Chương 44: Chapter 43: Warnings, Worries, and Anticipations

After convincing his cute master to potentially commit several war crimes – and deciding not to think too hard about what introducing magical grenades might do to the future development of warfare in this world – Ren returned home feeling surprisingly accomplished. Well, not completely. He still had many questions his Master could answer. Though Little Yara had not been too eager to just tell him how his Mana training should be done.

As such, Ren wasn't entirely sure if he would get the missing answers to every magical triad from her either. And there were other things he wanted to ask about too! Like about exactly how charms worked, or how to safely train an offensive spell, or maybe for Yara to reveal whatever mysterious training shortcut she might have. He had no basis for this, but Ren was increasingly convinced every competent adult in this world was hiding one from him personally! … Or perhaps he just had to git gud. Nah, couldn't be.

But he had gone there looking for ways to improve himself and somehow came back with another possible advantage for the entire village. That was a far better outcome! Slower personal advancement was a perfectly acceptable trade-off for the increased chance that Bren, Elna, Tessa, and everyone else survived long enough for Ren to complain about the lost training time afterward. More importantly, Little Yara had been right about one thing.

Several things, technically, but Ren preferred limiting concessions where possible. He could not expect someone to give him an answer every time he encountered something he did not understand. Ren needed to learn, practice, test, fail, figure out why he failed, and try again. Otherwise, the moment he encountered a problem without a competent adult nearby, he would simply get stuck.

And as a literal baby Ren had already run into a fair number of difficulties with no easy answers he ended up overcoming through sheer grit, grind, and stubbornness. … He did wonder just how much of that was the result of him being a baby? It was very clear to Ren that adult memories did not constitute adult sensibilities, and his memories were far from perfect. And yet he clearly wasn't acting like a perfect baby either. An issue for another time.

And considering his life involved goblin raids, mysterious System mechanics, time loops, hidden skills, and apparently inventing explosive devices before learning to properly pronounce half the village's names, not only would getting caught up on the distinction be a waste of time… getting stuck as a whole seemed unhealthy. So Ren accepted the lesson. Then worried about things anyway! Totally what a sensible baby adult would do. Definitely.

The village had just possibly gained another defensive tool, but he still had no proper measure of what everyone else could actually do. Hadrik was the most obvious example. Ren knew the man was powerful. He had seen as such during the previous loops and heard enough from Bren to understand that much. Hadrik had always taken the warning seriously once proof appeared, organized preparations, trained people, and now somehow found time to make Bren progressively more colorful with bruises. Could Hadrik do even more?

Probably. Maybe? … Ren had no idea. That uncertainty bothered him. By all means, the village was already the most prepared it had ever been. The help was coming, and tools to tip the balance were being made. And yet he still wanted more assurance. He could go ask. A talking, walking baby appearing beside the village's busiest defender and interrogating him about combat skills sounded like the kind of experience people remembered for years.

Unfortunately, memorable was not exactly the same as getting a sensible answer. Much like the difference between a friendly conversation in a nice restaurant versus getting kick-yeeted for being a creepy baby. Ren would rather not get yeeted. And Hadrik was already doing a great deal. He had preparations to oversee, people to train, defenses to consider, and whatever other responsibilities came with being the person everyone looked toward when something dangerous happened.

Would Ren even be able to help by hovering nearby? Or would he become another problem requiring attention, accomplishing nothing and slowing preparations? Ren did not know enough about Hadrik personally to gamble on the answer, and if it had the slightest chance of slowing down preparations, he would rather not do it at all. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. The man was serious about his work, was strong and capable. Ren knew that.

Everything beyond those points remained uncertain. So Ren left Hadrik alone. There were enough pieces already moving without a nosy baby attaching himself to one of the busiest people in the village. Instead, he focused on the part he could control and got back to his own training, especially concerning the advice he got. Little Yara's advice changed the way Ren approached the wand almost immediately. Until now, he had treated the resistance inside the first section as something to overpower.

He pushed mana into it, held the pressure, and kept adding more until either the charm finally yielded or his pool ran dry. It had worked well enough to get him through the first section, but now he understood that he had only been testing how much force he could apply. There was much more he could be doing with it. The morning after returning home, Ren settled down with the three-part wand and tried again, this time concentrating on the shape of the mana rather than simply how much of it he could force forward.

