Ken's Perspective
“No! That’s wrong, make sure it flows all the way to your finger tips!” Jill shouts stepping lightly on my fingers.
The difference from when Giean is around is astounding. When he is here Jill at least tries to be polite and proper. Without him she turns into a strict task master entirely focused on her last order. In this case training me in mana flow.
“it doesn’t go that far.” I complain.
“then make it!” she shouts pressing down harder on my fingers.
It has been going on like this since Giean left after breakfast for the meeting with the Beastlord elders. Trying to tune out Jill I focused on the gentle breeze that blows across the top of the beast wall.
As a kid I always loved to run around outside on windy days. Holding a blanket behind me I would jump in the air and pretend to be flying. As I got older, I found it relaxing to just sit and listen to the wind whistle through the trees and watch it roll over the farmer fields near the village.
Since awakening it has become something more. I feel like I have become one with the wind. The touch of the cool thin breeze is warm and soft, like that of a lover welcoming you home. I can feel every disturbance in the air around me. it was barely noticeable three days ago but now I can feel the ruffling of Jills long black dress in front of me. I wonder if I can-”
“Ow,” I say rubbing my head. I swear I will burn that bundle of cloth one day.
“You were having dirty thoughts again.” I can feel the disapproval in Jill’s eyes.
“No, I - ow” any attempt at protest simply earns me another smack on the head.
“Now, that doesn’t look like training,” a gentle voice says behind me.
I turn hoping to see Giean but am let down. It is Gerald approaching his back straight as an arrow. I can’t help but see his movements as stiff, yet he moves silently across the grass leaving the air around him undisturbed.
“It would be, if he could dodge it like Giean.” Jill says her pouting face unfitting for a 17-year-old professional maid.
“is that still bothering you? Those cookies were meant for him anyways.”
“But he didn’t know that,” Jill protests, “he could at least have had the decency to let me hit him once or twice, but no, he just skips away.”
Ignoring his granddaughter’s defeated sigh Gerald turns to me, “How is the training?”
“Painful,” I say rubbing my head. I look at my hand, at the tips of my fingers. “I don’t get it. I can feel the mana moving, It as easy to control as my own hand now, but I can’t see it. My idea of where and what it is feels incomplete.”
Gerald looks at his Granddaughter.
“What, Giean only said to help him practise his mana flow.”
Gerald shakes his head as he turns to me, “Close your eyes.”
I am unsure but I do as he asks. I feel his fingers press lightly on my eyelids.
“Now I want you to focus your mana here. Feel it flow from your body into your eyes till it feels like they are about to burst.”
Focusing my mana into one area is a lot harder than I expected. Mana naturally circulates throughout your body’s mana vasculature in a similar manner to how blood travels through your veins and arteries. Starting at the heart it travels to each of your limbs along one large vessel then back along the other.
The point of flow training is to increase the speed mana flows through these large vessels and the pressure applied to them. As the pressure and speed increase the mana will open up more smaller vessels that branch off reaching into the tissue and connecting the large vessels.
Giean said that this has a number of benefits but the one I should focus on for now is that it will increase the amount of mana I could hold in my body.
After a minute I had slowed the leakage of mana back to my torso enough that it began to pool in my eyes. When it felt like they were about to burst I told Gerald.
“Okay hold that amount of mana there while opening your eyes.” Gerald says taking a step back.
It takes me three tries to hold the mana there and get my eyes open. When I finally do it the effect is not at all what I expected. The vibrant green of the grass and the deep black of Jill and Gerald’s uniform have all dulled, as if a thin film of gray had been sprayed over everything.
What stands out now are the white lines glowing inside of Jill and Gerald’s body. The largest lines meet over their hearts and follow the path of the veins and arteries I know from gutting deer and boar. I am seeing their mana vasculature.
A thick liquid moves through their mana channels, the liquid flowing through Jill’s a light red while Gerald’s is brown. I look up at their faces but I can’t see them, their heads glowing balls of white mana channels and swirling mana.
“Now look at your body.” I hear Gerald say.
Looking down at my hands I see my mana channels, but they are a dull gray. As they go up my arms, the colour changes to white. I grasp the mana not in my eyes and force it towards the gray channels in my hands. The gray channels seem to resist the mana so I push harder. My mana, a viscous green liquid dotted with golden flakes, oozes into the gray tubes. I keep cycling my mana through less effort needed each time, and the gray of the channel’s walls lightens.
After a few minutes my mana flows freely to the tip of my finger and the gray becomes a dull white. I look to my pact sleeping by my side and am amazed by what I see. Chrono has the large vessels that glow white but he also has an intricate spiderweb of smaller gray vessels connecting them. Through his mana vasculature golden liquid flows, specks of green swirling inside of it.
Looking at Jill and Gerald I can see some of the small vessels but theirs are all white, no gray. I have no small connecting vessels gray or white.
It is then that I feel the ripple in the air around me, looking up I see Giean’s Grand Eagle overhead. The complexity of its mana vasculature is on par with Jill and Gerald. When it finally settles on the ground Giean jumps off its back.
Giean and Bu are blinding, each radiating light like the sun. Their mana vasculature encompasses the entirety of their body causing all of them to glow. Not even the largest vessels are visible in the tangled mess of their vasculature. The mana flowing through Bu’s veins can only be described as liquid sunlight. I can not see the mana in Giean’s body only the outline of the flow, his mana completely transparent like water in a shallow stream.
Gerald and Jill bow, I try to stand up only to find myself sprawled out on my back. My head spins as the world returns to its normal vivid colours. I stare at the brilliant clear blue sky as I try to keep my breakfast down.
I hear Giean walk towards me. It is tempting to try and sit up, but I will probably vomit on his feet if I try. I don’t want to know how Jill would punish me for that.
“Didn’t I say to just focus on mana flow today?” Giean asks while he crouches next to me, his question directed at Jill.
“You did master but Gerald thought using mana vision would help with that. It did as you can see from the condition of the mana channels in his hands.”
Giean let out a sigh as he stands up, “yes I can see that but this was extremely dangerous. Normally by the time you reach his mana level your body has had mana in it for a long time. The tissues had grown accustom to mana spilling into them and are strengthened by it. While I could cause rapid reinforcement of the mana vasculature, I can’t do that to the tissues of his physical body. He could have gone blind.”
“I am aware,” Gerald says nonchalantly.
“I wasn’t.” I shout. I did not understand most of what Giean said but I do understand, COULD HAVE GONE BLIND.
“But the greater the risk the greater the reward.” The old butler says his voice even keel as if it excused risking my eyesight. A hunter’s eyesight is his life.
Giean sigh is even more heartfelt this time. His shoulder slump as if recalling something he really doesn’t want to.
“That is what you used to say before you threw me off cliffs, or had me participate in underground fight tournaments and that time you had me steal from an elder bear.”
“and look how strong you are now,” Gerald responds beaming with pride.
Jill looks shock hearing the sort of training her grandfather had put Giean through, honestly it sounds about right for a person as legendary as Giean. Also, I am still focused on the personal note of I could have gone blind. That is something you mention before you have someone try something.
“Still I am impressed,” Giean says turning to me, “While moving might have been too taxing that you could use mana sight after such a short period of time means you have some skill after all. Just not as a beast mage. Now let’s go.” He holds his hand out to me.
I didn’t notice that the nausea had passed till he holds out his hand. I accept it as he pulls me to my feet, Bu hopping off my chest and onto his shoulder. Chrono scrambling up my leg onto my back.
“where to?” I ask as I follow him to the house.
“To see your parents.”
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