Chapter 29. Trial
The next session of training came sooner than I'd hoped.
After ending Mia's torture—I mean training—the previous day, Isolde, in an unexpected act of mercy, let me go as well. I didn't question it. Just left.
I'd done enough dying for one day.
With nothing much to do afterward, I crashed in bed like a corpse. There wasn't any point in trying to train other skills or techniques when I hadn't even taken the first step: feeling mana.
That was the core issue, really.
The reason Isolde had been throwing me into the proverbial meat grinder with those demonically possessed dummies was simple—mana in this world wasn't always taught. It was felt. Instinctively. Experienced.
And I, being an outsider to this world, had no such instincts.
No inner wellspring of mana awareness.
No childhood memories of light flickering on my palm or energy humming in my veins.
So I needed a push.
Unfortunately, Isolde's definition of a "push" involved methods that bordered on sadistic. And that push? It was very nearly shoving me off a cliff toward my demise.