24 - Slow Progress

The day before, in the middle of the night as children slept, a single woman could be seen walking towards the exit of the Nest.

Mila left the protected section of the city and headed to a strange building, not too far from the Nest.

"Hello, good night"

"Hi. Name?"

"Mila di Fermy, 858. I need advice. One of my children is showing mental instability"

"Right… you can wait there", The woman on the counter pointed to a set of empty chairs. "There is no one waiting before you, it won't take long"

"Thank you"

Few minutes passed when someone showed up and called her in. Guided her to an empty round room where an Oracle waited, sitting in a big chair right in the center of the room. The chair was beautifully carved by nature, it was a living tree taking the form of a chair.

Mila approached the figure and kneeled in front of it.

"State your business Child"

"Yes great Oracle, thank you for your time. One of my assigned children is showing signs of mental instability. She has good talent for mana control, learns faster than the others but does not have good insight capabilities. I need guidance to help her."

"Please explain in detail, my Child"

All while kneeling in front of the Oracle, Mila explained in great detail the situation of Zwei. She got one simple answer.

"Teach her. Force her to go further, she will either break or break thru the limits"

"Are you ok now?"

"Yes. Thank you Mila. Sorry about yesterday. I'm not sure what happened to me. Even my memories are a bit confusing after… that."

"That was not a uncommon reaction" Mila said kindly to her "You don't have to worry that much about it"

Zwei looked apologetic but did not say anything.

"So… I'm not going to explain the process in which I was able to show my roots to you, it is waaaaay beyond your level for now, but I'll explain a bit of what you saw. First you should know this: everyone will have access to the same knowledge I had you learn yesterday, the methods may differ but they will eventually learn. I hasted yours a bit because I believed you would be responsible enough to deal with it now"

"Your system and the seed roots will eventually evolve to work perfectly supporting each other, just like what you saw yesterday. The children are expected to have a working three-way-system working by the end of the Nest period. Of course, no one expects you to have it as strong as mine. Not only I'm a bit special but I'm also older than you"

"I showed the end result to you. I mean… not really the end… the middle result, I'm still growing, though at a lot slower pace than you. Anyways, I showed it to you so you can train with an objective and an image of what you are aiming for. You still remember your promise right? Do not overwork yourself"

"Yes, I remember. Still… It is so different, will I really be able to reach your level some day?"

"Yes, I'm sure you will, with enough time. If you do overtrain, however, you will lose everything."

"Why? Is it not good to train a lot?"

"Within a limit. Everything has a limit, Zwei. If you go over your limit you will collapse. Your mana will collapse. Your seeds will collapse. We are strong, but we are also frail. Training must be kept under control as to not to harm yourself. Yet if you don't train and push your limits you will never grow. The equilibrium is the most important thing. You need to learn how to SAFELY push your limits and accelerate your growth, SAFELY. Which is precisely why I made you promise to report every change for me, so I can help you adjust your training, ok?"

"Yes, thank you for all you are doing"

"It is my job to guid…. Yea, you welcome. Let's start today's training, I need to teach you few more thing so you don't hurt yourself trying the impossible"

Mila gave us a crash course on how to identify the flow limit for each mana-path, and how to safely increase that limit. It was a slow and daily work, the impact would not be noticed instantly, it would take days of repeated training to notice any small result.

This information was a bit unexpected for me. Everyone here grew so fast, so absurdly fast that I thought everything would follow this crazy pace. For Mila to tell us that this method would help Zwei increase her limit, but would need lots of time to work was definitely a surprise.

Apparently this training method is more usually taught a bit before we leave the Nest, when the children have more fine mana control, and self control so as to not explode themselves. Zwei was grateful for Mila's decision to teach her before anyone. She felt a bit special, for the first time.

During the entire time Mila repeatedly talked about how dangerous overtraining is, how careful we should be and how we should always report our progress to her. She said the same thing too many times for anyone to forget them. I'm sure Zwei, as dedicated and attentive as she was, would never ignore Mila's warnings.

Once our private class was over, Mila left. Zwei kept training for a while longer, safely, slowly training. Alternating between the old cycling-awareness training and the new slow-limit increasing one.

Days passed and Zwei kept her steady daily training. Daily reporting her progress to Mila, taking care to not overwork herself and going out to play with friends and her sisters.

She could not allow herself to forget one of Mila's advice: "You should always make time to talk to other people and learn from them. Make friends." If she said it was important then it was, no questioning Mila's advice. That and she liked to talk to people and play around. It was fun.

The changes on her flow limit were extremely small, almost imperceptible for the first several days, but eventually we noticed an improvement. The flow had increased by a little bit.

Increased only on her inner system, the seed-root ones were actually diminishing after every Watering since the 7th session. Mila said it was normal. Apparently the next was the last one, the end of watering, which would be the 10th session. The mana was being compressed instead of increasing in pure quantity, meaning that we would perceive less mana, but the quality was greater and that was a good thing.

"The 10th watering is the last because after that your roots are strong and stable enough for you to train them yourself, no need to have Mother's guidance"

"We won't go to the core after this?"

"We will, just a couple times more, we still need to transfer the control of your roots to you. As it is now you can't access it. Bue after these extra sessions you will be able to manipulate mana directly into them. I told you it would not take long."

The children would be given control over the seed and root systems in another 3 sessions. Both me and Zwei were happy with the news. I because it was something new and Zwei because she wanted to practice with the root system.

The 10th Watering was just another normal one. Nothing special happened. The following week was composed of a very anxious Zwei and basic practice. The day for Zwei's turn on the core arrived quickly.

She woke up in the morning earlier than usual, but well rested and prepared to go. We did not have to wait long for Mila to get downstairs, we performed the Dedication with all of us present.

That was different than usual. For the last seventy days, we performed the watering. One session every 7 days, and not once any of them were able to wake up the next day. For every session we slept for a couple of days.

Since Einer was up right now, yesterday was not as taxing on her like the Watering! Of course I'm not the only one that noticed this. Zwei did as well but did not ask any questions. I'm sure Vier did too, she also chose to stay silent.

My dear host performed the morning ritual, in silence, then waited for Mila to call her to leave for the Core.

"Are you ready to leave Zwei?"

"YES" she sounded a bit more loud than intended. Mila just laughed it off.

"Let's go then"

During our walk there Mila noted about Einer being awake.

"The next two sessions are not as taxing on the body as the previous ones. You will get very tired and will need to rest as soon as we get home, but won't need to sleep for more than a night. As you saw, Einer was already up and normal today."

We arrived a bit earlier than we usually did and waited for several minutes until the omniscient voice pronounced the beginning. The preparations were precisely the same, only the name differed.

"We shall start the Blooming of Zwei"

So, the next sessions are called "Blooming", it makes some sense. We get a seed, we water it, for quite a while for it to grow strong and stable, now it will bloom. I like that… Even if I disagree that a seed goes directly into a blooming state before growing leaves or something...

"Stand up" The voice repeated the same thing in the same order every time.

"Prepare the host" Everyone obeyed without questioning. Placing the child in the place they should be… I have been here for more than 10 times already, every single turn they do the exact same thing, yet I still cannot tell what's special about the spot the children are placed so cautiously in. It looks and feels exactly the same as any other piece of moss-floor here.

"We shall begin"