Chapter 54 - Training Montage

"Wrong! Gaige, you're losing control in your swing. In order to complement your swordsmanship with your cultivation method, your technique needs to be more fluid and must also exhibit an aura of suppression. For that, you need to time the release of your dark-infused mana with each sword form," Wei Zao instructed from the side-lines.

The teacher-student duo was currently situated in an empty training ground, courtesy of Gaige Bori's father. Although Wei Zao wasn't able to purchase a suitable weapon for Gaige from The Burning Forge, his father was quick on the uptake and provided an alternative of superior quality almost immediately. Apparently, the Bori Clan had made a huge windfall in the market after a successful bout against their biggest competitor. Wei Zao didn't put much thought into that matter, his main focus was on training Gaige for the tournament.

"But Teacher Way, I'm finding it difficult to manifest the dark mana..." Gaige said in an exhausted voice. Even though he had been diligently practising the cultivation method provided by Wei Zao, which he now called Insight into the Abyss, he hadn't been able to make a breakthrough in moulding and controlling darkness mana, which was supposed to be a bloodline trait of an Abyssal Wyrm.

Wei Zao worried about this problem for a very long time. It was something even the Omniscient Library was unable to solve. However, this was within Wei Zao's expectations. Mages weren't technically supposed to have the ability to leverage their bloodline traits before breaking through to Foundation Establishment. Although Wei Zao was able to accelerate the activation in Gaige, it would be asking too much of the kid to become proficient in it while he was still in the Middle-stage of Mana Condensation realm.

Gaige shook his head to clear his mind once again and entered a concentrated state. He assumed the first stance in the sword techniques supplementing the Insight into the Abyss. He exhaled deeply and started to circulate his mana based on the instructions he recollected from the manual.

'Unending Strike!' He recounted internally while shifting between the stages in the first stance. His movements were fluid and connected. Each stroke matched up with the next as if it were an elegant dance.

With a jerk, he then switched to the second stance, 'Suppressing Force!'

The motion maintained its fluidity, however, an aura of suppression manifested following each strike and slash. Every time the blade jerked and shifted direction, a wave of invisible force propagated a short distance. Any regular mortal would be unable to register this with their senses. However, Wei Zao could track these forces with his enhanced senses as a Foundation Establishment Mage.

That's right! He had only recently managed to break through from the Mana Condensation realm and stepped into the true world of Magehood. With the assistance of the Omniscient Library, he was able to optimise his own cultivation method, and through a rigorous process of assimilating and merging other cultivation methods, he managed to optimise it further and developed the Omniscient Path method of cultivation.

It was so phenomenal that it even amplified his mana capacity and physical strength beyond the limits of another mage in the same level. Therefore, Wei Zao was confident that he could go toe-to-toe, which mages in the Internal stage of the Foundation Establishment realm with ease.

With his improved senses and perception, Wei Zao zeroed in on Gaige's technique as the boy transitioned into the final stance in the first set of sword techniques associated with the Insight into the Abyss, 'Into the Void!'

These techniques were devised by borrowing and modifying existing sword styles and tailoring them to Gaige's cultivation. Of course, this was all done in the Omniscient Library, so there weren't any issues with it. Since Wei Zao only had access to the basic sword forms, the book he compiled for Gaige could only support him till he broke through into Foundation Establishment. By which time Wei Zao hoped to get his hands on a few more books and develop more advanced forms.

The last stance in the first set was where Gaige usually stumbled. He had to infuse darkness into his circulating mana and expel it through his sword at the same time as he transitioned through the steps.

Gaige concentrated to the max as he channelled his mana through his core and attempted to infuse darkness into it. He recited the mantras affiliated with his cultivation in his head to enter the perfect state of mind to achieve this.

He raised the sword above his head and prepared himself. With a forceful motion, the sword descended. As it separated the air during its descent, a void-black streak formed in its wake and extended forward as a growing crescent before fizzling out immediately.

