Chapter 352 - Matheus’s Adventure 1

After secretly exiting the city, Matheus quickly made his way over to the nearby forest. He found a few people waiting for him with a packhorse.

He quickly paid the people and took the horse away. Matheus had asked one of the servants in the city lord's mansion to hire someone to bring out his packhorse. Since he wanted to leave anonymously, he obviously couldn't leave through the front gate with his horse since the guards stationed there would have to check on him.

As for going through the construction site, Matheus was the one who had supervised the rebuilding of the walls so he knew the layouts of each site like the back of his hand and knew when to move once the guards had switched between their shifts and breaks.

So sneaking out through the large openings still being repaired was a cinch for him. Now that he was outside with no guards or servants, Matheus felt...a little more adventurous. At least, that's how he was describing the current excitement and anticipation he was feeling.

He quickly mounted his horse that had a minimum of things placed on it and trudged away. Of course, this excitement didn't last long because it immediately started raining a few hours into his journey.

"What dumb luck... I start my first and last adventure on a rainy day..."

Matheus quickly found a spot in a nearby forest to wait out the rain. He looked for the biggest tree in the area and quickly used his glaive to carve out the inside of the tree's trunk. This would have been an impossible task, but ever since he started using the family's mana cultivation technique that was provided and developed by his younger brother, Cecil, feats such as this had become something he could easily do.

"Hoho, man, my bro must've been so lucky! To be able to do things like this from so early on, not to mention he spent almost 4 years on a journey across 2 continents! Just thinking about the many places he's visited and the people he's encountered makes me so envious! Ahh, how lucky..."

After hollowing out the tree's trunk, he quickly went in with his horse. After roughly drying himself, he quickly began unloading his horse and placing the luggage to the side. He roughly dried the horse and fed it some hay before taking out a bowl of water, set it to the side, and let the horse rest.

Matheus saw the dark rain clouds overhead and thought, 'It's going to rain for a while...'

Since it seemed to be this way, he thought that it would be better to just rest for a moment. He also used this downtime to cultivate his mana, something that he would always do whenever he had some free time on his hands.

Maybe it was in his blood, but he was rather keen on getting stronger, just like his other siblings. The only exception to this was probably Luca. He didn't seem to care so much about his personal power.

*****

Once he focused his mind, Matheus began his training. The family's cultivation manual that his brother had developed based on his family's martial arts didn't only mention about the methods to efficiently raise his mana levels and stages, there were also many techniques and skills listed in it.

Skills like Cecil's signatures, the Mana Burst, Ascending Blade, and Flash Cannon were listed inside the manual. Of course, those 2 skills had been perfected through numerous trials and errors on Cecil's part during his long journey, so to reach his level, there were naturally stages and some conditions that had to be met before one was able to perform the technique.

Conditions like how to circulate your mana to efficiently cast the technique while also ensuring the output, how to infuse more mana into the skill to make it stronger, and tips on how to perform the technique using different weapons and the like, it was all in there.

It was just so thoroughly detailed that his family was progressing through their cultivation very smoothly. The only thing that Cecil kept reminding inside the manual was to be extremely careful and patient while one cultivated.

He had experienced the pains of being impatient and suffered from mana backlash which nearly drove him insane so naturally, he wanted to prevent his family members from making the same rash and naive mistakes he did.

Currently, Matheus was trying to learn the Ascending Blade technique and one of the things he was currently working towards was to attain the Energy stage of Weapon Intent. The technique was at first created based on Cecil's rough usage of mana but it had been refined over the years since he had first created it.

And with the help of both his wives, Cecil was able to create a skill manual for it which would enable someone to learn his skill. Naturally, this wasn't something he was going to share with the general public.

He kept it a secret technique of his family and included it only inside his family's core cultivation manual which was only accessible to his immediate family members. The other members of the main family branch, which were his uncles and aunts' families, only had a downgraded version of the Ascending Blade which Cecil had named the Rising Blade.

Anyhow, Matheus had the privilege of learning this skill, and one of the conditions to be able to use Ascending Blade was to attain the first stage of Weapon Intent.

Thanks to Serilla, Cecil was able to make a more comprehensive explanation of how one would be able to attain Weapon Intent. Serilla had been able to attain it through sheer hard work and after sharing her experiences with her husband, Cecil had enough insight to be able to come up with an explanation on how this was possible.

Firstly, Weapon Intent was attainable through 2 methods, first was Enlightenment, which was something that he and their friend, Elizabeth Arks, had been able to do. This method relied heavily on sheer dumb luck. The condition of this method varied from person to person so there was no exact explanation on how one could attain Weapon Intent through this method. All one had to do was be lucky.

