After a few minutes of searching he found his instructor, unsurprisingly in the training facility.

“Good day, sir!” Quin greeted him.

“Hey, haven’t seen you in the last couple of days, have you been ill?” his instructor asked him.

“No, I’ve just broken through to the Qi Foundation, that’s the reason why I came here,” he replied proudly.

“Oh? You did manage to shave off some time for your breakthrough, didn’t you?” he said laughing. “Hmm, but it lasted more than a day? That’s definitely not normal, what happened?” Usually the breakthrough takes only a couple of hours, so the Instructor was confused regarding what happened.

“I don’t really know, sir. When it all started, I was prepared for the pain they told me about, but what came wasn’t just normal pain; I could barely prevent myself from passing out. After I focused on my dantian region to see what’s going on, I saw that the whole thing was vibrating and its shell was cracking. There were also sparks going off of it.

“At first I wanted to suppress it and I even managed to do it, but as soon as I stopped, it just went back to the same state, no matter how many times I tried. Then, after a while I figured that I can gradually make myself to get accustomed to it by only suppressing it to a bearable level and then slowly decrease the amount of suppression. This is why my breakthrough lasted for days,” Quin explained the whole process he had gone through in a single breath.

“Cracking and sparks? Alright, let me inspect you!” He thought for moment while scratching the back of his neck, and then his face turned entirely serious, putting his hand on Quin’s stomach and closed his eyes. “Haha! Never thought you would have it! If it’s truly like that, you are one lucky bastard!” Investigating his dantian region and Core he seemed to found something extremely good, and his expression turned again, from one full with seriousness to one filled complete joy and excitement. “Alright, let’s go and check if I’m right.”

Quin did not even have time to ask what was his teacher was talking about, as he started nearly running towards the main building of the school and he had to keep up.

They entered a large room in the cellar at the school, in the middle of which stood a pedestal, shining in a bluish silver light. A sphere was placed on its top, which was filled with something similar to white clouds.

“Alright, put your hand on the sphere and start to pour your qi into it...” he said. “Oh, you’ve just broken through, so you don’t know, but it should be pretty easy to do it: concentrate on your dantian region and the qi inside your Core, then start to push it outside and lead it through your meridians, from your stomach to your hands,” he explained, while showing the path his qi should go through.

The whole thing felt quite alien to Quin and he got surprised at movement of his qi, so at the first try he did not succeeded. He took a long, deep breath, and prepared himself for the strange sensation before he began again. This time, he did it without a flaw.

The white clouds inside the sphere disappeared in an instant, sparks replacing them, which in some moments developed into cracking lightnings, lighting up the whole room. Quin, who opened his eyes at this point, was completely shocked at what was happening.

“What’s this?” he asked, but his instructor was just laughing for a minute in joy.

“This thing before you is used to determine the type of your qi and... Your’s is lightning! It’s one of the rarest you can come across and if used well, it can be one of the strongest one!” he exclaimed happily.

“Lightning? Is it really that strong?” having an affinity for one of the strongest element? Quin was obviously astonished.

“Strong? No, it’s more like overpowering! Once you have established all four of your Qi Cores, you can start to merge your body with the attribute of your qi. It means that your body will become similar to that element, granting you similar abilities and properties as well. For example if you have Earth Qi, when merging with it, though you will be slower, your skin will be as hard as a rock. Similarly, merging with Water Qi makes your body flexible, granting you the ability to make moves you couldn’t imagine before.

“Speaking about lightning, it has excellent properties. First of all it has a cleansing ability, which makes your body itself continuously stronger by expelling impurities at a faster rate than any other elements. Secondly it’s considered the fastest of all: although air is quick, lightning is faster and speeds up in an instant; fire also have an explosive property, which can instantly speed you up, but in contrast with lightning it’s momentarily. Furthermore lighting has the strongest attack power, when focused, as well. The only drawback it’s got is defense: you have to especially look out for your Cores. Lightning itself is an unstable element and hard to contain, but I guess you’ve experienced this during your breakthrough. Even a smaller strike filled with qi at your stomach can cause it to explode. Obviously that rarely happens in an actual fight, because due to your speed you’re very hard to hit, and thanks to that fact that your reflexes usually greatly surpasses others’, you’re also hard to hit by an ambush attack.

“About how rare it is: people consider elements like ice, magma, fog rare because there are only one child with those elements, in about ten thousands ones. On the other side there are times when a lightning user doesn’t appear even in a hundred years. I guess you can now understand.” His instructor was grinning the whole time, while he was explaining about the lightning element to Quin.

Me? Having the lightning element, that’s the strongest and rarest? I can’t believe, is it a dream? he thought and even pinched himself, which caused a big laugh on his instructor’s side.

“Don’t worry it’s not a dream at all. Anyways, we’re finished for today and you should go home and rest. Tomorrow, come to the training facility after school, because we have a lot to discuss.”

When he arrived home, naturally he told his mom about what happened, and she was probably even more excited and happy than Quin himself.

Unexpectedly this time his father joined the family dinner as well, which has not happened since years.

