Chapter 56- Mana Breathing Art.
.....
Shen did not answer for a long time....
The absurdity of the entire conversation still sat heavy in his chest—the game turning real, the merger, the stakes that no longer felt like pixels and numbers only. Yet somehow, against every rational instinct, he believed every word Leo had spoken. Those words kept circling in his mind, refusing to fade.
The private booth they were in suddenly felt smaller, the air thicker. Shen sat with both hands flat on the table, staring at the cup of coffee that had long since gone cold. Only after sorting through the tangle of thoughts did he finally raise his eyes to meet Leo’s.
"That’s... a lot to take in." His voice came out hoarse. "I keep waiting for you to say ’just kidding.’"
"I’m not kidding, Shen."
"I know." He let out a short, humorless laugh. "That’s the worst part. I know you’re not kidding. Somehow I ended up believing every absurd word you said."
Leo nodded. He remembered the shock and disbelief when he had first learned the truth himself.
"So we need to get stronger," Leo said. "And that Spiritual Integrity stat we received during the hidden quest? It’s of real use. When the merger begins it will matter more than anything else—and it should already be showing effects in the real world. The higher the Spiritual Integrity stat, the higher the synchronization of stat with the real world."
Shen blinked in surprise. "I had no idea what that stat was for." He pulled up his status panel and stared at the line sitting quietly at the bottom. "It’s just been there. No use, no prompts—just sitting there."
Leo’s expression turned somber, his voice low and deliberate. "Listen carefully..... If you ever come across any attack that decreases Spiritual Integrity, you run like hell. If it reaches zero, you die for real. Game, real world, tutorial—it doesn’t matter."
Shen went still.
"It also drops a little every time you die in game," Leo added. "So try not to die as much as possible."
Shen looked at him and sighed, then slumped back in his chair. "Easy for you to say. You haven’t seen the situation out there."
He gestured toward the guild hall beyond the booth. "Legendary-class players, Epic-class players—everywhere. I’m just an Talisman Warrior." His voice flattened. "I’m not strong enough, Leo."
"You’re stronger than you think."
Leo raised his palm. A small fireball bloomed there, complete with a tiny mouth and eyes. It swelled to the size of a football and hovered between them.
Shen stared at the oddly cute, emoji-like flame.
"At least *he* thinks you’re hella strong," Leo said.
The fireball opened its mouth. "Tsk tsk, brat." Surtr’s voice rolled out, dry and irritated. "You have an ancient bloodline and a class that perfectly matches it. What’s wrong with you? You’ll become too strong. Have you been friends with this idiot for too long or something? Why is your brain rotting too?"
Leo’s face filled with black lines. He flicked his wrist; the flame vanished with a soft pop.
Shen sat frozen, teacup still half-raised. "That... that was..."
"Ahem." Leo cleared his throat. "Anyway. Don’t listen to that fire. He’s old—his brain isn’t well."
"It’s your fucking brain that isn’t working, idiot—##***!" Surtr’s voice snapped through Leo’s skull.
Leo ignored him and leaned forward, elbows on the table.
"I know a way to make both of us stronger."
Shen set the teacup down. "How?"
"Mana Breathing Art." Leo held up two fingers. "First—Mana Breathing. A technique that lets you draw the world’s mana into your body. It flows through the channels, settles in the core, then returns in a steady current timed to your heartbeat." He folded one finger down. "Once you have the flow, you need the road map—the Mana Circulation Path. It pushes that current through your entire body along a fixed route. The two together are the foundation of everything."
"Where did you learn this? Some Asgard secret?"
"I stol— Ahm. Borrowed it from the Asgard library," Leo said, avoiding Shen’s gaze without the slightest hint of shame.
Shen felt something was off about that answer, but he let it pass.
"I haven’t mastered it myself yet," Leo continued. "Let’s figure it out together."
Shen stared at him for a moment, then smiled. "You should have learned it while you were still in Asgard. It would have been easier."
Leo simply laughed it off.
Shen laughed with him. "Alright. Teach me."
Leo essentially read the scroll aloud, explaining the rhythm, the channels, where the mana pooled in the core, and how to release it again with every beat of the heart. "The combat forms and the formations come later," he finished.
Shen listened with his eyes closed. He asked a few questions along the way; to which, Leo did an absolutely mediocre job of answering them.
One minute.
Two.
Shen’s eyes opened.
Leo felt it before he saw it—a pressure in the air, like standing too close to a banked fire. Not heat. Weight.
Shen reached into his talisman pouch and drew out a strip of yellow paper. It shivered in his fingers. The ink lines began to glow—faintly at first, then brighter, pulsing in time with his heartbeat.
Shen stared down at it, wonder plain on his face. "I can feel it." His voice was barely a whisper. "The world has a pulse. And the talismans... they’re listening now."
Leo watched him. He had not managed it yet. He had not even caught the rhythm, and his student—his friend—had taken the first step in a single sitting.
In his mind, Surtr spoke. Low. Almost reverent.
"He learns like the old masters. This bloodline will be dangerous."
"Surtr. You seeing this?"
"I am."
"Dangerous to whom?"
"To whoever stands against it. In the old wars, one pure-blooded seal master could anchor a formation that held an entire army at bay." A pause. "Guard this one well, boy. Or someone else will take him."
Shen finished explaining what he felt, then he was reading the notification panel with a shocked expression.
