-FASTER! WHY ARE YOU RUNNING SO SLOW! PUT SOME SPINE INTO IT!

Gabriella roared, standing in a field outside the town as she watched Ogra, Cornelia and Deborah running in a wide circle on a grassy field.

Morning had just come, the sun was still early, yesterday’s celebration was all gone as Ogra, Cornelia and Deborah ran like their life depended on it, actually Ogra was the only one who looked like she had any leeway as she had more than enough stamina from her racial physique and her blessing, the ones who really struggled were Cornelia and Deborah as their blessings weren’t suited towards training like this, but even then they weren’t slouches as Cornelia had sort of gotten used to this after a week of training under Avian while Deborah was a farm girl who had done some heavy work in the fields, the thing was if Deborah hadn’t been imprisoned as a slave for 2 months which caused her body to atrophy she would have been much better then Cornelia, unfortunately everyone present who was a slave needed to do training to regain their former strength and then even more training to become even stronger.

At the crack of dawn everyone had woken up this morning, or rather Gabriella had woken up everyone who slept like logs before ushering them into the bath and then downstairs to eat some food which Avian had already prepared.

This time Avian didn’t cook anything extravagant, he focused more on the amount of food and how easy it to cook it while keeping in mind what kind of food they would need to train better.

Normally you would imagine food for such purpose to not really be very tasty, Gabriella even remembered her time training as a knight and having to constantly eat the same thing every day to keep building muscle making her cringe, but delectably Avian never disappointed with his cooking skill as the morning breakfast while not as good as yesterday’s food was still very delicious making everyone satisfied as they chowed down.

Of course this peaceful eating didn’t last very long as everyone after an hour was ushered out with their equipment, they got into their carriage while loading up a few other camping equipment and food supplies as they weren’t going to return to the store that day.

What ensued next was them leaving the town in their carriage and stopping in a nearby plain a good distance away from the town a place that as also near the forest.

Nobody other than Avian and Gabriella knew where they were headed or what they were doing, but when they stopped, training immediately began as Gabriella turned into their drill instructor, her personality taking a whole different persona as she became the devil incarnate with how tyrannically she was instructing them.

Cornelia even felt she was scarier than Avian, who would hit her hard if she disobeyed or started slacking, Cornelia certainly didn’t want to find out what Gabriella would do to her if she started to slack off which is why she gave it her best as she ran with everything she had.

Ogra on other hand was pretty obedient as she gave it her all running, not because she was scared of Gabriella but rather because she was promised a special meal from Avian if she gave it her all in the training, a slave to food, Ogra worked as hard as she could to get that special meal she was promised.

And finally Deborah, Deborah having grown up in a farm and having a certain goal in mind that empowered her, she was a natural hard worker as she was forced to her very limits like everyone else.

Gabriella who supervised the training under Avian’s command was satisfied with the 3 of them, after another hour Gabriella stopped the running session to which Cornelia and Deborah collapsed, extremely pale in the face and also extremely dizzy as if they were about to faint while Ogra simply looked tired as she started to look around for anything to eat seeing the Earth Lizard eating the grass on the plain like a cow.

Ogra’s eyes immediately shone as she smiled at the Earth Lizard, but Earth Lizard noticed and immediately gave Ogra a dirty look before turning away from her to eat at another place.

-Good, we will take an hour long rest, eat and drink this while trying to rest, you will need it since we will go into the forest and start hunting monsters.

Announcing as such, Gabriella gave everyone a few drinks and foods Avian had prepared beforehand, they all were simply too tired to ask Gabriella anything about the monster hunt and as soon as drinks and food were shown, they started to eat and drink without a regard for their image as they had consumed too much energy in that run just now.

Thinking that they needed rest, Gabriella left them alone as she turned towards her master who was sitting near their camp writing something on his crimson book, Dahlia too was present and just like previous she stuck to him like glue as she hugged him, but compared to before there was something oddly different about Dahlia as she seemed more still and unresponsive as if she was sleeping, but Gabriella recognized this wasn’t so as she was familiar with the state Dahlia was currently in.

Walking closer Gabriella become more surprised as she observed the unconscious Dahlia, not able to help herself as she spoke.

-She learned how to [Meditate] faster than I expected, I thought she would have needed at least a few weeks to learn how to get into deep meditation, what frightening talent she has maybe she is going to be the fastest to reach rank 1 from everyone who is unranked…

As she said that, Avian didn’t even raise his head as he continued writing down his understanding and discoveries of his [Hemomancer] blessing, even though Avian looked like he wasn’t particularly doing anything other than writing in his book, in reality he was practicing his [Blood Control] and [Blood Sense] trying to expand their limits to improve them further, being the speed of shaping the blood, moving it or the distance he could sense it, his training was basic, but it paid off very quickly as he felt his control over blood increase by each day, he also didn’t neglect his [Aura] or BP training as he was still very clumsy when it came to directly controlling BP, though he still was improving at a noticeable rate with his relentless repetition every day.

-Is deep meditation such a difficult feat? Dahlia seemed to be able to do it the moment you tutored her, maybe it’s because you are a good teacher that she is able to do it so quickly?

Hearing Avian say that, Gabriella smiled wryly before answering in a self-depreciating manner.

-I am very humbled hear that master, but there is just so much I can teach Dahlia about meditation before it becomes useless, clearly she possesses immense talent as a magic user.

