Chapter 6: Ability

Every day, I trained with my father to become more proficient in mana usage and learned a bit of swordsmanship. After a while, I was finally able to use mana more efficiently.

First of all, I was able to conquer the skill of enhancing my body parts in combat. I was able to do it accurately and tried not to have any downtime.

Moving on, I noticed that when strengthening my entire body, I could still refill my mana regularly. Perhaps the reason was because I was only increasing the amount of mana circulating inside my body.

Lastly is strengthening weapons. My father gave me a wooden sword and showed me how to strengthen it. First, I had to interact with the sword (hold it or touch it), then I had to transfer a particular amount of mana into the hand holding the sword and slowly move the mana up the sword. The hand acts as the bridge that enables the enhancement of the sword.

It might sound easy, but it took me a long period of time to master it. Moreover, when the sword was being strengthened, the mana in the core could still be restored at the same speed like usual. Maybe because the sword was not a part of the body, it was a separate item, so when the mana was transferred to the sword, it was also separated from the body.

Most of my days just passed like that. And time flew by.

***

4 years later.

Lucian, my sweet, little son, has grown up day by day. As a mother, I can't help but feel proud when I see him growing up.

He is almost 7 years old now. To be more specific, in 2 days, it will be Lucian's 7th birthday, which is also the day he might be able to awaken his element.

He has grown a lot now. He has also grown more hair and his face has become more mature than before.

It seemed like he had a strong passion for training because he practiced using mana with his father almost every single day. He once got sick from practicing too much, so I forced him to practice moderately, only 5 times a week. He looked disappointed but eventually agreed to the deal.

Currently, I was sitting on the bench made from sawdust at the back of the house, watching the 153rd rematch between father and son.

"Do your best, both of you!"

"Don't lose! Oh, but you can't go all out on Lucian, Aether, Lucian will get hurt!"

***

In just 2 days, I would be able to awaken an element. Although the chance was only 1%, because a member of my family had awakened an element, my chance to awaken an element had also increased somewhat.

Now, I was standing opposite my father, both having a wooden sword and their hand and in a defensive stance, ready to charge at any moment. This was our 153rd practice match. Yes, we had fought each other 152 times and this was the 153rd match.

"Begin!" My father shouted, signaling the start of the battle.

Immediately, I strengthened the wooden sword in my hand, transferred mana to my feet to rocket my jumping power, and charged straight at my father. I performed a vertical slash, but it was actually just to deceive him.

After the slash, I shifted mana to my right foot and jumped to the left, withdrew the mana, and moved it to my left foot in order to jump to the right. The point was to appear behind my father. The whole action only took about 1 second.

I lowered my center of gravity, my knees bent even more while still holding the wooden sword tightly. The blade was tilted diagonally forward. I took a deep breath, putting all my strength into my arm to execute a slash from his left hip to his right shoulder.

"Huh!?!" I cried out involuntarily because my father was no longer there.

The moment I circled behind him, he conducted his mana into his legs and somersaulted into the air, leaving behind smoldering mana waves and residual afterimages.

I instantly looked up, there, our eyes met. My father was gaining momentum for his sword. The sword stabbed down at where I was standing at a magnificent speed. But of course I saw through that attack, the moment my head and the sword were only a few centimeters away, I poured mana into both legs and leaped forward.

Because I dodged the attack in time, his sword got stuck into the ground. My father's eyes showed surprise and pride. He smiled slightly.

Not stopping there, I turned around right away and added more mana to my legs to accelerate my next charge. The blade tore through the air, cutting through the air and only focused on storming towards my father while his sword was disabled.

'This time I will definitely win!' I smiled triumphantly as the sword got closer and closer to my father's stomach.

"Hahaha!" He laughed loudly.

'Wait what?' I didn't know why he was laughing but it made me feel uneasy.

Indeed, the sword charged forward but in that moment, I realized that he had disappeared. Where his figure should have been, there was only the sword stuck in the ground.

At the same time, I felt a hand behind my head and it pressed me to the ground. My whole body slammed into the ground. Luckily, the attack had no force, so I wasn't too badly injured.

'What just happened?'

At that moment, my father vanished into thin air and appeared behind me. It was impossible because he was floating in the air at that time, and even if he had enhanced his body, he wasn't in contact with any surface to gain momentum and launch himself behind me.

"Hahahaha, so I've won 153 matches!" He laughed triumphantly.

"What did you do dad!?!" I slowly stood up and dusted myself off while asking him my question.

"Hmm, that's called Ability."

"Ability?!" I didn't understand what he was talking about.

"How do I explain this? Just think that besides mana and elemental power, there's something else called "Ability." It's like a special skill such as moving objects, being invisible, understanding animal language, etc. And the Ability that I just used on you is teleportation within a 2 meter range."

"Alternatively, you can learn Ability through an Ability book. You just need to take a page from the Ability book that you want and tear it out, and you can learn that skill."

"Of course, the more powerful the skill, the rarer it will be, sometimes it will only have a few pages."

"So basically, you just cheated, right?" I looked at him with a disdainful look.

"Huh? What do you mean? I didn't cheat?" My dad looked a little confused.

"Using something that I don't even know to fight me, isn't that cheating?"

"You lose because of your skill issue." My dad brought both wooden swords into the house. It could be seen that he was just trying to hide from the fact that he just cheated.

***

In a 10 square meter room, there was only a bed, a wardrobe, and an iron sword hanging opposite the bed. Aether was sitting in the room, deep in thought.

'My son is getting stronger and stronger. He is gradually getting used to my movements.'

'If I hadn't used my Ability at the end, I would have lost. He really is a genius.'

Aether looked up at the ceiling. On one hand, he was glad that Lucian was getting stronger and stronger at an incredible rate. On the other hand, he was worried about the boy. His talent was very suitable for the battlefield against the demons, but it was very dangerous and Aether didn't want his son to get hurt or worse.

How ironic.