Veins of Steel

Gideon told my dad about the things that I did including me lifting the hammer and using channeling, my dad first was shocked but later just had a prideful expression, Gideon also told him about the my interest and desire to learn more about channeling and convinced my dad to let me train with him.

The next day I came to the smithy with my dad and after Gideon finished his work he took me to the testing ground behind the smithy which was usually used to test out weapons but from today it was going to be my training ground. 

"Remember kid i will teach you how to channel mana nature but by no means will it be easy to do so." Gideon tells me while preparing a training dummy.

"I know that it won't be easy but i will not be giving up until I manage to do so."

"You are confident kid but you will have to prove it before talking a big game." Gideon says to me.

"I will prove it." I say with confidence.

"Sure kid but lose the sword you will be using your good old fist today." 

"What? Aren't we practicing mana nature channeling?" I asked confuse.

"We are, but to learn mana nature channeling you will first need to master the simple form of it before moving on to a weapon." 

"Simple form of nature channeling what is that?"

"It's a basic technique which teaches you to channel mana nature through your body." 

"But I know how to do that i can summon fire on the palm of my hand."

"That's not channeling kid that's called casting there is a big difference between the two." 

"Are they that different?" 

"Sure they are, casting takes longer and consumes more mana while channeling is a passive technique which allows you to automatically use the least amount of mana to perform strong and bigger attacks."

"You mean channeling is like blood flowing in the veins?"

"Yeah, that's why it takes a lot of dedication to master it as it is all about concentration, but once you master it you can use it easily even while in distress but since you did manage to use mana channeling on the sword easily you might learn faster than the others."

"So what will we be doing today then?"

"Today is going to be simple you will learn to channel mana by yourself." Gideon says with a big smile.

"What" I asked confused.

"Yes, today all you do is learning on your own."

"What do you mean on my own?"

"Didn't I make it clear enough kid?"

"What do you mean clear enough I can't do that."

"Sure you can kid just be strong and confident."

"What, i barely know anything about it and you want me to learn on my own."

"As I told you kid channeling is like blood running through your veins so now replace the blood with mana you see that dummy punch it without your fist getting stuck" Gidion begins to walk away

"Just do your best kid and keep it safe or else your veins will explode, I will be inside working."

"What, you can't just leave after saying that?"

"Of course I can and you better start working hard and if I see you slacking off I will use you as a hammer to forge me a new sword so you better do your best." Gideon says while walking into the smithy.

"WHAT THE HELL"

After standing there for a while I realized that I could only follow orders for now and began walking toward the dummy as I looked closer at the dummy it looked like it was made out of some strange material, as I touched it my finger was stuck to it like gum and I quickly pulled it back.

"What is this made out of?" I asked myself.

I was curious about it but just decided to try it as i was told, as i began to concentrate and tried to channel mana throughout all my body and veins after a while of concentrating I threw a focused punch at the dummy but as the punch landed my had was stuck to it like glue and the force of the punch had reduced by a lot.

After a lot of thinking I realized that what I had been doing was not channeling but just body strengthening with mana after which I also realized that channeling mana needed to be constant without any disturbance for it to be perfect just like how Gideon said but since I had been using just strengthening I had gotten used to it.

(Hey this is the explaining corner let me explain what the difference between casting and channeling is if you are confused.)

Casting is the simple and easy form of using mana where the user uses their nature by gathering a specific amount of mana on the palm of their hands then merging it with their mana nature this is easy to do and can be done with some practice but takes a long time to perform and if the user is disturbed while doing it, it will be canceled.

Now what about channeling and why it is better that casting, first channeling if mastered can be performed passively which mean no need to gather mana and nature together as the channeling process performs this task automatically and does it faster too, while channeling even if the user is disturbed the process will not be canceled. 

Thanks for listening let's get back to the story.

"Wait body strengthening has same kind of process as channeling while body strengthening is not constant and is done by strengthening the muscles with mana it might be more similar than I thought" 

As I sat down i applied the same process as body strengthening but this time I tried to feel the veins of my blood throughout my body and tried to move my mana through them but even after an hour no progress was made.

"Is it really this tough to do I have tried all means but no matter how hard I focus I can't channel even a single drop of mana, what am I doing wrong?" I asked myself.

Well at least my body strengthening technique became more efficient back then I used to just pour my mana in my muscles but I have a good grasp of the technique, Wait? That's it. 

"Yeah let's not try to focus and inject mana carefully, I can just pour it in like I did with my muscles I will pour it all around my body first and slowly inject it in rather than…. but yeah there is that danger of my veins exploding if I do it wrong, but if I don't try this who knows I might be stuck at my current level forever so let's just go with it." I told myself.