Chapter 9 - Training(2/4)

After deciding himself of what to do with his work-out, Ethan finally noticed something in his Status Board, the [FeatherFoot(Sealed)], so, he decided to ask Light.

["Since when did I had this ability, Light?"]

[... On the 2nd day from your arrival, the Development Ability [FeatherFoot] appeared in your Status Board.]

'Oh… I'm so stupid.' Ethan thought. Because he knows that if he had known of this ability before, he could have developed it by now, and it was something that Ethan couldn't forget. So, he decided it was for the better and, instead of stay angry, decided to ask some more questions to Light.

["Light, how can I obtain some Magic and Skills without have to shop them?"]

[In this world Magic is something that could only be obtained by Grimoires, this seemed to be the fastest method to obtain Magic but Grimoires are expensive, so most people hope to achieve Magic on their own, something relatively impossible without a Falna.

The Falna is more troublesome than you think because it has so many Flaws that you should avoid it. If you allow me to 'help' you, I recommend you to shop a [Mana Control Manual], it's a manual that compresses all the theories of other worlds related to magic and, united together, makes the technique itself "flawless", something nobody in this world can achieve.]

["So cool! Buy me this Manual!"]

[Understood, used 15000SP to buy [Mana Control Manual]]

When he heard this, Ethan saw a book materialize from thin air. Something rather eye catching if he was amongst people. Ethan immediately opened the book to read it. But he saw it was formed in small images that represented clearly a cultivator's pose.

Ethan was a little excited from this but immediately decided to focus on his understanding of the poses for trying to learn the [Mana Control] Skill.

Just as he was about to begin, Light decided to say something more.

[You asked me about Skills, but they are something people in this world are limited because of their own understanding of the Falna itself. With the Falna, you could obtain a fair amount of skills but all the flaws in that system makes it "Not Recommended". So, if you are able to obtain a Falna, I could partially remove all the flaws in it and replace it without any God or Mortal noticing. How does that sound?]

Ethan, like always, was a little overwhelmed by all the information, but he imagined a girl version of Light that said 'Praise me ~!' but he immediately removed the thought, trying to hide this side of his from Light. He was unfortunate that Light was listening to him like always.

[I'm generally without a gender, but if you want i can customize my voice and gender, or appeal you like you tought earlier. I don't really mind~]

Ethan was, now, literally shocked. But instead of the classic dull in his mind, he literally said

["Please transform in a cute girl!"]

Ethan soon realized what he had said. He was embarrassed like hell, because he didn't even think of girls in the 7 days in this world. But here and now, he was taking advantage of a machine to try to appeal himself…he felt now, rather angry with himself for forcing his opinion on Light.

He really wanted it…even if it was a 'Machine' to decide for itself. When he was about to literally speak out loud to decide for himself what to be, a voice sounded in his mind, but now, it wasn't the same mechanical voice, but something extremely natural. With a little of teasing, the voice stated

[Now now, calm down Ethan ~, I don't think it's that bad to "be" a girl. You were thinking of something rather childish, instead, I decided to appear like someone of age.]

Ethan simply felt like no words could explain what he felt, the feeling of a girl speaking in your mind, with that hint of teasing, was like a pure paradise for him because the voice was similar to his unique best friend.

He decided to let the matter be for now. Finally, he sat on a rock that was sticking out from the rest of the cave. He was in a cross-legged position, trying to sense Mana itself.

One of the hardest steps for beginners, at least from the information provided from the book itself. After 30 minutes, he felt something from his surrounding. The Mana he was trying to sense was literally moving around him like a Phantom. Something a little disturbing, but as the book said, he needs to ignore that feeling for the time being and need to concentrate purely on the surrounding instead of this discomfort.

So, without a moment, he tried to "split" his focus in two, something he thought was rather simple but now, even in his deep concentration, he can't split his focus. And the difficult of the training itself was hardening by the second. Without paying attention to the difficulty however, he continued tirelessly to meditate.

When he decided to take a 'Break' 12 hours have passed. He started at 7AM so, seeing it was dinner time was a little shocking for him because he didn't feel like this amount of time had passed. He bought the classic [Earnest Volcano's Meat], he ate dinner and, by the time he finished, he decided to continue his training.

This because his "cultivation" had the same benefit as every normal cultivator should have, so he didn't need to sleep and, by focusing on his meditation, for Ethan this was even better than sleep.

He woke up from his meditative state at 6AM for the Optional Quest. He decided against rush 10x the amount of training because, even if he did the 10x amount of the quest itself, it was infinitely better to meditate. This seemed more obvious after seeing his own [Status Board]

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Name: Ethan

Age: 15

Race: Human

Lv 1(+)

End: 574D → 600C

Dex: 270G → 300F

Agi: 302F → 303F

Mag: 200G → 753B

Skill: [Qienta's Blessing:SSS]

Magic: -

Development Ability: [(FeatherFoot:(Sealed)]

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'Man, this surely is a cheat.'

Ethan couldn't prevent himself from thinking this but, he was happy that his Magic was sky-rocketing without him even possess a single Spell. Or so he thought.

After returning from his 3x training and slaying of a group of goblins, it was past 4PM, so he decided to return in his cave. Here, he decided to immediately focus on the next step of his training.

In this step he should be pushing his split focus to over the extreme because, now that he can feel the surrounding bubble expanding, he now needs to "Absorb" the Mana from his surrounding and make it circle in his veins. Without a moment of hesitation, he started trying to think on the feeling of him absorbing the mana.

As soon as he thought about it, the surrounding Mana began to "execute" his command and entering his body. He felt a little pained in the aftermath but decided to ignore the feeling and concentrate on to make the Mana circulate in his veins. But he was unfortunate because the Mana decided it was better to expand all around his body again, something that made Ethan angry because it was like the Mana didn't want to enter him and remain instead of dispersing completely, but he wasn't that easy.

After 10 hours, the Mana seemed to conceive defeat and allowed itself to be circled in his veins. As soon as this new feeling took root of his senses, he immediately understood why the book wanted him to split his focus in two. If he can completely split his focus in two, he could allow one part of him to be mediating while he was training around for obtaining SP.

It was shocking for him that he didn't think of this option sooner but now that he knew, he was absolutely sure he wanted to purchase [Parallel Minds] a rare skill that permitted him better control over two consciousnesses.

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(I have a discord server. discord.gg/cpVr5X8 If you enter it, you can choose one of Ethan's future powers from the pool I created, but that's not all! On the server, you can see the reference on some things that will be present in the story! Right now you can freely see some things but I advise you to read the story further before seeing them otherwise you'll get spoilers!)

(A/N:About how the [Mana Control Manual] works, think of something like you are searching for news about something, but most TV news speaks about 10% truth and 90% false. If you make together all the news, from different TV news, you could obtain a fair amount of the truth and, at the same time, eliminate all the false in them.)

(A/N:You can search Chinese meditation poses for better understanding about the cross-legged position)

(A/N: For a better understanding about the split of his focus, think of it as two things that are incredibly difficult to concentrate to at the same time, so he needs to split his focus in two, one for the internal cultivation and the other for external cultivation and, this is for me the best method for cultivating, something that normal cultivation simply "Integrate" as standard and it's something that, at least for me, is wrong because you simply can't do two things at the same time and be proficient with both. I don't like the mess cultivation novels always makes. So I prefer to him be simply passive in regard to cultivation.)

(Alternative Titles: "When the author is angry at himself and decides to turn the system into a cute girl to calm down" "A/N in this chapter are a little…" "Mana-Chan is a tsundere")