Chương 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. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"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. The second, and significantly more worrying problem was related to Tommy's mana.. While it was indeed adding to his own, it was not mixing with it. There were two very distinct types of mana in his body, and when they passed through body they flowed and compressed differently.

In fact, they compressed so differently that they started to clash. Tommy's mana flowed slower than the other mana, seemingly less willing to follow his orders, and it got in the way of the other mana, causing violent rapids to form in his body, putting him under stress and in pain. As the seconds passed, and more of Tommy's mana was added to the mix, it quickly grew out of control.

"Cut it off, cut it off!" he said.

"What?" asked Tommy.

"Take your hands away. Quick!" Tommy pulled his hands back, and the influx of foreign mana stopped, but what was happening inside Jonny's body was still only barely manageable. He tried slowing the flow to decrease the clashing between the two types of mana, but at that point, he realized he actually had a third problem. He now had too much mana. He had already been almost full when they started, and now he was far over capacity.

If he let it decompress too much, he'd be right back where he was after the first mana infusion. Bedridden, and in immense pain. Not that this process was painless, but he wasn't ready for that yet.

"J– Jonny? Are you okay? I'm gonna go get Lucy."

"No!" said Jonny.

"Don't! I'm fine. I can handle this."

"A– are you sure?"

"Yes. Just sit tight and watch the magic happen." Jonny gritted his teeth in a grin, but inside, he was not so confident. The clashing in his body had lessened since he let it decompress, but the damage had already been done, and he knew he couldn't hold this for more than a few minutes. He closed his eyes, focusing back on his mana, trying to figure out what to do.

He tried to command the Tommy mana to play nice, but it refused to listen, and he couldn't match his own mana to Tommy's, because decompressing anymore was dangerous. However, as he watched, he noticed something interesting. Whenever the Tommy mana passed through his core and came out the other side, it was always somehow… less Tommy. It moved a bit faster, and was less rebellious in his system. Five minutes soon passed, and the clashing of the two mana types lessened even further. Wait, I can still work with this.

He was about to call Tommy back over to get ready for another infusion, but when he raised his arm to beckon the other boy back over, he noticed he was sore. He shouldn't have been this sore. Not after just this. The mana violently clashing in his body had taken its toll, and he couldn't just keep taking it. In fact, he needed to find a way to get rid of some mana as soon as possible, as the increased flow and excess mana was rubbing his mana channels raw.

With no way to release it back out into the atmosphere, there was only one place Jonny could direct it: into his body. His bones, muscles, tendons, skin… He could not target them individually yet, but his time with Igrette had taught him enough. Still sitting, he held his fists out, empowering them with mana, then thrust down, slamming both into the grassy soil below, creating small craters. Then he did it again, and again, and again.

With each strike, the craters beside him deepened, and the strain within him lessened, until eventually, after two more minutes, he was back to ordinary mana levels. He opened his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief, finding Tommy standing in front of him, looking very concerned.

"What are you looking at?"

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," said Jonny.

"The experiment just didn't work quite as well as I hoped."

"Oh. What was the experiment?"

"I was uhhh…" Jonny hesitated, trying to find an excuse.

"I was trying to study how different types of mana react in my body." Yeah, that sounds science-y, kind of.

"Oh, that makes sense," said Tommy.

"How did it go?"

"Your mana doesn't like my mana."

"Oh no!"

"But it's okay. This was just the first of many experiments. We will get to the bottom of this eventually! For science!"

"For science!" said Tommy.

"Do you wanna do it again?" Jonny flexed his arms and winced.

"No, not today. I need time to, er, process the results. We will resume tomorrow." Tommy nodded seriously.

"Then can you help me with one of my magic experiments?"

"Uhhh… I don't know. Can I?"

"Maybe. I was trying out a new spell, and I couldn't figure out why it wasn't working. But you're good at sensing mana, so maybe you can help." Well… I do need to stay on his good side.

"Sure, let's see it, then."