Groaning with effort as he dropped into a lunge, Allen felt the rush as mana flooded into his pathways before slowly pulling back and resetting to his starting position. It was nearly three hours after he finished his discussion with Kyle, and he had spent nearly every minute of that time trying to refill his depleted mana reserves. Not wanting to deal with the general depression levels in the dorm, he had escaped to the House courtyard, enjoying the privacy that it offered with everyone but the Yellow class secluded behind the interior wall. Rotating at his hip so that both hands were down over his left foot, he once more pulled in as much mana as he possible could, holding the pose for several seconds. This technique wasn’t actually required to draw in mana, but it did ensure he targeted each of his meridians. His father had long lectured on the importance of balance when it came to cultivation. This exercise was filling each of his meridians as he flowed from stance to stance, making sure there would be no long term effects of his brief mana depletion. Meridians, if properly opened and exercised, would always draw in ambient mana in small amounts. What Allen was doing now basically forced them to hold mana in place, stretching out the limits and strengthening them, before flooding his mana pathways when they could hold no more. To anyone watching he just looked like a crazy person doing a series of bizarre stretches. Only a cultivator with a trained spiritual dantian would be able to sense the mana rushing towards him, and they would need to have trained it to at least the apprentice realm in order to actually feel what he was doing with it. Anyone who tried to copy him really would be a crazy man doing a series of bizarre stretches. Finishing another rotation, Allen held his pose and looked inwards. All three of his dantian’s were slightly over half full, but none of the mana had been properly cultivated yet. Coming to a decision, Allen eased out of his current stance and let his muscles relax. He didn’t have his normal pills or powders, which meant even half filling his stores was pretty good in a single day. It was probably only possible thanks to his ring taking advantage of giant array housed in the academy itself. His ring was powerful, but its size naturally limited its range. The giant array built by the Royals brought excessive amounts of mana to the island, which he had then gratefully hoovered up for himself. Taking advantage of the break before he moved onto the next stage, Allen inspected the various rings he always wore. All of them were enchanted by his father, but the sigil designs and actual craftsmanship was done by experts from around the country. Each of them was, quite frankly, brilliant. Spacial storage, mana attraction, mana shield. They were one of the the main reasons Allen had wanted to attend the academy in the first place. To learn how these enchantments worked and maybe try some himself. Allen wasn’t really sure what he wanted to do with his life, other than improve his cultivation and find a way to live in the wider world, not locked on a farm in isolation like his parents. His alchemy was passable, at least in terms of his fathers culture he would have been considered at the apprentice level, but that came largely from his mother. The bakery she ran specialised in mixing in alchemy powders which could give small mana boosts, improve strength and speed, or just boost energy. That coupled with the mixtures they knew had been a huge boost to helping boost his skill. The problem was did he really want to do that for his entire life? Dropping to the lotus position, Allen tried to stop worrying about the future and once more turned his focus inward. Mentally he gripped the new mana that he had collected over the last few hours and began to take control. Slowly he drew it out, cycling it round and round his pathways until all three dantians were drained and the mana was completely grouped together. A couple more cycles, and then he began, guiding it into his first dantian and then drawing out the first sigil before channelling it up to the second dantian and continuing the form. Each sigil would compress the mana slightly, but only if used in the proper sequence. Break the sequence and you had to start all over again. When you considered that with each compression the mana became slightly harder to hold under control, Allen was far from an expert. In fact his record was the third sigil of the second cycle, so eleventh in total. With each failure he had to resist the temptation to give up, his already tired body increasingly dripping with sweat. It was only his second day at the academy but he had already been forced to work harder than he had in years, mostly because of his ascension. If he hadn’t ascended the night before, he probably wouldn’t have been out of mana healing Priya. Not that he had any regrets about finally reaching mid Initiate. The simple fact was he was going to have to work a lot harder for a while just to maintain a usable amount of mana, and that wasn’t factoring in things like martial competitions. In many ways it was slightly lucky that his class had so few actual mana users. At least this way he could focus them on physical conditioning and combat training for the first month or so, while cultivating to increase his own reserves. The academy was shaping up to be nothing like what he had expected, but there was no way he would admit defeat. Not when it had taken so much effort for his dad to let him attend in the first place. Failing again, this time on the seventh sigil, Allen brought proceedings to a close. Guiding the mana back to his dantians it was a point of pride how equally he divided it out. Where before each had been half full, they now sat at less than a quarter. But the mana was thicker, condensed down under his own spirit so that is resonated with his element. While there may be less, this mana was now his, and would respond accordingly. After standing up and stretching out muscles which had begun to fall asleep, Allen made his way back inside. The sun had set, and as he wondered through the dorm building it was to see a greatly reduced number off occupied bunks in his section. Evidently more of his fellow first years had opted to leave them behind than he had initially hoped. Not that he really cared. Allen had no connection to any of them and if they wanted to join people who acted like that then he had no real interest in changing that fact. Joining the queue, it was only minutes before he was being handed a tray with a plate of rice and what he assumed was some kind of poultry, although it wasn’t immediately obvious. Sitting down at the table he tucked in, cautiously trying the meat first. While he didn’t know what animal it was, possibly a chicken, the tiny amounts of mana it released as he ate told him that the whatever it was hadn’t even made it all the way to the first realm. Another thing that would need to be resolved if any of the yellow class were ever going to make it through the novice realm. Even the weakest crops at home would have given him a larger boost. The problem was that if the House were the ones in charge of providing food then there was no chance of getting better supplies anytime soon. Yellow class were very obviously bottom of the food chain. That meant he would either need to find a way of sourcing food supplies from outside the House, which was unlikely given their current location, or force the House to take them more seriously. Mentally he began making a list of tasks, from improving the food through to sourcing alchemy supplies. There was just too much to do if he wanted to make yellow class capable of standing on their own two feet. And If Allen was going to get anything out of his academy experience, he needed his class to be capable of standing alongside him.