"You don't have to make a decision right now. I agree with your grandmother; I just want you to know that. You can think about it for a few minutes and decide later."
My parents were the only ones who spoke to me; my siblings just watched from behind.
"Parents, don't worry. I've already made up my mind. I understand the difficulties of trying to master three affinities. I’ll need to dedicate more time to mastering them at the same level. Since I awakened so young, I can afford to do it. My decision will not change."
Both of them looked straight into my eyes, smiled, hugged each other, and nodded.
"Then, how do I eliminate the other affinities?"
"Little boy, I'll take care of it. You'll feel a slight mana leak in a moment, but don't worry. When it's over, your cube will refill with only the three chosen affinities."
My grandmother approached the bracelets and began injecting her mana into them, controlling the flow between the bracelets and the vessels. Little by little, I lost mana until I could only feel the remaining affinities: Ice, Electricity, and Gravity.
The sensation was strange; I felt my mana as completely “white,” without affinity, yet at the same time, it carried those three affinities.
"Can I ask a question?", My grandmother squinted at me, suspicious, and nodded gently.
"Why does my mana cube feel like it has no affinity and yet I can feel the three different affinities?" It was a truly mysterious feeling.
"That's a phenomenon that's hard to explain. Our cube constantly absorbs mana to refill itself when we use it. Before this ceremony, your cube only absorbed mana aligned with the ten elements. After the ceremony, that changed. Now your cube absorbs pure mana from the environment."
I saw my grandmother cover her lips with her index finger and thumb — she always does that when she needs to concentrate.
"You can feel your three affinities fluttering all over your cube, playing with the pure ambient mana. From that, we can conclude something: mana is completely pure and, at the same time, mixed with each person’s respective affinities."
"That's fascinating. That means, no matter where I am, as long as there's ambient mana, I'll be able to use my three affinities, right?"
"Yes, Maki. Just remember: during a fight, mana absorption is almost nonexistent. Never risk relying on refilling your cube in a fight to the death."
My grandmother's voice sounded very serious at the end. Personally, I don't love fighting without a cause or for self-defense, and I've never shown any signs of being battle-crazed.
I’ve never had a serious or deadly fight in this world, so I don’t know how I’ll feel in that moment of adrenaline. I just hope I don’t end up hating myself after killing someone.
I talked with my family for another ten minutes, then everyone left — they couldn’t waste the last day my siblings had with us. Tomorrow, after lunch, they’ll return to school and the Weri County. I’ll miss them a lot.
Now alone, I’m heading to my training room. I want to train my new magic; now I can not only use pure mana but also three different affinities, each vastly different from the others.
"Let's start with Electricity!"
I focused on the pure mana in my cube, channeled it through my body, and materialized it in my hand — a small ball of electricity. The difference compared to a ball of pure mana was obvious. Electricity felt dangerous, like it wanted to destroy, break, electrocute, and tear apart.
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Very interesting. Electricity felt extremely strong for offense. When I have enough control, I’ll try applying it to short- and mid-range attacks.
I remembered reading in some novel about uses of electricity: enhancing senses, speeding up brain response, and delivering devastating electric blows capable of breaking through any defense.
"Now onto Ice!"
I created the same sphere, but the affinity was different. Ice felt very different compared to electricity. Ice gave me a feeling of serenity, hardness, and flexibility.
I just remembered something: I’m almost sure that ice has a lower density compared to water because the freezing of its molecules leaves empty spaces between them. Maybe, with meticulous control, I could infuse more mana into it without increasing its size. I’ll have to note that down for later.
"And finally, Gravity... I'm scared."
When I chose it, I already knew how dangerous gravity could be. Just hearing the word makes me think of a black hole — the very definition of death in space, where gravity is so strong it traps even light without letting it escape.
I was afraid to create a small ball like I had with the other affinities. What if it started pulling everything in without me being able to stop it? What if I lost control and it grew exponentially?
I had a skill in mind — less risky, not requiring delicate control, and the first thing that came to mind when I thought of gravity.
"NO PAIN, NO GAIN!"
I dropped some leaves from the nearby trees to measure the radius if the ability worked. I focused all my concentration on it: I wanted to create a field around me where gravity was heavier — only affecting my enemies, not me.
I don’t have deep knowledge of gravity, and my mana control is still basic, but despite all that, I decided to give it my best.
For the first few seconds, nothing happened. I almost gave up until I felt a small change. Some of the leaves froze midair, as if an external force held them in place.
This ability has great potential for the future but many current limitations: I got a headache from focusing so much, the force applied was almost negligible, the radius of the ability was around 50 cm, and it consumed a huge amount of mana. I could probably only maintain it for about five continuous minutes — it’s pretty useless if you think about the area and pressure applied.
But someday, it could become one of my trump cards. For now, it's just a rough project to polish.
Lying on the floor, I entered a dilemma: should I train short- or long-range abilities?
My strength lies in close combat where I can use my twin swords — it would be wonderful to polish my best weapon. On the other hand, I could practice long-range attacks with ice or electricity magic, creating a new weapon for my arsenal and getting magic training too. What a hard choice...
After a few minutes, I decided to practice long-range magic. I leaned toward it because using magic is something new and fascinating to me.
It was time to plan my schedule for these 26-hour days:
Wake up at 4:20 AM, practice with my grandmother from 4:30 to 6:30, continue practicing alone until 8:30, then have breakfast. Return by 9:30 to practice magic until 1:00 PM, have lunch, resume training at 2:00 PM, train for eight more hours with a one-hour break to eat something, go home, have dinner to recover energy, shower, and sleep around 11:00 to 11:30 PM. Only six hours of sleep sounded rough. If I noticed any fatigue, I would need to improve my sleep quality and extend sleep time.
I began forming ice balls until I ran out of magic. After a few hours, it took me less time to form them, make them bigger, and control a larger number. It still required all my mental effort just to control three slightly bigger ice balls.
Once I felt more comfortable managing three ice balls, I decided to try pushing more mana into one of them.
"It’s impossible... they'll keep exploding if I split my focus on two tasks."
Maintaining two balls while gradually feeding mana into a third was too complicated for my current level.
"Maybe I should just try with one for now."
I canceled two of the ice balls and kept the last one. Mana started filling the empty spaces inside the ice, making it much heavier and denser.
I was so excited by my achievement that I stopped monitoring how much mana I was injecting. When I noticed the spell felt unstable, I panicked slightly, stopped the mana influx, and tried to control it before it exploded.
Slowly, I calmed the spell. At first, I thought of canceling it or removing mana from it, but I rejected those ideas for one simple reason: I needed a bit of adrenaline to push myself 120%. After a few seconds, I managed to stabilize it. It drained my mental energy considerably. I played with the sphere for a few seconds before canceling it.
I repeated the planned training circuit all day until exhaustion — another day successfully completed.
I gained some juicy levels, and where I saw the most growth was in my mana control. Playing with so many ice spells definitely helped.
Maki: 8 years old – Basic Amethyst
Skills:
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Swordsmanship – Level 12 → Level 13
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Enhanced Senses – Level 8 → Level 9
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Quick Step – Level 10 → Level 11
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Mana Control – Level 10 → Level 13