Owen stared at Hiro wide-eyed his mouth gaping, as did everyone else on the field. Suddenly an old man with a long white beard followed by two others appeared beside Owen. Behind the old man stood a red-haired mage in a purple robe and a bulky knight with a receding hairline and a thick brown beard.

Owen was shocked at their sudden appearance, but then he shook his head and asked, “Hiro just what spell did you use just now? And just what level of a spiritual body have you reached!?”

“Hmmm?”, Hiro tilted his head, “Spiritual Body? All I did was use a simple body reinforcement technique and a little trick I learned. Though...”

Hiro turned to the broken scarecrow, and said, “I’m quite confident of its attack power despite how simplistic it is in nature.”

The bulky knight beside Owen shouted, “That’s impossible!”

He quickly walked over to Hiro and grabbed his arm, and energy seemed to flow from his body into Hiro’s. He exclaimed, “This is…”

The bearded old man asked, “What’s wrong Albert?”

“He...he hasn’t even achieved the most basic spiritual body...the only Qi circulating in his body appears to be from the baptisms nobles go through as children.”

“What!?”, the purple-robed mage exclaimed, “That’s impossible, then that technique he used just now was purely magic?”

Hiro laughed wearily and scratched the back of his head, “Well sort of, you could call it that. Usually, whenever I cast a spell I always manage to mess it up somehow so all I could use was this rather brute force technique of reinforcing my body with mana.”

The Albert glanced at what remained of the wall on the far side of the field and hesitantly asked, “That...you did that just by reinforcing your body with mana? How?”

“Hmmm? It’s rather simple really. First I split my mana into two parts, a majority of it spun around my right arm reinforcing it and the rest I used to launch myself forward. I formed a spring on my feet and using a bit more mana I sent myself flying. Then I distributed the mana around my feet around my legs so I could firmly plant myself to the ground.”

Hiro pointed at the footmarks where he landed, “Then with my reinforced arm and the momentum I built up I simply punched the scarecrow as hard as I could, and right as my fist was just about to strike the scarecrow I condensed all of my mana mid swing into a ball which carried all the force and momentum of my strike. And well this was the result.”

“...”

The crowd merely stared at Hiro in shock, several of the other students began whispering to each other in the background, “But wait can you even do that? Wouldn’t doing something like that usually tear your arm straight off?”

“Yeah, if he wasn’t quick enough he would have broken his arm. Those scarecrows were reinforced with steel and magic ya know.”

“Man, that kid’s insane?”

And while the crowd was gossiping, the bearded old man walked forward and asked, “Why didn’t you just work to increase your natural strength by absorbing mana?”

“Hmmm? Why would I do that? If I coat my body in mana, I can maintain an elevated level of strength beyond my normal capacity, absorbing it would only allow me to achieve a fraction of that strength.”

The bearded old man replied, “But over time the amount of mana you store in your body as Qi would easily allow you to match your current strength, and possibly even surpass that.”

“Hmm,” Hiro thought about it, “Well that’s true over years of training I’m sure you could reach a level of strength close to my elevated state, but I don’t think I’d be able to reach this level of explosive power. After all, I’m sure the energy absorb would be pretty rigid.”

“That may be true, but over time your base level of strength would be able to match this level of explosive strength you’ve exhibited.”

Hiro thought about it before asking, “But just how long would that take? A few years? A decade? A few decades?”

Hiro shook his head, while it is true such a path existed no one in the Holy Empire had the leisure to wait so long just to reach this level of strength. Especially not him, the Hero. He had only a few years after receiving the past Hero’s memories to reach their level of power. And the only a few more years after that to surpass the previous Heroes.

“Also I’ve been meaning to ask this, but what’s this Qi you guys have been talking about.”

Everyone paused again and gaped in shock. Owen paused before asking, “Hiro… you don’t know what Qi is?”

Hiro shook his head, “Nope.”

Owen sighed, “Just what is Holstein doing…”

“Hmmm?” the purple robe mage turned towards Owen and asked, “This is Holstein’s brat?”

Owen nodded, “Ah, yes Miss Campbell.”

Miss Campbell sighed, “Really what’s an honor student like Holstein doing…”

She turned to Hiro and walked forward and began to explain, “Well to oversimplify things for you the energy surrounding us is known as mana, this is something we mages use to cast our spells.”

Hiro nodded, Mana was a very unique source of energy that all living beings could tap into somehow and this Mana came from the ley lines that branched out in the ground from their source referred to as dragon veins. It was very likely that the capital itself was built atop a small dragon vein as Hiro noticed both the quality and quantity of mana rose steeply as they approached the capital.

“As for Qi, it’s simply what we refer to the mana that we store in our bodies. This is something that specifically only warriors use.”

“Hmm? Mana that we store in our bodies? But don’t mages do that too? How else would we be able to cast spells? ”

Miss Campbell shook her head, “Spells require too much mana to cast, it would be too inefficient to use the mana stored in our bodies, also the way warriors store Qi in their body is inherently different from Humans natural mana reserves. As a matter of fact, storing Qi irreversibly destroys those inherent mana reserves.”

“Huh, why would you want to do that?”

“The old man-.” Miss Campbell coughed, “I mean the principal should explain that to you later in class unless he forces me to do it later. But you see Qi is incredibly pervasive, warriors store it in their flesh, bones, and even their organs. This allows them to reinforce every part of their body, and heighten their bodies natural strength. And quite a few people think trading their natural mana reserves for Qi is rather worthwhile, I mean look at what Qi can accomplish”

Miss Campbell motioned Albert, and he threw a heavy punch into the field causing a whirlwind to blow through.

“That was a bit exaggerated, but for the most part, you can consider something like that to be the base strength of someone who accumulated a vast amount of Qi. As for magic...”

Miss Campbell raised her hand and fireball appeared, “It’s a bit too complicated to just generalize, but at its root, while warriors store Qi in their body, mages mostly rely on mana outside their body.”

Hiro tilted his head, and wondered, “When did this become a thing, in the last millennium we mostly used the same system for Magic. Could it be different in the south?"

The principal walked up to Hiro, and asked, “Anyway it wouldn’t really do to put you in either the Magic Division or the Knight’s Division, you don’t mind coming over to the Magic Knight Division do you?”

“I don’t mind at all, I mean that’s what I came here to do.”

The principal laughed and a ball of light floated out of his hands and into the red bracelet on Hiro’s wrist. As the light touched the magic circle in the center, the bracelet lit up and half the center of the bracelet turned golden, “This marks that you’re in the Magic Knight division, you may head over to your dorm now to find your room.”

Hiro nodded, “Thank you.”

With that Hiro quickly made his way back to the eastern part of the campus. The two heads of the divisions and the principal looked at each other before nodding. The principal waved his hand, “Alright folks, let’s continue.”

Owen laughed wearily and turned to the other child he brought with him, a rather short and pale black haired child, “Alright sorry about the delay, why don’t you go ahead?”

The child looked up at Owen and said, “I already have.”