I'm traveling this weekend, so early release. Enjoy!

Mu

Book I

Chapter 5: Primitive dantians

Before Aran had regained consciousness, Gerand had already sent his fastest rider to convey the news to Luca, who made haste back. That same evening, Luca Steele had returned to the estate with the rider, leaving the matter with the bandits to his subordinates. He climbed off his personal horse and handed the reins to the stableboy.

Concerned about Aran, Luca did not bother to remove his armor and immediately walked towards Aran’s room in the estate. It was getting dark and the mana lamps lining the estate flickered on, casting light onto his solemn figure. A servant, noticing Luca coming in from the stable, nervously walked towards Luca with his hands extended, offering to take his armaments. Luca took off his helmet without slowing his pace, revealing an unkempt, curly light-brown hair highlighting a handsome face, with high cheekbones and a strong nose. Worry reflected in his grey eyes as he handed the helmet and his sword to the servant. He gestured that he’ll keep the armor on and kept on walking as the servant bowed.

In mere minutes, Luca was standing in front of Aran’s door, his heart thumping wildly as he put his hands on the handle. Taking a deep breath, he opened the door and found, to his relief, Aran and Celeste sitting by a table, having dinner.

Aran stood up and addressed him, “Father. Welcome back.” After a short pause, he added, “I apologize. I have made you worry.”

Feeling his heart rate slow down, Luca questioned, “What happened?”

Before Aran could utter a word, Celeste held up her hand towards Aran, indicating for Aran to be quiet, and walked towards her husband. She whispered to Luca and shock registered on his face as he looked incredulously at Aran. A few moments later, his face tensed up, reflecting his rage. Celeste put both hands on his chest to calm him. Luca closed his eyes and calmed himself. He was not easily angered, and even if he was, he was one who would not let it cloud his judgment and quickly regained his wits.

Luca walked towards Aran, pulled a chair close, and sat right in front of the boy, his face inches away from Aran’s. “Why?” he asked sharply, staring right into Aran’s eyes.

“I was curious,” came the reply, as Aran stared back unflinchingly. He continued with resolve, “No. To be absolutely honest, curiosity is a small part of this. I want to become stronger. Strong enough to protect our family.”

Both parents were taken aback by Aran’s answer. While many children have dreams of power, they are usually fantasies of grandeur; of triumphing over evil, of becoming a hero, of discovering unknown lands. None so limited. None so specific. Additionally, they lived in relatively peaceful times, with no major wars happening within and around the continent. Their main threats were ferocious beasts and bandits, something that posed little problem to the Steele family. When did it get into this child’s head that he had to protect the family?

“Stupid son of mine,” said Luca while leaning backwards, his expression gentler, as he put his hands on top of Aran’s head, “That’s our job.”

“Yes, and no. Disaster can strike fast and without warning. There’s no such thing as having too few people capable of protecting our family. At the end of the day, it’s everyone’s role,” Aran replied as-a-matter-of-factly.

Luca looked at Celeste. Both parents had a resigned smile and shook their heads at each other. Luca turned back to face Aran, “It’s good that you think that way, son. But, I agree with your mother. You are way too young, even with your astounding growth rate.”

“That growth rate though… If your eyes weren’t grey, I doubt that you’re even my son,” Luca added, getting sidetracked.

Celeste smacked the back of Luca’s head, “Idiot. Of course he’s not yours. He’s too smart to be your son.”

Aran’s lips curved upwards and the corner of his eyes crinkled, much to the shock of both Celeste and Luca. Their usually serious son was smiling?

“We will talk to grandfather and seal your mana. No debate. It is for your own good. We agree that you can probably start your magic training earlier than other children, but not now. After all, children usually train their bodies for at least two to three years before they are tested for magic affinity. You have only done so for a little more than a year,” Luca continued.

***

The next morning, Aran was summoned to Gerand’s study. When he entered, he found Gerand standing behind his large walnut desk, talking to both Luca and Celeste, who had their backs facing the door. The patriarch of the Steele family remained in great shape even after fifty years of age. This was due to the fact that he maintained an active role in various skirmishes, unlike most other lords of the older generation. His hair, the color of mahogany interspersed with lines of grey, was slicked neatly backwards. He was thumbing the bottom of his carefully trimmed beard, listening carefully to Celeste.

Gerand motioned to his son and daughter in law, and all three of them looked at Aran. Aran bowed curtly and addressed his elders. Gerand nodded back, with an incredulous smile on his face. He then started laughing heartily.

“Father!” cried Celeste.

“This boy… Trying to coalesce his mana pool by himself and surviving the backlash?” Gerand continued, unable to hold back his laughter, “His foolhardiness reminds me of myself when I was younger.” His eyes teared and he grabbed his stomach, still unable to stop laughing. Gerand, rational and wise as he may be, had the flaw of being fond of his grandchildren. Stern and fair when he had to be, he still couldn’t help but laugh when amused by their antics. Aran, having read his grandfather long ago, was not surprised by this reaction. However, he also knew what was coming next.

