Triiffic-Soul: Can I Be In Control?

Chapter 132 – Training

Anlesa vanished from the city in the late afternoon.

They visited the children and promised to teach a self-defence course tomorrow morning. 

Elly was slightly uncomfortable during the whole exchange, but neither brought up anything mentioned during their one-on-one.

For the time being, they were using the remainder of the day to start training themselves.

Their training session began in the quiet forest near the city but far enough away that they wouldn’t be bothered.

This could also be considered their first proper magic training session. Of course, they had trained individually to varying degrees. Syrus, in the past, had just made sure she could use her techniques but never went further than that. She had spent her whole last life mastering her abilities, and so she never tried learning any new ones with her new body, as in her mind she had already reached those limits and, more importantly, wanted to let that time be used by the others. Luna had done a lot of theory crafting and mental picturing of possible new spells, which led to the creation of her Moonlight star bomb. Eva had the most practical magical training in this life, as she had to learn magic from scratch. Morph was a completely new ability for her, and Manipulation became properly usable.  

However, as a group, they only tried learning together on a very basic level. 

But with the recent dangers and desire for strength, the individual learnings weren’t going to cut it for their wish. 

Anlesa started by having everyone go over their abilities and preferred magic. Of course, they knew what each other liked to use, but they were trying to start from a blank slate. 

Eva and Luna learned the dangers of the technique Syrus had first used to ward off the wave of mutated creatures. Which led to a massive earful, as they both gave their well-justified concerns. Once they had calmed down. 

[Calm down, nothing bad happened, and next time Eva can support me, which will minimise the risk.] (Syrus) 

[You really need to feel some guilt about the situation. We nearly had a bomb explode next to us if anything went wrong.] (Luna) 

[But I am feeling guilty, can’t you tell?] (Syrus) 

[I can, but do it with your words and not just your emotions.] (Luna) 

They would be demonstrating their main abilities for a certain attribute, and then they would discuss. It was a learning experience; they would try to implement what the others did into their own abilities, but more importantly, learn how to use their abilities together. As Anlesa had experienced, they were the strongest when they worked together. 

The showcase went into the order of Fire, Moonlight, Manipulation, Space, Blood, and Morph.  

Syrus’ main method of Fire usage was coating her body or weapons with it. This made either option a nasty object to get hit by, as the flames would burn her opponents. She had ranged options; she could create standard firebolts and such, even powerful ones. However, her abilities that extended from her fire coating were her strongest ones. 

Her fire coating could be converted to range attacks, and while this seemed similar to just creating a ranged attack, in Syrus' case, she already had most of the requirements for the spells already created, meaning the casting time was greatly reduced. She could also increase the power by pouring the flames into an object or condensing the coating further. Syrus could still use the standard methods of creating strong flame attacks as if she were casting magic, but that did slow down her quick cast.  

[The mana drain from my base fire coating is basically nothing.] Syrus explained, and she continually demoed the process for Eva and Luna to study. Syrus’s control of her flame mana wastage was perfected to a near insane degree, which allowed her to maintain her base fire coating for extended combat without issue.  

[I’m still not sure how you managed to do this with fire of all attributes.] (Luna) 

Luna’s comment was valid, as different attributes behaved differently, and the Fire attribute, unsurprisingly, tended to burn away quickly. 

[Stubbornness.] Syrus answered. [Though, don’t be confused, this doesn’t mean that my control is perfect.] The fire coating around the blade intensified and condensed, appearing less like flames and instead a glowing red blade of heat. [I’ve just mastered one spell to perfection, but other usages still have wastage.]  

The red blade was a more direct advancement of Syrus' flame coat. Unlike when she had the fire within the blade, which was something she learned after branching from the flame coat once her control improved, the red blade was designed to be in every way a strict improvement. Being hit by it was way more deadly, and it allowed Syrus to cast more powerful spells quickly, but it had its downside; the heat was so intense that Syrus shouldn’t use it on her body, and the one part that didn’t even match Syrus' original technique was the mana drain. It was taxing, and something she could only maintain in short bursts of combat.  

[You should give them proper names.] (Eva) 

[Why, it’s not like I am going to yell at them out?] (Syrus) 

Some mages would yell out their magic, even child Anlesa did that, as it was a way to memorise the flow of mana to create the magic. There were other reasons; it signalling to teammates what you were doing, an intimidation tactic, or a way to fool the opponent.  

[Mum would’ve liked it.] (Eva) 

[Sigh...the basic ability will be called, flame coat, the bomb as you two liked to call it, furnace flame, and finally, the red blade will be called, flame coat–red blade, red blade for short.] (Syrus) 

[You had those names prepared.] Luna smiled. 

[Nah, I just picked the obvious.] (Syrus) 

Luna’s turn was next. She demonstrated her barriers, healing, and her new offensive attack.

The structure of the magic was quite different from Syrus's. Everything was in hard lines that flowed with Moonlight. The barrier was very simple, but the healing magic was a different beast. Overlapping Moonlight mana arranged in a complicated form, but Luna slowly took the spell apart, and it still worked, as she showed what was necessary to heal and what was added to strengthen the effect.

[It’s… kind of like music…] (Eva)

[That isn’t an incorrect assumption.] (Luna)

Unlike Syrus’s spells, which were a lot of controlled fire mana in chambers designed to enhance the effect with firing pins attached.

Luna's healing magic pulsed in a perfect rhythm along the lines of mana Luna used to create it.

Finally, there was the Moonlight star prism.

[Well, do you

[Don’t rush me… I’ll figure out one eventually.] (Luna)

[Moonlight bomb would be good.] (Syrus)

[I cannot give it such a crass name.] (Luna)

The Moonlight used Luna’s advanced knowledge of her barrier magic to create a cage that would also become a weapon and whose shape would amplify the destructive effect. The inside of the star was a complicated spell that used a similar methodology to healing spells and pulsed in rhythm, but the rhythm of this spell was very different and was completely designed by Luna alone.

