Jay was playing with sand and he was currently trying to make a sandcastle. He first made a steel bucket and a small steal shovel. Looking at the beach he saw Tesra playing in the water with Fluff.

He got up from the shade of the palm tree with his bucket and he walked towards the water. After reaching the water he scooped up a bucket full of water and returned to his shade. Tesra saw what he did but didn't say anything.

After sitting down, Jay started to scoop up sand and poured it into the bucket. Soon the bucket was full of wet sand and Jay dumped it. After pulling the bucket up, he saw what looked like the structure of a castle tower. Looking at his bucket which needs to be filled with water again, Jay decided to think smart.

He moved towards the water and started digging with his small shovel. Tesra saw him digging and wonder what he was doing.

"What are you doing Jay?"

"I'm trying to make a river to my shade so that I can keep building my sandcastle with water."

"Why don't you just use mana for water?"

"You don't seem to understand something Tesra."

She looked at him curiously. "What's that?"

"Effort taste better than hard work."

"Isn't effort and hard work the same?"

Jay shook his head and kept digging.

"Hard work is struggling to do something that is not impossible while effort is just doing something. When one has a dream, one should never put hard work in it, one should only put in the effort."

Tesra arched an eye but his explanation kinda makes sense so she decided to leave it at that.

"What does that have to do about not using mana though?"

"Using mana is like using effort, it tastes very sweet. Humans are lazy by nature. They avoid hard things and chase sweet things. Well, that's what makes humans great I guess. Always chasing after sweet things but avoiding hard things. What they can't seem to see is that one must overcome hard things to obtain sweet effort.”

“That still doesn't fully explain why you're not using mana.”

“Your still too young so you don't understand.”

“Ok then.”

Tesra went by his side and made a stone shovel. She started helping him dig his river. Jay didn't say anything and just kept digging. The shade was very far from the waves so it took a long time to dig.

After many hours of digging, the small river reached the shade. Jay made a bucket and gave it to Tesra who took it. She saw him start making towers after towers with the bucket. She joined in with him and made towers along with him. They soon had many towers around the beach and Jay kept making more.

“Why do we keep making sand towers?”

“I dunno, it just seems effortless and I don't see where this effortless activity will lead to. What do you think this effortless activity will lead to Tesra?”

“I believe the wind will blow away all the sand tower or the waves will wash it away.”

“Then why are we doing this Tesra."

She looked at him strangely.

"I don't know why we're doing this."

"Oh, but I think you do Tesra."

"No more riddles Jay."

"But I'm not giving you any riddles, I told you already that I wanted to build a sandcastle as a kid."

"Your building sand towers, not a sandcastle."

"What's the difference." He asked with a smile.

Tesra tried to explain the difference but she could only come up with a few things.

"The sandcastle is bigger."

"Pfft, ahahahaha." Jay fell to the floor and started laughing.

"I don't get how that's funny."

Jay quit laughing and smiled at her.

"It's just so funny how you tried to think of an answer but you couldn't find an answer you wanted. Anyway, we can both agree that sandcastle and sand towers are made of the same thing and the only difference is their size right?"

Tesra nods since she couldn't deny what he said. Jay looked around the sandcastle and proceeded to place dirt on top of them. Stone rose under every sand tower and made walls. Jay took out a bag of seeds from his robe and tossed a seed on top of every sand tower.

He then used mana to quickly grow the seed. In real-time Tesra saw all sorts of plants grow. She recognized some herbs and others she didn't recognize.

"Tesra, what's the most useless thing you could think of that I did today?"

She thought for a moment and spoke.

"Not using mana to make water which you could have used for a sandcastle."

Jay looked at the sun.

"Is the sun useless?"

"No, the sun is not useless." She was worried Jay might destroy the sun.

"Why is the sun not useless?"

"Because it gives life to this world."

"But isn't life useless?"

Tesra could kind of see where he was going and answered, even if she wasn't sure.

