...

For just a few instants the sun turned black, not black as if it was obscured, but as if he were always a star made of black flames that emitted a black light that made everything appear in shades of gray.

Those that were not knowledgeable just thought that they had hallucinated because lack of sleep or that they had a sudden common vision problem, those that were knowledgeable perceived it as a something strange to give attention to, and those that are powerful felt that something important had happened but without knowing what or why, those that caught on this event were not many, but they were all around the world.

And a secondary event was that hundreds if not thousands of shadows just like the ones that visited Hitomu in his sleep were surrounding the special department building, but because there were many pedestrians coming and going, they arrived, stayed for a few moments and departed unnoticed.

But not only it had happened in a matter of moments, Hitomu was underground and getting over the dizziness with his eyes closed, so he did not perceive the sun event nor the shadows, but out of nowhere he felt as if multiple gazes fell upon him from a far away place, he also could feel happiness from some of then, from some others, doubt, and a few...fear,  but when he opened his eyes, he was still sitting across the man who was his new teacher with no one else around them, and as he opened his eyes the presences vanished as if they were never there, said presences were quite distracting so when they were gone he could again fell the annoying dizziness and some headache

He also now with his eyes open, saw both the man and the world in front of him in a different manner, every color he could see looked very saturated, he felt like he could see things better such as details and small thing he did not notice before, and see a few colorful things floating here and there, but the most interesting thing he saw was that the man had a type semi transparent layer over his body, with some colors in specific areas and a small yellow aura around his head.

Another thing he noticed was that he felt somethings around him, they were within a 25 meters radius of him as the center with many shapes and sizes but he could tell they were related to things around him. Something silly was the face Hitomu was making, it was like a child looking at cool toys in toy's shop for the first time, it did not go unnoticed by his new teacher, so he said to Hitomu:

"By the looks of it, it was a success, welcome to unveiled world. By the way i forgot to mention a thing or two, my name is Gregor Griffyn Escanor from the noble house Escanor, but you can just call me Gregor. When drinking those elixirs and on specific situations is rather common and even expected that you would hear things or see things, feel pains or discomfort, so no need to worry."

"And talking about the elixir, i need to tell what it does to you, at the first level of the Shadow path you are less likely to be noticed especially when in shadows, you can feel shadows around you, to be more specific, you are more aware of them, like their shape, distance and what it belongs to, you get more dexterous and nimble like a shadow, those first three make more sense because they are shadow related, but the latter part of the package of powers don't seen related, such as..."

"The slight increase in memory capacities and a slightly bigger increase on cognitive capabilities, you also get a type of intuition that warns you of things and lastly the most useful one, you get and ability we call 'soul gaze', it lets you see the soul and spirit of others, like seeing the condition of a body part or the state of their soul and the most useful part being the capability to see their mental and emotional state in the form of colors and other visual representations, and obviously it lets you see unseen entities such as humans remnants, spirits and Asbtratum entities , if you are wondering, not only will your powers get stronger as you progress but you will also gain new ones..."

Hitomu was full of expectations for his future but noticing that Gregor wanted to continue speaking he restrained himself from asking silly questions and choose to continue hearing.

"The colorful things you see here and there floating around is what we call mana, to be more precise, a type of elemental mana that falls in one of four main categories, solid, liquid, gas and energy but the more traditional ones like to use the terms earth, water, wind and fire respectively, and we will be using these old terms for simplicity sake. What you are seeing is the ambient mana but we have a personal mana inside of us that is what we use to cast spells and power magical tools, which you also received a substantial boost to your reserves because of the elixir."

"Despite seeing the elemental mana, i doubt you can sense them, only a very few are born with the ability to sense mana so no need to feel bad about it, so our first lesson will be how to sense mana, but for that we will need to go to another room, the 'lab 2'"

Gregor got up, took a few pieces of chalk from a blackboard in the room and led Hitomu that was getting accustomed with the dizziness and had a far lighter headache to a door opposite to Gregor's room with a plaque written "Lab 2", he opened the door by inserting his ID card on a small machine to the left of the door and entered, firstly he turned on a switch inside the room at the entrance and the lights came on, and secondly signaled for Hitomu to enter.

