Expanded Horizons [Training]

This entire trip was becoming more surreal by the day - First there was having to come face to face with the new king / dragon emperor / insert this week's new title in an attempt to not alienate even more of the general populace, then there were the assassinations that he had been requested to perform. So far these were pretty par for the course, and then there was what Lydus did to him. He still didn't understand it completely, even after going through all his notes, but he understood enough about it to know the basics. 

However, on top of that, he couldn't help but notice the sheer increase in power that he had gained since those fights. It wasn't that shocking - His body had been made capable of reaching whole new heights since that mishap in the mansion, and a huge part of his education in Magnostadt had beaten into his head how important physical fitness was to a user of magic, due to the amount of energy it required to keep up the majority of spells. Now, he couldn't help but wonder just how far this new capability would extend. 

The room that he had been using since he started living in this country over a month ago was now covered in books and assorted things that he had gathered from his travels. Journals, notebooks full of research, and almost overflowing sacks of money littered the floor. This room had never been big at the best of times, he had attempted to slink under the radar for the most part, but now? Now it was getting ridiculous. 

 The mess would be even worse were it not for the fact that the carpet he had "procured" somehow seemed to expand and contract at will. As it was, he had taken to wearing it as a turban as was the fashion in Magnostadt. Not only did it look relatively stylish, but it aided him in avoiding using gravity magic to fly around everywhere.

However, he should be thankful for his gravity magic regardless, as it had given him an idea. An idea heavily guided by his experience in Magnostadt, and from the theorem of the eight types of magic. 

Intelligence C -> B - 0368 / 1000
Manipulation D -> C - 000 / 500

The eight magic types was a theorem suggested by the chancellor of Magnostadt many years ago - it stated that there were eight main types of "elements" that rukh could be transferred into - Life, Light, "Strength", Heat, Wind, Lightning, Water and Sound. Every mage in the known world specialized in at least one of these eight arts, and were categorized thusly. 

Why these were the eight, and why it wasn't eleven considering that Clairvoyance, Poison and Curse magics existed, was somewhat lost to history. Or, at least, lost to the fact that the chancellor refused to talk about it, which was a bit mean-spirited all in all. Still, his selfish knowledge-hogging aside, it was Seti's understanding of this basic lore of magical science that led his train of thought.

The important information that one could retrieve from that is that people are predisposed to two different elements from the cycle - their primary magic, which in his case was Light, and the one opposite it on the spectrum. This was strength magic, essentially pure energy, and it was why he was so skilled at gravity magic - he was predisposed naturally to be best at it after light magic. 

Because of this fact, he decided to incorporate training his secondary magic type into his training with his new body. He already had base knowledge of it, and incorporating it into his day to day life was a lot easier than having to allocate time to break away from whatever he was doing and slink off to train alone for several hours. Whenever he screwed up and made a mess whilst training his body, he used gravity magic to pick up the mess and restore it to as close to order as you got in this room. 

The benefit to doing this form of training was the fact that it was a lot lighter than doing it on humans and if he screwed up and dropped the spell halfway through its casting he wouldn't end up dropping someone to their injury. It was books spilling over a floor, not someone's legs shattering on impact. 

It also exercised his understanding of the magic more - it was very well controlling one (admittedly heavy) thing at once, but when you were able to levitate eight or nine things at the very same time without breaking concentration? That was when you were truly working your mind and body. 

Intelligence C -> B - 0768 / 1000
Manipulation D -> C - 000 / 500

Of course, this wasn't always the most useful way of training. Many days that week were dedicated to working on hardening his chitin and being able to summon it on multiple limbs at once, but the sad fact of the matter was that that wasn't exactly useful for training strength magic, unless he did something stupid like attempting to mutilate himself, something that he was understandably not that interested in. 

Because of that, he spent the evenings after working on his chitin in a nearby forest, directing strength magic at trees. At first, all he could do was push them over with overwhelming bursts of energy, but after a while he found himself able to tear into them by twisting the energy like a cork-screw, and able to be specific enough that he could blast countless little holes through the tree's core before using his amplified strength from his new abilities to just punch the bloody thing over. 

This, he thought with a twinge of satisfaction, had to be what it felt like to be a Fanalis. Ridiculous speed, ridiculous strength, but with the added knowledge that he was one of the only people in the entire world who had this ability. 

He wasn't sure whether to feel proud or sad about that fact. However, rather than becoming morose, he simply distracted himself by turning his strength magic on another tree and getting off on the adrenaline that surged from being able to rip a tree out of the ground after cutting off all its roots with a blade of pure energy. 

Intelligence C -> B: 1000/1000
Manipulation D -> C: 000/500

After feeling relatively assured that he had mastered strength magic, there was one more loop that he had to jump through to be able to get back to the task at hand. See, the issue about his body was that it was a little like a double-edged sword. Sure, it was useful enough to be able to do things that a normal human body was not designed to do, but it was also clear that there was a way that this would backfire. 

The issue with this was that his body was something that he still didn't quite understand fully. Spending a good hour before bed every night pouring laboriously over the research notes in Lydus' journal, he was able to gather a lot more information than he had at the start, but due to the aforementioned hesitation to use it on humans, there was a lot of information missing that would have been useful. Still, he knew one obvious issue - his body often did things without him wanting it to. 

Thoughts stayed on that day on the hill when his arm had stretched out without his desire for it to do so. He wished that he could say definitively that it was just because he had freshly changed and he had yet to gain control of it, but the fact remained that he had no idea why it had happened. Perhaps it would happen every single time that he put weight on his arm. In that case, he could imagine some rather dicey situations in which that would be a very difficult thing to happen.

As such, not wanting to put himself through any further risks than he already did on a daily basis, he made a training regiment. He figured that there had to be a way to avoid it from happening without his consent, and to do that he did an old training exercise that soldiers from the military used to strengthen their grip - he had to hold his weight up on the edge of door hinges, and bring himself up and down using only the power of his arms. 

His body weighing more than his staff, this way he would be able to make sure that he managed to avoid it happening accidentally. As you might imagine, the first few times he tried it, the weight on his arms stretched them out like pulling a piece of string out to its maximum length, his arms receding to their natural length the moment that he let go and touched the ground with his feet again. 

It was a difficult thing to do - Instead of focusing on pulling his weight, he had to focus his strength on keeping his arms taut. It was like permanently flexing, which at first seemed weird and hard to pull off whilst lifting himself, but as the third day finished, he finally managed it for over twenty lifts at the same time. 

That, he figured, sweat running down his brow, was enough. A little bit as a time. 

Manipulation D -> C: 500/500