Unlocking Mana

Many days passed by uneventfully although the condition of my body got worse each day I was forced to sleep on the ground. I continually ate the spirit food they gave me and spent my time trying to feel mana. I was also harassed by multiple groups on occasion, but they never went too far and after seeing a fight for myself I knew I was in no position to stop them.

Just like Alex said before, seeing these warriors fight was truly an eye-opening experience. Each swing of the sword would carry with it unimaginable force as it tore through the air straight towards their opponent. When the random opponent would actually block such a force there really was a shockwave that spread out into the surroundings.

I made sure to carefully observe the bodies of these fighters during their matches and every now and then I felt like there was something more to their movements. It would be quite hard to explain what it was that I was seeing, but it reminded me quite a bit of how unnatural the healing magic felt previously. Therefore, I felt assured that what I was seeing was mana and that these people most likely used mana to strengthen their bodies. However, I wasn't sure if it got more specific than that. Perhaps they only used mana to empower their muscles?

Regardless, I kept on trying to sense mana while planning what I would do in the future. Thinking back on the stories that involved other worlds, I was trying to figure out a path that wouldn't limit my potential growth in the future. I wasn't sure where the limits of different paths would be, but I felt that I could at least rule out the paths that involved crafting items simply because I felt like I would need to have power for myself in order to survive.

I continually contemplated my situation and my potential future until one day after eating lunch I felt a strange sensation in my body. At first, I thought it was just the sort of strength or energy that you might feel after having a healthy meal, but after a while it seemed to be more than that. I could feel a strength originate from my stomach before slowly dispersing through the rest of my body. After realizing that this could be mana, I decided to try out multiple ideas of manipulating the energy.

I closed my eyes and tried to use my mind to direct the energy. At first, I tried to interact with it directly, but after that failed, I tried focusing on one point of my body and sort of telling the energy to go there. Eventually, I could feel the energy responding to my will causing me to laugh out in joy. I let the energy disperse once more, but this alone told me so much more about this world.

I opened my eyes and immediately noticed that the people around me were looking at me with strange expressions. One of the people even called out to me.

"Oi, have you gone senile or something old man? Why are you laughing to yourself over there like a creep?"

I felt a little embarrassed over the situation, but it was fleeting at best. I went ahead and cleared my throat before responding.

"Sorry, just remembered a funny joke just now. It won't happen again."

"The only joke here is you, so you better stop weirding us out at meal time or else."

"Yes, yes. I'm sorry it won't happen again."

After that they went back to their own conversations, but I couldn't be bothered any longer. Now it was finally time for me to choose my path to power and I had many things to think about. I couldn't be entirely sure if there were other ways to manipulate mana, but I felt that my earlier ideas about strengthening parts of the body seemed to be correct. Now there were only a few questions that remained.

I decided to wait before I did anything further until Bruno came back and noticed that I could feel mana. It was a bit risky, but I felt like I could fish out the last couple of answers I needed from him before I could start on my own path.

I had to wait until the next day, but finally Bruno came walking through the training grounds straight to me. He took one look and then seemed surprised before coming closer.

"Four days to get access to mana huh? You may be a worthless old dog, but at least you are talented when it comes to this. I can work with that."

He took a moment while lost in thought before continuing.

"Alright I suppose now is the time to move on to the next part of your training. You should be able to feel the mana in your system now which will let you manipulate it as well. Now, your new routine will be working out, slowly at first, until you begin to feel exhaustion in your body. Then you will imagine pulling the mana to anywhere that felt exhausted. In this way, you will build up the strength of your body and also improve your heart enough to train for real. It's important to go just hard enough so that you will feel pain in your chest and then stop to let mana influence it."

He told me a lot with his explanation, but I need just a bit more.

"So, you are saying I need to exercise and then pull the mana into my muscles to get stronger right? Do I need to worry about my bones or anything either?"

He seemed pretty annoyed that I asked a question without his permission, but he eventually answered all the same.

"Your goal is to become a warrior and thus strength is all that matters for now. Just try and focus on your muscles as much as you can. If you end up diluting it by focusing on other things as well, then you will be worthless at everything. Also, I wouldn't recommend focusing on something like the mind, with that body of yours being one step away from death you will only be dooming yourself."

He gave me quite the stern look, but I could only feel excitement now. All my concerns were washed away and I now knew my path. Yet, at least in front of Bruno I decided to keep up a front, so I frowned at his words and tried my best to look disappointed.

Seeing that, Bruno broke into a smile and slapped me on the shoulder. I grunted at the pain, but Bruno just laughed.

"Don't look so down. You seem fairly smart so you probably know what I mean, but the path of the warrior is still plenty strong. Just look at me."

He laughed once more before walking away. He did however, remind me one more time to start training my muscles before he talked with other people.

With him finally out of sight, my demeanor completely changed. I felt nothing but happy about the new information. Strengthening the muscles of the body meant that you were a warrior, strengthening the mind meant a mage, but I couldn't help but think what if I strengthened my blood? Yes, it was a pity if I couldn't become a true mage simply because my heart would be too frail, but I felt like it was possible to get all of the benefits if I just strengthened my blood. After all, it was the blood that brought nutrients and cleaned out the waste of every part of the body, so what would it look like if the blood was magically better? Did that simply mean more nutrients or would it perhaps develop more advanced functions and maybe improve everything?

I couldn't be sure at this point; but I did know that if I wanted to fix my bad heart while also keeping magic as an option all while only focusing on improving one part of my body in order to reach the pinnacle, then blood was the only possible option. Nothing else would meet all those criteria.

I wasn't quite sure if anybody had attempted this path before. Really much of what was known as possible in this world still remained a mystery to me. However, I knew that this was truly the only path for me. Afterall, I came to this world just to be able to do magic, how could I give up on it right away?

Now that my path was set, I only had one more problem. How could I possibly get the mana to only strengthen my blood? I had already tried to get the mana to flow towards a specific spot in the body, so I already knew that my control over mana wasn't finetuned enough to get it to only settle in my blood.

Bruno said that I needed to exercise to the point of exhaustion in order to get the mana to settle into my muscles, but I guess that is just to give me some sort of sensation that will guide the mana to the appropriate spot rather than me focusing on each specific muscle. If that was the standard method, then that meant that I needed to do something like experiencing blood loss to trigger a similar situation.

Thinking this far, I shivered. Being from the modern world, I barely ever had a cut on my body let alone experienced the amount of blood loss needed for this to work. I wasn't looking forward to what I had to do.