Mana control

"I had previously told you that affinity determines how much mana can be stored and how easily it can be used. That was the simplified explanation taught to kids so that they don't get confused by the complex theory."

"Mana is an ethereal object which is compressed into strings that form a complex circuit all over the body."

" To simplify it, chanting a spell gives the mana a task to perform, which also specifies the amount extracted for the most part, but in your case, it doesn't seem to."

"That's why you need to learn how to regulate the mana output."

"There are three ways in which you can do this, The path of medium resistance, the path of least resistance and the path of most resistance. I plan on having you learn all of them in 5 or 6 years."

Mother gave him a serious look," The amount of resistance doesn't define the learning difficulty but rather the difficulty in the cast itself."

" I will start with the path of most resistance first as it is the easiest to learn for you. It was taught to me by my teacher to cancel spells abruptly."

Thus, they began their training and like that a year passed.

Now five years old, Noah could morph his entire body into that of others very easily.

'I had once carried out several assassinations by morphing into the people that they trusted.'

'Magic is pretty hard now that I have to control it with conscious effort. Is this why those mages died at my hands? Anyway, I can feel and control my mana circuit to some extent now.'

He called out a small fire wisp, which gave him some warmth before disappearing.

'Alright I should sleep now, it's too late.'

The frost phase was close to ending and Noah was 6 years old now.

Kyra smiled and spoke to Noah," You have finally mastered, 'the path of most resistance', Now we can move on to 'the path with medium resistance'. You won't be attending the Academy till you master all three."

"Mother, Will we be taking part in the festival to celebrate the end of the frost phase?", Noah inquired.

"No, I don't feel like leaving you alone with other children, so we will not be going, I will tell your sister to bring something good for you if you study hard."

Noah faked a smile.

' There goes my opportunity to take a look around as a kid. I'll be going out as a bird I guess.'

After making sure no one was looking he opened the window slightly, morphed into a bluebird and took flight.

He took a flight around the town and collected information from people's conversations who were revealing a lot after having not talked to anyone for a long time, just the thing Noah was looking for.

A lot of juicy information was extracted by a bluebird that day.

'The town is named Noran. The people are very superstitious here. The local lord has just remarried for the third time and has two sons and three daughters from his previous wives. The town has nothing worthwhile in the production sector. It's renowned somewhat as a tradehub. The local brewery's owner is known to have shady dealings.'

Now having some form of situational awareness he fled back to his house and entered through the crevice he left in the window. It was a smooth excursion from the fact that its main purpose was to take a look around the town.

It was Noah's seventh birthday today and they decided to head to an expensive diner. The meal was fine but still left Noah desiring more.

'The cuisine is fine but not like I could experience the fine cuisine in such a small town diner.'

For his seventh birthday, he was given a grimoire that had spells from the beginner to the advanced level. He was barred from reading those pages for now though.

'Sooner or later I'll have to leave this household or I might go insane from being treated like a child. The longest I was undercover was way shorter than this. Now that I can gigantify I can easily avoid being captured by plebs. My growth has been stable these few years, I believe that I might reach my peak before hitting 20 this time around. Beyond it lies a realm of development unknown to me. Let's face those challenges when I have to.'

After another year passed his mother informed him that he had succeeded in the 'medium resistance path' by learning how to modify spell wordings to exactly define the amount of mana that had to be utilised. He had been stumped at this part for a long time as it required him to change the spells whenever his mother defined a new task.

Kyra thought to herself,' Isn't my son a genius, I just gave him a five-year goal to stop him from slacking but he might achieve it at this rate, Let's not boost his ego though.'

"You will be trained in the path of least resistance by your sister, I am not ashamed to tell you that your sister is better at it than me."

"Her vacations will start in a few days that's when she'll start teaching. This time around you will have to learn how to cast without chanting and the knowledge you gained from the previous exercises will help you with this one. After you master this one you'll be able to freely control your mana flow and will no longer be taken away by the bad people."

Noah smiled at her," I'll try my best".

'To not kill them all for making me go through all this.'

His sister Sabrina was 23 years old and didn't interact with him too much usually as both of them were busy with their studies.

She did sometimes take time to give him a few pointers on how to proceed with his study. Now, they sat in front of each other.

"Noah, we will begin after you demonstrate the things you have learned before so I can adjust the way I teach you based on that."

And so he demonstrated his control over the mana circuit and repeated the spell song modifiers he had learned about along with their uses. This earned him a shocked look from his sister.

"It appears that it won't take long before you learn this path as well.'