AN: I know the title is kinda sus, but I can guarantee you that there is unfortunately no yaoi in this story.

____________________________________________

It was time for me to start making my mana link. In the Endless Fantasy world, to be able to use magic on the most basic of levels, one must first create a mana link. A connection between themselves and the magical energy known as mana, which allows them to communicate their intentions and commands into it. Kind of like how you need certain programs to work with some coding languages, you need a mana link to work with mana.

Magic is basically a programming language, but one that has too many variants, and way too much flexibility for it to be easily understood by beginners since it's very easy to get lost or misunderstand some of its rules. 

For example, there are 3 main ways to cast a spell, those being magicraft, which is the idea of using magic circles to cast magic spells. Chanting, which is the most common, as the method of using words to help you focus on the proper visualization of the spell. There are two categories of chants, complete or full chants and shortened or simplified chants, their names being quite self-explanatory. Last, there is silent casting, mute casting, or chantless, as the advanced casting technique of simply using your mind as the vessel for the whole process of the spell, not only is it the fastest casting method it is also the hardest to master, as most avoid using this method unless they are facing equally dangerous opponents since more often than not spells come out weaker than using the other methods. 

The spells only become weaker because of the lack of understanding the caster might actually have of them. When it comes to the other two methods, magicraft is literally writing the formula of the spell so it gets cast making it impossible to fail unless it gets interrupted or the formula is written out wrong... Well, it could still be canceled but that's beyond the point. While chanting is basically subliminal messaging yourself into visualizing what you have to in order to make the spell work.

There are also more minor methods like rune casting and prayer casting, each being a subcategory. Rune casting is a subcategory of magicraft while prayer casting is a subcategory of chanting. What makes them different? You might ask, it's that Rune casting is very fast, but also way weaker than the three main methods. It just consists of instead of writing out a whole formula, you just use primal magic symbols of the elements to get a different reaction depending on the command given. For example, you cast the water rune and give it the command to boil and you get hot water. Though you would still have to learn and memorize the runes to do so.

As for prayer casting, it's a bit different in the sense that instead of trying to convince yourself of something, you're literally appealing to the celestial of whatever planet you live in, so the power and all the other information about the spell is decided by them, depending on how well you bootlick. Only people affiliated with a church or a proven Devotees can use them anyway. 

Very similar to prayer casting, there's spirit casting, which is the same just instead of bootlicking Celestials, you're bootlicking spirits.

Finally, when it comes to speed, chantless is the fastest as said before, but when it comes to chanting and magicraft it depends. Individual full chants can go up to 30 seconds for normal spells, while magicraft can go up to 60 seconds for the same normal spells, but if an individual is proficient in magicraft, they can cast even the more complicated normal spells in 2 to 5 seconds while none of the shortest chants goes below 5 seconds. Unfortunately, you have to learn each magicraft formula individually and hone your magic circle construction with them as well as memorize said formulas.

Now back to creating your mana link, you'll have to first go through the most basic part of the whole process, train your ability to sense mana at least to the bare minimum. When it comes to the Omniverse energies, they exist everywhere, they are simply more active in some places than others. As such, every sentient being should be able to sense mana if they train themselves to do so.

The first step would always be prevalent aside from being the foundation of it all, meditation. One must start by being able to concentrate and expand their senses to the world around them before they can sense a single streak of mana. And that was exactly what I did. Unfortunately, this was also the most uncertain method to create your mana link, since each individual would evolve at different rates and have different ways to meditate, which would often lead to apprentices spending most of their beginning stage trying to figure out how to properly meditate rather than actually trying to form their mana link.

On the other hand, there is a faster method, but it requires an experienced magic user to pull off. That being the use of one's own mana to help awaken another's connection to theirs. It is known as mana guidance, and it's not something I can employ in my current position.

Focusing on mediating and expanding my mind to the world around me, I found no results even after trying for hours. This was not unexpected, as even in Endless Fantasy, it would take apprentices anywhere between a week and 3 months to create their mana link, only prodigies being the exception and being able to do it in 2 to 3 days.

Eventually, I was mentally tired of the effort and decided to take a break, I was in no hurry after all.

[Master! Since you're not focused on training right now, I wanted to tell you that G-Sama told me to give you access to Character Customization just this once. While you won't be able to decide your race like in the game, you'll be able to fully customize your appearance on a base level.]

Great! Just the distraction I needed! 

(Ok, show me the character model.) I ordered.

Then a blank-nacked mannequin was displayed in my mind with only the basic features, sex locked as male and the race locked as high human. Also, the mannequin displayed an older version of me instead of my bady self.

Immediately I began to work on the avatar's appearance making all the changes I wanted, and always dreamed off while I was still on earth... And due to that, I might have gone a little overboard and will probably regret some of these decisions later.

The hair was made purple and my eyes, one pink and the other red, for some reason I couldn't make the same color oh well whatever. My changes continued as I made my body as toned as it was allowed, followed by me making my face that of a pretty boy with a side of androgynous aesthetic as I found it appealing. Finally, I got to my spear that will pierce the heavens... And as one would expect with my virgin anime mind that spent a lot of time playing adult games and watching porn and hentai, I increased the size to an unreasonable number. My 15cm(5.9 inches) long and 4cm(1.5 inches) of diameter flaccid junk looked back at me making me feel conscious of the absurdity of it, but a part of me screamed YES at the prospect, and as myself, I couldn't put myself to delete it, so I just confirmed and finished the character creation.

