Some hours later, Rai noticed that they didn’t cover half of what they were meant to in his magic lesson. They’d only covered some applications of external mana manifestation, let alone internal mana manifestation.

For the next few hours, Rai thought about the other main elements, wind and earth. Through trial and error, he managed to manifest them externally. Not perfectly, or even well, but he did it. It took him way longer than he expected though, given that it was already past noon.

He sat on the ground just outside the house, staring out over the farm and fields beyond. There was peace in his heart. He felt excitement at the prospect of one day being able to control all of his mana without it being completely sealed.

All his life, Rai knew only that releasing his seals completely would be dangerous. He was only allowed to release up to a fifth of his mana, unless his or his family’s lives were in danger.

His thoughts began to drift, and he thought about his sword lessons with Jin. I’m not able to use two swords, at least until I learn Balance... or whatever that is. I’m still not sure what old man Jin means, but if I could... A thought struck him. Rai leapt to his feet.

A eureka moment. Internal manifestation, Rai thought about the characteristics of the elements and what they were best at. He then thought about how he imbued his muscles with raw mana to strengthen them. What if...

He had to test it.

Rai set himself up on the field just next to the house. First he timed himself running from one end of the field to the other. Just over a minute. Then he imbued mana into his whole body, knowing from past failures that if he only imbued his leg muscles he would feel backlash afterwards. He ran the same distance, timing himself. Just about forty seconds.

This next part was tricky since he’d never tried it before. He knew how to avoid backlash, but was still trying to figure out how to start and hold the manifestation. He started by simply channelling mana to manifest it externally in a form he was all too familiar with. Lightning. Tendrils of lightning curled outwards from his body, surrounding him and leaving charred marks on the ground where it struck. Raw, powerful, and fast. He envisaged something similar, except this time the lightning was to stay in his body, infused into his muscles.

He felt it. It took a few minutes to figure out how to infuse it into his body, but he felt the explosive power welling up in his muscles, raring to go. Mentally preparing himself, Rai readied the internal counter. He pushed off the ground.

BOOM!

The world flew around in his vision, and before he knew it, Rai was way past the other end of the field. He was lying flat on his back, dirt and grass all over his body as he stared deadpan into the sky trying to figure out what happened. Slowly lifting his aching body off the ground, looking back at the starting point, he saw a series of shallow holes in the ground, and a deep hole from where he set off. Did I... skip across the ground like a stone on water?  It all happened in an instant, and Rai wanted to try again. He started to push himself off the floor, however, his body had a different idea. Screaming in agony, his muscles tensed up. They begged for rest. Rai fell back onto the floor, and gave his body what it sorely wished for.

After about an hour, he got back up to try again. This time he would imbue less mana, to try to decrease the intensity.

The same thing happened again; a new line of shallow holes were left in the ground just next to the previous line.

Rai remained on the ground, his body now writhing in pain. This much he couldn’t ignore, so he lay there with tears flowing from his eyes. While he let his body recover, he thought about what on Zenith was going wrong. In theory, this makes sense. I should be able to use lightning to empower my body to move faster, with more strength. For the first time in a while, he was stumped. Everything about magic normally came easily to him.

The body! It’s about the body, using magic to strengthen the body. It’s not about covering up my weaknesses, but adding a layer of power on top of what I can already do. I should ask Jin for advice. Rai knew that Jin wasn’t fond of magic, but he always tried to help whenever Rai asked for it. In his sword lesson tomorrow, he’d ask the old man. For now, he was content to lay here basking in the suns that were reaching the horizon as his body was recovering from the pain of his experiments. It wouldn’t be the last painful experiment, he giggled to himself through his pained tears.