Hitomu entered the now illuminated very spacious laboratory, it was 90%+ white had a gray concrete floor, full of drawers, cabinets, shelves with glass doors with chemical bottles and other stuff in them, and multiple counters surrounding a spacious empty space at the center of the room, when Hitomu was wondering how he was going to learn how to sense mana Gregor went to the center of the room and started drawing on the floor with chalk a circle with four smaller circles opposite to one another with enough space for a person to sit comfortably in the center, he also scribbled some symbols in the smaller circles and one the central one.

When Gregor was finished he told Hitomu:

"The best way to learn how to sense mana is so feel a substantial amount of it at once, and that is the why of this magic circle, it concentrates the surrounding mana into a specific area, and those smaller circles do the same but convert said mana to a elemental one, so stand on top of the central circle to start you lesson"

Hitomu did as he was told and found himself standing on top of the magic circle, he was anxious but had become calm when he remembered that this was the same person that told him about a cool government secret and gave him a cool elixir that gave him powers, while he waited for a moment, Gregor got on one knee and put his hand close to the circle and injected mana into it.

Suddenly Hitomu started to feel a sensation build up around him, it was hard to describe, it was a vague sensation that he could tell that was there, and soon after he heard Gregor say:

"You probably are feeling a strange new sensation, that is the mana, remember well this sensation"

Gregor proceeded to take a pause and "turn on" the other elemental circles and let Hitomu feel the different types of mana inside the magic circle, the difference between them being their "flavor", and he was successful in easily sensing the types of mana, so after another pause Gregor told him of the next step, sensing your own mana. It was basically the same as the previous one so after some time of meditation and trying to search for his inner mana Hitomu was again easily successful, but to his surprise instead of giving another lesson Gregor said:

"For today that is all i going to teach you, while these lessons are not physically taxing, they are hard to solidify or take in, not only we have the Chief's permission but is standard procedure to 'use some time to digest these new things', so go home and take in what you learned today and most importantly, get accustomed to your new body's powers"

"ok, thanks" Hitomu responded a tittle dispirited, he was at least expecting to read some books from the library level 2, but he knew that would be strange if he adapted so fast to "this", so he marked his shift end and got out of the building.

While Hitomu was getting back home he was greeted by all types of colorful auras people were showing off, some blue, others yellow, a few pink and another few red, but he hadn't forgot today's lessons, so while walking he was training on sensing the surrounding mana and his own. He was so entertained that he didn't even notice when he arrived home, but when he was inside he put aside the training for a bit a made a portion of Risos and a bit of a powder that is a misture of a type of flour and a few light spices, he was rather hungry because of the constant concentration required to feel mana, after he ate he proceeded to do his usual routine and went inside the starry void.

When Hitomu entered it, he immediately felt that this space was quite different, the first notable thing was that he could feel the shadows of the objects around the mansion room and for some reason he also could feel shadows of some things that appeared to be invisible, in another layer of reality that only could cast shadows in this layer, however he could only vaguely those shadows so he ignored them after a few attempts of trying to explore them a bit more, so he proceeded to the second most notable thing, he now could see a few small black blobs that appears to be from the same material from his "mask" that looked like dancing ferrofluid and a few black or gray stars that emits a faint black light, but not only he could see them, he also could feel them, and the black blobs gave a impression that they were in a type of dormant state, the black stars also gave this feeling but they algo gave a sensation of life and the gray one gave the impression that they were sleeping and could wake up any moment.

The new floating things made him curious so he looked outside the window and to his shock he saw in the distance multiple shadow entities that were navigating the starry void, some had animal shapes and some had humanoid shapes, he felt rather anxious because of the way they floated about with a contrast made by the weak light of the stars, but he discovered that they were not hostile and using his new intuition he could feel that they gave a friendly impression as if they were old friends, giving off a warm feeling, but despite this discovery he was not ready to interact with those shadows, and strangely enough, it seems like the shadows were aware of his choice and respected it by maintaining their distance from the mansion and continued to do their own stuff, so to pass time and distract himself from those creatures he instead of willing the contents of the library books in his mind, he teleported the books to his hand and read them the normal way for some time, and sometimes he would take a look at a wall clock that he put on the wall and synchronized with the one in the real world and read books until late at night before exiting the starry void, and going to bed full of anticipation for the new day to come, his plan was to try new things with his powers, so he slept like a brick for the next 9 hours.

Stephan_Pi

I was planning to make the mc have a system, i was really really tempted, but it would ruin the tone despite making sense within the plot so i refrained from doing so :/