From then, my days moved on and I kept practicing meditation... And I noticed that I suck at it. Unfortunate, but it didn't stop me from continuing to work every single day for long hours.

Time passed and it was almost a month since I first started practicing meditation, and I started feeling like I was finally making significant progress as my focus had improved a lot, and I could now feel a tingling sensation whenever I meditated until living proof of it appeared before me almost like a reward for completing a quest.

[Master! I'm happy to inform you that you acquired the meditation skill! One step closer to the goal!]

Though it wasn't much it gave me motivation while validating my efforts.

My training then continued for a few more days until the fated moment finally came.

____________________________________________

"Congratulations miss Lofn, it's a healthy boy.", the woman said to miss Lofn who was resting with heavy breathing. It wasn't long before she handed the baby to miss Lofn.

That was followed by all the medical staff leaving the room once everything was properly set up for miss Lofn to have her time with her child.

"Hi, my little Zandrius, welcome to this world. Mom is extremely happy to have you." Miss Lofn said to her child, Zandrius, who could help but look at her.

She had long curly turquoise hair with ruby red eyes under her similarly turquoise eyebrows accompanied by her smooth and sharp ever so small facial features that gave her a fresh look, that made one wonder about her age, but that was quickly offset by her ample chest that carried some heavy hitters that would stun-lock most into being mystified by their visage. 

"Now you just have to wait a bit and your... Father? I guess, is going to be here... Eventually...", miss Lofn announced almost confused in her own statement.

(Just what does she mean by that? Does she not know who my father is? Or is there something else going on here?), Zandrius couldn't help but question, as he looked at his mother with the closest thing to narrowed eyes he could muster right now.

"Awww, you're tired. Just sleep, I'll wake you up later to meet your father. Then again, should I feed him before he sleeps?", miss Lofn was infatuated with her child who she believes to be the cutest baby ever.

"And I can't even ask the doctors... Your father might know though.", she said to herself as she looked at her child.

Her baby was a chubby little one with purple hair and one of his eyes pink while the other was ruby red.

(My life will be something if this woman will be the one taking care of me.), Zandrius had a decent first impression of the woman he would call his mother, but he understood that it was too early to form any opinions.

Their small little interaction continued as she puffed her cheeks followed by her lightly hitting them to instead have her tongue out while sucking her cheeks in and making her own eyes go completely white, just before she made exaggerated duck lips while covering her eyes with her index and thumb fingers making a circle around them. 

She then stopped only to find her son not amused by any of her attempts and more so almost stoic about it, or at least that's what it seemed to her while in reality, Zandrius was actually semi-disappointed he had to witness that display of self-deprecation to try to entertain him, and just when he thought it had ended things proceeded to continue.

"Why ish mawh bewby sho angly? Awe you humgwy?(Why is my baby so angry? Are you hungry?)", miss Lofn enunciated.

(Will she stop if I laugh? Cause, I don't think I can emotionally survive her antics.), Zandrius was slowly internally dying as he experienced the first glimpses into his life as a baby.

Just as Zandrius lost hope in being able to keep any semblance of his sanity living like this, things spiraled even further towards it, as his mother pulled down her blouse and moved it towards his mouth. An advance that was rejected by Zandrius due to how awkward it was for him.

"Sweetie, you have to drink, it's good for you... Plus, What kind of mother would I be if my child won't drink my breast milk? It can't be that he hates me, right? No, there's no way... He was literally just born from me, how could he hate me?!", these thoughts only got worse as she began to question herself. 

"ZANDRIUS TIRAS LOFN! You're going to drink my milk, even if it's the last thing I do!", facing rejection awake something in miss Lofn and her eyes flared with burning passion and she insisted incessantly to the point where Zandrius had no choice but to accept his destiny as a baby and drink her breast milk.

(This woman is too intense, I won't survive this household...), a defeated Zandrius could only obediently drink the milk as he contemplated the possibility of his future demise.

Once she was done feeding Zandrius, miss Lofn began lulling him to sleep with a song in her melodic voice that soon made him comfortable as he slowly began to fall asleep.

"I'M HERE!" As the door to the room opened abruptly a voice resounded and woke Zandrius up from his slumber.

"SHUT UP! You dumbass! Look at what you did?! Now, little Zandrius got his sleep interrupted... You're lucky he's a calm baby, because I would end you right now if he was crying.", miss Lofn was furious and even yelled herself, somewhat contributing to the problem.

(The fuck?!), Zandrius, the calm baby, thought to himself as this commotion pulled him out of his lulled state.

The individual on the door contrary to Zandrius' expectations was a woman, one with long purple hair, a purple eye, and a pink one. Her facial features were sharp and smooth with a voluptuous body to complement them. 

(Who is this woman? Is she a sister or something?), Zandrius questioned looking at the approaching woman.

"I would nag you about how you're late, but now's not the time for that. I have to introduce you to someone.", miss Lofn said to the woman as she got closer.

"Little Zandrius, I'm sorry to wake up like this, but there's someone who really wants to meet you... And though they are late and will certainly be punished for this later. Right now, I want to see your best smile, 'cause here is Loralaine Lofn, your father!", miss Lofn very enthusiastically introduced the newcomer.

(What?! Why is my father so hot?!) Zandrius was surprised by the reveal.