With all this activity, Jun's food intake started getting bigger, bigger than what the orphanage could provide since it was not that well off and there were quite a few kids.

'Ugh! I'm always hungry these days!' Jun complained in his mind.

'An inevitable situation considering the weak human physiology and your intense training regime. Your body can handle a lot more abuse though and if you can willpower through the suffering, you might get unexpected boons.' Ahsaka commented.

'Maybe so but it doesn't mean I like it.' Jun quipped.

He was currently running in the streets of Kuoh as a part for his training but that wasn't all. It also served the purpose of scouting what would be the place of his operations for the foreseeable future.

During these runs, Jun also tried passing by places he thought children might frequent to see if he could spot his targets but he was still unsuccessful.

'Well . . . Kuoh is not that small and I can't go that far with the stamina of a five year old, no matter how much I push myself.' Jun thought.

Experiencing no great changes to his life, Jun fell into a routine. Meditating most nights away, practicing the more spiritual side of Kalaripayattu and the Nameless Breathing Methods which he still had problems using while moving and could only perform while focused.

Eventually though, he should be able to maintain it constantly, even during sleep which should give a tremendous boost to his overall ability.

This kind of ascetic practice helped reduce the actual amount of sleep he needed but not get rid of it but as time passed, Jun's need for true sleep got progressively smaller, even if at a very slow pace.

During the morning and afternoon, Jun's time was dedicated to his physical practice of Kalaripayattu and Pankration respectively, with the assistance of magical Tempering, though his lack of sparring partners did somewhat hamper his combat training.

In the evening, he practiced his simple spells until he got tired and, after his handling and control of magical energy got better, he also threw in a few other simple spell into the mix.

It was like this that two years passed. Jun was now seven years old but his training resulted in him seeming a little older, just about ten though so nowhere near enough that people would not find it weird for him to go around town by himself.

His body was toned and his handsomeness became more obvious but unfortunately his boyish looks still plagued him, much to jun's chagrin.

The orphanage's people were quite happy that Jun seemed to be going out more but then started getting worried since he just tended to disappear for the whole day, only coming back during lunch and at night.

While they admonished him at first and tried to keep him inside as punishment for leaving without saying anything, the staff soon realized the futility of their actions since Jun would just do it anyway, earning him a bit of problem kid reputation.

They also wanted him to go to school but Jun saw no point as just did his own thing, however, when he showed up during tests and got 100% on every single one, the school silently acquiesce to his actions and looked the other way.

This was due to the reputation the school earned from having a genius student as such, Jun got a very comfortable life. Relatively speaking. After all, he had freedom but not much else. All that time did allow Jun to progress in his training smoothly.

As for how such grades were achieved, not only was school stuff for kid ridiculously easy but Jun's mental abilities were also improving due to his training.

The Breathing Methods not only improved Jun's physical abilities but also improved the speed of his thought processes. It did not make him smarter but he could integrate knowledge much faster.

The main reason of his scholarly success however, was the mental magecraft he learned. Mental Archive, Memory Partition and Thought Acceleration, all spells from the alchemy system of magecraft.

Jun chose these spells to master first because they would tremendously speed up his study of magecraft and the abilities they provided were useful for countless situations.

Mental Archive just stored information he learned like eidetic memory and organized it for easy access and rapid searching of particular memories and was, by far, the simplest of the three.

Next up was thought acceleration, the main magecraft of Atlas alchemists one of the three main branches of the Mage's association along with the more famous Clock Tower and the Wandering Sea. Fast thought is only a prerequisite to it, and it is truly the ability to multi−expansion diagrams.

In turn, it allowed Jun to properly learn and use the final and most complicated spell, Memory Partition. An ability used by the superior alchemists of Atlas and paired with Thought Acceleration, it is the very proof that one is an Atlas alchemist.

It allows one to partition their thoughts to form multiple independent thought processes. While normal people can only have a single "room" in their brain and focus on one thought, partitioning adds partitions to the one room to create multiple rooms.

Different than having multiple independent machines in their heads due to that, while there are multiple processes, they work toward one goal.

They manage different problem sets, but work together to generate one overall solution. While machines can calculate on the same level, nothing else compares when used for problem solving.

Average alchemists are limited to one thought into multiple rooms, but superior alchemists can perform first−order tetration of their thought into rooms.