The resistance met him almost immediately, exactly as before, but instead of pressing against the whole thing, Ren tried narrowing his mana into a smaller point. It was harder than it sounded. The mana entered the wand cleanly enough, but the moment he pressed it against the resistance, the narrow point began spreading. Ren Focused, corrected it, tried to squeeze it tighter, and managed to hold the shape for another moment before it widened again.

He withdrew before wasting the rest of his pool and considered what had happened. That had already felt different. Ren rested, waiting for some of his mana to return, then tried again. This time he paid closer attention through Mana Sense, feeling where his mana met the condensed resistance inside the wand while Mana Manipulation kept the pressure concentrated. Rather than pushing straight ahead, he shifted the point slightly. Nothing. Another small adjustment. Still nothing.

He moved it again and felt the resistance change. Only a little, but it was there. Ren immediately focused on that spot, keeping the pressure narrow as he pushed. His mana slipped farther into the section before beginning to spread, and he corrected it again rather than simply adding more force. He did not reach the charm, but he also used noticeably less mana getting as far as he had. Ren grinned. His master really did know what she was doing. The rest of the day became a series of experiments.

Ren changed the width of the pressure, shifted where he applied it, compared how much mana each attempt consumed, and used Mana Sense to search for differences he had completely ignored while trying to batter his way through. He assumed that keeping a needle shape, or a hook might work better. But frankly, his control simply wasn't good enough to hold them concentrated for long.

Yet the tests still yielded results, and by evening, he was reaching the first charm much more reliably while spending half the mana to do it. That meant more attempts before his pool emptied. And more attempts meant more practice. And with more practice came faster growth. Now this was the kind of advice Ren could abuse! It was time for some grind!

The next five days passed quickly. Ren kept applying Little Yara's advice to both training tools, refining what he had already figured out instead of falling back into brute force whenever an attempt became difficult. The gains came steadily. His awareness of mana sharpened first. Small differences inside the training toys became easier to distinguish, and distinguishing the active paths through the patterned ball demanded less effort than before. [Skill Level Increased: Mana Sense Lv. 8 -> Lv. 10] [Skill Milestone Reached - Initiate: Mana Sense Lv. 10] [Mana Sense Initiate Bonus: Improves clarity and precision when sensing mana, making different concentrations, movements, and changes easier to distinguish.] Ren immediately appreciated the difference, though it wasn't huge at first glance. The charms remained charms, the ball remained a puzzle, and Little Yara's work retained all of its secrets. He could simply perceive what was already there more clearly. But that was already plenty.

Better sensing made every future attempt easier to judge, and better judgment gave Mana Manipulation more opportunities to improve alongside it. Ren became quicker at catching mistakes before they ruined an entire attempt, while holding narrower shapes and changing their direction demanded less correction than it had only days earlier. That made more trial attempts possible. Especially as he made sure to utilize Focus sparingly, once per each attempt.

Just that bit of advice and his speed of improvement shot up tremendously. And just a day later, he managed to solve the next ball puzzle layer. The first layer had hidden passages. The second was full of flowing zig-zaggy patterns. And Ren both dreaded and happily anticipated the next. Yet it surprised him nonetheless. He immediately focused on trying to discern what it had in store for him. And yes, there were the familiar parts.

The hidden passageways were everywhere, with one side of the third layer dominated by the curving flowy patterns, the other was filled with completely unfamiliar brutally sharp geometric shapes. Squares, triangles, rectangles, and more. Switching from one to another would already be quite a challenge, but his little Master was not that kind. Both halves had separate insertion points! Ren was supposed to draw two separate paths through the pattern, with both patterns different in shapes and styles. He stared.

Then tried testing it immediately, only to fail, and fail, over an entire day, and then continue to– [Skill Level Increased: Mana Manipulation Lv. 7 -> Lv. 10] [Skill Milestone Reached - Initiate: Mana Manipulation Lv. 10] [Mana Manipulation Initiate Bonus: Improves precision and stability when actively directing, shaping, maintaining, and redirecting mana.] Ren grinned at the messages. Right, that was the obvious benefit of pushing himself beyond what he was capable and comfortable with.

As difficult as that layer was, he couldn't argue with the results! The two put together were starting to look quite impressive. Mana Sense helped him recognize what was happening. Mana Manipulation helped him respond to it. Neither milestone handed him a spell, solved the puzzles, or suddenly made him competent enough to ignore Little Yara's warnings, but together they made the training noticeably faster and cleaner. His cute master was really impressive! And Ren still had plenty left to learn.