/3rd of the usual mana in his brain, Kane was flawlessly dodging disk after disk as they rapidly shot past him.

He reduced it to 1/4th, still managing to keep up with the disks.

1/5th, using flight, he twirled into a side flip over some intercepting disks before teleporting to the ground.

Kane brought it down to 1/6th, this was where he failed last time.

Keeping his senses sharp and his detection of subspace even sharper, he began firing off pulses of mana that seemed to knock groups of disks straight out of the air.

Combining this with his senses wouldn't be enough to protect him though, on the spot, Kane quickly took the concept of flight and used it for something else.

He teleported into the air, using the dense mana lift he'd created below his feet as a platform Kane proceeded to jump off of it, landing on another platform and repeating.

It essentially looked like Kane was double jumping while moving in a zigzag, though with the inclusion of some twists and minor movements to avoid getting hit.

Kane teleported back to the ground, manipulating the space around him to create a wave through reality that offset the course of each disk.

Kane completely withdrew his mana, facing the disks at full speed.

It... wasn't that much worse, 1/6th was already really close to normal anyway.

After a few minutes of rapid movements, mana skills, space manipulation, and general trickery, Kane was finally taken out.

Not because he couldn't handle the disks, but because he ran out of mana to handle them with.

Kane was smiling like an idiot as he left the room.

Rank-5 was about the average for completing 15 minutes in the disk chamber at its highest setting, Kane just pulled off 13.

"Hey, who do I talk to if I want to go visit home ahead of schedule?"

-------------

Kane was staring at the bottom of the military jeep as they made their way across the city, he could hear a drone squad flying far above his head.

He'd made sure to set up an anchor in the military base, planning to set up another in his apartment.

He could technically have infinite anchors since this wasn't Ember, but they got several times harder to create after each one.

An hour of driving passed, as the jeep began pulling into a familiar lot. The moment Kane stepped out it drove off.

'It should be Cassy's day off, maybe I should've gotten her some flowers?' Kane wondered if that'd make up for him randomly vanishing, hopefully his dad gave a convincing excuse.

The answer to that was no, as Kane swiftly side-stepped a leap from Cody before letting himself get tackled by a somewhat teary Cassy.

"Christ, what happened to you! are you okay? Your dad just said you weren't coming home and started crying, I was damn worried!!"

"I'm fine Cass, good to see you too... mind getting off of me?"

"Mnn, no. You deserve at least this much," she sounded upset as she buried her head into Kane's chest.

A few minutes passed as they both ignored the strange looks of anyone passing by.

"I sorta missed you," Kane scratched his cheek.

She flicked his forehead lightly, "Only sort of?"

"Alright alright, I missed you quite a bit, you got me," he chuckled.

Kane got up, lifting Cassy like a princess in the process.

"You just got back and we're already jumping to third base?" She joked deviously.

Kane rolled his imaginary eyes, "As fun as pretending we have that kind of relationship sounds, I think I'd like to go visit my father first."

"Well don't stop carrying me now! Onward!" she pointed toward the stairs.

As Kane climbed the stairs, Cassy solemly asked a more serious question.

"Really though, what happened?"

Kane chuckled, "Government stuff. I have superpowers now, I'm a fairly high-class soldier, I can manipulate space itself, etc."

She puffed out her check, "You don't need to tell me if you don't want to, but I'm being serious here."

"Well so am I," Kane said with a completely serious face.

They stopped at the door to his apartment, it was locked.

"Oh, hold on, your dad gave me a spare key, I'll go grab..."

"No need," Kane said while walking towards the door.

And just like that, he vanished from sight.