CH7: The Body Which Devoured Mana
***
CH7: The Body Which Devoured Mana
I remember going to school for the first time.
School was... well, school.
A place parents take their children to get indoctrinated because they don't have the time or the knowhow to do it themselves.
I remember the teachers looking at me with the same pity the doctor looked at me with that day.
It seemed my situation had spread quite nicely as I thought.
It's like we always said in my Taskforce days, 'A secret isn't a secret if anyone more than you knows it.'
As I expected, the good doctor shared the results of his check-ups with the authorities.
I noticed immediately that our homeroom teacher wasn't happy to be there. It didn't take long to realise that the children were grouped based on the Mana Affinity completion percentage.
That's a mouth full.
Anyway, those between 80-99% completion were in Class A, 60-79% in B, 40-59% in C, 20-39% in D.
Ordinarily, 20% completion rate should be the lowest possible, however, yours truly broke the unwanted record with a whopping 0% completion.
Finally, there was the Elite class which was reserved for the 'elite' few who had 100% completion.
Ignorance is bliss.
The children didn't realise their worth was being determined by the world even before they did anything. They were still blissfully playing around.
It took sometime before the teacher was finally able to settle all of them down. This only increased the discontent he had to be taking care of the talentless ones.
I quietly stayed at the back corner of the class, not drawing attention to myself.
Unfortunately for me, I was resilient to indoctrination.
The teacher's poor attempt to build awe in the kids for the strong 'S-class' ability users went into one ear and went out the other.
I mean, come on... it's just the first day and you're already pushing stratification and classes to the kids.
I could already see where the school year was going.
Finally, after hours of poorly done indoctrination (at least to me), the teacher finally started to teach the alphabets of the language.
This was in itself another form of torture.
Can you imagine how it feels as an adult being taught at the same speed as a child?
I ended up falling asleep and earning the ire of the teacher.
I had the worst talent of the bunch and yet I had the guts to fall asleep during class.
Yep, I could see where this school year was going.
At the end of the day, I only gained two things.
First, we were given the language textbook. With this, I should be able to get Granny Asta to teach me the language quicker.
At the rate we were going, it would take three years before any of the kids could write a proper sentence.
I had a time limit. I couldn't wait that long.
The second thing, and perhaps the most important reason parent brought their children to school, we were taught a meditation method to improve our Mana Affinity Completion percentage.
This really is a mouthful, I'll call it MAC% from now on.
According to the method taught by the teacher, we should see strands of mana in our surrounding when we entered deep meditation . Our job was to pull on the strands with the same colour as our bodies.
Apparently, the more mana strands of the same colour as our bodies we can pull, the better our affinity.
Not that the children understood this.
All they got was that they should be able to pull in all the strands of the same colour as their bodies in one meditation session.
Honestly, I was worried how many of them actually got it. Well, they'll get it in the future.
So, why am I mentioning this?
It's because my body doesn't have any colour, all I saw was a vortex the size of my torso devouring all the mana strands around.
Where all the mana was going? I couldn't tell you.
My previous life knowledge also wasn't helping. Even before I died, scientist couldn't prove where black holes sent the matter that went into them.
I was in the same situation that I didn't know where the mana was being sent.
However, when I remembered what Loki said in his message, I couldn't help thinking understanding this phenomenon was important.
Anyway, this little session proved to me that this school was pretty much useless to me.
I wanted to drop out after just the first day.
Too bad I knew I couldn't do that.
I'd be wasting eight hours a day in this place. I just had to accept that for the moment.
*
Anyway, I took the textbook home and got Asta to teach me the alphabets.
The shocked expression she had on her face when I learnt to pronounce and write the twenty-five alphabets easily in a day was strangely amusing.
I managed to coerce her into getting me higher level books to use the next day.
One advantage the came with being a child was that I had a natural secret weapon. I could throw tantrums to get what I wanted.
A month later, I was proficient in reading and writing the language. Of course, I was still limited by difficult grammar but I was now proficient enough to raid the library.
By now, Asta already understood I wasn't a simple child.
Poor woman believed I was a 'once-in-a-lifetime genius who the jealous world despised'.
Well, she wasn't wrong about the 'world despised' part.
She gave me a free rein to do whatever I wanted as long as I didn't compromise my safety from then on.
I found out my parents kept shelves of books on various subjects in a room I guessed was my father's study.
Asta almost never went into it aside cleaning.
So, like that, I formed a routine.
During the weekdays, in the morning, I would go to school to be bored to death. When I returned in the afternoon, I'd go over the books in the study. Finally in the evening I'd do my basic training.
On the weekends, there was no school, so I'd alternate that for basic training in the morning.
The trainings weren't anything too much, just some strength, flexibility and coordination building exercises used by old martial arts lineages in the past life.
They weren't anything too precious so it had been easy in my past life to get my hands on them, even though they were useless then.
They were quite useful now.
I continued this routine until I was ten.
-
As you'd expect, I was top of my year in everything except MAC%.
I didn't find that as an achievement, I mean I've seen fifty years if you add my two lives. Getting top of the year in primary school was an embarrassment more than an achievement.
I got 95%.
Only F*cking 95% in primary school!
Anyway, once I turned ten, the free basic education was over.
It was up to the parent to take their children to intermediate school if they wanted to continue his education.
Turned out intermediate school wasn't compulsory.
Thank God!
