16 – Fighting Tommy with Tommy

Internal mana techniques were surprisingly simple. Well, the simple ones were, at least. Maybe it was because he had already done it on accident a couple times, or maybe it was his Null Syndrome helping him, but when Igrette showed him the correct way to do it, Jonny got the gist of it almost immediately.

As soon as Igrette described how to do basic internal mana manipulation, and demonstrated for them, Jonny knew where he had been going wrong before. He was trying to go against the flow. The mana in his body was somewhat under his command, but it was also constantly moving. When he tried willing it into his arms, he was kind of able to succeed, but he broke the natural flow, which caused the mana to surge in the target area, running wild and injuring him.

Igrette’s technique was different. Rather than forcing the mana where she wanted, the way she described it was manipulating the flow. The mana in his body was constantly moving, but there were many pathways and not all were directly connected. Rather than trying to force it from one part to another, he simply needed to amplify the flow in one part and lessen it in others. And since he had already trained in speeding up and slowing down the circulation, localizing it wasn’t that difficult of a next step.

It was so easy for him, in fact, that Igrette actually seemed impressed. She said a lot of it was probably related to his Null Syndrome. For ordinary people, in addition to increasing the flow, they would also have to restrain the mana from leaking out. Jonny didn’t have to worry about that, and his mana naturally flowed into his body to empower it.

He didn’t really care about the reasons behind why he was learning quickly. All he cared about was that finally, for once, he had beaten Tommy. The other boy was also making frightening progress on the technique, but he was not mastering it anywhere near as quickly as Jonny was. One week in, Jonny was at the point where he could limit his strengthening to individual fingers (after ten seconds of concentration) while Tommy was still struggling to strengthen larger areas without burning all his mana.

Sadly, his progress in forming the first layer of his core was not going anywhere near as smoothly, and at the moment, Tommy was well on the way to beating him. Tommy already had a head start due to his abnormal mana capacity and talent for manipulation, but now he was even being helped directly by Helen to set the process up. Meanwhile, not just Helen, but Igrette as well were annoyingly evasive when he asked them for help, always telling him he wasn’t ready yet.

Well, screw that! He thought. I bet I can figure it out myself.

He already knew the general process of forming his core. Helen had explained it to him once before during his basic magic lessons. For ordinary people, it involved cycling their mana so fast that it made sort of a whirlpool effect, drawing nearby mana in as well and condensing it until it coalesced into a sort of shell behind his navel, where his core was located.

As for what it did, it more or less just let him use more potent mana. The regular, ambient mana that existed in the air, and that Helen donated him, was relatively light and wispy, and was only good for the most basic of cantrips. After forming a core, however, mana that flowed through the core—in other words, all mana in a human’s body—would be able to be condensed. Not only did it increase mana reserves, but it made that mana simply more powerful.

Jonny had practiced cycling his mana as quickly as he could, just like Helen taught, but it didn’t work. It condensed his mana a little bit, but without being able to draw on ambient mana, there was only so much pressure he could apply, and it didn’t seem to pull into his core the same way. But perhaps if he had a larger mana pool, he would be able to do it just with his raw internal mana.

That was actually his original plan, and he was pretty sure he could do it within the next few years. His mana capacity was steadily increasing with each recharge, and he was sure that if he kept this pace up, he would have enough to force a core, even without ambient mana.

But a few years was far too long. Each layer of the core was a massive jump in power, and if he got a few years behind Tommy, he might never catch up.

So, he came up with a brilliant plan. Just like you couldn’t counter wrestling without using wrestling, Jonny realized that the best way to beat Tommy was Tommy himself. Of course, Tommy would have no idea that’s what he was doing. He would be none the wiser as he unwittingly played right into his competition’s hands. That’s what made the plan so brilliant.

So, a week after Igrette started teaching him internal mana techniques, he approached the boy when they were out in the yard after finishing their run. Tommy was leaning against a tree, drinking from a waterskin one of the nuns had provided for them, and Jonny was just finishing up his post-run stretches when he approached Tommy, hiding a smile.

“Hey, Tommy.”

“Y– Yeah?”

“I had an idea for something cool we can try with magic. Wanna help me out?”

“Yeah!”

Heh. He fell for it.

Tommy scrambled to his feet, splashing water on his shirt in his haste to get up.

“Woah, hey, hold on,” said Jonny. “Not yet. Finish catching your breath first. And stretch. Never forget to stretch. That’s how you end up with sore legs and muscle cramps.”

“Okay!” said Tommy, immediately bending over to touch his toes.

Jonny helped Tommy with his stretching while the other boy finished cooling down from the run, making sure to add some extra praise to make sure he was in a good mood, then led him toward the opposite side of a small, grassy knoll where the nuns couldn’t see them and sat down.

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“What are we doing?” asked Tommy.

“So, you know how I can’t absorb mana and I have to get it from Helen?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I was thinking what if I could get it from you too. We could see if you could donate some of your mana too. ‘Cause I keep running out, and Helen doesn’t want to give me too much or else I might get hurt again. And maybe it can help you with mana control or something.”

The last part was a little bit lame, but it seemed to work, as Tommy immediately perked up.

“Oh. Okay! Sounds fun!”

Heheh, idiot.

The two sat down in the grass with Tommy’s hands on Jonny’s shoulders, and after a messy few minutes of Jonny trying to give Tommy instructions based on how the mana infusion from Helen felt, they were able to establish a faint connection. Tommy’s mana did not arrive anywhere near as quickly as Helen, and felt like a pitiful trickle in comparison, but for a first attempt, it was enough.

Immediately, Jonny began cycling his mana. He was already almost full, having been infused earlier that morning, and Tommy’s mana was enough to top him off and then some. But with the cycling going on, Jonny’s mana was able to compress enough to make room for the excess, and it even started to simulate the suction effect that happened with ordinary people, pulling Tommy’s mana in faster and faster.

It’s working!

He cycled faster and faster, pulling more and more of Tommy’s mana. Tommy said something about his mana being pulled, but Jonny just told him to keep it coming before going back to focusing on his cycling. For thirty seconds, he was elated. His plan was working. Even if it didn’t quite work this time, he would certainly be able to form a core in no time with Tommy’s assistance.

Then, he began noticing a few problems. First of all, his mana was not properly gathering at his core like he thought it was supposed to. It was certainly compressing, and it has pulled Tommy’s mana in, but now that he looked, it wasn’t actually creating a “whirlpool” like Helen had described. It was just flowing fast.