A routine had been made during Yuki’s time in Aether. During the weekdays he would attend his classes in the day. In this way, he had learned basic fire magic from his Elemental Training class. During his sleep he would study under the guidance of Akira and improved his earth magic.

 

His night time training with Akira also included weapon combat with swords and daggers made of earth as well as hand to hand combat. They had discovered that when Yuki trained in his mana dimension, his mind and body would adjust accordingly.

 

In his free time, Yuki would use the digital library that was accessible from his Compendium or mentally read books that Akira gave him from her ancestral library. This was how he improved his knowledge of the world.

 

At night, Yuki would slip out his room to use the gym when no one was present to strengthen his body. Other times he would go outside and practice his sword and dagger fighting.

 

For one month Yuki trained like this. And soon his training was starting to bear fruit. Many of his stats were in the high tiers for the first star, with agility and mana nearly breaking through. His levels in mana manipulation and earth magic also increased to four and three respectively.

 

And now Yuki was once again slipping outside, but this time not to use the training room or to practice his weapon combat.

 

In his hands he held a book that had no cover or title. The book was given to him by Akira. While Yuki was getting stronger, so was Akira. She came to the point where she, through Yuki, could somewhat use magic to affect the physical world. With this method she took a martial arts manual from the knowledge of her ancestors and created a copy of it in the physical world. Just this one task, though, drained much of her energy.

 

This book was now in Yuki’s hands and he was on his way to read and practice the knowledge that was written in it.

 

‘I have a basic understanding of hand to hand combat but no actual techniques,’ he thought to himself as he silently crossed the hangar on the first floor. ‘If I can learn what is written in this book, then my fighting skills would get much better.’

 

When he was outside, it was completely dark, the moon and stars covered by clouds. Yuki snapped his fingers and a small scarlet flame ignited into existence. His fire magic had improved as well but it was considerably weaker than what he could do with the earth. It was most likely due to his incomplete understanding of what fire was. To create a flame from nothing, he had to have great concentration and use up lots of mana. Yuki discovered that by snapping your fingers and changing the heat that was created into fire instead of creating the flame from nothing, he wouldn’t need to focus as much and it used considerably less energy.

 

With the light of the fire to guide him, Yuki walked to a clearing that he had discovered weeks before. It was a rather large flat piece of land that laid next to a river full of rocks and boulders. Yuki sometimes would use those rocks to help with his training by hopping from on to another down the river.

 

Yuki placed down the dry sticks that he had gathered on the trip to the clearing into a dirt pit surrounded by rocks. Throwing the ball of fire that hovered over his right palm, the sticks ignited and a bonfire that illuminated the area came to life.

 

Then he sat down in front of a tree next to the fire, leaned back against the trunk, and began to read the book.

 

After a few minutes of flipping through pages with intense concentration, Yuki looked up.

 

“Why is the whole book blank?” he thought out loud.

 

Indeed the book was empty, every page a sheet of fresh white paper with no markings of any kind that could be seen.

 

‘Is Akira pranking me?’ he wondered but then dismissed the idea. Akira did joke around constantly with him but never when it was related to his learning.

 

‘Then there must be something special about this book,’ Yuki concluded.

 

He began to examine the book carefully page by page from the back to the front for any clues as to what the book was.

 

‘Well I just wasted an hour of my time,’ Yuki grumbled when he didn’t find anything. He tried to contact Akira but she still seemed to be tired from creating the book and didn’t answered.

Yuki decided to try again one last time before he would give up and do normal training until it was time to head back. But this time he tried to do something different. Reaching for his mana he began to push magic into the book to see if there was anything hidden to the normal eye. This was a technique that Yuki had discovered on accident when he was playing with his mana.

 

But something odd began to happen when the mana touched the book. Instead of staying on the surface and conforming to the shape of the manual, the magic was absorbed into it. The pages began to glow a golden yellow and a soft white ball formed over the book.

 

Yuki stared at the ball with a awestruck expression on his face and reached out to touch the glowing sphere. When his finger met the hovering mass of energy, it flew toward him and melted into his chest, the book dissolving moments later.

 

With a gasp, Yuki’s eyes widened as he felt the ball become part of him. Then in his mind flashes of images began to appear that slowly became clearer over time until they started to play as a movie. It showed Yuki standing in the clearing doing a complex dance that flowed with the strength of the river next to him.

 

Yuki then understood what the book was. It was a magical manual of sorts, a type of novel that when given mana it will download the information into the users mind.

 

He got up slowly and walked toward the center of the field. He breathed steadily to focus himself and then took a stance following what he saw in his mind. It was an odd stance, one that he had never seen on Earth. Legs apart, the front foot facing toward the front and the back foot making a perpendicular angle with it. His right arm was raised across his face and the left was in front of it a feet away making an X shape. His hands, instead of making fists, were open with the fingers gradually curving inward the closer it got to the pinky.

 

Following the film in his head, Yuki began to move slowly as he performed a complex set of motions. His hand slowly slapping the imaginary jab that moved at a snail’s pace toward his head away. Bending back to avoid the hook that followed. Striking out at the elbow of the enemy he saw in his mind.

 

For hours, Yuki practiced this slow dance until he noticed the rainbow hues of the sun poking out of the horizon. He stopped and saw that he had been outside for over four hours.

 

Yuki went to extinguish the coals of the fire that was almost dead when a line of text appeared before his eyes.

 

[ Alert: Basic Hand to Hand Combat Lv. 7 Has Changed To The Technique {Dance of the Dragons - Lv. 1} ]

 

‘Huh,’ Yuki thought to himself. ‘My practice was enough for it to register it as a technique. “Dance of the Dragons” is the name of the martial arts apparently. That’s a nice name.’

 

And with that, Yuki silently returned to his room, his late night excursion unknown to the still sleeping people of Aether.