When I came to my senses the first thing I noticed was that my surroundings were only mildly glowing.

Feeling a headache coming I relaxed my body again in defeat. It seems that I will have learn how to cope with everything glowing.

“I will teach you how to adjust your mana sense to your surroundings. A situation like this won’t happen again, I can promise you that.” Teacher’s voice sounded out from behind me.

I didn’t turn my head around. If I did, the amount of mana he emits would only serve to blind me again.

Damn mana sense. When I first heard about it I was thrilled but until now it served as nothing but torture. How can the other warriors cope with this? Well, if teacher didn’t lie this will hopefully be a thing of the past.

“Is there really a way? Is it possible for me to never experience pain when looking at something full of mana?” I said in a hopeful tone.

“Yes, there is. Otherwise every warrior would be closer to a cripple than a fighter. It is quite simple actually, but without guidance it is nearly impossible figure these techniques out. Confused? Just listen to my explanation.” Teacher voice sounded slightly pitying. I bet he must have been through this phase too.

“Look at the wall in front of you, or anything else in this room for that matter. Focus on it as hard as possible. The rest is up to you.” He instructed me.

Wow, that was…extremely unhelpful. Really, how is that supposed to help me? Has staring at a random wall become a profound technique while I was unconscious?

I sighed. It’s not like complaining will help me.

I sat up and focused on the wooden wall in front of me. As far as I could see the room had no furniture and the ground was covered with smooth wooden planks. Why do warriors like to use wood so much if they can create just about anything anyway? If it were me I would use more exotic materials, or at least something different than wood. With so many aesthetically more pleasing building materials out there it’s a wonder that they didn’t use them for anything.

Shit, my focus slipped! I hurriedly focused my gaze again.

For quite a while nothing happened. The wall stayed the same, its glow at least not hurting my poor eyes.

But then it happened: A small speck of something different than white appeared. If my attention hadn’t been at its peak, I wouldn’t have realized it. I immediately inspected it extensively, but in the end it was just a small green speck in a sea of white.

Where did it come from? I am pretty sure that the whole wall was white a second ago.

Suddenly a second green speck appeared, startling me immensely. The longer I looked at the wall the more green specks appeared. Eventually specks of different colors started to turn up too but the vast majority stayed green.

In the end the whole wall turned into a strange mixture of colors. When I looked around the rest of the walls had a similar appearance. Though they looked similar each of them had a distinct pattern. Well, to call it pattern would be an overstatement though.

It was more like they all had some small differences in where which color was placed at.

What is this? Could it be that mana can be separated into different types? Are these types represented by colors? What color do I have then?

With a start I realized that this would be the first time I had properly looked at myself since I had acquired my mana vision.

I was nervous. Which kind of mana was I made of? If I assume that green stands for plants as I can’t really think of anything else is there a specific color for animals?

When I looked down at myself I was mesmerized by the mixture of colors I emitted. The main ones were a relatively dark shade of blue and brown though. Though these two dominated my view a strong dark red was also present. These three colors joined up to a constantly changing lightshow.

Why do I emit these colors though? What do they stand for? Are these the colors animals emit or is it unique to me?

Does teacher emit the same colors I do?

I turned around, and what greeted me was completely unexpected.

Although he did emit a brown, blue and red they were completely different from mine. Instead of a dark shade they were an extremely light version of the ones coming from my body.

Not only that he appeared more like a walking color table than anything else. Every color I have ever seen before and some that I didn’t even know that they existed were forming a harmonious, almost divine picture.

I stood there for a while, my jaw almost hitting the ground while doing so.

“I see that you have managed to differentiate the different kinds of mana. Now snap out of it, this still isn’t the end.” His voice managed to snap me out of my stupor.

“How comes that you emit completely different colors when compared to mine?” I asked him. This was a question I just couldn’t answer no matter how much I thought about it. I mean although the walls had some differences they were only small details. But I and teacher look completely different.

“I don’t know. How should I? I have always heard mana fluctuations so I don’t really know. The way everyone perceives them is, like I already said, unique. You will have to find out by yourself.” He answered me.

I noticed that it was even harder to look him into the face now. Although I could see his facial expressions the always changing mixture of colors made it far harder than it would normally be.

