Early release this week. Enjoy!

Mu

Book I

Chapter 4: Sealed

Celeste arrived at Aran’s room and was shocked when she saw Aran lying on the bed with many small tiny, superficial cuts all over his body and a thin trail of blood dripping from his lips. Fighting her panicking brain, she immediately rushed over to Aran’s side and inspected him with her arcane sense.

Dense. The mana in the body of her son was dense, but chaotic. His internal organs were lightly damaged, with a few veins being lacerated. She sighed in relief; it wasn’t life threatening.

‘What did you do?’

She immediately set his body straight and laid his head on a pillow. She put her palm on his chest and started letting her mana flow into Aran’s body. A blue haze surrounded her body, as she rapidly absorbed and directed the water-attributed mana around her into Aran’s body to envelope his damaged organs and veins. At the same time, the small wounds all over his body slowly closed.

Two men arrived at the door and saw Celeste, kneeling beside the bed in concentration, tending to Aran. The room was in a mess. There were blood splatters on the floor, spread outwards from the bed, and the furniture were broken and scattered across the room. Gerand nodded to Ed and both stood guard, remaining vigilant for whatever might have caused this phenomenon.

An hour later Celeste got up.

“Thank you, father, Ed. Aran is in a stable state now,” said Celeste, bowing slightly towards the both of them.

“What happened?” asked Gerand concernedly. Nothing stirred in the hour he and Ed stood guard, and they already had an idea of the cause in their minds.

“It’s probably this foolish son of mine,” gritted Celeste, accordant with the doubts of the other two present.

“But this feeling. He couldn’t have, could he?” questioned Ed, disbelief in his eyes.

“Probably. But, we won’t know until he wakes up. Celeste, rest well. We will take our leave and send some servants to help with the room,” Gerand said solemnly and left with Ed.

“Foolish child,” Celeste said, as she sat on the bed, caressing her son’s forehead.

***

The whip cracked angrily on the back of the brown-haired child, leaving behind raw, ugly red welts.

“You will kill that beast, boy!” roared a burly man wearing a slaver’s mask on the wall above the arena. Edan Sturm stared stubbornly back at the slaver with his back turned towards an injured pair of panthers, ‘You will not break me!’

The whip cracked again, accompanied by boos from the spectators around them. It had been six months since Edan had been sold to the slavers. As he had been trained in combat, they had forced him to fight ferocious beasts at the slave’s arena as a form of entertainment and a source of gambling.

He was one of the youngest fighters in the arena, or rather, one of the few young ones that have ever survived a single fight. This was his fifteenth fight, and he had made the slavers a fortune. However, he had refused to kill a single beast. In every fight, he would expertly disable his enemy beasts, and sat on the side. The only injuries he had accumulated were from slavers, who had jumped into the ring to discipline him. He never took it sitting down. He had often fought back, and had to be dragged out of the arena. When that first happened, the crowd got rowdy in enjoyment. After all, it was free entertainment.

The slavers always gave in; they had dragged him out and killed the beasts themselves. Recently, it was getting tougher to restrain the boy, and Edan was let out after a few slavers had failed. It was financially more viable to start the next fight than gamble on the stubbornness of a child with enough skills to back it up.

But now, many of spectators have grown tired of his antics, and the slavers have noticed. Today, the overseers decided, was the day a death would present itself during this slave’s fight. A death. Any death.

The slaver motioned to a dozen other slavers. Twelve men, armed with various blunt weapons jumped into the arena and circled him. Edan smiled, ‘Again?’

Edan brandished his blade and took a defensive stance. Despite his hatred for this depraved sport, he did enjoy inflicting pain on his tormentors. ‘Come, you sick bastards.’

He was confident against this band of uncoordinated lowlifes. His body had hardened over the past six months. Already strong to begin with, working in the mines when he wasn’t fighting had given him strength and constitution comparable to that of an average adult. Fighting wild beasts had granted him agility and explosive power. Coupled with his finesse in close combat techniques, he was not an easy enemy. If that was not enough, fighting the slavers at the end of every match, he had learned that honor only stands in the way of fighting in an arena.

The slavers laughed maniacally and fearlessly as they approached the boy. They might have feared the boy the first few times, but he had never killed anyone. Teach him a lesson, the boss had said. If he didn’t obey, kill him. Either way, they will be rewarded.

A slaver carrying a heavy mace swing at Edan. He deftly stepped to the side and quickly launched a left palm towards the slaver’s face, breaking his nose. He quickly turned as he heard the shout of another slaver behind him. He parried away another mace and kicked the slaver in the stomach, sending him to the ground. Edan continued weaving between the slavers, dealing pain with every move.

Half an hour later, an exhausted Edan stood in the middle arena, surrounded by slavers who were lying on the ground, either unconscious or groaning in pain, unable to get up. He frowned. Usually, by now, the gates would open. The slaver with the whip from before smiled evilly. He pulled on a lever and a gate on the other side opened. Two men, armed with swords and shields walked out. Slaves. Slaves who had fought and killed men in the same arena. Edan recognized one of them, The Ripper, who was known to be cruel and brutal. He reveled in rousing the crowd with his slow, methodical treatment of his opponents. As the men stepped out, Ripper slit the other slave’s throat from ear to ear as he shouted, “The boy is mine.” A chill ran down Edan’s spine.

“Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!” chanted the excited crowd, hungry for blood.

“Boy, I will slowly slice you apart. It has been a while since I enjoyed someone as young as yourself,” said The Ripper with a maniacal glee in his eyes. Edan felt fear, a fear deeper than the one he had when he faced his first beast.

The fight was long, and painful. The Ripper easily disarmed Edan and started slowly slashing him, avoiding the face, causing painful, superficial wounds. The face, The Ripper had said, was best left for last. He had refused to scream, to refuse this demon of its sick satisfaction. His determination crumbled soon after.

He never begged though. He would never. After minutes of agonizing pain, with every strike, Edan had slowly inched himself towards the body of the slave The Ripper had killed earlier. Grasping the last of his strength, Edan grabbed the sword, in the still warm hands of the body, and plunged it deep into The Ripper. The Ripper stared at the sword in disbelief and slashed a diagonal wound on Edan before gurgling up blood and collapsing onto the ground.

Edan heard the crowd gasp, followed by uproar. He had lost too much blood and his consciousness slowly faded.

In a platform reserved for dignified guests, a man in a black hood whispered to his aide, “Get me that boy.”

***

Aran’s eyes opened in shock while gasping for breath from the nightmarish memory. His body felt like a block of lead. He found himself in fresh clothes, lying on the bed in his room, alone. The door was open and he felt a breeze of the crisp morning air of spring. He groaned as he pushed himself up weakly and leaned against the headboard of his bed. He sighed inwardly, ‘I was too hasty. I should’ve taken better precautions.’

He tried moving his toes and smiled when he realized that he has not lost his sense of movement. Aran quickly closed his eyes and inspected his body using qi. To his relief, his veins and internal organs were shocked, but not damaged.

His body had been strengthened after absorbing qi for two years. Although he had failed to form his qi-realm, he had completed the series of reforging cycles during the qi circulation, further forging his body. Furthermore, the hastily formed layers of defense, while imperfect, still offered some protection and resistance. While some qi blasted through the defenses, most had travelled through the path of least resistance, around these layers and out of his body. As such, he was able to prevent major internal damage.

‘But no injuries? Not even externally? Impossible…’

He then noticed a faint blue colored energy forming a layer of translucent membrane around his organs; an energy that felt foreign with a warm familiarity to him. This energy did not seem to do any harm, but rather continued to nourish and protect his internal organs. He understood then that any minor injuries he sustained must have been healed by this energy.

‘Mother.’

He extended his senses and saw that the amount of qi in his body had decreased by a sizable amount, about twenty percent, compared to before he attempted forming his qi-realm.

“Oh, you’re up,” said a monotonous voice. Aran turned towards the door and saw his mother, Celeste Steele. She had a tired, stern look on her face and her hand carried a tray of food. Despite that, her eyes had a look of relief and were a little moist on the edges. She blinked a few times and set the food down by the table. She sat by the bed, slapped Aran’s hands, twisted his ears, and hugged him.

“Mother,” he said weakly and indifferently. After a few breath’s of time, Celeste stopped and gently helped Aran against the headrest.

“Tell me everything. You’d better not lie. I know the phenomenon,” said Celeste, glaring coldly at a son she had long deemed anomalous.

Aran closed his eyes, quickly running the limited scenarios and options that he had through his head. He could try to lie, but Celeste was an accomplished mage researching the laws that pertains to it. It would have to be an extremely convincing lie rooted on the truths of this world. If he mentioned coming across an otherworldly tome, she would ask to see it and he would be unable to produce it. He could also just come clean; that he was reincarnated. It was an easy out, but it meant revealing all his cards. That was something he was unwilling to do. Furthermore, even if she accepted the story, how would she react to a son that was mentally the same age as her? The same son that she had suckled for months?

‘I can’t tell her,’ he determined. He pieced together the information he had read about magic in this world. Since it was a power foreign to him, he had spent countless hours poring over it in the library. There were many concepts that were unfamiliar to him, but he did find many descriptions similar to the process of qi manipulation.

Magic in this world was achieved through the manipulation of an energy called mana. Aran believed that mana and qi are one and the same; an energy that exists in nature across different worlds. He hypothesized that the laws that govern them might be different across both worlds, leading to different applications of it. This was something he mused about after he noticed a difference in the qi here. Not only was qi more abundant in Parthenon, it was also qualitatively different.

In Parthenon, the ability to manipulate mana was hereditary, and are generally restricted to nobility. Or rather, magical prowess allowed the ancestors of noble families to rise to power and establish the social structure of the world today. Aran had realized a while back that his ability to sense and manipulate qi had improved in this world, and attributed it to both his new family’s lineage and the increased abundance of qi.