"Wonderful!" Wei Zao exclaimed and approached Gaige, who collapsed into a puddle of his own sweat. The entire process had drained his mana and left him

"I... did... it..." Gaige repeated through heavy breaths.

"Yes, you did! Yes. You. Did." Wei Zao said with a bright smile plastered across his face. He then noticed the deflated body of Gaige panting on the ground and added with a chuckle, "Just don't use it right at the beginning."

____

"Master. Can you take a look at this?" Markus asked as he brought over a book to Guy, who was once again chatting with Al in his office.

"What happened to your book? It looks like it died and came back to life," Al commented as he leaned over to take a peak.

Markus didn't bring the workbook Guy had "printed out" for him before, this was his own personal writing book. And Al's description perfectly described its current state.

One must know that owning a copybook was a luxury in this world. The process of making and binding them required a lot of manpower and man-hours, and so they were expensive to purchase. Furthermore, since this world lacked a proper printing press, a decent publication was even more costly since trained scribes were required to copy and typeset them.

Therefore most students would often purchase unbound hardback covers and sheets of paper separately. When needed, they would bind additional empty sheets into the hardback covers using a length of binding thread. Once the hardback cover was filled, they would purchase another one and start the process anew.

This method was economical and was the general trend amongst students of all social standings.

As an orphan without much to his name, Markus had to come up with alternative strategies. Since he couldn't even purchase hardback covers, he had to find defective ones from second-hand bins or the garbage from book stores. Furthermore, he couldn't afford the purchase of sheet packages, and thus he had to source scrap paper from disposed of books and make full use of them. To that end, he even shrunk his handwriting to a near indiscernible size just to cram in as much information into the page as possible.

The worst part was that due to the lack of sufficient hardback covers, he had to shove in more sheets than capacity into his last one, which itself was in a state of ruin.

Markus dropped his head in embarrassment. Al noticed this and quickly realised his faux pas. Right as Markus was about to retrieve his book, Guy exclaimed, "Did you figure out a way to modularise the targeting and ranged components from spells?"

Markus nodded and explained, "Right! I was going through those spells once again and found that I could isolate the modules that governed the ranged aspects of spellcasting into a separate subroutine. So then in practice, I cast this subroutine using the wand and cast the main sequence using my own capacity, I can reduce the mana consumption by half!"

As Markus spoke excitedly, he completely forgot about his earlier embarrassment. Al turned to Guy and mouthed 'Thank you,' to which Guy reciprocated with a slight nod and a smile.

"That's amazing!" Guy chimed in when Markus finished. He then turned the page and found a similar spell circle, except with some variations in it.

"What's this?" He asked,

"Oh. Even though I was able to create those subroutines, I couldn't apply them to all the cases. In situations where the subroutine wasn't applicable, I had to make a new one. I tried to generalise them into one standard general subroutine, however, the final result was a little beyond my ability at the moment," Markus declared while carefully turning the pages to another section containing multiple smaller spell circles.

Al nodded in acknowledgement and chimed in with his opinion, "It seems that the generalised subroutine to tackle the ranged components of spellcasting requires you to cast up to three different spell circles at once. It should be beyond your limit as a Mana Condensation mage, but I think once you breakthrough, it should become possible."

Markus nodded solemnly and retrieved his copybook.

"On that note. I just noticed something. Did you break through to the Middle stage?" Al asked with elation sparkling in its eyes.

Markus smacked his forehead and unleased a smile capable of brightening up the room three times over. "I just broke through last night! I was going to tell Master right away, but today when I woke up, I got a burst of inspiration on this generalised subroutine..." he finished with some embarrassment.

Guy chuckled and patted Markus' shoulder, "That's great! I'm so proud of you."

Upon hearing the praise Markus' eyes started to tear up, "Umm... I should probably go practise..." he muttered and ran out of the room.

The two people remaining in the room smiled wholeheartedly as they observed the boy's receding figure.