28 – Stoke the Flames

By the time Jonny and Tommy finished scraping dried cheese off all the night’s dishes, Jonny was so exhausted he almost forgot to do his nightly workout to burn off his excess mana. He had already used quite a bit of it in the game earlier, but he had enough that falling asleep without releasing it would have been painful. When he finally lay down in bed, he wanted to test out his new mana breathing ability, but his body rejected him, and he fell asleep in seconds.

The next morning, it took until near the end of breakfast to shake off the drowsiness, but after that, he was able to get right to work. Igrette was not there that morning—probably busy with whatever punishment she had gotten for letting the game go on for so long—and Jonny was not allowed outside either, which actually worked out perfectly. He would not have been able to properly get to work if they had another lesson.

Interestingly enough, Tommy was there too. In the past, when kids got adopted outside adoption day, the nuns usually spent the morning getting them all dressed up, and brushing up on their manners, but Tommy was in the classroom, surrounded by other children peppering him with questions. He was dressed up a little nicer than usual, and someone had done his hair in what was probably supposed to be a sophisticated way, but it was nothing compared to what Jonny had seen with some of the other children.

Tommy made no effort to talk to Jonny, and Jonny felt a bit awkward about the previous day, so the two stayed on opposite sides of the classroom, only occasionally glancing over at each other. It was distracting at first, but Jonny quickly got used to it, and was able to focus inward.

His breathing seemed to be passive. He breathed, and his lungs absorbed the mana. He didn’t have to do anything consciously to make it happen. He could, however, speed it up. Using the same rhythmic breathing he had been working with before, he was able to pull it out of the air faster. It was nothing extreme, but it turned the mana trickle into a slightly bigger mana trickle, which would probably cut a few hours off the time it took to fully charge up.

More importantly, combining the breathing with his enhanced lungs felt right. Like this was how it was always supposed to be. And when he tried going back to ordinary breathing afterward, it felt suffocating.

Additionally, it seemed to be somewhat self-regulating. Only now did he realize that going to sleep the previous night had actually been quite dangerous. Since his body was absorbing mana, but couldn’t release it, his natural breathing could have pushed him over the edge from comfortable to danger zone, but that had not happened. It had slowed down on its own, only taking in what his sleeping body naturally consumed, which was almost nothing. When he was awake and could consciously condense his mana further, it started back up, but sleeping was safe.

As he went through his morning stretching and exercise, he took things much more slowly than usual, focusing on incorporating his breathing into his movements. Breathing had been important back on earth as well, but this was different. Back then he barely had to work on it. It was instinctive. Coach gave him pointers here and there, but he mostly had it down from the start. It was one of his talents.

Here, it was different. It wasn’t that he couldn’t rely on his instincts, but more that his instincts were too new. He felt like an infant all over again, where his body was not fully developed, and his brain was still trying to figure out how to move his limbs properly. Basic breathing was natural, but tying that into his movements was foreign.

One thing he discovered during his testing was that the way that he had been breathing, while functional, was perhaps not optimal. Not for anything other than everyday activity. When working out back on earth it was best to exhale during the hardest part of the workout, but when he did that here, his mana decompressed, making him weaker. Maybe that was good if he was trying to purely train his muscles, but to apply that to fighting, exhaling with each punch or kick would be the opposite of what he wanted.

So, while he held onto the edge of the table with one arm doing pullups, he tried reversing the way he breathed. Compressing while inhaling and decompressing while exhaling was his imitation of what Tommy was doing when he formed his first layer. It was a good visualization, because by compressing his mana like that, he was also pulling atmospheric mana inward, just like he was inhaling. And although that did work for Jonny, he didn’t need to visualize it that way. It helped when he wanted to pull mana in, but when he wanted to exert maximum force, it was opposite.

He struggled at first, but after half an hour, he managed to come up with an alternate visualization that worked. Rather than inhaling causing a whirlpool effect, spinning the mana faster, he thought of it like pumping air into the fire. Inhaling was the downtime when the big airbag thing inflated, and the fire started to die down, and exhaling was when the air was pushed into the fire, and the fire blazed up and got hotter.

That visualization not only worked, but it worked so well that Jonny himself was surprised. It was very different from the other breathing technique, and took some getting used to, but the boost he got when exhaling was greater than what he could ever have done previously. He reveled in what it did for just his ordinary exercise, but soon found himself wishing he was outside. He really wanted to punch something, and the trees would make a good target.

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Sadly, the nuns did not let him go outside to punch trees, so he was forced to remain indoors. He practiced his new breathing more, wondering if he would even need the old kind anymore, since this seemed superior in every way until he realized how quickly his mana reserves were depleting. The new style was extremely effective for when he was exercising or fighting, but he burned through mana faster, and his absorption rate was slower.

First version for charging, second for fighting, he thought, nodding.

The rest of the morning passed quickly as he continued practicing, but he made no further breakthroughs before lunchtime came, and the children were all summoned to the dining room again. Tommy was still there, for some reason, but he was getting visibly anxious, constantly glancing at the door.

Lunch was tense, at least for Jonny and Tommy. They sat at the same table, but on opposite sides, and Tommy was uncharacteristically silent. Jonny found himself getting nervous as well. Why hadn’t the new family arrived yet? Why wasn’t Tommy more dressed up? Had something happened?