Chapter 4: CHAPTER 3 – Training like the first time

            Next morning, I wake up at midday, that is kind of like my normal waking hour, if not later, and start to remember what I did the first time I felt any kind of energy inside my body. It was a few months after I started getting treatment for my mid to almost crippling depression.

            I was in cloud nine, I mean, I normally feel like an empty shell, like there’s some void inside that you can’t fill no matter how hard you try, even now, though even till this day I don’t know how to explain how that feels like, nor why or when it started, it was with me all my life, just that it got worst since I was 16 almost 17.

             But that day, that day I felt something inside me, going around my body in a cyclic way, circulating by itself and trying to repair what I supposed was broken at the moment.

             It was so sudden.

             I think it had to be with the medication at that time.

             My brain wasn’t working as it was supposed to be, my psychiatrist told me that probably it was like that since the day I was born. To make it function normally I had to take some medicine. Maybe that was what brought that change into my life, maybe it activated something in my brain that was sleeping or sealed since birth, and was what got me into what I call “the second part of my life”, a not so fancy name.

            At first I thought “That’s it! This is what I was missing all my life!”, and started studying the new feeling by myself.

            People often said that I’m intelligent, that I can learn and do whatever I propose to, though I still don't know why. But this, this was something that made me feel like a genius, it felt like something I knew to do from the start, something so natural to me that I quickly grasped how to circulate it. But still couldn’t do anything with it, though.

            As an avid reader of fantasy novels and web novels, I quickly thought about mana, and that maybe the world would change into a novel’s world where monsters would roam all over the place and people would have to fight against them, but I was partially wrong. I did have some mana inside my body, though more like some unidentified energy, but I soon found the world stayed the same, it was only me who changed.

            “Great, now I’m different in a completely new kind of way…”- Is what I thought at the time. Still happy though, that I could “find” whatever was missing inside me. Oh boy was I wrong about that it, but that’s not a story for today.

            Getting a few days ahead, and after testing and testing how to use this “mana” inside of me, I found out I could basically reinforce my body concentrating energy on the part I would like to reinforce, and keeping it there. That was my first achievement, and when I discovered it could actually deplete if used, even if it was kept inside the body.

            With that new knowledge, I started testing more and more, and soon I could extend that energy outside my body. With every testing, practicing and exhausting, the energy got thicker and more plenty, and I became more used to it, being able to do more and more.

             At first it was just like a cyan fog, maybe even a lighter color, but with time, it started to become something more material, more physical, I could shape it little by little. And after some time, I could actually use it to push things around just repulsing it out of my hand.

            And it wasn't everything. My body also started to change little by little, not outside at first, but inside, my senses were growing sharper and stronger.

             With that, I could start feeling the natural energy around me, it was mind-blowing, starting to feel what seems like a whole sea surrounding you, just lighter, like being inside a room full of an invisible fog.

             Thankfully, it was a growing change, so I didn’t need to automatically adapt to that new sensation, or I would be damned for minutes, maybe even hours.

            And just as I tried to touch that, to the moment unknown, energy with my mana, I noticed that my mana changed, it adapted to the surrounding energy and started absorbing it into my body, until I couldn’t take anymore.

             After that, I started sensing both energies inside my body, what I thought was mana, and what I absorbed from the outside. They were cohabitating, even mixing themselves here and there, but still perfectly balanced, like it was that way from the start.

             Using it wasn’t any problem, it worked exactly the same way, but with different properties maybe? At the time I didn’t know, but it was a more constructive than destructive energy, helping me regenerating faster, or magnifying other energies, especially my own mana.

             I could do other things with it, like sensing anything around me. It was weird, like having eyes all over my body, but not "seeing", but more like feeling? Like everything around me was at my grasp, whether it was a little speck of dust or some insect.

             Without a need to say, it was hard adaptating to that feeling. Even more hard doing it passively. Even then, after a hard training, I started sensing everything 5 meters around me automatically, and if I tried hard, I could expand that to at least 25 meters, even 30 in my best condition.

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             After a few tries, I learnt how to use them both at once, and the effects were really obvious, starting with the fact that the reinforcement was stronger with both energies, and it made it possible to interact with a few elements around me, like wind, earth, water and fire. Though it wasn't everything I could do with it, I still needed some time before I could discover all the possibilities that it had.

             Manipulating those elements wasn’t possible at first, but I could feel them, and somehow replicate a little bit of that feeling in everything I did with my mana.

             It was faster with fire, and I had to work really hard with water and earth, in the case of wind, while it was harder than fire, it wasn’t near the same as with the other two. But it wasn't bad, I barely had anything to do other than work, so this new experiences I was having kept me occupied and with no time to feel that void that got me on the edge of life.

             With all that said, natural energy was so familiar to me, something I never thought would be problematic to handle.

             And that brings me back to the present, to me trying to mix mana and natural energy as one.

             “It never was so hard with natural energy… It is almost like a part of myself, but this body… it just keeps rejecting it… At least I can keep it for emergency use, but this is not how it should be…”

             As destiny have it, my training wasn’t going any well… No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make both kinds of energy coexist naturally inside this new body of mine.

              May I try using both of them, everything within 5 meters around me would explode, including me, and that's only if I don't increase my mana pool. So, after 4 days of trying, I decided to stop.

            “Well, guess it’s time to start concentrating on the physical part… I’ll start doing some calisthenics, and maybe weight lifting in some gym around here… And while at it, let’s try to get this mana pool a little bit bigger, and some reinforcing with the little mana I currently have…”

            So, I started doing some basic training to see how much I could do with this body. Little by little I was intensifying the training, mana training in the morning (just circulating it and depleting it as much as I could) and physical training from noon to night, with few stops to eat, sleep, bathroom, and the walking distance to a gym down the street, which I did pay for a membership, mind you.

            Seems like, even though I’m an orphan, I still have some money to my name, at least enough to survive, but as Kim Hajin, I have a big debt thanks to Cube, to the Hero Association to be precise.

            The good part is, my current body is not so untrained as I first thought, and I also can barely reinforce it using the little mana I have, though not for long; also, I could make my mana pool grow a little bit, but nothing worth noting.

            The bad part is, I can’t do nothing more, this is practically nothing if I compare it to my previous self. Really hope to get everything back when synchronization finish.

            “Guess it’s almost time for getting into Cube, like Kim Hajin, it seems that I HAVE to be at Cube, otherwise, I don’t know for why other reason I would be part of the combatant class on the Agent Military Academy”

             It was almost time for the plot to start, and I still didn’t know what I should be doing. I know Hajin has to complete the story, but what about me? What do I have to do? Help him? Just observe? Or maybe even antagonize him? Well, guess I’ll try to get some fun while I try to decipher it.

            “Just 2 days to start… I haven’t been this excited in years… Guess I’m still trying to find whatever can fill that void huh…”

            With that last thought leaving my mouth, I start to focus completely on my training. Can’t trust that I will get my real-self back.

             For the last two days, I barely had anything to eat, and just slept for 2 hours a day, all just to train as much as I could. Thanks to circulating the mana in my body, and to the little natural energy I can gather at once, I could keep up with the intense training, helping my body restore to at least a decent shape after each hard training session.

             “Damn… really felt like the first time I trained and went hardcore mode on exercising… Guess tomorrow is the day huh… Let’s see how it all goes, worst thing comes, either I keep up with my current effort, or blow myself up mixing both nature energy and mana inside this body”

             Then I finally got to sleep for more than 2 hours, in preparation for the next day, the day I would finally get to go to Cube, to start exploring this weird adventure called “The Novel’s Extra”.

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