"Why are you shocked?" Leo asked.
"See for yourself." Shen shared his status panel.
[Ding~]
[Passive Art Learned: Mana Breathing Art]
[A common foundation—taught in every realm. But the art awakens differently in each practitioner, shaped by body and mana affinity.]
[Analyzing practitioner: Shen]
[Body: Untempered scholar frame]
[Mana Affinity: Talisman bloodline (ancient, pure)]
[Soul Signature: Seal Warden]
[Unique Awakening: Sealing Breath] (Novice)
[INT +45]
[WIS +40]
[Talisman Power +30%]
[Mana Capacity +25%]
[Inscription Speed +20%]
"Sealing Breath. I got a unique awakening—my talismans are thirty percent stronger, Leo. Thirty percent!" Excitement shone in Shen’s eyes.
Leo was stunned after reading it, but he quickly suppressed the reaction and answered as if it were only natural. "Told you. Stronger than you think."
Then he waited for his own notification.
It did not come.
He stared at the empty air in front of his face. Nothing. He pulled up his skill list and scrolled—Mana Breathing Art was there, grayed out at the bottom, sitting in his panel the way a scroll sat on a shelf.
The SSS-rank talent holder. The man who had repaired Mjölnir. Standing in a guild booth while his Level 35 retainer learned in minutes what he had not even started.
Humbling.
He closed his eyes. He had taught Shen the rhythm. He knew the road map better than Shen did—he had read the scrolls a dozen times on the way to the guild. He had simply never tried.
He breathed.
The world had a pulse. He had heard Shen say it, and now—eyes shut, heartbeat slow and deliberate—he felt it for himself.
A current....
A tide...
He did not chase it. He let it come to him.
[Passive Art Learned: Mana Breathing Art]
[Analyzing practitioner: Leo Stone]
[Body: Iron-Forged Body (D-Tier) — forge-tempered channels]
[Mana Affinity: Ember (Fire) — Eternal Flame resonance]
[Soul Signature: Soul Forge — soul-mana bridge detected]
[Unique Awakening: ????] (Novice)
[STR +40]
[VIT +35]
[DEX +25]
[STM +30]
[Mana Capacity +50%]
[Fire Technique Power +15%]
[Physical DEF +10%]
[Mana Regeneration +2/s]
[Eternal Flame resonance: channels draw fire-aspected mana at an accelerated rate.]
Leo opened his eyes.
The panel hung there, and one line stood out above the rest: "????." Shen’s awakening had a name—Sealing Breath, elegant and earned. Leo’s had only question marks.
When the two of them walked out of the Adventurer’s Guild, both moved differently. Shen’s steps carried a spring that had not been there an hour ago, and the talismans at his belt hummed with a faint, constant life.
Leo rolled his shoulders. The air itself felt thicker—charged. Mana moved through his channels with every breath, feeding the ember in his core. The fire inside him was no longer a spark. It was a banked blaze, waiting for fuel.
An unnamed awakening. Fine. Then I’ll earn the name myself.
...
They walked north of Graystone City. The path they followed was known as Goblin Road. It stank of rot and cheap iron. Ragged banners of cured skin hung from dead trees, and old bones littered the ground.
Soon they found their first target: a band of six goblins that looked to be on patrol. Levels fifteen to twenty, dragging a dead deer between them. They carried rusted cleavers and bone clubs wrapped in leather; their armor was little more than scraps.
Shen planted himself at the front as the goblins charged.
He didn’t even bother with talismans. He simply caught the first club with his bare palm as if it were nothing.
Even Leo stared dumbly for a second.
"What? I’m above Level 30. They’re not even half my level," Shen said, seeing the look on Leo’s face.
"Kill them. We’re hunting these low-levels so you can level up."
Leo nodded and stepped forward, sword in hand.
The Mana Breathing technique circulated automatically; he hadn’t even realized he was doing it. The world’s pulse ran through his channels like water through a sluice. Exhale—strike. Inhale—recover and guard. His body moved in the spaces between breaths, and the goblins could not touch those spaces.
His mana pool barely moved. The art did not drain him—it fed him, a constant trickle of mana drawn from the world itself. What he spent on each strike, the world continued to give. He had never fought like this. He had never known fighting could feel like breathing.
His blacksmith’s eye Forge sight found the flaws without being asked. The rust-eaten notch on a cleaver—a flick of his wrist snapped the blade at the weak point. The too-thin spot in a bone club’s haft. The seam where a goblin’s ribs had healed crooked, leaving a hairline crack a blade could ride.
[Soul Captured: Goblin Raider — Tier: Faint]
[Soul Receptacle: 2/10]
[Soul Captured: Goblin Raider — Tier: Faint]
[Soul Receptacle: 3/10]
[Soul Captured: Goblin Raider — Tier: Faint]
[Soul Receptacle: 4/10]
[Soul Captured: Goblin Raider — Tier: Faint]
[Soul Receptacle: 5/10]
The goblin patrol team became a pile of green corpses, and Leo’s core was four faint souls heavier. The black Inverse fragment still sat in its slot, silent and untouched—the first soul, the one that could not be moved. Ten meters. Sixty seconds. The dead only gave up what was close enough and quick enough—and not everything was.
[Ding~]
[Level Up: Lv.15 → Lv.16]
[Soul Receptacle Capacity: 12]
........