Steve woke up feeling better, not much better, but still better nonetheless, he took some instants to put his mind in the right place, and with just a few seconds after waking up he was "ready", he looked at the clock in the wall and saw that was 15:22, but he was not surprised however, instead of making some lunch, he chose to eat the cake, so he went to the fridge got some slices for himself and ate them in a calm manner, it was delicious.

After getting a full stomach and having his mind wander in different directions, he remembered what he was doing before his parents arrived. He was messing around with mana, to be more specific, he was trying to manipulate mana, and seeing the opportunity to distract himself he chose to continue from where he stopped.

Now that he moved the coffee table away again, he sat down on the floor, and focused on the mana inside him, after a few minutes of feeling it he used his will to move it to his hand, and he failed the first few times, however at the 7th time, with a lot of concentration he was successful in creating a almost transparent ball of mana the size of 2/3 of his palm that was floating almost touching his stretched open hand, after messing around for a few more minutes with the ball he changed its  shape to multiple things, getting more and more complex each iteration that he dissipated and created, despite it not being mana intensive to create "simple" mana constructs, creating a stupid amount of them like Steve was doing, was obviously expensive in mana, so he was feeling like he ran a 50 km marathon without stopping, it was a unfortunate side effect of mana depletion, it could been worse like straight up death similar to other stories. But noticing that his reserves were very very low, he decided to make a pause and drink some tea while relaxing on the couch to recover his reserves.

And 2 hours later and quite a few cups of tea, Steve was ready to continue his research. After making one or two mana constructs again he had a small though:

'hmmm, if i can manipulate normal mana, what about elemental mana? Can't hurt to try, let's  see if i can try changing it's type somehow'

So he did it, he created again a small mana ball, he tried to manipulate it a few times before he tried a simpler approach, he willed it to change while imagining the familiar sensation of elemental mana he felt before, starting with fire mana. He was successful, however not without a lot of concentration, willpower and some time, the result, a small flame like  that is the equivalent of 1/4 of the original ball of mana, he then dissipated the fire mana, he did it with the elements he knew, next was water, the result being a small undulating bluish cloud of mist that stayed in his palm, next was air, the result was a small ball of moving air that he could not see except for the mana signature through soul gaze, and lastly earth with the result being a small brownish rock crystal. Except for their elemental characteristics, they were pretty much the same, for example, their method of creation, how to dissipate them and their amounts that were from 1 to 0.25 of their base mana, which means a 25% conversion rate.

For the next 2 and half hours he was doing his small research and training, also doing stuff like instead of changing the ball, he changed a small portion of his reserve and brought out this part. When he was finished with his mana reserves again he was rather satisfied because after repeated use, he got a better control over his normal mana and his elemental one and getting his conversion hate up to 30%, but don't be mistaken, it still used a considerable amount of both willpower and concentration to realize those feats of manipulation every time. 

He was again relaxing on the couch drinking a different type of tea this time when he suddenly had a epiphany as he slapped his own forehead in realization, leaving a red hand print behind:

'HOW!? How i could let that fly over my head just like that? That should have been the first thing i noticed and tried out!'

As to not let you wondering about what mysteries of the cosmos he is talking about, let me clarify it for you, the mana, the one right in front of his eyes, the thing he see everywhere and also being the most common one, yes, the ambient mana that was surrounding him this entire time and somehow he missed, his epiphany was to try what he hid with his own mana to the ambient one.

As he recovered around half of his mana reserves, he went for it and tried to manipulate the mana right in front of him, but in that moment he realized something, again, it was hard, the principal reason was that it is around him, everywhere, all the time, so you brain choses to ignore it like it does to air, which makes you only notice it when there is a high concentration of it or a lack of it.

'so that was the reason for the magic circle that Gregor made, i knew it was to make sensing mana easier, but i did not expect to be this hard without it'

After committing to memory the mana sensations he remembers he tried for a hour or two of pure concentration and literally trying to manipulate something basically invisible he finally succeeded in getting a grasp on the ambient mana, but again did he look around himself and when he saw the obvious blobs of elemental mana floating around, he was feeling like the dumbest man alive, just like when he spent a entire day trying to resolve a math problem but later discovered that the answer was so simple a child could resolve it.

Putting his nostalgia aside, he put a firm grip around this sensation and tried to manipulate it, something that became obvious was that it was relatively more taxing on concentration and willpower, if it was to be put in a quantifiable number it would be something like, 55% more concentration and 80% more willpower, however these quantities are added on top of the concentration and willpower needed to manipulate his own mana reserves. Without breaking the norma, he went and did many exercises with this newly obtained ability. It went basically identical to manipulating his own mana, but something that surprised him a little was that every time he manipulated ambient mana, he would end up using a small amount of his own reserve, by his calculations it was that for every 2 points of mana he would expend 1 of his own, not that it was miraculous power but it was still better than using his own mana directly.

After doing his "research" and getting his reserves empty, he got up and took a look at the wall clock and got a small surprise, it was 22:11, he was so distracted that he didn't see the time fly by, to not waste time he proceeded to do his daily business before going to bed not much later than 22:55, and falling asleep with a smile on his face thinking of the possibilities of magic.