“What comes next is meditation, lots of it. As you meditate more and more the colors you mentioned will eventually become less blinding and, though they stay at the same…brightness, right?” I nodded in affirmation, urging him to continue. “You will do so until you can properly look at me, after which comes the next step.”

I immediately sat down and started to circulate the mana through my mana channels. The idea of not feeling pain nearly every time I looked at something was obviously very appealing to me.

I don’t really know how much time passed until I awoke from the meditation. I am sure that it took quite a while though, considering that Teacher has left and entered this room multiple times.

When I was finished I looked at Teacher, who had entered not too long ago. He was still blindingly bright, almost causing me to flinch at the sudden brightness, but only barely enough to cause me pain.

If meditation is really so helpful why did I not feel any change after the session before I fainted? I voiced out this problem to teacher but he only nonchalantly stared at me as if I were an idiot.

“Of course it helped you idiot! You were able to look at your friends without pain, right?” He shouted.

Now that he mentions it, he is right. Why didn’t I notice that?

He massaged his temples for a few seconds. “Now comes the second part of the training: Weakening your mana perception. To do so you have to send a strand of mana into your eyes. When you do so just cover them with it permanently. This will weaken your mana sense considerably, so you can still live normally. I recommend you to only activate it when going out to hunt beasts as it will help you find them.” He finished.

Why should my own mana be able to do that? When I meditate my mana just overshadows the rest of the radiance without hurting my eyes. Mana perception in general seems to be quite strange.

Pushing my doubts aside I let the dormant mana in my eyes cover them completely. The result was instantaneous: The colors that occupied my vision dimmed down until they were almost invisible.

As my vision returned to normal I noticed that the room was completely dark. Now that I think about it, there wasn’t a light source when I looked around. If it weren’t for the last remnants of my mana vision, I wouldn’t have seen anything.

“C’mon, let’s exit this poor excuse of a room. Your friends are already waiting for you outside.” Teacher said while standing up. He turned to the door and quickly opened it.

The light streaming out from the outside wasn’t as I had expected though. Instead of a bright light a shade of orange filled the room, recoloring its wooden boards.

When I stepped out I put a hand above my eyes to shield me from the receding sun. Unexpectedly the room I spent so much time in was in the middle of our training field, making it more of a shack than anything else. My fellow students were looking at me strangely but Frank, Greta and Owen jumped up in joy when they saw me.

They pushed their way through the masses and jumped at me. Feeling quite helpless I went with the flow and opened my arms in return. When we finally made contact however Frank punched me in the gut, making me double over in pain.

Owen quickly followed up with a kick that hit my shoulder, making me fall onto the ground.

“Don’t you dare make us worry like that again John! Do you even know how worried we were? You fucking idiot, we thought you had died!” Greta screamed at me.

When I looked up I realized that tears were running down their faces. Damn, I have managed to make some pretty good friends.

Thankfully they weren’t really serious when they had hit me so the pain only lasted for a short period of time. As soon as I had recovered my breath I hugged them with all the power I could muster.

By now my vision had become slightly blurred due to the dust that had gotten into my eyes when I doubled over and they responded in kind. Yes, it was just the dust. I am too mature to cry over something so trivial!

The group hug itself was kind of awkward due to the height differences but we didn’t really care.

“We’ll stay friends forever, right?” Greta whispered.

“Of course we will! If you think otherwise, then how are we supposed to stay together? We will always be the bestest friends, forever and ever!” Owen whispered back with unexpected intensity.

“How about we make an oath?” I added.

“To what? I don’t want to make one to the founders, that would be too boring.” Owen answered.

“Let’s swear an oath with the sinking sun as the witness.” Frank said, surprising us.

I had never expected him to be so poetic, but it kind of fits him.

We nodded and discussed the contents of the oath itself. A few minutes passed until we finally came to a conclusion.

We untangled our bodies, now standing about one step apart from each other.

““I swear that the four people present here will always be friends. May the light of the falling sun punish us if we ever break this oath!”” We spoke synchronously.

What we hadn’t expected however was that the light around us would suddenly intensify.

“Thou oath hath been heard.” An ethereal voice sounded out.

After that the light started to gradually return to normal, but the people present didn’t. All of the people on the field were paralyzed, but me doubly so.

Of course I was shocked that the sun had actually responded to our oath, but there was something that bothered me far more than that:

The voice sounded familiar.