Water and Blood

Even though Velios tried to convince himself that it didn't affect him, the fact that the sun had not gone down for all the time he had been staying there. It must have been multiple days and Velios had not drank anything either. Even with improved skills, he would only survive so far. The days were cruel and tough, filled with training and fighting, he had no time to enjoy himself. Physical training, mana training, magic training and skill training. Velios made sure to train at least all of them to some degree to keep up an even balance in stats and capabilities. Velios thought about going to a city to gather water but thinking of what had happened last time, it took a while to convince himself. In the end, he decided to not go to another city but instead learn a new ability he had been eager to have an excuse to learn. One of the most versatile and useful things you could possibly control with the use of magic, water.

He yet again sat himself down, closing his eyes while imagining everything as clearly as possible. He would use the same exact method as last time. With all the focus he could harness, his consciousness slowly entered the space which is his mind. Is water a colorless, transparent, odorless liquid that forms the seas, lakes, rivers, and rain which is the basis of the fluids of living organisms or is water nothing more than the combination of two hydrogen and one oxygen atoms? How do you create water? How do you control water? Where do you get it from and what are the consequences of using it? How do you use water magic? Even with all the experience Velios had got from his mana and magic training, he had no idea what to even do as there were so many options to choose from. He did not know the limits of magic and how they affected his surroundings. He did not know if he had to get the water from a water source directly or if he even could use the water in the air or clouds. He wanted to think of the possibility that he could artificially create water with the help of hydrogen and oxygen but how would he even do that at his level, he thought. 

After a while, he had managed to create a very small amount of water completely artificially with magic. It took immense amounts of mana to do so and would not be practical even later down the line. It simply took too much mana. The mana to magic ratio was so big that it would be hard to even use in daily life, let alone in combat. Even if he were to take the water out of his surroundings, he did not know what effects that would have. Velios was not sure if it would be possible and if so, what effects it would have on the air and climate depending on where he was, even if it was just a virtual world. Velios spent hours exhausting his mana trying to find a way to efficiently use water magic but to no avail. That was, until he had realized a source of water which would be never ending that was with him from the beginning. Velios thought about the idea and if possible, it would greatly improve efficiency. The idea in question was to use his own blood as the source of his water magic. If he was not capable of getting the water sufficiently out of the blood then he would at least be able to use blood magic. Which would be very versatile considering that both humans and monsters mostly rely on blood to live.

Without realizing it, he was training his durability and regenerative abilities as he continuously cut himself everytime he started experimenting with something new. Velios had so much to learn, discover and think about at the same time that he couldn't simply only train a single thing at one time. He simply had to learn how to train as effectively as possible all of the time wherever he was. Even with everything he did, he never grew tired of training because it was the one thing he enjoyed doing out of everything. You could call him addicted to training, to becoming stronger and you wouldn't be wrong. Normally, a person would be either crazy or not right in the head to do something so hard and painful like him. But Velios didn't often care what others thought about him. Even from a young age, he had learnt that the world is not run on the ideals or the words people say but the actions they do. That's why Velios judges people not on what they say or what they feel but what they do and if the things they are doing truly come from the truest part of their hearts. The average human would go crazy if they were void from human contact and civilization for too long but for Velios, that had been his life up until this point. 

Velios was prepared to do anything to survive as long as he got to train as much as he wanted to train. The more he trained, the faster he could master magic and the more magic he mastered, the more diversity he could add. Velios continued to train as he usually did but something that he had completely overlooked. He already knew that he could change how much mana he used on his aura and which body parts he wanted to use it on. But he had not thought about the possibility to change the size, or to be more precise, to change its density. Velios had hoped to achieve a difficult way to train his mana and also to use more mana but still keeping it close to the body. Velios did not yet know the benefits and the effect of making mana much more dense. For everybody else, days had already passed since the incident in the stone town in the desert but in the wilderness of the desert, the days barely seemed to pass as the sun was up nearly all of the time depending on where you were located. Every task in Velios' entire daily routine could be written up in only four words. Train, fight, eat, sleep and repeat. 

Velios was training as normal, straining himself with as many things at the same time. As he was moving multiple small balls of fire around him, the fire suddenly disappeared and went up into the atmosphere with the wind. Velios was struck, confused and before he had time to create new ones, his heart violently started to beat, feeling as if it would jump out of his chest. Velios' muscles started to shake and his legs could barely hold him up. Down on one knee, he held his chest and the pain only seemed to get worse. The big aura around him was now completely gone and his whole body started slowly almost shutting down. Velios had a confused yet somewhat agitated look because he did not know what was going on. He gritted his teeth in pain and didn't know what was happening. The sand below him started slowly moving as it started pulling the weakened Velios down. What's happening? Move, body, move! If this was whenever, Velios would have noticed the sand moving before anything was even happening, that would be the case for the last week almost. But it's just his luck that the moment something unexpected happens to his body, he gets pulled down. The last thing he saw before he got pulled down and completely lost his consciousness, was the shape of a person who Velios couldn't see clearly only a couple of meters in front of him.