-If you say so.

Avian said, slightly doubtful as he had witnessed her earlier attempts at meditating.

Dahlia being blind and possessing not much strength with many other problems one of them being the fact she couldn’t easily separate from Avian without going through a mental breakdown, obviously couldn’t yet participate in the training everyone else was doing.

To combat that Avian decided he would train Dahlia by making her used to separating from him bit by bit, when he first suggested that Dahlia was obviously very outraged as she sobbingly asked if Avian had started hating her or that she was going to be abandoned, a lot of people would have likely folded from Dahlia’s pitiful display, but Avian was a harsh adult, while he took a caring approach to Dahlia, he also made her experience his strictness as he clearly and concisely explained her everything to make her understand.

Dahlia luckily did understand as she wasn’t as scared anymore, but she was still very unsatisfied and anxious, even though they began at a 1-meter distance from each other without getting into close contact, Dahlia still would look at Avian 3 to 5 times while sometimes reaching out for him to touch him as if to make sure he was still there even though she could see him with her [Spiritual Sense].

Avian though didn’t mind as he let it be and simply did his own thing, Dahlia at the time should have also been doing her own work, as she had been tutored by Gabriella earlier on how to use her [Meditate] ability, Dahlia seemed to understand, but when she actually tried to do it she failed each time without any success as she couldn’t get into even the elementary meditative state.

[Meditate] is the ability all magic blessings get at the very beginning without fail, long ago people believed that only blessings who bestowed the [Meditate] ability were considered to be magic blessings.

But as time went on and more blessings were discovered people quickly figured out that wasn’t true at all as blessings like the [Knight] came to be who also could [Meditate], [Knights] weren’t magic users thought, even though they could do something similar to magic which only affected them making it not quite magic.

[Meditate] itself was not as simple of an ability as it sounded, the mastery of this ability was quite significant and core to the growth of the magic user as it restored mana quickly and increased the mana pool of the individual essential making them stronger as each increase in mana meant more mana to use spells for later.

[Meditate] itself also had 3 stages.

Shallow Meditation, Focused Meditation and finally Deep Meditation.

Dahlia currently was in Deep Meditation which was the final state of the [Meditate] ability, hearing it like this, the mastery of the ability didn’t sound difficult at all, but what Dahlia was doing currently wasn’t anything that easy if put into context how did she do it then, and why was she even failing the most elementary meditative state, Shallow Meditation if it really was so difficult?

To explain this, explaining the [Meditate] and its different stages would be more fitting.

Shallow Meditation was the easiest to learn out of all 3 meditative stages, an ordinary person would be able to master it within 3 to 5 days, even the worst of all mediators would only need a week at most and what it did was basically allow the person to recover their mana faster while being aware of their surroundings, a quick thing to explain here is that these 3 meditative stages aren’t bottlenecks to be crossed and then abandoned even though each subsequent stage is more difficult than the last, each stage has its own use depending on the situation making them all useful.

People who mastered Shallow Meditation to the very peak are capable of doing everyday activities such as eating, talking or exercising without ever disrupting their Shallow Meditation which constantly restores mana at a quick rate giving a person essential high mana regeneration if Shallow Meditation is mastered fully.

Knowing this alone it is clear to see that each stage of meditation hereafter has its own uses and not to be underestimated.

Focused Meditation for example is the core Meditation stage that most magic users attempt to master as it at this stage that allows them to not only recover their mana, but also increase their mana pool which is the main point of their goal of increasing their power.

But this isn’t the only reason why people desire to master Focused Meditation, Focused Meditation has an added benefit in which is why it is named Focused Meditation, the user in this stage is capable of focusing on a specific topic or problem to solve it at high speed as their brain focuses all its power on that one topic to be solved making it extremely useful as it solves universally anything a person has troubles with which not only concerns real life problems such as figuring out a person’s next move in a chess game, but also emotional and mental problems such as coming to terms with the death of a loved one which usually required quite a bit of time to get to terms with, but something a person with powerful Focused Meditation can get over with quickly.

Magic users obviously don’t usually use this ability this way, rather because of their blessing they frequently do research on topics that make them more powerful for which they use Focused Meditation to accelerate the progress of their research.

A full mastery of this stage allows the person to think of solutions to problems much quicker without needing to go into Focused Meditation making an individual quite wise and intelligent.

Finally, Deep Meditation, just like Focused Meditation, Deep Meditation restores mana and increases a person’s maximum mana pool, but compared to Focused Meditation, Deep Meditation does both these things much faster and more substantially as it is the final stage and the most difficult stage to acquire.

The benefit of Deep Meditation compared to the other 2 is that through going into Deep Meditation, the user requires less sleep the longer he or she is in Deep Meditation, in a sense one acquired a person can replace sleep for Deep Meditation as it basically fulfills the same function as sleep with a much greater benefit, but this isn’t it either, people who have fully mastered Deep Meditation are capable of entirely forgo sleep if they so desire and are also resistant to all forms of mental attacks or disturbances around them, while in Deep Meditation the user also enters a state of full recovery as the body they inhabit starts to heal any and all internal or surface problems/injuries, Deep Meditation puts the user into the path of the body’s most perfect state giving this meditative stage another name called Perfect Rebirth Stage.

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