Mental training initial completion

I did not like thinking about my previous life and I especially loathed talking about it.

It wasn't for any major reason, nor was it because of my refusal to accept my death. No, it was because… well, because to a certain extent I felt a deep contempt for many aspects of that life.

The main one being my parents who, like many Asian parents, had been extremely authoritarian and controlling. They constantly controlled my every move, refusing to let me eat certain foods because they were "too low quality" or "you wouldn't like that anyway," while insisting I ate other things and refusing to let me do anything without their permission.

That's not to say that my previous life was majorly horrific or anything. No, I had actually lived a rather privileged life, especially compared to my current one, as the third son of an upper middle-class family. But despite that life of privilege, it was the small things about that life that just made me hate it.

Unfortunately, Nicklaus Flamel picked up on that. 'Unfortunately' because, after accepting his sponsorship, he'd decided that the first 'guidance' he'll give will be on the one thing that'd speed up everything else.

Occlumency.

Which was… understandable, as much as it annoyed me to say it. After all, the sooner I got it to a sufficient level, the sooner I gained the boost to memory and learning, the more efficient my learning would be, and the less time I'd waste to pick up stuff I needed to know. Not to mention that I intended to learn it myself anyways and learning it through the 'shortcut', so to speak, that Flamel should be great.

It's just that the shortcut involved invoking really strong negative emotions, across the whole spectrum, and use the echoes of those emotions to bypass the whole 'sorting emotions' part of Occlumency that came after the 'saturate brain with magic' part. It just so happened that my past life invoked a lot of the necessary emotions.

Which, while annoying to recall, wouldn't be too bad. But that wasn't the worst part of this method. Hell, if it was just that then it would be miles better than the alternate 'fast' method. That being the method involving someone repeatedly using the most violent version of mind reading possible on me to cause my mind to automatically build up defences.

"So, you mean to tell me that your parents purposefully hid your uniform to get you fired?" no, the worst part was that I had to have an active discussion about it to achieve the 'right' emotions.

How he knew what the 'right' emotion was, I didn't know. But seeing as it worked, with my occlumency almost hitting the self-sustaining stage already, I'd decided to go with it. Not to mention that not only was this way still better than the other method, but also the fact that I didn't just accept his offer for guidance only to ignore the guidance he gave.

Though telling him to fuck off was very tempting.

"Yes, they did," I replied, letting the irritation spike I felt when on remembering the time I discovered that little… indiscretion from my parents, continue without suppressing it.

"Hmm, I suppose that's understandable, you were too young for a job anyways," for a second, despite knowing that he was doing this on purpose, the irritation surged into rage, "channel."

Immediately I channelled my magic into my head, focusing on the rage, and felt the emotion get 'scooped', from the source up, into the mental 'container', right next to the 'containers' for irritation and hate, and closed and locked the metaphorical door. Then, with the rage locked away for now, I did the same for the apathy that came with the absence of rage.

Taking a deep breath and opening the locks on the two new mental containers, I felt the occlumency 'set' into my mind. Already I could feel the improved memory and sense that I'd no longer need to spend hours every day maintain my occlumency anymore.

"Judging by the look on your face I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you finally got rage and apathy organised?" I don't even get to give any sort of reply, "Yep? Great. Now here's the guidance I promised."

I look at the massive leather-bound books he just dropped on the table in front of me, pulling the one on top towards me and flipping through a few worn pages, before looking back up at him, "this is all in another language."

"Yes, a mixture of French, Latin and Sanskrit to be specific," I try to keep my irritation contained, something made easier by my new milestone in occlumency, "the books on the bottom are enchanted to teach you how to read all those."

I briefly considered asking for an English copy, but just as quickly dismissed the idea. Interactions with him had made it obvious that it'd be pointless, so it'd be better to ask the more prudent question, "can you at least tell me what it's about?"

"Well I suppose I could tell you…" again, I tighten the occlumency keeping the irritation in check, "good, you're already getting used to the emotional control. It's my first journal about my experiences with changing the body and biology, I thought you'd enjoy some of the information in there. That is, once you learn to read it."

Suddenly, the thick book seems far more impressive, "thank you, I guess."

"Not a problem my boy!" suddenly he places a couple more things in front of me, things I quickly recognise, "and here are your supplements and medications. Now, I'm assuming you don't want to stay for dinner."

Pocketing the potions and picking up the wooden rod, that was a portkey back to my room, I nod.

"Well, Nell is going to be sad about that, but it is your choice… Well! Until we meet again."

"Yeah, bye," feeling somewhat awkward, seeing as I actually liked his wife, I just slid the books into my bag and picked up the portkey, "one, two, three password."

With that I was off. Hooked at the waist, on the utterance of the activation phrase, and whisked through the writhing kaleidoscopic tunnel, that all portkeys traversed through, by an unseen force. Unlike the first few times I'd used the reusable portkey, I managed to land on my feet with relative ease. However, I still couldn't avoid knocking over the chair and a couple of books from the desk. Though, in my opinion, it was far better to knock a few things over than the alternative.

Yeah, as it turns out, the part of my nose that is magnetic doesn't react as severely to teleportation through portkey as opposed to teleportation through apparition. While the specific explanation from Flamel went somewhat over my head, it essentially boiled down to apparation causing more electromagnetic disruption due to its more sudden nature and hence making me want to empty my stomach on the floor.

But anyways, all that meant was that I could simply pick up and replace the knocked over items before moving on to my personal studies on human biology and magic's that may improve or fix it.

Something that I'd been doing, for the obvious reasons, to fill the extra time I had free from not having to do the long and drawn out solo Occlumency training, what with Flamel teaching me it with a more efficient method, on top of my usual magic practice. It actually made accepting Flamel's deal feel a lot nicer.

Well, that and the lifting of the trace on me. Something I probably wouldn't have been able to do for at least a couple of years since the thing was actually composed nearly two dozen methods of tracking magic usage, of which only six were blocked with my little ritual. Not that I had to worry about it anymore, I could now practice magic whenever and wherever I wanted.

But anyway, ignoring the ways I justify and cope with accepting Flamel's deal, I should probably put away the supplements and get to the daily grind and start deciphering the book I got from Flamel.

I'll probably learn more from his notes about his magical body experiments than any research I'll do myself anyways.