Chapter 10 - Training(3/4)

After 4 days, his training wasn't anymore effective on his parameters. Instead, he felt like 'Mastery' over Mana, wasn't something that he, right now, was that far, even if he knew he learned not to even half the [Mana Control Manual].

This caused his brows to furrow slightly, but he knew that he still wasn't a match for even a well-built Level 2. His routine seemed more stable than before, allowing him to perform 3x his work-out daily. He decided to check the actual cost of the skill [Parallel Minds] because, if possible, he wanted to learn it sooner than later.

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[Parallel Minds]

Rank:A (Stable) (A/N this is the meaning of "it can't be raised anymore under normal means")

Allows your consciousness to be split in two permanently.

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The cost was rather low with a 750.000 SP. 'If you consider what benefit I can gain by such a skill…it's no wonder that the price would be a little harder to afford right now.'

If he wanted to, Ethan could be able to do 10x his actual training regime, something monstrous, yet he can only gain 10k SP a day, and to obtain 750k, he needs to completely stop increasing his other skills and parameters, so he decided against it and acc.u.mulate them normally, at least for now. So he decided to continue his normal training and increase of his skills.

After he woke up from his meditative state, it was almost 6AM so, like always, he got up and started his work-out. After finishing his 3x Optional Quest, he sat cross-legged on the stone and began reading the images and text of the book. Now, he needed to try to "will" the Mana to form a bubble and then try to condense it to a state that it can output damage to his surrounding.

Of course his first attempt ended in him nearly create an explosion that could have wiped out him and the cave, from this he understood that he couldn't simply shape the bubble at his maximum, but he needed to slowly feed mana, shape it to his like, make it stable, and in the final process hardening and refining it with both his internal reserves and the Mana in the surrounding.

If he could do it, his mastery over internal and external Mana would only sky-rocket, so he decided he could try his hardest in this critical part. But he wasn't so fortunate because even creating the ball took 4 hours. But the bubble itself was so unstable that it could explode if he just tried to infuse a bit of the surrounding Mana that was desperately trying to infuse in the bubble.

He could only repel the bubble in time before the situation got out of hand. He tried, tried so hard that he was feeling his reserves of Mana nearly reach 0, but it wasn't necessary a bad thing because he was trying to obtain something similar to Mana control. [Spirit Healing] and [Mana Regeneration].

The latter was something that nobody should have because, as primary stated by Light, nobody knows how to proactively use their own Mana, and even those that know, doesn't know the technique of Absorbing the surrounding Mana to fill their own, something only items could generally do. He decided to ask Light something he held for himself in the last 4 days.

["Light, is it possible to buy something like a Time and Space Chamber like Dragonball?"]

[The Time and Space Chamber is something that can't be introduced here because of the enormous incompatibility between the two World's Laws. Here, if you try to use the Gravity, even 5x, you would immediately die. Not because of your own lack of power however, the gravity increase affect every single cell of your body, makes it nearly impossible to take before dying. However, I can modify the entire structure of the Chamber, or make it only for time to be dilated, even so, the cost is literally over the billions of SP just to the Space and Time.]

Having his little dream shattered, Ethan resumed his training and, after a little over an hour, he finally managed to create a mana bubble. This time, he decided to try to infuse external mana as a literal "property" of the bubble instead of his own command.

He was pushing himself rather hard because it was something like Add an artificial Law to an object, even if temporary, was something far beyond the current mages could hope to do.

If someone was here to watch Ethan, they could have been so shocked to nearly spit blood, because Ethan, strangely, understood the technique far more easily than he thought, but he didn't seem to understand that the ball was exploding.

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After 3 days, he finally was to the point where he could, in 10 minutes, complete the entire process, even if the stability of the bubble when he was in the phase of "Infusing Laws" was of nearly 3 seconds of stability before exploding like a firework.

He decided it was better than nothing however, because he knew he had a lot of time for mastering all the concept behind Mana, and, now that he made what he now calls a 'breakthrough', Ethan decided to open, like always, his [Status Board].

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Name: Ethan

Race: Human

Lv 1(+)

Pow: 401E→ 481E

End: 600C →741B

Dex: 300F → 358F

Agi: 303F → 470E

Mag: 753B → 821A

Skill: [Qienta's Blessing:SSS], [Mana Control:D](new)

Magic: -

[Mana Control]

Rank: D

The User of this skill can control the Mana, the control increases with the skill rank.

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Like always, Ethan was shocked, he thought the skill was far more difficult to obtain but, now that he had the skill, and in D-Rank, he felt like his control over Mana increased by a fair amount.

This theory proved to be right because he could now speed up the process in 5 minutes, and the stability of the bubble in its final form increased from 3 seconds to 15 seconds. He tried to look at the book to see that, not only he needs the ball to be in perfect balance with the surrounding, but he needs to be able to form more than one bubble at time.

He started to hate this training a little because now he need to test with explosions now and then that makes his body explode with the bubble itself.

Knowing that he was distant from even a bit of what "Mastery" was, he felt curious about what was after [Mana Control]. Deciding it was still time for his training, he returned to his meditative state and tried to do all the training at the same time, shifting his focus sensing the surrounding, circulating his Mana, creating the bubble and hardening it.

This was taxing on his body like hell…more effective than his own work-out at this point.

After another explosion, he decided to chat a bit with Light, he was becoming more and more fond of the time he spent talking with her, mostly because she always spoke with so much kindness in her words that he felt like he would fall in love with her if she had a body.

Even if he disliked to rest, Light wasn't the same and instead forced Ethan to slow down a bit. This was because Light felt he was so 'break' in his personality that he seemed empty, like a flower that radiated beauty but without its petals forming the image you had of the flower itself...it was…rather sad for her because she never cared for this aspect of him before he decided to her be a 'cute girl'.

Even if he isn't aware of it, Light now has a consciousness and isn't talking with him because he is her Host, but because she wants to help him in some ways. So, when they were talking about his training, Ethan suddenly asked

["Light, should I join a Familia?"]

At these words, Light was thinking of what to answer to him, before confidently said

[You should. If you join a Familia, you could use the Falna as your advantage to get skills, magic, development abilities and parameters more easily while you will have a method to increase your own level without relying on the System. For now, the System uses a cheap version of the Falna and the maximum you can reach is S in all parameters before you can't do anything but level up, and in doing this you are not only wasting the benefits of the Falna but the parameters themselves.]

Light knew that if she couldn't provide him enough justifications to join a Familia, he would not even enter in Orario for months. Something heartbreaking for her but decided against point it out now.

She understood her role and decided it was unnecessary to complicate things when she could easily 'fool' him in doing what she felt it was for the better.

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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: You can try to think of something like the training of Naruto for the Rasengan but it's more than simply that. Naruto simply tried to condense the surrounding mana in a ball pre-existent, something made for him to understand easily the concept, but here we are talking about Laws of the mana, not something that simply "exists", it's hard to receive but I hope you understood my meaning)

(A/N: He isn't immortal, the explosion hits him and retains a fair amount of damage but isn't enough to do real damage to his body that would simply regenerate. If stabbed directly to the heart or completely overwhelmed however, he would die instantly)

(Alternate Titles: "Light is Bae", "Casually made himself explode a hundred times","Ethan should focus on his mind instead of his training")