Mana Lands are naturally occurring areas that have massively high concentrations of Mana. As such they attract both Mana Beasts and cultivators looking to absorb as much of this plentiful Mana that they can to boost their cultivation. Mana Lands often have a higher density of a certain type of Elemental Mana and absorbing this Mana can increase the affinity that you have for that Mana type or just make it easier for you to absorb more of that Mana type making them extremely valuable to Ascendant Realm cultivators. However as one might expect Mana Lands are very dangerous places and it is recommended that you don’t enter them until you are a middle—ranked Ascendant Realm cultivator as the Mana concentration in the atmosphere is deadly to those that aren’t prepared.

Excerpt from Telram’s notes on the world of Nerrus.

The first lesson of the day started off fairly well, and Telram managed to work out how much time he would have to spend on making sure that all of his students could read and write to the standards that he expected. As expected, Iris was by far the best at both writing and reading but even the worst among them were better than he had feared considering the general level of education in this world.

Telram also managed to go over the majority of the things that he had wanted to teach them about forming a Mana Core before noticing that his students’ eyes were beginning to glaze over and decided that it was time to take a break and do something else.

“Alright Iris, Cameron, Tim do you three want to show us the techniques that you have learned?” Telram asked smiling apologetically at Henry who looked a bit depressed that he was the only kid that didn’t have a Martial Technique or even a Mana Core yet. “Henry come here and watch the others with me, and you can tell me what sort of technique you want to learn first after they have shown us their skills.”

“Okay,” Henry mumbled. He still looked a bit disappointed but at least now it looked like he understood that Telram was doing this for his benefit as well as working out just what his other students could do which would allow him to think up better lesson plans tailored to their needs.

Fergus and the others who were still watching the lesson also perked up upon hearing this. While they appreciated that Telram had to make sure that all of the students could keep up with what he was talking about and were going to be able to read the information that he handed out to them to help them but the lesson had so far been pretty boring for them so seeing what their students were capable of for the first time was much more interesting as far as they were concerned.

Cameron went first and simply walked over to a nearby rock that had to weigh nearly 200 kilograms and lifted it over his head with relative ease. Telram nodded when he saw this, strength wasn’t actually the main focus of the body strengthening technique that he used. Stamina and general body toughness were so it was pretty impressive that he had managed to reach the point that he could do something like this at his low cultivation level.

Next up was Iris who surprised Telram when she summoned a cloud of glowing orbs that shot towards the same rock that Cameron had just picked up and smashed into it. The individual orbs didn’t do much damage but the technique she was using was more for attacking groups of enemies or providing covering fire. However, the technique did use up an awful lot of Mana, so Iris was barely use it for thirty seconds before she ran out of Mana. Telram whistled to himself when the cloud of dust that the barrage of attacks had created cleared. The rock hadn’t been destroyed but it was clear by its ravaged surface that an ordinary human would’ve died if Iris had used that technique on them and he made a mental note to get her to show him how to use it later as he was lacking in ranged attacks himself. Even Cameron looked impressed by the display of power from the skinny girl which told Telram that she had never had cause to use it in town or show it to anyone which was perhaps even more impressive than the technique itself in a way and made Telram feel even better about the place that he and his family had chosen to settle and set up the school in.

Tim bounced up and down energetically as everyone turned to watch him. He was quite proud of how well his training in the movement technique that his father had taught him had progressed and was looking forwards to showing off a little like the others had.

Telram watched with interest as the young man started to move, the technique that Tim was using was one that Telram was only slightly familiar with called Vigorous Pulse Steps and like the name suggested it sent pulses of mana into the user’s limbs to strengthen the muscles with each step. It wasn’t an efficient technique by any means but as his student darted around the rest of the class with jerky and unpredictable movements, he had to admit that it was still a martial technique with a lot of potential. Unlike the Graceful Mist Steps technique that Telram’s father had taught him Tim’s technique was focussed almost entirely on sudden acceleration which allowed him to change direction very quickly and move faster than Telram would’ve been able to at Tim’s cultivation level.

Most movement techniques were actually fairly similar with only a few minor differences, or at least that was the case when the cultivator using them was in the Human Realm. As with most martial techniques, things got a lot more complicated when Elemental Mana types got involved but that was went for any type of martial technique not just movement ones. In fact, Graceful Mist Steps and Vigorous Pulse Steps were about as different as it was possible to be when it came to movement techniques could be without using Elemental Mana.