Come to think of it, I never seen or heard anyone profess a religion since I reincarnated in this world.
I remember finding that strange.
Humans instinctively cling to religion as a guide to make sense of their lives. It was weird not to find any in this world.
I put that to the back of my mind as I focussed on getting Asta to agree that it was a waste of my time to send me to Intermediate school when there was nothing they could teach me.
Anything they could teach me, I could find at the public library which was surprisingly well-stocked for my needs.
I emotionally blackmailed Asta into not sending me to school by telling her school was a constant reminder that I could never become strong.
With her guilt(?) on the matter, she accepted my demands. In exchange, she thought me Herbology.
Turns out, a big difference between Herbology and Alchemy is that you don't need fine Mana control in Herbology unlike in Alchemy. Channelling mana from a mana stone was enough.
Asta got me a nifty glove which helped me extract mana to use in my herbal concoction.
The glove was like a gauntlet with a slot for a small mana stone on the back of the hand.
With it, even someone who can't store mana like me could use it. That said, I got the impression Mana stones weren't cheap.
-
My routine changed.
During weekdays, in the morning, I studied Herbology under Asta. In the afternoon, I would go to the public library. In the evening, I would train my body.
By weekends, the library wasn't open so my routine changed accordingly.
Herbology in the morning, combat training in the afternoon and physical training at night.
At ten, I was finally able to begin intensive, rigorous training. I built a solid foundation in the past three years so bodybuilding and combat training could finally begin.
By bodybuilding, I don't mean packing muscle. Maybe, I should better define it as body-shaping instead.
I did physical exercises aimed at building a lean, flexible but strong body. The contradiction in physique was meant to build a strong, athletic physique that could allow me hold my own across all physical parameters.
Speed, Strength, physique, defence, dexterity, agility, endurance, stamina... you name it.
I couldn't allow myself to lack any.
By twelve, I had already learnt everything Asta had to teach me in Herbology.
It turned out that the subject matter was more developed in my previous life than in this one. Since I dabbled a bit in it in that life, it was easy to pick it up in this one.
However, I wished I hadn't learnt it as fast as I did.
It turned out, Asta's time was up. The only thing keeping her alive was my tutelage from her. With that gone, she couldn't hold on anymore even when she wanted to.
Asta died when I was thirteen.
I didn't cry all through her illness till her burial. I was just numb.
I was no stranger to death so I didn't give myself the luxury of wailing like a child. It served no purpose. The best I could do was to keep pushing forward in my plans.
Fortunately, before she died, Asta passed on something to me that sped up my plans significantly.
A few months before she died, I sprained my ankle during one of my trainings. I was told I couldn't move for a whole week.
Humans in this world have a higher healing factor than in my previous life. I figured it was probably due to the mana in the air.
It weren't without saying that physical and combat training were out the window that week, so I decided to focus on Herbology to make efficient use of the time.
The mana stone in my special glove ran out. When I was about to change it, I discovered the mana in the new stone drained rapidly, far more than it should.
I was about to call for Asta when I noticed my ankle injury was healed.
It was then it hit me.
Loki said I wasn't manaless, instead I just used mana differently. I devoured mana was what he said.
In that case, where did the mana I devoured go?
Turns out it was my body.
Other humans in this life absorbed mana and stored it in special vessels called a core. The core could be formed anywhere; the heart, the brain, behind the sternum, around the naval area(the dentin I believe it was called in the East in my previous life).
I don't have a core. I realise that's what the doctor meant when he said I was a leaking vessel.
I didn't have a core to store mana because my body doesn't store it. It uses it up immediately to build my body. I just didn't notice what it was doing until this moment.
So, I explained what I discovered to Asta.
I cut my hand and then held a mana stone. And voila, I was healed immediately.
We were both stunned and excited.
Asta spent the remainder of the night nagging me not to expose this.
Ironically, she told me something similar to what my taskforce unit used to say about secrets.
Since then, I went all out when training. With the confidence that I was only a mana stone away from full help, I created the hardest training regimen I could fit into my time.
That brings me to what Asta left me with.
There were two keys and a letter.
According to Asta's letter, the keys opened a secret my mother passed to her in a similar letter before she died. And she was passing the secret to me the same way too.
A secret is only a secret when only one person knows it.
Turns out, my parents didn't build the cottage on the outskirts of town for no reason. Aside being a good location to rest, It was also to hide something of immense value.
Following the letter, I found a passage hidden behind a shelf in my father's study. The key opened the door to that passage.
The passage led to a series of tunnels designed as a labyrinth. I had to follow the drawings in the letter not to get lost.
Finally, I came to another door.
It took the second key and, most importantly, my blood to open the door.
There was a strong creaking sound which proved the door hadn't been open for at least a decade. In fact, I strongly doubt Asta ever came down here to open the door.
It's not that she didn't have access to my blood. She could've gotten it from a number of ways if she wanted to.
I felt this way, because knowing her, she probably never had an interest in the secret hidden within the tunnels.
I applauded my parents' thoroughness in hiding the secret as I opened the door excitedly to find out what it was.
I wasn't disappointed.
It was a mana vein.
In other words, my parents found and hid an entire mana mine!
(To be continued...)
[A.N: If you're enjoying the book, please leave a review, vote with power stones and golden tickets. Gifts are also very welcomed. Also, please check out my other book Soldiers of Time. Thanks.]