"Life is not useless."

"What about death then, is it useless?"

Tesra couldn't find an answer to this question. Death is considered evil but it is not useless. Life is considered good but it seems useless. She tried to think of an answer but she couldn't.

"Sorry about that, it seems today's lesson was too hard. Let's try another day shall we." Jay smiled at her.

Tesra was surprised today was a lesson. She then remembered that today Jill was supposed to teach her more about magic. Remembering this, she was about to say yes to trying another day but then she remembered what Jay said.

Hard work is struggling with something. Had she put in the effort? She did indeed put in effort but all of her efforts were useless. Her useless effort felt like she ran out of mana.

She wondered why Jay didn't use mana for water. But what if he couldn't use mana or didn't have mana. Why should he try to keep using mana to make water when water was right there. A useless effort was pointless while a useful effort was worthful. Tesra realized there were still more parts of the lesson today but she couldn't seem to find them.

She remembers Jay telling her that she knew something even if she didn't. Things started getting confusing inside Tesra head. She was getting really confused and the answer evaded her.

"Don't think too much if it's hard. It is in human nature to avoid hard things. Let's go eat now since Fluff has brought some food for us."

She saw Fluff with many fishes on the sand. It seem she had been hunting for a while now. She walked with Jay towards Fluff but he did not make a chair for her to sit in nor for himself. She tried to think of why but then remembered him telling her to not think too hard.

She made a chair for herself and was about to make one for Jay but he made a chair for himself too. His chair looked better than hers. She did not think and proceeded to try and make a better chair than him. He saw what she did and smiled.

"Challenging me to a chair contest. Your still a thousand years too early."

Jay then made his chair far better than hers by adding a unique art style to it. She tried to copy him but she couldn't, adding more effort now would simply be useless. It was going to be hard she wouldn't try to avoid it.

Fluff looked between the two with question marks and Jay made a chair for her. Getting some herbs from the sandcastle he started cooking quickly. After he was done cooking, the three ate and fell asleep. At night, Tesra saw Jill come into her dream.

"How you been doing Tesra?"

"I've been doing well, is Jay a part of you?"

"Yep, you could even say without him I can't exist."

Tesra sighed with relief since she thought Jay had taken over Jill's body.

"When will you be back?"

"I'll be back after I studied the way of the blade. Anyway, don't be too sad. With the pace I'm going, I'll get to cut up some bloodthirsty pirate soon."

Tesra felt a little worried about Jill's bloodlust.

"Don't be too crazy, ok Jill?"

"Oh well, fine. Anyway goodnight."

Jill disappeared from her dreams and everything returned to darkness. While Tesra was asleep Jay woke up. He stretched his back and looked at the forest. From the forest came out a tiger.

“What kind of bullshit were you spouting to Tesra?” She spoke in his head.

“Im sorry, but I haven’t consolidated my powers yet. My mind is currently very erratic.” He replied back to her inside his head.

The tiger was as black as the night. It was as big as an elephant. Its stripe radiated moonlight. Jay admired its beauty.

"I think I'll call you Tigat."

The tigat roared and charged towards him. The sound didn't reach fluff and Tesra since Jay blocked it. The tigat came upon Jay and he grabbed it by its face.

"You look like a very cute cat."

The tigat tried to struggle in his grip but it couldn't move.

"Should I make you into a fur coat or should I let you go?"

Letting out a wisp of his aura the tigat immediately became obedient.

"Good boy, now go home."

The tigat quickly ran back into the forest. The tiger was a low rank 2 beast so it was pretty strong. Unfortunately for it, Jay's stats were too high.

-

Jack JJ Jelly - Peak Rank 5

Age: 40

Strength: 9.999 M

Endurance: 9.999 M

Agility: 9.999 M

Mana: 9.999 M - 621 Mile Range

Total Might: 36 M

Passive: Suppressed, Breaking, Limited...

Spells: Teleport, Deconstruct, Create...

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