After eating the cookies and drinking some juice, my dad is still thinking, but I need to go on I want to finish this conversation to go and continue training, so I cough a bit to get my dad attention and once he turns his head towards me I continue.
- Also dad some of the magic books of my second mom they talk about some descriptions of magic and things they could see, and I think the people that wrote those books had a lot bigger mana sense and they could use it while casting spells, this is the only explanation I can think about why they have such specifics descriptions, while we nowadays with our poor skills cannot even see the energy that the system gives us, I have found references to the pearl colored energy in several books from more than 500 years ago, the name they had for it was Divine energy, but there are holes, also some of the Heroes mention that the gods did use divine energy for some spells to help.
- That is interesting, Carter is there anything else that we need to talk under the dome? – asks my dad
- Oh well, one last thing if I find a way to train in the orange level I would like for us to start setting up the troop that we asked the king for, 500 men but I would prefer that they all have level 100 swordsmanship, or better that they already broke through to the orange level, also I know that you said that you had been working for nearly 6 years to deal with doppelgangers in the household was there any? Because we also need to have these 500 soldiers clean, and if this takes time, maybe we should start the recruiting now – I tell him.
- First you should not worry about this, but yeah there were 3 doppelgangers on the household, we got rid of them it took time but we have gotten to the point where every single human in the household is verified to be here and it is not in fact with the demons, actually since your birthday party the household has become even more dedicated, even the spies from my fellow dukes has gone quiet and they have come and promise to keep the secrets of our household in the names of the gods, those moments were weird – says my dad smiling.
- Spies from the other dukes? – I ask surprised.
- Yeah later in life you will learn more about our political system, possibly when you go to the academy, well if you go to the academy, all the nobles have done binding oaths to do our best for our kingdom, so we cannot really sabotage one another, but trying to get info so that you can get a better position in court, receive more funding, have some royal favors to call your own, well we all compete with one another for those – says my dad – thanks to you and now that the king knows about you, we will receive extra funds for a while and if we make requisitions to the capital those will receive priority, obviously the other dukes want to know what we did? How did we contribute? Even your grandpa send me a letter asking about it. And that made it more hilarious that the spies the other dukes had on our house decided to keep their mouth shut, not a single one wanted to go against the gods on this, so every single one came out and promise to keep your secret.
We finish our talk and my father put away the orb we used for privacy, we talked a bit more about dinner and other small stuff then both of us went down to eat with the rest of the family.
I stopped most of the other projects I had been investigating, and decided to dedicate myself to improving my mana sense, I needed to be able to use it without entering meditation, once you entered meditation there was no way to use magic or activate skills or you would break the meditation and also break the way you were using mana sense.
I started to experiment, then I remember what I did not too long ago when I was doing the appraisal, maybe something like that would help, so I went into meditation and tried to see what my own body was emitting and how, my next month was spend training my senses to their limits and I discovered a lot about mana sense and how I was using it, finally at the end of the month my mana sense was again at level 100, this time at the orange level, and I was finally able to feel how my mana sense and my meditation were 2 separate skills, and just like I did with my appraisal lesson I started to try and activate one without using the other, it took a week and I lost track of the number of times I tried, but finally one day I was able to activate my mana sense without entering meditation, as soon as I checked my status screen I saw another breakthrough my mana sense has gone up from the orange level to the yellow level, and now I was confused by something different even though I was really happy for the breakthrough.
Why in the name of everything did production skills start at the 3rd major level, my blacksmithing started yellow, oh well I truly think this is a choice of the gods, why? I will have to sit and speculate, or maybe later ask them directly.
I started to do a more detailed journal of everything I was discovering and my second mom was doing several copies of it, all 3 of my moms also decided to take the plunge and pushed their mana sense skill further and broke through the orange level, my dad did the same but it took him a bit longer since he was a bit out of practice, my brothers and sisters did not know why the focus on meditation lately but hey if our parents insisted then that was what we were going to do, also one of copies of my journal and the updates was sent to the king, and my second mom said that we were going to keep that journal safe, that his majesty was putting this info in the same area of the royal library as all the information that had we were keeping from the heroes of old, to be preserved and they made a second copy to read and use if they could, now knowing that the skill mana sense could go up towards the orange level and it was easy to continue leveling up, and that the focus for breakthrough from red to orange was to try and see the energy of the system that gave direction.