Wiping the tears off the side of his eye, Gerand cleared his throat and said authoritatively to Aran, “I am sure your parents have reprimanded you. So, no, I will not waste our time here. You are a bright kid, but what you did overstepped a line. This is a serious matter. If not for your luck and your mother healing you, you could have become crippled or mentally disabled. As punishment, you will reflect in the ancestral hall for one day and you will have to wear this mana dispersing bracelet from today onwards.”

Gerand opened a box that was on his desk and produced a bracelet that was made of a black metal with a colorless, cloudy gemstone embedded in the middle. The bracelet was half an inch wide and, unlike most metals, had no sheen. This bracelet was made of black meteoric iron, a rare metal that could only be tempered by magic. Once molded into its final shape, it allowed the artificer to imbue it with a single magical purpose and would be resistant to all other forms of magic after. The gemstone was lens-shaped and its length was the width of the bracelet. This was void quartz which had the natural ability to disperse mana. This particular void quartz was of a low quality, indicated by its cloudiness. A high-quality quartz would be clear, pure of impurities. Although of low quality, this metal and gemstone pair was still expensive, as any other instrument to restrict the power of mages would. Since the void quartz was of lower quality, it would be able to seal the abilities of low-leveled magi, and would theoretically work well on someone who hadn’t even formed their mana pool like Aran.

This specific configuration was designed to disrupt the link between a mage and surrounding mana. The channeling of any mana by the wearer, inwards or outwards, would be dissipated, effectively sealing a mage’s ability to manipulate mana externally. The flow of mana inwards were designed to be unperturbed, although largely restricted, to allow for other mages to inspect or affect the restrained mage.

“Give me your hand,” ordered Gerand.

Knowing that resistance without exposing himself was futile, Aran held his left arm out. Gerand held the bracelet over Aran’s arm and chanted a quick spell. The bracelet glowed and latched onto Aran’s left wrist. Aran immediately staggered. Celeste looked alarmed as she reached her hands out to him. Aran steadied himself and shook his head at Celeste.

“I’m fine mother. It’s just a weird feeling. I feel like all my senses just got worse,” Aran said and closed his eyes. ‘Maybe the bracelet sealed more than just my qi. I just have to adjust to it.’

His assassin training had trained him to operate without one of each of his five senses, one after another, allowing him to quickly adjust to a loss of any. A few moments later, he opened his eyes and got accustomed to the new sensation, his senses working together to make up for whatever was sealed.

“Leave. Go to the ancestral hall and reflect on your actions. Do not leave until breakfast tomorrow,” ordered Luca. Aran bowed and left. As the door closed behind Aran, the adults looked at each other.

“That reaction?” asked Gerand, disbelievingly.

“He’s not a mage. It’s impossible,” Luca responded softly.

“It’s not impossible. That was a textbook response to losing one’s arcane sense. An experienced mage, if caught unawares, would have a similar reaction, not to mention fresh mages,” said Celeste, “People who are born with a natural affinity to mana are extremely sensitive to this. Maybe he has high affinity to mana. After all, what child would have the amount of mana he has only after a year of meditation?”

“Just how many gifts does this child have?” asked Gerand, his shock turning into a smile.

Unknown to these three, however, is the fact that Aran had been absorbing qi, or mana, for the past two years. He had long developed his arcane sense, which was the first step of the Primordial God’s Foundations. Having actively sought out mana daily over two years had made him sensitive to mana. Himself unaware of it, Aran had unconsciously been perceiving the abundant mana around him. It is similar to how a blind person would develop and refine their other senses to observe the world around them; even senses most are not conscious about such as magnetic fields and balance. Furthermore, Aran was in one of the few period of active growth phases in a human’s lifetime, exponentiating this effect.

After pondering for a second, Gerand continued, “If he has such high affinity to mana, do you think the low-grade bracelet is enough?”

Celeste closed her eyes and opened them after a short pause. Her forehead creased as she replied, “It should be. While the amount of mana is dense, it is not near the level of an initiate. Even if there is an influx of mana, the amount should be negligible since he can’t feel the presence of mana. Besides, we don’t want to use something too strong that might cause irreparable damage to his future prospects.”

An uncertain Luca nodded, “Let’s hope that you’re correct.”

***

It was night outside and Aran was seated in his room in a lotus position, furrowing his brows. He had worn the bracelet for a week now. After spending the first five days sorting out the disordered qi in his body, the next two days were spent trying to cultivate qi with little success. Cultivating aside, it was difficult to even try to feel the presence of qi. He was now absolutely sure that qi and mana were one and the same. As one to strive to improve himself but not to dwell on the impossible, Aran had given himself a one-week deadline of trying to cultivate. Should he fail in a week, he would approach the adults a few months later to try to change their minds. After all, he could continue to learn other aspects of this world.

