If somebody ever asked me why are you training your body if you had all this essence? Then I would replay “ Of course it is because I have essence and not some other type of power. ”

Life Essence is generated when a lifeform that has a consciousness does something. It did not matter if that was meant to be done or it was instinctual. It was all the same as it would generate Life Essence, but what does change is the amount generated and how much is stored in one's body.

If a lifeform does something instinctual for a year then they would generate what I call 1 years worth of essence.

If a lifeform does something with conscious intention for 1 year straight in my theory they should generate more essence that way.

` Now comes the question, how much is the difference? ` Well I will find out soon I hope.

Right now it was morning. The sun barely came over the mountain and shined down on me. It pushed away the slight chill of the morning but as it barely came over the sky that's all it did.

To improve my body and test out my theory I have made a schedule for one month which I will try my best to follow.

First in the morning I will be running. As my body had been asleep for 3 weeks in the hospital it will be a slight jog. While jogging I would try my best to be conscious of every movement of the body and study it with essence.

Mentally prepared I set off. First I walked while using my essence to observe the body. And I must say it was marvelous to see your own body in action. From inhaling in oxygen to it being distributed all over the body by the pump of life called heart, to everything else and in this case a lot of it went into leg muscles. Luckily I could tell my body to do something like an autopilot switch. As my body walked I observed the processes. Once I saw everything and how it worked for the current action of the body I used essence to speed up the process.

Of course I didn't immediately jump into nitro mode, no I slowly increased the usage. Slowly I saw the heart beat rate increase and my chest inflate to take in more oxygen and with the increased heart rate, pump the blood faster to its destination while there I saw the cell exchange to fuel themselves happen faster and faster.

But there was still a plateau that it hit. If it truly went over it, it would no longer be efficient but turn to wasteful heat as the body had to vent it. And currently the body just was not using that efficiency anyway so all it did was tire it out and wasted essence.

Noticing that observation I had my body start jogging to test it again under more stress. Slowly my body picked up speed. With every step I observed the muscle absorb the shock every time a foot hit the ground and what it wouldn't, had been sent to the bones.

With every motion of the body I could see the processes needed to maintain a balance. The swinging of the arms, to the needed front and back muscles of the upper body to hold it all together, all while the neck muscle supported the head and its balance instruments that hid themselves in the ear.

The biological body was a masterpiece of efficiency at what it does no matter the form. No matter what it needed to do it could adapt to anything. ` The key is not what I wanted the body to be but what the body needed to be in a certain situation. `

As the body would always seek efficiency and adapt, what it needed was the outside pressure that would force it into adapting, but what if you have the power to influence it from the inside while facing the pressure from outside. ` Well, Soon I will find out. `

As my body picked up speed and I used essence to maintain its current actions. With that it just kept going and going not slowing down at all. It felt like it could go on forever, but since there was no need for it at some point I let it be and had it slow down and eventually stop.

Once it was still it took a while for its processes to stop as it still had waste heat to transfer, waste carbon to get rid of and ease the muscle tension. That took some time and with essence that cooldown period was expedited to. Once it was truly over I noticed what I wanted to see. Thanks to the active usage of essence the body performed at such efficiency that it would not need to evolve due to it.

` It seems active usage of essence to power the body while doing some activity is not the key to evolving the body. Let's see what happens without essence? ` With that I went for another jog, and with no essence actively used for efficiency but only observation. In a matter of seconds waste started to build up, the muscle stressed due to oxygen depletion, and impact absorption was halved.

When I finally had it stop it took 5 times more time for it to all cooldown. This time I used essence to influence the adaptation of the body and immediately noticed an improvement. With the outside pressure and the encouragement from essence I could already feel the processes involved being activated.

Having my confirmation that only essence after heavy usage of pure body activity will trigger evolution I stopped my essence influence and went jogging for real this time.

Two hours of jogging and plenty of rest in between for efficient essence usage, I was back home ready for a shower but it would have to wait for later today as there was still much to do. Once home a quick breakfast with a heavy dose of essence to speed up digestion for about half an hour I went to do my exercises.

I had looked up online all the exercises I needed. Again I did the same as with jogging first testing stuff then actually training. With plenty of essence used to encourage growth in between exercises another 2 hours went by. Done with those, did a quick shower and I would rest for the day.

Having a few chats with family and some net browsing soon dinner time came and time to hit the bed. Once on it I checked my body and already could see some small improvements. To solidify the gain I used about 1 months worth of my essence and spread it around the body and gave instructions to encourage repair and growth. That done, with a thought I was sent into dreamland.

