“Well, for now, we can’t figure out how you can sense mana, whatever caused it, it is a good thing! This means you can join the hunt faster!”

Huh? What does sensing mana have to do with joining the hunt faster? It seems Cylix had the same question as me as he started speaking out.

“Uhm, Mr.Roc, what does sensing Mana have to do with joining the hunters?”

“Ah! Good question Cylix, and don’t call me Mr.Roc, you are now my son, so you can call me dad, though you are being trained as Hunters now, so keep calling me Mr.Roc, you too Cyclos.”

I just nodded along to show that I understood that he was trying to be professional.

“Your mana reinforcement not only reinforces the body, but it also has an additional effect. It trains the body to be under equal stress all the time once you get hold of the reinforcement technique. This means every part of your body is trained equally, from your muscles to your senses, probably even the brain. It has been noticed that us mana users have sharper memory and can remember better than non-users. This is also one of the reasons why everyone in the hunting team had a similar build, otherwise, why do you think all the hunters of the village have similar bodies?”

Now that he mentioned it, I immediately started noticing that almost everyone that was not a trainee hunter had the same looking chiselled body. It was like everyone was a prime example of the human muscular system from those medical images on earth.

“Now that we have gotten that out of the way, give me a minute to replan. I was thinking of training you two together but with Cyclos already sensing mana, I may have to put him through an accelerated course so that he can join the hunters as soon as his body finishes moulding.”

“Um, I am okay with being in the accelerated course with Cyclos”, Cylix interjected.

“Are you sure? This usually takes a couple of years for people, in the accelerated course however now we will have to do it in two years before Cyclos’s body finishes moulding, and unlike Cyclos you haven’t sensed mana yet so you will have a harder time and will probably have to keep working even after sundown.”

Cylix nodded with a determined face.

“I have been meaning to ask, what is this moulding you are speaking of?”

Dad just raised an eyebrow over my question before realisation came and he started to explain.

“Moulding is the name we call the process of body reinforcement shaping our body, get it?”

“Okay, I get what moulding is but how am I going to do it if my body keeps trying to explode every time?”

“Hmph, Pfft! Do you think what you did was body reinforcement?”

Was it not? I followed the exact same steps he did, so what changed? He seemed to have noticed the confusion on my face as he started explaining with a smug smirk on his face.

“Body reinforcement doesn’t just mean giving the body the energy, you also have to control how much energy you are giving to each part of the body and control the output of the energy to certain parts of the body based on their energy usage.

For example.”

Dad turned on mana reinforcement and started to lift a big boulder, as he was lifting the boulder, I started to notice the energy going to each of the muscles that were being used for the task and I understood immediately what he meant. Dad, seeing the look of realisation on my face dropped the boulder and said, “Looks like you understood it?”

I nodded

“Then explain it to Cylix, I will correct it if you say anything wrong.”

“Body reinforcement is not just spreading the mana to the body, we also have to adjust the amount each area receives based on how much mana it is using, for example when dad lifted the boulder he used more energy on his arms, chest, back and leg muscles, even then it was not a general application but to only to the muscle being used. But what I don’t get is how is it possible?”

“Very good explanation, did you understand it, Cylix?”

Cylix nodded with a half-understood expression. It seems Dad also noticed that as he said

“Well, this is one reason why we don’t try to teach body reinforcement to people who can’t sense mana yet, it is something only properly understood after feeling it. As for your question Cyclos, it is possible due to the body moulding process.”

“What does it have to do with that? Body moulding is just the passive effect of body reinforcement in shaping the body.”

“You are correct however, there is another benefit that body moulding offers other than a fit body. It is the benefit of being able to sense everything in your body. As you try to keep body reinforcement all of the time eventually you will be able to sense everything in your body instinctively. So, we don’t even need to control where the man needs to go, after practising reinforcement for a couple of months it becomes instinctual, the only thing stopping you from keeping reinforcement active all the time is mana exhaustion.”

Oh, so that's how he did it, I thought he must have insane parallel processing abilities to keep count of each muscle in the body and to supply it as it needs. But his last sentence immediately brought up a question.

“What happens after mana exhaustion? What if we have zero mana left in the body?’

“What happens after mana exhaustion? Nothing, you just can’t use mana techniques or spells anymore and it is not possible to go until you have zero mana in the body. After mana exhaustion, your remaining mana will disobey your will and make it impossible to command it so don’t be afraid of that.”