Already Telram was thinking of ways that he could adapt what Tim was doing to a technique of his own. Graceful Mist Steps was a great technique, but it didn’t really suit his fighting style that well. The new technique that he eventually made was probably going to combine the Vigorous Pulse Steps technique as well as the makeshift movement technique he had made for the specialised boxing style that he had used to wear Connor down.

Turning towards Henry who was already watching him with sparkling eyes Telram chuckled in amusement. He fully understood how the boy felt after seeing the superhuman abilities that his friends had shown him and that Telram had promised to teach him. While Henry didn’t have Telram’s experience in a world without such abilities the idea of being able to do these things was always going to be exciting for a child especially because having the chance to learn to cultivate was still something that was limited to those who either had family members who already knew how to cultivate or had a lot of money to spend on obtaining cultivation and martial techniques.

“So then young Henry, what sort of martial technique do you want to learn first?” Telram asked with a massive grin on his face.

“I don’t know!” Henry replied excitedly. “They were all so cool, I can’t decide.”

“That’s fair,” Telram replied chuckling once more at the is students’ response. “Well then may I make a suggestion?”

“You’re the teacher why wouldn’t you be able to?” Henry asked giving Telram a slightly confused look.

“Alright then,” Telram replied. “I was planning on starting to teach everyone a very basic body strengthening technique once you had finished forming the first layer of your Mana Core, so if we do that to start would you like to choose the next thing that you want to learn in class?”

Henry nodded thoughtfully at Telram’s words but remained silent which prompted Telram to continue to explain his plans.

“Bearing in mind of course that you will have other teachers who will teach you other martial techniques,” Telram continued. “Like Diane who will mostly be teaching you unarmed fighting techniques or Fergus who will be teaching you movement techniques. All I’m really doing right now is trying to find out what sort of techniques will best suit each of you so that they don’t have to do that later.”

“Okay, I think I understand,” Henry replied. “So, you are going to be teaching us basic techniques and the other teachers will be teaching us more specialised ones?”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that but you have the right idea,” Telram agreed noticing that the other students were also paying close attention to his words. “I will be teaching you other things as well like how to control your Soul Energy more efficiently, for example.”

“Okay,” Henry nodded, and the other students did as well.

Telram had already explained how important Soul Energy was to cultivators especially when creating a Mana Core for the first time so it was no surprise to them that he was going to be teaching them how to use their Soul Energy.

“Alright then,” Telram said looking Henry in the eye once more. “I guess we should have lunch and then start on creating you Mana Core.”

“Really?” Henry asked as his eyes widened in surprise. He had been looking forward to creating his Mana Core, but he hadn’t actually been expecting that Telram would be walking him through it today. “You want to do this today?”

“There’s no reason not to,” Telram replied. “In fact, it’s better if we do it today before the others increase their cultivation level any further. That way you’re all working towards the same things. Now I’m sure that some of you will cultivate faster than others but this way you will all be starting from as close to the same place as possible.”

“Okay,” Henry agreed as the other students nodded their agreement. Although they wanted to increase their cultivation level as fast as possible without overreaching, they also understood where Telram was coming from and agreed that Henry needed to form his Mana Core as fast as possible so that he could catch up to them. “Is there a particular reason that we’re going to have lunch first though?”

“Yes, there are a couple of reasons,” Telram replied. “The first is that creating a Mana Core can take a long time and the second is because creating a Mana Core uses up a lot of energy so doing it just after you’ve will provide the best results.”

Henry nodded his understanding and got up to grab the lunch that his mother had made for him before tucking in. Seeing this the others did the same. Thankfully Telram had already explained to their parents that they would have to bring something to eat for lunch because he was planning on spending most of the day teaching them and this would be the same every day that they had classes.

Telram also had a lunch that his mother had made for him which he too started eating. While the class ate their lunch Telram to take the chance to learn more about his students and struck up a conversation with them. By the time everyone had finished their lunch Telram was satisfied that he understood the motivations of his students quite a bit more.

As one might expect Cameron was mostly interested in learning to cultivate and inscribe items so that he could increase the quality of the things that he made in the forge which made perfect sense as a motivation for the young man.

