Chapter 9: Mana Foundation
Mana Accumulation was the first skill Ember learned after reaching Tier 2, a feat he didn't acomplish without help. Every morning since his advancement, his father would sit him down and demonstrate the way to gain the skill. Ember had to acknowledge that without the lessons, the skill would have taken over a month instead of a week to learn.
As mana circulation required mana sense, mana accumulation seemed to require both the sense and circulation to work. The skill allowed one to accumulate more mana into the body. First, he had to sense the ambient mana in the surroundings, and then he had to coax a connection with it through his one breath of mana. If that weren’t difficult already, he’d have to draw the ambient mana inwards and circulate it along with the breath of mana, until some of the ambient mana began to linger in his channels.
The theory behind it was simple enough, but in practice, it was magnitudes more difficult. Even drawing his own mana required a great deal of concentration, whereas grafting his Will upon ambient mana was another ordeal altogether.
Even after weeks of gaining the skill, and despite making a level of progress in it, Ember was unsure if it was even working until he finally formed his second breath of mana. His skill mastery rose to the third level with that. From then on, Ember could sense the slow accumulation of mana in his internal channels.
The third breath of mana came even earlier, in less than a month. After half a year of practice, Mana Accumulation was much easier to get hold of, if still boring and arduous.
It burned away his mental energy faster than anything, and only hours of meditation allowed him to continue the practice for it to be worthwhile. So, to reach Tier 1 in Mana Foundation, Ember would sit silently for half a day in practice. If someone had told him the process of learning magic would be this mundanely strenuous, then perhaps he would have had second thoughts about flinging fireballs and lightning.
But many times his father had mentioned the importance of mana foundation. It was perhaps more significant than race Tiers, at least for the Mage classes. His father himself was only at Tier 4 in Mana Foundation, despite his race being at Tier 8.
It wasn’t without good reason. Unlike race, which one could evolve through various skills, mana foundation seemed to grow only through the rigorous, boring process of accumulating mana daily.
In his line of duty, his father barely had time for that, not to mention he readily admitted he was no genius in mana. Apparently, his sister was even better than him. Either way, like race, mana foundation tiers had requirements that seemed to double each time one advanced a step. For example, Tier 1 required 10 breaths of mana, Tier 2 required 20, Tier 3 required 40, Tier 4 required 80 breaths of mana, and so on.