Intense Daily Life

The days began to pass by faster than Kayn expected. Every day was the same routine, but it was a vigorous and intense routine.

Every morning, he would have to wake up right at dawn and run around the property of his family. The entire perimeter was around 12 km and surrounded by woods. He was assigned to run around until he was called for breakfast, so most of the time he could lap around the property once or twice.

Fortunately, with his body getting stronger when his mana core formed, he was able to do physical exercise much longer than he used to be able to.

After breakfast, which his mother would make, he trained with his father until lunch. Ezekiel would teach Kayn how to make use of his racial abilities for fire and also applying that property to lightning. Kayn wasn't able to produce the black fire or lightning that he did when his mana core formed, but he learned to produce normal lightning.

Every day his control over these two elements would soar after each training session. This wasn't all Ezekiel would teach him though. He was also trained in his father's personal martial arts and forced to spar using his both swords, one sword, and no sword. Kayn almost enjoyed the swordplay as much as learning control over fire and lightning control, but just almost, magic was always more fun in his mind.

After lunch and until dinner, it was Lydia's turn with Kayn.

During this time Kayn would continue to learn more about healing and was able to put it into practice more effectively since he now had a mana core. Lydia would also focus on Kayn's control over all elements.

Her goal during this time was to have Kayn become proficient in all basic elements up to the standard recorded tier 2 spells she and the Vestarius family owned. He was taught up to tier 3, but was not able to perform them due to his lack of mana. Since each core stage was generally accompanied by two tiers of spells, tier 3 was generally for those with a stage 2 core.

After dinner, Kayn spent a couple of hours with Zerana. She didn't allow Lydia or her husband to overhear what she was teaching Kayn.

Her time spent with Kayn discussed anything and everything having to do with Obsidian Void Dragons and teaching and him performing the final few forms of a martial routine that to Kayn had learned previously from her. The other lessons included innate strengths and weaknesses of Obsidian Void Dragons.

However, their major weakness was strong light elemental users who could use it offensively, but since Kayn had a high affinity for the light element from his father, she assumed that he wouldn't have that major weakness.

Lastly, she would instruct him on the varying deviant darkness elements. Void dragons, were not called void dragons because of the realm they resided in. It was because of their unique deviant form of the darkness element.

The void element had many uses and there was a variety of spells invented by their species throughout time. There were many and she wanted to teach Kayn everything there was to know even if she couldn't currently demonstrate.

For the last part of the night and before he would go to sleep, Kayn spent his time alone in his study putting practical use to all of the knowledge he gained. Kayn discovered that no one had thought of fusing the elements with their bodies yet, but since healing spells affected body tissue, he figured why not try?

He was able to utilize mana to stitch minor wounds back together before he even had a mana core, so infusing the elements into his tissues seemed the next logical step. However, he used extreme caution when approaching this area. As it was unknown, he didn't want to ruin his journey right when it started.

Every day he would try infusing different elements to his tissues without injuries, with injuries, while doing exercise, any situation he could think of. He started out only using his fingers for infusions, but after a lot of testing was able to infuse both of his arms without much worry.

The results of Kayn's experiments per element were as follows:

Water would allow for more flexibility in his movements, but it wouldn't make him bend around things like he hoped for. His bones were solid and no matter how much he tested; he couldn't get them to bend without excruciating pain.

Wind worked to make his movements quicker and more agile. This was essentially exactly what he thought it would be, nothing exciting, but still useful.

Earth hardened every tissue he infused it into making it denser, but he was aware that he needed to place certain limits on it. He didn't want to accidentally infuse earth with his brain and make himself dull, or somehow turn himself into a rock.

He couldn't figure out a good use for infusing fire with his tissues yet. Fire caused his skin to burn and tissues heat up. An individual's own mana wasn't supposed to be able to harm them, but apparently this didn't apply to fusion magics.

Light, naturally did what it was best at, healing tissues. However, another interesting use he discovered was that it could purge necrotic tissues. This made sense since a group of people who classified themselves as "holy paladins" would use light to purge the undead.

The dark element was another finicky element for fusions. He discovered he could cut off his sensory receptors with it, but stopping the fusion wouldn't just bring his senses back. He had to repair his nerves in order to gain feeling back. In this sense he figured infusing lightning would be better since he could just stop the electrical impulses that were sending signals.

Darkness was also good for cleaning out wounds and any substances or tissues of wounds that were foreign to the body. Kayn determined dark would require much further testing.

With his previous world's anatomical knowledge, he was able to control elements in his body to speed up hormonal and chemical processes in his body. This would allow him to increase his natural healing in the case he didn't have enough mana to cast a full spell or use light fusion.

Controlling small amounts of an element inside his blood was much easier than fusing an entire part of his body with one.

Lastly, he fused with the lightning element. He took into account that many of the body's functions utilized electrical gradients and impulses. He was able to speed up his thinking processes and drastically increase muscle movements and reaction time. He also confirmed his previous nerve theory as well.

By the time Kayn's experimentation and results got to this point. He was already halfway through his tenth year in this life.

His sister, Clementine, had just turned 14 and shortly thereafter formed a mana core. This put her on par with what was considered a genius for this world.

While Kayn didn't get a party thrown for him since he was young and his parents wanted to hide that he had formed his own core at a mere 8 years old, they planned to throw a fitting event for their daughter.

Kayn didn't end up attending the festivities since his parents were both worried about someone realizing he had access to mana as he wasn't very good at hiding the natural aura a mage had around themselves. He secluded himself inside his study and continued to experiment.

Clementine was disappointed she couldn't experience that special event with her little brother, but she understood. Since she would only spend a couple weeks at home per year, both before and after the party Kayn didn't do any studying or training. Aside from the training time his sister wanted, he would just follow her around and do whatever she wanted.

He spent every minute when he was awake with her and even managed to teach her a few tricks he had picked up from his time spent learning in the last 2.5 years.

The only unfortunate thing about Clementine's core were her aptitudes. She had a minor affinity for the darkness element and an extremely high affinity for fire, but that was it.

She couldn't use any magic aside from spells using those two elements besides mere tier 0 cantrips that couldn't do much. This also meant she wasn't able to use lightning like her father, but her control over fire was almost just as good as Kayn's who had already practiced for 2 years.

However, Kayn was better at infusing his will on fire than Clementine, so he was able to take over her fire spells with their innate ability better than she was at resisting him. After Clementine left for the academy once again, Kayn went back to his daily routine.

He ended up determining that a spell's tier was only determined by the amount of mana needing to be spent to cast it. While most were more complex as the tier increased, it didn't necessarily determine their output.

He designed several spells that could be considered as tier 3 based on output, but in terms of input most of them were tier 1 and only a few at tier 2. Most researchers of magic didn't believe that it was possible to use less mana for the same power of higher tier spells, so Kayn was proud of himself.

Before he knew it, he was already halfway to 13 and it was time for Clementine's coming of age celebration.