Tim wanted to become a cultivator so that he could travel around and see sights that he wouldn’t be able to otherwise which also made sense to Telram as the young boy didn’t seem to be able to stay still for so much as a minute even when eating much his and the other students amusement.

Henry also had a fairly simple reason that was actually a bit similar to Telram’s own in some ways. The young boy had always been interested in the stories that travelling cultivators had told when visiting the village of the ancient ruins that dotted the landscape and often becoming a cultivator was the only way that someone could access these places which were always extremely dangerous.

Iris was a bit more interesting, apparently her parents had been working on a cure for a disease called Mana Waste which occurred when someone got too close to a powerful source of naturally occurring Mana. Now these areas called Mana Lands were very useful for those at the higher levels of the Ascendant Realm due to the massive Mana requirements to break through to the Immortal Realm but deadly to those whose bodies weren’t prepared for the inundation of the dangerous energy which lead to them wasting away much in the way someone with radiation sickness would back on earth. Occasionally the Mana Lands would also form something called a Mana Storm which would carry the dangerously high concentrations of Mana to areas where it wouldn’t normally have such a high concentration causing people who knew better than to go into a Mana Land to fall sick with Mana Wasting which was why a cure was so important. However now that her parents were dead Iris had decided that she was going to continue their work on a cure and becoming strong enough to enter one of these areas which often contained large numbers of powerful Mana Beasts would be very useful to her research. In fact, Iris’ parents had gone missing in the Mana Land closest to Yulis village and after waiting patiently for them to return for months a travelling cultivator had reported finding the corpses of two people in the Mana Land. Upon hearing this Iris had begged him to go back and retrieve the bodies. Eventually the man had agreed to do so which had cost her all of the money that her parents had saved up as well as what the other villagers had offered to give him for helping her.

Telram found himself feeling for the girl, his own mother was suffering even now from something that was in some ways quite similar to Mana Wasting. Unusually so now that he thought about it. As such Telram decided to ask her if she would let him look at some of the notes her parents had left behind. Any information regarding the negative effects of Mana on someone could be the missing piece that he needed to find a cure for his mother’s condition.

But first he had to finish what he had already planned to get done before the kids went home. Once all the kids were seated once more, he sat down in front of Henry who was looking a little nervous.

“Are you sure that I’m ready?” he asked. Henry had only been cultivating for a couple of months now and while his parents had told him that he had enough Mana to form a Core now he hadn’t been expecting to have to do it today.

“Yes, now I want you to start meditating the same way tat you would when you’re cultivating and then use your spiritual sight to enter the area where the Mana is stored,” Telram told his students. “Everyone else, use your spiritual vision to watch what Henry does.”

Once he was sure that Henry was looking inwards at the cloud of Mana inside his body Telram sent his spiritual body into that same area making Henry flinch in surprise.

“Alright then,” Telram said, speaking through both his real body and the spiritual body he had made inside of Henry’s body so that everyone present knew what was going on. “Let’s get started.”

Telram started talking Henry through making the first layer of his Mana Core, stopping Henry every now and again to correct him or make sure he understood why what he was doing was so important and even to answer questions from the other students. Sweat began to run down first Henry’s forehead then Telram’s as the stress of what they were doing started to take its toll.

Creating the first layer of a Mana Core was always difficult and while Telram’s coaching did technically make everything easier he had much higher standards than Henry had expected and he ended up having to break down certain parts of the layer and start again from scratch which meant that he was using up even more energy than someone who was just doing it by themselves normally would. In fact, Telram’s standards had increased even further from when he had created the first layer of his own Mana Core and while Henry didn’t have anywhere near the amount of Soul Energy that Telram had when he had created his Mana Core all that meant to Telram was that he had to be more thorough.

Telram was also feeling the stress of what they were doing because forming a spiritual body inside of someone else wasn’t something that he had a massive amount of practice in. Also, unlike the few times that he had used this technique previously to check up on his mother’s condition he was still in control of his physical body so that he could explain what was going on both by ‘speaking’ through the spiritual body inside of Henry and his real body so that everyone could hear what was going on which was extremely difficult even for someone with twice the amount of experience that Telram had doing anything like this.