Like qi, before the mana could be utilized, it had to be absorbed into the body of the mage through meditation. Unlike cultivating, this happened more passively and slowly. The mage doesn’t actively draw in mana, but rather sensing them and letting them flow into the body while the mage's mind entered a calm state. Meditation was only performed after the mage forms a mana pool, a place to store mana in one’s soul, akin to a qi-realm. After the mana pool had been formed, a mage’s body would constantly absorb mana without conscious effort. Even more importantly, the absorption rate of mana by the mage during meditation would increase up to ten-fold.

The formation of a mana pool was slightly different compared to the qi-realm formation. While both required crossing the boundaries of the physical realm into the soul-realm, it did not require the gradual accumulation of qi, like in the Primordial God's Foundations. Rather, it depend on the forceful accumulation of mana in the body to force a connection with one’s soul. This was often done with the help of elder mages and magic circles.

Although rare, coalescing one’s mana pool on their own was not unheard of, at least from ages long past. This practice had been abandoned by the mainstream mages, due to the relatively poor success rate, high risk of mortal danger, and the presence of better methods.

Uncontrolled mana is combustible by nature, and the large accumulation required for the breakthrough to the soul-realm, if not controlled properly may damage, or even kill, the person attempting it.

The body needed to be strong enough to house this power. Like a fragile urn containing labile gas; mana in a weak body will go wild and cause the person to explode. For this reason, it was forbidden for children below the age of seven to practice magic. Furthermore, the child would have had undergone training to strengthen the body, and be examined to be capable of holding the mana needed to break through to the soul before attempting it. This is the second reason for the presence of elder mages and magic circles. Not only do they increase the mana concentration, they also act as a safeguard to quickly dispel the accumulated mana should anything go wrong.

Even absorbing mana through meditation carried the same risk. In the books that Aran had read, meditation only slowly accumulated mana in the body, without converting it into useful benefits like strengthening the body. It was not until after the existence of a mana pool that the mana begins circulating and strengthening the body. The main purpose of meditating before then was to prepare a stash of mana for use during the mana pool coalescing process. The Primordial God’s Foundation had the advantage of increasing the amount of qi, or mana, in one’s body while strengthening it.

‘Well, it had been done before. And I wonder if it is really any different.’ Aran decided to base his half-truth on it.

“Go on. Speak,” prodded Celeste.

Aran gathered his strength and spoke slowly, “I was trying to practice magic. I have read the instructions in some of your books and attempted to coalesce my mana pool.”

Celeste nodded, already expecting the answer, “I knew you were a smart child, even when you were a baby. Your brother would cry and babble when he was a baby, but you, you were quiet. Others thought that you were mentally incapable, but I recognized something else. Those knowing eyes of yours were brimming with intelligence and full of curiosity. I had the maid pay extra attention to you, and sure enough, it confirmed my suspicions.

“You quickly astonished everyone, myself included. Your body matured quickly,with the mental constitution to match it. Your father and I, curious and excited, had decided to leave you be, seeing that you had the capacity to make good decisions by yourself.

“But this?! This is reckless. You are well read. You know the dangers of practicing magic as a young child! Perhaps, we have put too much faith in you. You are a child after all, and chilldren bound to be curious with reckless abandon,” Celeste said, shaking her head.

Aran realized that he had underestimated this astute mother of his. However, her reaction was well within his calculations. He nodded, “Yes, mother. I’ve read of the dangers.”

“Then recount them to me.”

Aran slowly described the dangers, without missing a single point.

“And how old are you?” asked Celeste.

“Almost three,” said Aran calmly.

Celeste was a little perturbed by how accurately Aran had recounted the dangers and how calmly he had responded to her. Even though he was mature for his age, any child should be anxious when being reprimanded.

Aran thought deeply, and continued honestly, “I’m sorry mother, for making you worry.”

Celeste’s look softened a little, but she continued her interrogation, “How long have been planning this?”

“A year now.”

Celeste closed her eyes and slowly shook her head. They should have kept a closer eye on him. “And you think you can do this on your own, without any help or supervision?”

“I was fifty percent sure I could accomplish it, and should I fail, I would be able to protect myself. After all, this had been done a long time ago.”

“The success rate back then was at most only ten percent. The difficulty of accumulating enough mana itself is…” Celeste stammered. An understanding and dismayed look flashed on her face. ‘The dense mana!’ she realized, before she shouted in anger, “Aran Balor Steele, have you been meditating?! For a whole year?!”

“Yes.”

Celeste furiously raised her hand and brought it down in a slapping motion. She stopped it just before reaching Aran’s face, and steeled herself. Her hand retracted as she hugged Aran tightly, “You fool. I could’ve lost you.”

“I am sorry mother,” Aran said softly, his eyes a little wet. A flood of emotion that he had locked away suddenly overflowed. Motherly love. Love. Something he had consciously forgotten to survive.

A short moment of silence later, Celeste stopped hugging Aran.

Celeste remarked sternly, “You will stop meditating. You will stop trying to practice magic. The library is forbidden to you. If there are any books you’d like to read, let a servant know, they will get it for you. Until you are old enough to act responsibly and withstand its rebound, your mana will be sealed.”