As soon as I finish my breakthrough, that same night I talked with my second mom and told her how I had finally broken through to the yellow level, and that the focus for the breakthrough was to try and separate meditation and mana sense, to be able to use mana sense without having to use meditation, and how this share some similarities as the way that the craftsmen use appraisal, and we also talked about how my nature knowledge and the way I used spells with some knowledge of the rules of nature had allowed not only me but also her to break through the barrier, she told me that her magics were at the orange level and she also told me that my mom had her water level at the orange level, but that she kept that hidden until we revealed the going from red to orange was a level up, and that Sophia my third mom, was also at orange level, and that she also kept it a secret.
They were now teaching my dad, and my aunts all about my spells so that they could also level up their magic.
- I find that so unique - I say
- What do you mean? – Ask my second mom.
- Well that everybody can use magic in this world, you all are magicians. – I say
- Not exactly, yeah everybody can use magic but being proficient at it requires time and effort and if a person spends the whole day just training magic what is he going to eat? Also magic is limited in some ways people do get tired and lose focus, they need others to defend them and learning the way of the warrior takes time, your dad got his magic at level 100 Red because of time, it took him almost 25 years to get there, while me and your mother we did it in less than 10. – says my second mom.
- That long?
- Yeah, this is my own theory but I think the more you know the faster you can train the skill some of your sister have reached level 100 with your modified spells in 5 to 7 years.
- Have they level up?
- Yeah they have but that is only recently after you told us that the demonic bite was false, we sort of ask them to not push before since we did not want them to suffer the Demonic Bite, but with the goddess revelation and your revelation about levels well some of your sisters are breaking through and continuing their training. – my second mom then ponders and then tells me – Carter this information we will have to release it right?
- Yeah if we want to make everybody better we will have to teach this to the rest of the kingdom.
- Yeah true I will talk with your father, maybe even with the king and some of his queens, we will have to make plans to educate the people once we have more info. – she stops for a second and then remembering something – Son remember to also put in your journal everything about your swordsmanship, if you had revelations or if you focus on something that made you train faster write it, if there are more levels after red we need to find a way for people to train that level faster, your dad and uncles took around 5 to 7 years to train their swordsmanship with the current methods and they were focused on just training that because they were going to be warriors, most of our normal troops almost never get to max level during their ten year stay at the army, you have taken around 2 and half years to go from 0 to 100 and break through so any insight on how to train faster would be massively important, you discovered already 3 levels with your mana sense, and I suspect swordsmanship will also have a yellow level, if we need to grow stronger we need to be able to do it faster.
My eyes open like saucers and I understand what my mom meant, I have to go and write all my different thoughts about my training and tomorrow, I will start trying to find the difference between Orange level of swordsmanship and the red level.
Next day found me in a private Area of the house and the members of the household were told to keep an eye out and keep everybody from that little enclosed patio, I do not know why we have it maybe later I could ask about that, I started some exercises and then came the moment of truth, first I did all 14 of my skills the 9 offensive ones and the 5 defensive ones with my swordsmanship at the red level, then I tried at the orange level, I failed, I had asked today to skip all my other lessons and we have sent a messenger to my teacher Bart at the smithy telling him and he responded that it was not a problem, I had been working for hours failing at activating the skill while at the new level and I just sat down a bit and looked at the sky, If I had not asked I would be right now on my way to the smithy.
That gave me a jolt, I remembered what Bart told me during our appraisal lesson, the system helps but is our work the one that makes things possible, I went back and did one skill the overhead strike at the lower level but this time I was not focusing on energy or skills just on my moves, then I set up my skill back to its maximum and tried to do the exact same movements, and yes FINALLY I got it to activate but it sort of sputtered off in the middle of it, I almost had it.
After some more hours and comparing each movement I saw I was not using the same strength on my back and my legs as when I did the move on the lower level, I had to put more effort on using my back muscles and my legs muscles, now with the skill activating properly both at the lower level and at the higher level I could compare, so I did use my mana sense on it.
I finally saw what was happening, the energy I activated when I used the skill at the red level, a lot of it went into my muscles, it guided them to the right positions and helped move them with the right amount of strength, I remember when my dad said years ago to let the system help, so now I see that in this first level a lot of the energy goes into helping the body move properly, but at the orange the amount of energy that went into the muscles was less and it did not have the same compulsion that it had before, I had to move the muscles myself, why the energy was going in I did not know, but I could also see that the amount of energy in the sword was greater, with the red level the pearl aura around the sword was barely a cm thick and just at the edge, now it was still at the edge but it looked to be around 3 to 4 cm thick, I also understood why I trained faster, a lot of those times I was trying to do the moves myself and work with the energy, when I did that my skill went up faster, so I put more work into learning the moves, sadly I was still depending too much on the guidance of the system, that is why I was failing to activate skill at the orange, now I had to do the heavy lifting myself.
