Mana Body Technique
Regius was less stunned than the others due to his recent conversation with Macarthur but it was his first time hearing the break down as well and he was intrigued but not enough to ponder on it too long Regius would need to return to his dorm and start making more batteries, with the recent changes he made to his equipment they could use the extra power and he'd rather be prepared.
Regius was the first to stand and walk out but Ashlyne was by his side again shortly after. "Hey let's go get food first, the cafeteria is this way." Regius was going to turn her down but at the word of food, he realized just how hungry he truly was so he followed her as the students began to file out of the room. It was a short walk to the cafeteria and when they walked in it looked like a luxurious restaurant.
A waiter came and seated them and handed them the menus. There was food from all around the world and Regius realized he was starved started picking several items as the waiter explained how eating here worked "You pay for food with school points but because you aren't able to get school points for the first 6 months as a freshman you all will eat for free from our basic tier until then. Tiers work as such for each item on the menu you can upgrade it to the next tier by paying double the point cost which will have the kitchen upgrade the ingredients accordingly."
Regius nodded because that seemed simple enough and the waiter walked away afterward. Ashlyne ordered just a main dish and an appetizer and the other students began to be seated as they had the same idea. Ashlyne tapped her wrist and pulled out a booklet that she slid across the table to him. The front of it was blank; it seemed like a leather-bound journal. Regius opened it and knew what it was instantly as he looked back up at Ashlyne. "This is the rest of the mana body technique?" Ashlyne nodded in affirmation. "It's your mother's technique or so I'm told my mother had me practice it alongside the cultivation of my mana space. My uncle Leem didn't realize that Macarthur didn't have the whole thing so now you can practice it. It's untested for sure as for me and you may be the only people that practice it but I don't need to tell you about the benefits of it.
That notebook has the entire thing in it so now you can read it and we can compare notes about it as we progress." Regius smiled, "Thank you for this." Ashlyne made a disgusted face at him and waved it off "You only know how to smile when it comes to mana you junky but oh well." Regius furrowed his eyebrows; she wasn't wrong; he hadn't exactly talked all that much about anything else so he let out a held breath and spoke "You are right and I apologize, you've been kind to me I just don't often talk to people other than my spirit. The nature of my mana made it so that I spent a lot of time researching and creating and along the way my social skills have taken a considerable dip."
Ashlyne smiled at him in a way that lit up the entire room and they conversed about random things until their food came. Ashlyne was done with her food relatively quickly but Regius had filled the table with plates and steadily ate all of it, not leaving a morsel as they then got up to leave. Regius ignored the looks of his classmates as some of them looked at him like he was crazy and others just looked at him with either fear or disgust.
Regius was unbothered by it since these people would never stand on the same stage as him ever; they could only dream of catching up to him so therefore the only person worth talking to was Ashlyne. They made their way back to their dorms and Regius realized that Ashlyne was only a couple of doors down from him. She told Regius that she would be there tomorrow morning to walk to their next class and they went their separate ways. Regius, back in his suite, went straight to his practice room to look at the technique. The first couple pages detailed stage one and Regius scribbled notes on the page about using not only perfected mana but a concept and wrote
"Concept body" on the lines on the side of the page.
He then continued to go through it. The second rank involved compressing all of your ambient mana into your body. It would almost be like making a second layer of skin composed only of your ambient mana. The third stage which was also the final stage was called spirit imprint. This stage wasn't able to be achieved with anyone that did not have an unbound spirit because most bound spirits couldn't just leave the mana space as they pleased and would need to for this.
The unbound spirit would have to move through the layer of ambient mana that now coated the person and leave an imprint of itself through or several and after this, the person would have a tattoo that looked like your spirit and it would serve to treat your whole body like it was a separate mana space almost and would constantly reinforce the body and would level with the user making it so that as the main mana space continued to grow stronger so would also the mana body causing the mana users body to continuously grow stronger and stronger with no defined limit since no one has practiced it as of yet. Regius, thinking there was no time like the present, followed the words on the page and directed Link as he sat in silence.
He initially thought it wouldn't work but slowly he started to feel an itching pain on his skin and then it spread further and before long he was curled in a ball on the floor in complete agony but he continued nonetheless. His concept had forced him into the second rank of the technique when fighting Ashlyne but he wanted to be the first to complete the final step and it was this perseverance that he clung to as he went through the process. After more than 6 hours of complete agony, Regius had done it.
His back now depicted Link in flight and he could feel abnormal levels of strength coursing through his body but before he could test it out a splitting headache came over him and before he knew it he suddenly felt like his head was gonna split in two as his eyes glowed and he was absorbed into his mind. Regius reaching rank three in the mana body technique wasn't supposed to happen so quickly but in doing so he had released the shackles of his demon blood and with it came flooding in memories that had been locked away.