“So, you’ve finished your breakthrough in the afternoon, right?” his father asked him during the dinner in a surprisingly warm voice.

“Umm, yeah” he was a little taken aback due to his father’s unusual gentle voice, so he replied only after a couple of moments, shyly.

“And I’ve heard that you’ve got Lightning Qi, is it true?” he asked.

“Yes, my instructor said so,” Quin nodded, this time proudly and more firmly.

“Haha! That’s great! I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me and will make me proud!” He laughed and his face was clearly filled with pride and joy.

“I’ll definitely will make you proud, dad!” Quin answered cheerfully. He felt that his relationship with his father, which he thought was lost, finally got restored.

“Good,” his father said and nodded acknowledgingly. “With the lightning element you’ve got something really special! You’re no longer an average kid, but somebody who stands at top, above everybody else.

“Let me tell you something son, I’ve worked hard years after years in the military, gathering honor points for one thing! To be able to ascend our family into the ranks of nobles, so that we’d be never looked down on again, but with you it’s become a whole lot easier. Not only will it cost a lot less honor points but even before that we won’t be looked down upon!” His father was filled with excitement but after seeing his son’s confused look he added, “Hm, you’ve never learned about honor points in the school? Whatever, it’s nothing complicated, the thing is that you can’t really become a noble by only having a lot of money, for example. No, you have to earn honor points, which you get if you serve your country well, just like me! It doesn’t have a fixed price to become a noble and families who have a lot of potential have it easier, just like us now! But back to what I’ve been saying: you know what people will think when they look at you or me? They will think that that’s the boy with the lightning element and that it’s his son that’s the genius of the Duchy. Even kids from big noble houses and ones who’s got strong elements will feel inferior to you! That sounds great, doesn’t it?”

Quin thought about it for a few moments. Although he was more happy just about the fact that he could finally become someone strong, it was something his father said, and to be honest, being the one at the top and the one who others looked up to did not sound so bad.

“Yes, it does,” Quin replied with a smile that almost turned into a smirk.

Next day, after finishing school he went to the training facility right away and met up with his instructor.

“First we’re going to do the usual test, you know the way, go!” the Instructor told him and they started the tests.

“Just as I thought, compared to your last results, you’ve shown great improvement. Your strength is in the top tier and your speed and reflexes are not just in the top, but are the bests,” he said after Quin finished the test. “Nextly we’ll check the quality of your Qi Core, come.”

They went to the second floor, where in one of the room there was a similar pedestal with a sphere on top of it, than the one he had seen and used yesterday.

“It works just like the one before, but it’ll show us how much Qi you can store currently and the rate you can pump it out.”

Quin placed both of his hands on top of it, and started to circulate his Lightning Qi outwards, inside the sphere. To his surprise it only took about ten seconds to empty his reserves, which he felt a little sad about.

“So, twelve seconds at the rate of two? Interesting, you don’t usually see something like this!” the Instructor said. “An average human at your level has around thirty units of qi, which is a bit more than what you have, twenty four units. What’s extremely rare is though, when the amount of qi they can push out of their Core exceeds one unit per second, especially when they’ve just entered this level. You’re an exception it seems: your Qi Output is two per seconds. All in all it’s way better than having a huge amount of qi storage. Without having proper output speed, even if you have thousand units of qi, it’ll take quite an amount of time to cast a spell, thus in a real fight you’d probably just die before it.

“The higher your initial output rate is, the easier it’ll be to improve it in the future, while extending your qi storage is much easier,” he explained what these results really meant and that he did not have to worry about it; what’s more he could feel quite confident.

“I’ve to make a couple of changes to your training schedule, but I can’t do it without researching a bit, so that’ll have to wait for tomorrow at least. Today, I’ll teach you the basis of spells using qi, but we’ll do these things in the room next to us,” he said and led him to the next room, which was bigger and its walls were coated in something which was black and looked metallic -- probably for increased defense.

“Alright! Because the Lightning Qi is quite rare there are less spells and techniques for it, but you don’t have to worry about it on your level yet. We’ll start today with two of the easiest lightning spells: Jolt and Flash Jump. They work quite similarly, basically you have to gather your Lightning Qi into one place and then let it explode out.

Firstly, let’s try Jolt. Start to gather your qi into your hands, but try to not let it out right away. After you’ve waited a second or two, let your gathered qi out but not just from one point, but rather from your whole palm.”

After he explained, Quin started trying it out. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes and lifted his right arm up. He focused on his Core and let his qi flow out of it, toward his hand. It started to gather there just fine, but after a moment he lost control of it and it exploded in every direction, but fortunately without causing any harm to him.

“Hey, I said a second or two, not ten seconds, your qi control isn’t that good yet! Pay attention!” his instructor scolded him, though it was obvious he was not angry or anything like that, merely it was his style of teaching.

Quin nodded and started again while trying to pay attention to the time as well. Although he gathered the qi in his palm and even could let it out, somehow this time was a failure as well.

“Almost, your timing was right, but you tried to explode your qi after it left your body. You should do it just before it’d reach outside of your palm,” he explained.

He tried a third time and he was finally successful. Yes, I did it!

Edited on 2016. 09. 25.