Chapter 32 - The First Lesson

“Mister Jiran, your cousin is here to see you.” A soft voice spoke, disrupting his train of thought.

Jiran glanced over his shoulder to see the maid who had been acting strangely all day. She gave him a bright smile that was gone in the next instant as she ran back into the manor.

He looked up to see First Mother’s light blue sheen descending toward the horizon while First Father was only a sliver of red.

Lost track of time. This cube sure is fun. I’ll have to make sure I thank Lenton the next time I see him.

He hopped to his feet and met Niya in front of the manor where she was fidgeting nervously. She wore a long pleated skirt, a thick shirt with long sleeves, and a wide apron that covered her front.

“Sorry, I lost track of time,” He gave her a slow up-and-down look with an expression of doubt.

“You know we aren’t going gardening, right?” Her face lit up scarlet and she clenched her hands into little fists.

“I just thought we would be getting dirty and these are… whatever! C’mon let’s just go.” She said while stomping away from him back toward town.

“We’re running to the woods, this way.” Jiran took off jogging at a speed he knew would push her.

Niya scrambled after him, lifting her apron and skirt up so her legs could move freely.

By the time they reached the first training field, she was sweating profusely and gasping for breath.

“All right, what do you want to start with? Mana control, or fighting.

“Mana… control… sounds… easy…” She fit each word around a lungful of air.

“Okay, molding it is. Why don’t you walk me through how you currently use the skill first so I know where to start.”

Niya looked up at him in annoyance that he wasn't giving her any time to recover. Jiran just smiled back at her, enjoying the moment. After a few more breaths, she stood up with her hands on her hips.

“When I need to go a little faster or pick up something heavy, I activate the skill. What else did you want to know?”

Jiran’s open hand smacked his forehead as he groaned.

“Okay, let’s start at the very beginning then, come sit down,” He motioned to a spot on the ground in front of him as he sat.

“Pay close attention when you activate the skill. I want you to find the little burst of feelings that flow out of your head. Keep turning the skill on and off until you have a clear grasp of it.”

“Okay, I think I got it,” She said ten minutes later.

“Good, what do you think that is?”

“I have no idea,” Niya responded with a bright smile and blinking green eyes.

“That feeling is how your thoughts connect with your mana. When you form a thought or picture in your head and then activate the skill, the thought travels through that little feeling and into your mana to tell it what to do.”

“That’s neat,” She said while looking around at the surrounding trees.

“Yes, very neat… Now, the hard part. You’re going to learn to make that little feeling without using the skill.”

“Why?” Niya asked innocently, truly not comprehending why this was important.

“So that someday you can learn to do this.”

Jiran pointed toward a tree and activated a lightning Shaping. Within a split second, the current arced from his finger to the wet tree.

When the mana-fueled electricity flowed through the water and sap into the interior of the tree, the liquids heated, expanded, and turned to gas causing the trunk to explode in a shower of kindling.

“Ouch!” Jiran looked at his hand in annoyance.

Forgot the Coating, whoops.

Blackened skin was rapidly turning to blisters that leaked bright red blood. Upon seeing his hand, Niya gasped while covering her mouth with both hands.

Jiran grit his teeth and focused on the body's natural healing abilities before he activated Regeneration for the first time.

Technique evolution triggered - Regeneration > Rapid Regeneration

Technique evolution triggered - Rapid Regeneration > Restoration

Restoration + 1

Restoration + 1

Restoration…

Ahh, that’s better.

Jiran looked at the new pink and healthy skin on his hand, enjoying the lack of burning pain.

“What did you just do?!” Niya yelled while leaping forward to grab his hand.

She turned it around inspecting every inch for the blackened and blistered skin she had seen moments ago.

“Teach me how you did that,” She demanded, the earlier joviality and lackadaisical tone replaced by a desperation Jiran didn’t understand.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to do! Before you can shoot lightning, you have to learn to control your mana.”

“What? Nobody cares about your stupid lightning! Show me how to heal like that, I have to know.” She pleaded, turning the puppy-dog-eyes up to full power.

Rude. Everyone wants to learn how to shoot lightning.

“Then focus!” He snapped, which caused Niya to sit ramrod straight and nod vigorously.

“That little feeling when you activate a skill is fake emotions connecting with something that shouldn’t be inside your body to begin with.”

“Emotions can be fake?”

“Just listen, or this is going to take forever.”

“Fine, okay, sure thing, Master Jiran,” Jiran rolled his eyes when she bowed, touching her forehead to the ground.

“The brain,” he tapped her head with a finger. “Produces emotions with almost every thought. Usually, they are so subtle that you never notice them but when you think about something that makes you angry—

“Like your face,” She interrupted.

“Yes, like my face. Now shush!

“When you think about something that makes you angry, you can feel that anger spread through your whole body, same with fear or love. Any strong emotion is easy to track as it makes your fists or jaw clench, your heart beat faster, or your toes curl.

“Well, that’s how communicating with your mana works. Instead of making your toes curl, you need to hijack those emotions and push them into your mana to make it curl.

“Try it,” He commanded.

Thirty minutes later she huffed in annoyance and stared at him like he was tricking her.

“This isn’t working,” She complained.

“Try using the skill now, with the mental imagery of that little feeling just being a liquid emotion that your brain uses to communicate with your mana.”

A few seconds later she leaped to her feet in surprise.

“I got two whole levels in molding! No way, it’s really working,” She shouted.

“Only two? We must be doing something wrong. Okay, we’ll have to try reenacting what happened to me and work from there.”

