After Hiro left the infirmary he stopped by the cafeteria adjacent to the dorms before heading to his next class. His next class which was in the practice field up north, supposedly this was a special supplementary class for him since he was the only magic knight who in a sense couldn’t be properly classified as either a mage or a knight by the academy. He was admitted to the curriculum purely on his firepower alone.

As Hiro got to the training grounds he was surprised to see the two Headmasters waiting there with a blackboard. Alfred the Headmaster of the Knight Division pulled out a golden pocket watch, he turned over to Hiro and said, “Well we’re a bit early, but since you’re the only one participating why don’t we start.”

Hiro nodded, there was no point in wasting time, time was something he sorely needed. Hiro quickly grabbed a small box that was on the floor and sat down. The Head of the Magic Division Miss Campbell waved her hand and a piece of chalk began drawing a Human body while she explained, “We’ve already generally explained the concepts of Magic and Qi to you, Mages use mana, while warriors and knights use Qi.”

Hiro nodded his head, “But what's the point in differentiating the two? In the end aren’t they both mana?”

Miss Campbell shook her head, “Unlike the mana you use to cast your spells, Qi is limited to your body. The only time Qi exits your body is through certain techniques or through reinforcing your equipment.”

Then a red chalk began to float through the air began drawing red wavy lines around the Human figure, while the white chalk began to draw a sword and a shield. Miss Campbell continued,

“In the end, there are four primary aspects of Qi, reinforcement, purification, transformation, and consolidation. For now let’s focus on the first two aspects of Qi, reinforcement, and purification.”

Hiro looked at Miss Campbell in confusion, “Purification?”

Albert nodded his head, “Hiro have you ever heard of monks?”

“Like the ones at churches?”

Albert shook his head, “No, they’re practitioners of a certain group of people in the south-east that don’t worship Gods. They practice incredibly unique spells that allowed them to have incredibly long life spans. Over here in Renton, due to being the frontier the average lifespan is only about fifty years, and even then that’s only due to magic. In a place like Tribole, the average lifespan is probably about sixty years old. Now take a guess, how long do you think the average lifespan was in these southeastern countries?”

“About the same as Tribole? Maybe slightly higher?”

“No, it was one hundred years, many of the people there would live for upwards of a hundred years because they believed in something called Prana.”

“Prana?”

“Yes, I suppose in a sense you could call it Life Energy. They were able to convert mana into life energy that not only gave them incredible regenerative capabilities but extreme lifespans.”

“I see...then, in reality, Qi is Prana?”

Miss Campbell shook her head, “No, we managed to derive Qi from Prana, but they’re not the same thing. Anyway, that’s a story for another day. Let’s get back on topic.”

“Ah, right.”

“Anyway, I’m sure you understand the gist of reinforcement, by absorbing mana over a long period of time one is able to permanently increase their physical capabilities. I could go over the specifics of how that works, but that’s irrelevant. As for purification, to put it simply it’s too expel impurities out of your body to allow your body to store Qi within your body.”

“Impurities?”

Miss Campbell nodded, “I’m sure you realize that Human flesh isn’t a good medium when you use mana to reinforce your body it gets covered by a faint glow doesn’t it? And the more mana you use the greater the glow. But think about the power to strength ratio when you use magic like that?”

“Yeah I know, when I use a small reinforcement on my body it doesn’t cost that much mana to maintain it. But when I use a lot more mana, while it is stronger, compared to how much mana I used, in the beginning, it’s far weaker.”

Miss Campbell nodded, “It’s a right-skewed bell curve, but if the Human flesh was a more potent conductor of mana then in all likelihood we wouldn’t even see any residual mana left over! We could even see a one to one ratio of mana to some definable level of strength! Though that’s only theoretical, there’s nothing in the world that possess an absolute compatibility for mana, not even those beings practical made of mana oddly enough.”

“But wait, how do you go about removing these impurities then?”

Miss Campbell scratched her head and laughed wearily, “Well no matter how much we study the Human body or how many experiments we conduct we’ve only found one way to definitively achieve this…”

“Hmmm? And that is?”

Albert laughed and raised his fist in the air, “Brute force! We simply bombard our bodies with enough Qi to force the impurities out of our body!”

“...”

Miss Campbell sighed, “Unfortunately there’s no other feasible way. For now, just worry about reinforcing your body. Once your body has been reinforced enough to some degree, we’ll help you expel the impurities from your body, and move on to the remaining aspects. After your purify your body once you’ll also find it much easier to reinforce your body which is why growth for Knights typically follows an S curve.”