The rooms are synergistic, so four partitions allows for 256 thought processes. As they work towards one goal, it does not allow for 256 separate calculations.

Each room can think of a different matter while the multiple thought processes in each room cooperate to solve each matter by approaching it in different ways. This was Jun's trump card to speed up his studying of the massive amounts of knowledge in the Akashic Records.

For now, he could only partition his mental "room" into three different rooms but surprisingly, he could actually perform tetration, allowing for 27 thought processes split between the rooms.

Jun usually kept one room for studying the Akashic Records, another to maintain his magical tempering working at all times and the last to govern his daily life.

Unfortunately, learning all of this meant that the only magecraft other than them that he learned was the very basic stuff like slowing himself down during falls, fix broken stuff, analyze objects with magical energy and a simple form of Memory Manipulation that would only work on regular people among other things.

He did get plenty better at the things he had decided to practice though.

*

Name: Haikami Jun

Race: Human

Gender: Male

Parameters:

    Strength: -

    Endurance: -

    Agility: -

    Mana: E

    Luck: EX

    Magic Circuits: EX

    Affinity: True Void

Skills:

Scion of the Void (-/UEX)

Kalaripayattu (E)

Pankration (E)

Ascetic (E): Resistance to basic needs like hunger, thirst and sleep. Slight resistance to exposure. Strong tolerance to pain and injury.

Breathing and Walking (-): Not yet on the level of receiving a rank, the pressages of basic attainment that allow for increased physical strength, stamine, agility, reaction speed, thought speed and endurance.

Magecraft:

Reinforcement (C): Can reinforce one's body to a significant degree including more complex body parts like the eyes and auditory system. Objects can also be reinforced so long as they are not of a very high grade in terms of mystery.

Magic Bullet (C): Smooth and quick activation but still far from fully controlled and efficient when used at high power. Slight self harm occurs at maximum power. Power can range from that of a handgun to that of a small caliber cannon.

Magic Burst (D): Smooth and quick activation but still far from fully controlled and efficient. Control becomes worse the more power is put in and self harm is easy to occur. Self harm is just slight when used at lower power settings. Striking power and speed significantly increases.

Mental Archive (C): No memory is forgotten and can be easily accessed. The user's resistance to memory altering effects is significantly increased

Thought Acceleration (D): Thought processing is significantly accelerated.

Memory Partition (C): Three partitions with tetration allowing for 27 thought processes.

Memory Manipulation (E): Allows for basic alteration of the memories of normal people only.

(I didn't see the point of putting in the other basic stuff.)

*

Jun's physical abilities had reached superhuman levels and he could toss an adult through the air without that much effort but he was still quite a distance away from a rank.

His Mana however had actually got to E rank, owing mostly to his outrageous talent, quality of his magical energy and intensive training.

He also met Issei and Saji in school and by very reluctantly accepting Issei's invites to play at his house where he suffered the childish entertainment, Jun also met Irina who Issei still thought to be a boy.

Jun's visits to Issei's house and playing with him and Irina were helish but he had a purpose in mind.

'Just endure Jun. Irina will be big in the future, first in the church and then in the Heavens. She'll have quite a bit of pull and making a big impression on her while she is young will definitely help me in the future.' He convinced himself.

'I swear . . . Once Irina leaves, I'll take Issei's Boosted Gear and never talk to him again.' Jun thought.

Even at the ripe age of seven, Issei already showed sign of his future pervertedness.

'Seriously, at seven!?' Jun was stupefied.

'How can a seven year old be horny!' I don't think is is even physically possible!' He complained.

Irina also had a loose screw since she thought Issei who just declared his perverted intentions to the world was cool which just made Jun facepalm hard.

But the pretty boy look that Jun was dissatisfied with was much to her taste so she seemed to be split between Issei and Jun.

Seeing this dilemma in Irina, Jun's thoughts went along the line of . . .

'I don't really know what to do with the affections of a seven year old. And the fact that you are torn between me and "that" Issei is honestly insulting.'

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P.a.t.r.e.o.n is officially up!

The link is: https://www.p.a.t.r.e.o.n.com/lusoba  without the extra dots of course.

You'll get to read up to FOUR week ahead, a full month, but I'll still post here.

There's also my other novel Archon of DanMachi, do check it out!

I would greatly appreciate any support since this is going to be my breadwinner.