The second method was through comprehension. One needed to be able to comprehend the state of mind that is required to release your Intent out into the physical plane. Intent came from the mind, the psyche, or the soul of the cultivator.

If one had a sufficiently tempered mind, they'd be able to easily awaken their Intent and project it out into the physical plane. Serilla was able to do this through years of meditation and sword training which tempered her willpower and mind.

It was much easier to project your will into the physical world through an object, but there were some cases like their father, Kaiser, who was able to release his Intent using purely his body alone.

However, before you could do this, you'd first have to attain and master the 4 stages of Weapon Intent, at least that's what Cecil had concluded with his research, with the first stage being, the Energy Stage.

Having the ability to fully wrap your mana around an object which in this case would be a weapon, without the use of a magic spell, and be able to maintain for a brief period of time would indicate that you had successfully stepped your foot into this stage.

After that, you would have to train and train until you can form a mana cycle around the object which would be able to enhance the sturdiness and strengthen the power of the object.

However, if you were only able to form a cycle with your mana for a short time, then it wouldn't be enough to actually use the full-powered Ascending Blade just yet. One would need to fully master the Energy Stage to proficiently use the skill.

If you were able to wrap mana around your weapon and form a cycle for an indefinite amount of time or at least until your mana ran out, then this was the indicator that you had attained intermediate mastery of the Energy stage. At this stage, although you still wouldn't be able to use the Ascending Blade, you could at least use energy attacks with your weapon of choice.

Now here came the hard part which was to attain complete master of the Energy stage. To do that, the only objective one had to accomplish was the ability to eject your mana out of the mana cycle formed around the weapon, control it, and materialize it into a tangible and much more lethal energy wave which was enough to cause a large amount of destruction.

This was hard to do because you had to inject more mana into the already stable mana cycle you have around your weapon which would immediately cause it to destabilize and break apart if you didn't control it properly. If this did happen, the consequences of that would be, at the minimum, to take a large explosion of mana to the face, or worse, experience the excruciating pain of having the energy pathways in your arms and hands that are connected to the mana cycle around the weapon internally explode and rip apart, essentially resulting in you crippling your arm.

If you were able to go above and beyond that and perfectly execute this dangerous part of the Energy Stage, then you would have attained high mastery of this stage. If you were able to do it instinctively and on reflex just like Cecil and his wives were able to, then you would have attained complete mastery of the first stage of Weapon Intent.

Matheus was currently working on this and it was a little bit difficult for him. He hadn't trained as much during his childhood like his eldest sister or his two younger brothers, Gabriel and Cecil, so he didn't have as much mana as they had when everyone first arrived in this world.

So for Matheus, he had to start from the bottom and work his way up. Even now, he felt like he was biting off more than he could chew because another condition to learn the Ascending Blade was to attain the final level of the first stage of mana cultivation, the Peak Mana Vapor Stage.

The previous condition was already very difficult to attain and he was currently only at the Intermediate Mana Vapor Stage which was still a long way from the Peak level. He still had to go through the Advanced level, Expert Level, and Quasi-Peak level.

These stages were the more elaborate terms that Cecil had stated inside his family's cultivation manual after reading up on many ancient texts and through the things he had experienced. There were very specific and detailed information on the new stages of cultivation that if he were to release this out into the world, the other magic researchers of Alterna would start hailing him as another master-ranked magic researcher.

Cecil had given this research material to his mother-in-law already and even she was rather intrigued by the new approach on how to view someone's cultivation stage. It was much more clear and concise than the world's current cultivation stages which were vague compared to Cecil's new approach.

Cecil's new approach to mana cultivation stages was already being implemented in the Anglaria Kingdom and even the other Urrugdrasil Kingdoms were starting to use this new approach as well. It wasn't an original idea of his. Instead, it was something he had perfected after reading through one of Anna's colleagues' magic research data.

Anyway, Matheus had to focus on fulfilling this condition because it was much easier to fulfill and it would also help out in him cultivating the Energy stage of Weapon Intent.

He slowly began wrapping his mana around his glaive but was only able to wrap it around a part of his weapon's pole. He wasn't even able to extend his mana around the blade of his glaive which honestly, was very discouraging.

He continued to try and soon he depleted about half of his mana and stopped. Matheus always remembered Cecil's words to him and that was haste makes waste. He also didn't want to experience the terrifying mana backlash that Cecil was always going on and on about.

Matheus released a frustrated sigh at his lack of ability and chanted in his mind, 'Slow and steady, slow and steady...slow...and steady...'

"Phew... okay, let's go one more round before I rest..."