“Wait, what do you mean it will disobey me? Does mana have a will?”

What the heck, didn’t mana mean magic? Or was the magic here like the force, having thoughts of its own?

“No, no, I mean more like the body’s natural limiters will come into play and make it impossible to use anymore mana. Well not impossible, there are some cases where the person was able to use even the last bit of mana.”

Immediately both Cylix and I leaned forward in interest.

“Well, you know grandpa Ito, right? Nana’s dead husband?”

We both nodded, Nana tells us kids stories about him sometimes.

“Well, when he was captain of the hunter team, on one of the hunts they came across a rock bear. Grandpa Ito decided to stay back so that he could buy time for the rest of the team to escape.

He fought the rock bear till mana exhaustion bringing both himself and the bear several severe injuries, however, due to the nature of the beasts it still had more energy than grandpa Ito, as it raised its paws for the finishing blow. Grandpa Ito tried to do one final death attack to kill it, and surprisingly he was able to pull the last bit of mana and do a final strike killing the bear.”

“So cool!” Cylix said in a low voice of amazement by my side and I couldn’t help but agree.

“So, what were the after effects?”

“Well, immediately after that Grandpa Ito couldn’t do any reinforcement for 3 whole months and was bedridden for the first two weeks. As you know most fighters if we reach the age of retirement generally live long lives, well into our 90s. However, Grandpa Ito died when he was 72, and some believe this is because of that incident as well.

Now storytime is over, It is time to get back to our workout. Cylix you go over to the archery range and meet Terys and tell him that you are a new hunter recruit and he will start with your archery training. I will measure your body level after I finish with Cyclos here.”

Cylix nodded in acceptance as he walked towards the archery range.

“As for you, we will first start by trying to find your starting mana.”

“What is starting mana?” I was confused as he didn’t explain anything like this before.

“Starting mana is the minimum amount of energy that your body can accept. Any lower than that your mana will just go back to your heart, any higher you chance yourself exploding like before. It is also the state you will have to keep as you try to familiarise yourself with the technique.

Go on, try to find it, it shouldn’t take more than a few days.”

Days? Why would it take days? Anyway, I try to follow his instructions and sit down, close my eyes and pull the smallest amount of mana I can and try to spread it across the body, however it is not accepted and the mana returns to the heart. I increase the mana by double and try to see if it is accepted, before continuing doubling until I overshoot the starting mana. Now that I had both lower and upper boundaries it was just a matter of a few tries before I had the exact amount of starting mana required. I opened my eyes to see my father's dumbfounded face.

“You, You, how did you find it so fast? It hasn’t even been 15 minutes.”

Wondering what all the fuss was about, I explained the method I followed, immediately he was back from the captain of the hunter team to proud dad.

“Genius! My son is an absolute genius! Wait, I will go brag-cough I mean inform the other instructors of this technique. In the meantime, try to keep that state as long as possible and get acquainted with that level of mana.”

He finished speaking and ran off with the absolute smuggest grin one could ever have. I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at his juvenile nature, but I guess being at the forefront of the village protection and hunting team, he probably is juvenile as a way to keep the stress away. I closed my eyes again and tried to re-grasp that level of mana again. Since I know how much it was last time, it only took 3 tries to get to starting mana again and I kept it at that level constant. I could see that my mana was constantly decreasing now that it wasn’t returning back to the heart. By my estimates, it should last around 3 minutes at this rate. As soon as I started, I was keeping track of time by counting the seconds, while he wasn’t sure how accurate his timekeeping was but by the time, he was out of mana he managed to last 192 seconds.

I opened my eyes to see that dad had already returned from his bragging session along with a few more adults.

“Wow he is able to keep the reinforcement for 64 breaths, he has impressive mana capacity for someone so young.” said one adult

“So, this is your son captain? Impressive, being able to sense mana at the age not to mention finding his starting mana on the first day, he was even able to keep the mana at a steady rate till mana exhaustion, I wish my son was half as talented.”

Said an adult that looked similar to his dad’s age in their mid 20’s, however, there was something in the way he looked that seemed to say he was a scumbag, but as a person with the experiences from the modern world I know not to judge by his looks.

“Thank you, I will try hard to support the village.”

“Good, good! You should spend some time with my son, he is around your age as well, you might know him, his name is K’len.”

Ah shit!