[It’s amazing…] Eva looked over the star, completely amazed. Now that Luna had stabilised it, it was truly a sight to behold. Everything about it was such a masterpiece that she was so excited that someone she knew had made something like this. 

Syrus was deeply impressed too, and she could see Luna was still improving the design and her control over it, two factors that would improve the mana compensation and power of the spell.

Eva’s Manipulation didn’t show off anything new, but after they used Eva’s Manipulation as a tunnel, they wanted to explore more of what they could do. There was some resistance as Eva didn’t have control of the mana when it transformed into another attribute that wasn’t hers. When it came to supporting Luna or Syrus, she used her Manipulation to control the mana before it was converted into attribute mana or used her mana as a guide–for the latter, Manipulation allowed for the flow to be smooth as if it was just a person’s normal mana; there would be great resistance if they tried to direct someone’s mana.

Next was Luna going over her Space attribute, which she was cautiously optimistic about showing off. There were a lot of problems she had, so maybe this group discussion could solve some of them.

Space attribute was a complicated attribute for Luna to utilise. Any short-range teleportation would consume around a 1/9th of their large total mana. It became nearly impossible to use if they were touching another person, as the magic would always try to teleport everything. 

Outside of simply using the spell, there were some other quirks. The magic itself was slow from when it was started, its activation; when a person did teleport, momentum wasn’t carried over, and teleport couldn’t be used if someone else tried to teleport the same target.

However, teleporting wasn’t the only thing Luna could do with Space. 

She dragged her finger down in front of a tree, and a purple light shot out, deleting a line through the bark.  

[That… it is deadly…] (Syrus)

[On non-living creatures–] Luna paused as she remembered the stone construct, [–or more accurately, anything without mana.] 

This attack seemed to follow the same rules of teleporting when it came to its issues, and anything with mana, it basically did nothing to. Other issues were that Luna couldn’t make the attack any bigger than a small line; it only travelled ten centimetres before disappearing, and if she was touching the object when she used it, it wouldn’t work.

Syrus’s Blood attribute allowed mana to be stored and manipulated in their own blood. On a base level, Syrus could use it to strengthen the body, but after a long time of using it to study how the body’s muscles work, she found the most efficient way to strengthen any part of the body to absurd degrees. It was theoretically possible for a person with the Blood attribute to control blood outside of their body, but Syrus never found any success with that method and held no interest in diving further into that side. 

However, due to this, Syrus didn’t really have any magic for Blood. It was standard control. 

Morph was, of course, the weirdest one. Like Manipulation, it was less defined in its scope and definition. Though in Manipulation’s case, Eva still had Manipulation mana, which was just her default mana, but it felt and interacted differently from when Luna or Syrus utilised their mana. Morph didn't have Morph mana; their body was simply permanently changed, and it was capable of transforming. 

Though it was true that Anlesa knew practically nothing about the attribute and everything was based on Eva’s experience.

In the past, they had tried transforming into a bigger body to see if that would increase their strength, but it never did.

[It’s so strange…] Syrus had helped Eva along many times in the past, as Syrus was proficient in using Blood to explore the body, which helped Eva’s training. 

Once the main meeting was over, night nearly fell.

There was one question that Eva had been wanting but dreading to ask. 

[Do... you think we should try and recreate the mana absorption ability...] (Eva) 

[Let’s not be shy about the name, the Corpse Collection ability.] (Syrus) 

[We can at least not dump into the hells that is grave robbing; we can at least call it something like ‘mana recycling’.] (Eva) 

[Main drain would be more appropriate.] (Syrus) 

[We weren’t able to take mana from the living, so it would not be appropriate, as you would say it.] (Luna) 

[Who knows, maybe we just couldn’t because it was our first time.] (Syrus) 

The jovial exchange continued for a few moments. Luna’s and Syrus' feelings on the matter were paused just so they could lighten the mood before moving to such a topic. 

[I am unsure.] Syrus scratched their neck. [I won’t say every ability is a good one, but for me, it falls into an acceptable range. However, I believe most of the work would be reliant on you, Eva.] 

[Syrus is correct, Lilly.] Said Luna. [I am more hesitant to use such abilities again, as outside the moral question of using dead people’s mana as a resource, our body did suffer damage from ingesting foreign mana.] 

[Counter, we could always just take in the environmental mana.] (Syrus)

[Would it even stop there? And my main concern is the internal damage. Environmental mana may solve that issue, but we have no idea how that technique was performed.] (Luna)

Especially when it came to the magic of that night, how much of what they accomplished could not be remembered properly. 

[...If I had to make a hypothesis…] said Eva. [It would be that Manipulation was used to drag the mana into the body, and Morph was used to adjust the body to take in the different attributed mana… but there had to be another factor.] 

[Another one?] (Syrus)

[I would assume not another attribute.] (Luna)

[Correct, not another attribute, but there had to be something else. Because even using all my mana, I can’t drag the environmental mana, let alone corpse mana, into our body…] (Eva)

There was silence for a moment.

[Well, I am for you trying to learn it.] (Syrus)

Objectively, it was power whose potential was unknown, but at the bare minimum, great. The biggest issue for any mage was mana, even for Anlesa with their extremely large mana pool. So, as always, any method to increase the tank was good.

[I would prefer you spend your time on other skills; however, if you wish to work on that, I won’t force you not to.] (Luna)

Luna’s words were cold, but through her emotions, Eva could feel her acceptance. 

[Thank you.] (Eva)

Whether this would be a fruitless effort or a mighty treasure had to wait to be seen.