When i woke up it was already morning. Using a bit of essence to power up the body after sleep faster and in seconds I was already wide awake. Checking out the body one could already see its growth, especially muscle growth. ` But only during a field test will the results be shown. `

While changing clothes again a thought came to me. ` It was not control of the body and its growth that essence brought me. No it is the simple minded desire to improve myself that I always lacked before. ` This was not the first time I had tried to improve my body but it's the first time I could see the results and have fun while doing it.

Once more resolve came to improve and another day went by, and another day, and another day. Soon it was a full week.

Finally after a week of training I was standing in my parents bedroom where a giant cloth cabinet had a big mirror to check myself out. In front of me stood a decent looking man with short dark hair and green eyes. The cheek bones, while well defined, were hidden by some plumpness I inherited from my mother. While looking at myself in the mirror I said to myself. “ Don't worry handsome me, we'll have that changed soon and after that no woman will be able to withstand your handsomeness. ”

Nodding one more I took off my shirt and looked again at the mirror.

Before this one week if one said I could be considered slightly fat around the stomach they would still say that but I could already see some improvements. There was less fat and more muscle. ` Looks like I will need to increase the amount of exercise. `

Doing some posing and touching my already harder than before chest I noticed something behind me. Doing my best to not show I noticed anything I continued posing. But during them I squinted my eyes at the door being slightly ajar. In the slight crack between the door and the frame I could see a green eye watching me.

There was only one person I could think that had green eyes and would hide behind the door while observing me. It could only be my little sister Amila.

Despite having noticed her I did a few more poses and put on my shirt back on and turned around but by the time I was out of the room there was no one there.

Not seeing her anywhere on the first floor i could only assume she was back on the second floor where her room was. Mine was just below hers on the first floor. ` Should I tease her a bit? Hmm best not, I should go review how the first week went. `

` Let's see, I used up about 8 months worth of essence. Seven during the nights and one during the exercises for accelerated adaptation but if my current development is any sign I got around 1 month worth of results one would do without essence, all while only doing light exercises. Could probably speed it up even more but since there are no urgent needs for it there is no need. `

` Now to improve even more I would need more pressure on the body so that leaves normal jogging out, hmm, I guess mountain climbing is the only choice and later I can just increase the speed I do it with. As for the exercises I do, I can only increase the number. `

` Although going to a gym is an option. For that I would need to go to the city. While it's about 15km I could just jog to it. Hmm nah there is no jogging trek beside the main road, it's easy to make a mistake and get into another accident and going over the mountain is far too much trouble. `

` Ok lets do it like this, morning till afternoon mountain climbing, once back home double the number of exercises and then rinse and repeat for a week.`

Nodding to my plan I rested for the day.

Once morning came and the sun shone through the windows, I got up, had a light breakfast and went for the mountain. My little village was called Deep Creek and while there was a small river stream down from the mountains it was not really deep or anything.

But since this village was situated in a small valley a river and the main road split the village into 2 parts and around me were all mountains. While not steep or anything a mountain was a mountain. All around there were villages and there were small roads that led to them. Soon I came upon one such road. It was filled with gravel.

`I've not been up there since I was a kid. Let's hope I don't get lost. ` With that my trek happened. Step by step I did not hurry. Time slowly passed and I was already half way up while only mildly out of breath. While taking a short break I used up a bit of essence and soon I was on my way.

Step by step I followed the old memories. Past one village then another, then took the least trodden path that was only ever used by tractors and soon I stood atop the mountain. In front of me stood a beautiful sight.

Still only being like 9 in the morning I saw the misty mountains surrounding me where only peeks could be seen, while in the distance I saw a big mountain chain going from one end to another.

Not having seen it in a long time I used essence in my eyes and brain to enhance the picture as much as possible to store the memory. ` One day I should do some tests to see how much i truly improved my vision with essence. `

Committing the memory for myself I made my way back. Never rushing it I only came back 2 hours or so later. Went for my exercises and spent my day like usual.

It was only the next day that I felt how truly harder it was to jog up a mountain. Barely passing a tenth of the way I was already panting as if starved for air. I had to actually use up essence every kilometer of mountain I went up. Thankfully the 5 minutes breaks with plenty of essence was all it took to get me back into shape.

But it was jogging back down the mountain that was the nightmare. The legs and my knees were shaking as if twigs from all the shock absorption they had to do to break off my speed and not even mentioning 1 misstep would send me tumbling into rocks and trees.

` Damn, in every movie or book I ever read they never mentioned how terrible it was to jog down a mountain. Thankfully I'm already down. ` Few minutes later I was home all bruised and battered from all the missteps I had and my wobbly legs soon met their deserved rest as soon I hit the bed and let my body rest for at least an hour.