“Okay let's change tactics. When I learned this, I didn’t have any mana and only a sliver of density that I was absorbing through breathing.”

Jiran circled around her and placed his hand on the back of her neck.

Samris was able to track the mana inside my body like this, maybe I can do it with Mana Expansion.

Jiran snaked a sliver of mana into Niya’s body. The sensations he felt through the small trail of energy were completely overwhelming. She squirmed under his touch, clearly unhappy with the invasion.

How am I supposed to find her mana in all this? It's like looking for a grain of rice inside a blanket with your eyes closed.

“That tickles! What are you doing?”

“Activate your molding again.”

She complied and he felt something shifting against his sliver of consciousness.

Found you!

Now, you belong to me!

Jiran imagined grabbing her mana by the throat and claimed it as his own with overwhelming force. He heard her gasp as he withdrew what was now his.

CONGRATULATIONS - Mana Siphon technique discovered

Great, one more thing to add to the list.

He immediately stamped down the annoyance of being overwhelmed with things to work on. He changed the thought and emotion to excitement that he had so many experiments to perform.

That’s better. Ohh, crap, she’s crying.

Niya was looking up at him with wet cheeks, her eyes full of betrayal and confusion.

“M-my mana. What did you do?”

“Exactly what I said I would do, now focus!

“Use your emotions to connect with the density you inhale with each breath. When you feel it respond, claim it with everything you have. If you can’t even do this, then there’s no hope of you ever leaving Feylon.”

Jiran forced harshness into his voice while giving the back of her neck a tiny squeeze.

I don’t like this any more than you do, Niya. You need some motivation though. Without desperation, I doubt you will succeed.

The same can be said for me.

Besides, if she can’t handle this much, then fighting really isn’t for her and I’ll be doing her a favor by stopping here.

Niya took a deep, shaky breath and closed her eyes. Jiran snaked another whisper of mana into her and watched from the inside as she struggled to claim her mana for the first time.

Hours passed as Niya sat in quiet meditation only broken by occasional densoon waves. Jiran used each one as an opportunity to search for that fleeting feeling of connection he needed to properly absorb the density.

The sound of a twig snapping in the distance attracted all of his senses.

His focus was so sharp that he could feel the moisture on his skin as a gentle breeze rustled the hairs on his arms. Jiran’s entire field of vision came into focus as the world seemed to come alive around him. His breathing was loud in his ears as he forced his lungs to pump oxygen rather than letting them breathe automatically.

Every part of his body was alive at that moment. Focused and sharp, like a blade ready to swing.

A densoon wave washed over the glade and impacted him harshly. He responded instinctively with a Coating that writhed under the swirling, chaotic density. He claimed the energy as his own like an animal greedily drinking from a river.

His senses were still sharp, focused intently on the sound beyond the brush, waiting for a beast to leap out at any second.

Niya grunted beside him, distracting him enough that his moment of supreme focus faltered and faded.

The connection with his mana dimmed along with the sharpness of his other senses and he could no longer anticipate the movements of the chaotic density.

His purposeful breathing stopped and the clarity of his vision returned to normal. As the world dulled, he realized what he had been doing wrong this whole time.

I've been focusing on the image I want, thinking about the result when I need to do the opposite of thinking!

It's the absence of thought and distraction that I need. When I’m fully focused on everything, all at once, my brain has no room for random thoughts and that's when the connection forms automatically.

That makes so much sense, I can’t believe I didn’t figure that out before.

A beast with the snout of a wild boar charged into the clearing. It snorted bellow just before it met with a bolt of lightning that fried its brain. Jiran happily roasted the creature while Niya continued to focus with a level of determination he would never have expected from his rambunctious cousin.

Second Father had long descended before her eyes snapped open, shining a pale green light across the ground.

“I did it,” She whispered in a soft tone of wonder.

“Congratulations, Niya,” Jiran said with honest praise.

“W-w-what the heck, I just got fifteen levels. My molding is level twenty!” Her eyes went wide as saucers as her voice trailed off in disbelief.

“Perfect, tomorrow we can work on forcing,” He said while handing her a cooked boar's leg.

She looked at the meat with naked desire before taking a big bite. A satisfied moan escaped her mouth as juices ran down her chin.

“Hey, you probably shouldn't tell anyone about any of this. I might get in trouble if too many people find out, okay?”

She nodded vigorously and finished eating. Jiran’s hand glowed with a gentle fire that lit their way as they trudged back to town.

“That took a lot longer than I expected. Did something happen?”

“The density refused to cooperate until I remembered what you said; that it wasn’t supposed to be there. As soon as I pictured density being something unnatural that I wanted to take as my own, it all clicked into place.”

“Interesting,” Jiran wondered aloud before jumping into his next question.

“Why are you so interested in healing?”

Niya took so long to respond that Jiran thought she might have decided not to. When she finally spoke, her words were quiet and soft. They carried a sad tone he had never heard from the exuberant girl before.

“Dad told me Momma died giving birth to me. They knew she was sick and didn’t have long to live so they chose to have me early, in spawning season, rather than waiting for calm like everyone else.

“She died giving birth to me because nobody could fix her. So, so that’s—

When Jiran saw tears streaming down her cheeks for the second time that day, his hand landed on top of her head where he rubbed her hair affectionately.

I'm not going to give up.

I can’t.

I have too many things to live for.

“Thanks for telling me, Niya. I never knew that.

“Just you wait, we’re going to make you into the best damn healer the empire has ever seen.” Jiran’s flames reflected in her eyes as she nodded.

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