He glanced at the bracelet on his left wrist. Every time he attempted to sense mana, the gemstone would glow and increase its intensity as Aran tried harder. Following this display, Aran would slowly feel his ability to sense mana slip, as if he was trying to catch sight of rapidly dispersing smoke.

Not phased by this, Aran slowly tested the limits of the bracelet. He tried to sense the mana surrounding him again. The gemstone flashed and the Aran quickly lost the sense of mana. He then extended his sense inwards and discovered that the amount of mana within him was the same as before putting the bracelet on. He manipulated the mana in his body and found no interference. The gemstone remained dim and colorless.

Recalling that mages projected their mana out of their body as one of the ways to cast spells, Aran wondered how the bracelet would react to it. While he was experienced with drawing in mana, Aran had never attempted transmitting his mana out and had skimmed over the details of doing so while reading.

‘I just have to experiment in baby steps.’

Aran manipulated the mana in his body to slowly expand outwards, but they did not respond the way he envisioned it. When the mana got to the edge of his body, they stopped and moved inwards in a random motion. He then limited this to a small portion of his body. Holding his right index finger up, he directed the mana to gather at the tip and slowly extend outward. The bracelet kicked into action; the mana scattered like mist the moment they touched the surface of Aran’s skin.

‘Projecting the mana? Projecting. Maybe it has to be fast?’

He willed the mana to accelerate outwards, but all it did was to make them sluggishly move around. He tried, and failed, again a few more times. Aran opened his eyes, leaned back and looked at the ceiling, deep in thought. He suddenly sat up, remembering the scene during his qi-realm forming attempt. ‘The nova!’

Aran looked at his right hand and closed his eyes. He pictured the mana in his body revolving in a small thumb-sized circle around the palm of his hand and steadily extended his palm outwards. The revolution became more intense every second until Aran forcefully collapsed it. The mana exploded outwards spherically but the moment it left his body, the gemstone glowed again and the sphere shuddered before fizzling away. Aran’s excitement at triggering some sort of mana reaction was immediately replaced with disappointment.

‘So it activates anytime mana passes the boundaries of my body?’

The methodical Aran continued experimenting. He tried it again and, like an ever alert sentry, the gemstone activated. He repeated the process several more times, slowly increased the amount of mana in the revolution every iteration with no better results. Like the evil glint of a demon’s eyes, the gemstone flashed every time, teasing him.

Mentally exhausted, Aran finally decided to stop. He inspected the mana within his body and tilted his head slightly. His mana had decreased by about ten percent. Interestingly, because the mana in the body is less chaotic and saturated, Aran was able to identify two areas where mana tended to congregate; areas by his chest and below his navel where his middle and lower dantians would have manifested.

Feeling refreshed upon the discovery, Aran was prompted to continue. Using his arcane sense, he delved deeper into those areas and noticed that mana formed equidistant layers of a dozen sphere-shaped lattices, radiating outwards until they reached the size of his fists. In the center of these spheres was a dense nucleus of mana. These constructs reminded him of dantians, but were more defined and less pliable. He moved the mana of those lattices and discovered that they returned to the same configuration when he stopped. Aran proceed to make the bottom spheres rotate individually. Unexpectedly, the sphere drew in mana from around it and slowly compressed them through the layers.

‘Eh?’

As the mana around his body was compressed into the sphere, surrounding mana slowly diffused into his body. The gemstone remained quiet. He slowly increased the pace of the rotation and the mana flow rate increased proportionally. Unfortunately, this rate was much slower, about a third, compared to his usual cultivation speed. Still no sign of the gemstone activating. Aran stopped and the mana that were absorbed this way remained in his body.

‘What are these? They are behaving like less efficient version of the whirlpools during the forming stage.’

Aran had unconsciously formed primitive dantians. In this world, like many others, when its first conscious beings realized the existence of mana, they would only be able to manipulate a small portion of it, not being able to fully utilize its powers. As these beings continued manipulating mana, it slowly accumulated, and their mortal bodies were eventually saturated with it.

Driven either by courage or desperation, those that continued to use mana would find themselves overloaded with it, under the risk of death. A small few who survived; either blessed with a body strong enough to withstand it, intelligent enough to find an external method to overcome it, or had a great dose of luck on their side, would find the mana compressed into these spheres.

These beings became the first true magi and identified this compression as a major step in achieving true mastery of mana. They would experiment and develop techniques based on refining these spheres that eventually became the practice of coalescing the mana pool. For Aran, his dance with death rewarded him with more than a reforged body, it had also granted him the earliest, unrefined form of dantians.

Repeating the process, Aran was pleased to find that it was able to be replicated.

‘The bracelet is not activating? Is it broken? Couldn’t be. Could it be that it has to be activated by my mana?’

He tried pushing mana out from his fingertip. Like clockwork, the void quartz activated and the mana dissipated. He made the bottom spheres revolve again and sensed mana flowing into his body.

Aran trembled with excitement, ‘I can’t use my mana, but I can cultivate this way!’