He was however quite impressed with how Henry was doing. While this was very obviously difficult for the boy he had done as Telram asked without complaint and a few hours later he had finally managed to create a Mana Core that rivalled Telram’s own in terms of how much Mana it could contain if Telram’s Mana Core was still at the first layer. In fact, the only reason that Henry’s Mana Core couldn’t hold as much Mana as Telram’s could when he first created it was because he didn’t have as much Soul Energy that Telram had.

“Well done,” Telram told the young man who was now drenched in sweat and pale-faced as he passed the young man a piece of fruit to eat. “Make sure that you have a proper meal and a good night’s sleep when you get home. Now then does anyone else have any questions?”

“Yes, why did you make us watch Henry make his Core when we’ve already made our own?” Cameron asked. He had actually asked this about half an hour in when it became clear that Telram was going to make absolutely certain that Henry made his Core as well as possible no matter how difficult it became but Telram had asked Cameron to remind him to answer that when Henry had finished creating his Core.

“Alright I suppose I can answer that now,” Telram agreed. “The truth is that while you can’t go back and reform the first layer of your Mana Core without using a fairly dangerous technique you can make up for some of the poorly formed areas of any layer that you create by paying special attention to those areas with the next layer. This is actually something that every cultivator does but now that you have seen exactly what I expect you to do with your own eyes you should be able to do much better than if you just did it on your own. Me showing you exactly the standards that I expect you to have should provide better results than simply improving as you go and I’m sure that we’ll all come up with improvements on our own that make us even better but making sure that the next layer that you all make is as well made as possible will make up for not having me walk you through creating your Mana Core.”

“That… actually makes a lot of sense,” Cameron admitted, and the others nodded. Making Henry’s Core had taken almost twice as long as any of them had taken to make their own but even at their level they could tell that the final product was much better than their own which made them all a little bit jealous because they knew that while they could indeed make their Cores much better overall by spending more time working on the subsequent layers Henry would still have an advantage over them.

“Anyway, I think that’s enough for today,” Telram said as he helped Henry who still looked exhausted to his feet before helping him onto Jai’s back so that he wouldn’t have to walk all the way back into town in his current state. “It’s getting late.”

As they arrived back in town the other students all went in their separate directions with Iris cautiously following Gerry and the others like they had planned earlier while Telram and Jai walked Henry home and soon they stopped outside Henry’s house. As Telram helped Henry down from Jai’s back Henry’s parents rushed out of the house with worried looks on their faces as they saw the state that their son was in. However, as Henry’s father who was a cultivator himself, got closer he noticed that Telram had a proud look on his face and activated his spiritual vision. Once he did this he came to an immediate stop and just stood their staring as his wife fussed around their son before turning to Telram with a look of awe on his face.

“What,” the middle-aged man sputtered as he stared at the perfect orb that rested inside his son’s body. He had never seen a single-layered Core that looked like this before in his life and while he knew that Telram’s own Core was far beyond his own in terms of how well made it was, he hadn’t expected that Henry would’ve been able to create such an impressive Mana Core even with Telram helping him. “How?”

“Ah, Jonathon, Kelly, how are you doing?” Telram asked calmly even as Henry’s mother fussed over her son.

“We’re good, I think,” Henry’s father replied while still staring at his son in bewilderment. “How did you manage to do this?”

“I didn’t really do anything,” Telram shrugged. “Henry did all the work, I just advised him.”

“Really?” Jonathon asked. “It must’ve taken him hours to make something like this even with you advising him.”

“It did,” Telram agreed. “He’s basically been working on it non-stop since midday which is why he’s so tired.”

“I see, I’m still not sure I entirely believe that all you did was advise him,” Jonathon admitted. “But even if it was, I thank you. A Core like that will be of great advantage to him in the future.

“It’s a good start,” Telram agreed. “But he still has to keep working on it. Anyway, I had better head off, the rest of my family is waiting for me. Henry I’ll see you tomorrow, make sure you have a good rest tonight.”

Henry nodded drowsily as his mother helped him inside. Even though he was exhausted by the events of the day he was looking forward to tomorrow. If Telram could get someone like him to make a Core that even his father was impressed by then he couldn’t wait to see what the tall young man would teach him next!

“Well than Jai,” Telram sighed. “We should get going. We’ve got another Core to make tonight.”