“I see, but how long is it going to take for me to reach that level?”

Albert answered, “Three years.”

“What three years!? But wait how much stronger will I get.”

“For the current you it’ll be like a drop in the bucket.”

“Then what’s the point?”

“Well…”, Albert turned his head over to Miss Campbell, “It’s because…”

Miss Campbell shook her head, “In the first place reinforcing your body achieve more than just simple strengthening magic. It reinforces everything from your senses, to your defenses, to your immune system. You have a higher resistance to poison, diseases, and it once you purify your body you’re reinforcement magic will become more efficient. Plus in the long run, the strength you get from your later reinforcements will allow your strength to grow rapidly. And if you want to pour your mana into reinforcement your strength could grow exponentially.”

“Yes!”, Albert laughed, “That.”

“I see, but that reminds me before didn’t you tell me that using Qi destroys my mana reserves? Then how am I supposed to cast spells?”

“Oh that’s simple, Hiro try casting a spell right now.”

Hiro nodded his head and began reinforcing his hand with mana causing it to glow a faint white.

“No, I mean an actual spell, you know how to cast spells right?”

“Oh, um, I have trouble controlling my spells so…”

Miss Campbell laughed, “Don’t worry, we’re quite powerful in our own right. Even if you cast a powerful spell we’ll be alright. Unless you’re worried about property damage, if so then I promise if you break anything, blow something up, or anything then you won’t get in trouble.”

“Well alright…”

Hiro exhaled slowly, before focusing the mana in his hand into his palm forming a small transparent ball that burst into flames. The ball was only originally the size of a baseball, but as Hiro tried to maintain the size it suddenly grew rapidly to the size of a basketball and continued to expand.

Miss Campbell stared at the large fireball and remarked, “Impressive…”

She grabbed wooden staff and the tapped the fireball in Hiro’s hand causing it to suddenly explode, however, the explosion seemed to be contained by an invisible force and as she raised her staff the explosion erupted in the air away from everyone.

Miss Campbell turned to Hiro and asked, “Hiro, did you feel that?”

“Feel what? The explosion? The heat?”

“I see you were probably to distracted by the giant fireball to notice. Frankly, I think your abnormally large mana reserves have been holding you back Hiro.”

“What?”

“From what I saw you gathered mana from your reserves into the palm of your hand and gathered some fire element inside of it to serve as the core of the spell. You even did this chantlessly which is quite impressive for a child your age. However, as you were consolidating your spell and trying to maintain it your spell grew to a point that you couldn’t control it causing it to grow rapidly.”

Hiro nodded his head, this has occurred every time he tried to cast a spell. It didn’t matter how much older he grew, or how much mana he used, or even what spell he used. No matter what he did the most he could use were body reinforcement spells or shaping spells that partially solidified mana like the wings he used or the magic springs on his feet.

“The watch this Hiro.”

Miss Campbell motioned Albert, and Albert began chanting before a small flame appeared on his finger. Hiro stared at Albert slightly confused, “But wait, how? Isn’t he a Knight?”

Albert laughed, “If it’s something as simple as this even I can pull it off!”

“But what about Qi? What about your mana reserves?”

Hearing this Albert gave Hiro a good smack in the back and continued laughing, “Kid don’t you know what program you’re in? The Magic Knight program! Haven’t you ever stopped and wondered about that?”

“That's…”, Hiro paused as he thought about it, “Actually yeah, I was so distracted I never really thought about it…”

Miss Campbell continued, “You see Hiro we mages control the mana in the surroundings, if we were to simply rely on our mana reserves then, in the end, we’d only have a fraction of the mages we actually do have. That’s the reason your magic went so berserk, you were unwittingly gathering the surrounding mana in your spell. Plus this way even if Magic Knights don’t have mana reserves, they can still cast spells.”

Hiro’s eyes widened, he didn’t think about it like this. To begin with, he was never much of a mage when it came to controlling mana, as a Hero he not only had massive mana reserves, but his Divine Artifacts basically gave him a practically infinite amount of mana. His spells mostly consisted of movement spells and powerful blasts from gathering an extreme amount of mana.

As Hiro thought of the possibilities, he bowed his head and said, “Thank you, Instructor Campbell.”

Miss Campbell smiled and handed Hiro a small journal, “This is a journal I used back when I was an apprentice. It has all sorts of notes of spells and techniques, I’m sure this will be of great help. Hiro you’ve got a long eight years ahead of you. Put them to good use.”