TBATE - Brother's Once More

Unexpected Visitor

Arthur Leywin

"Welcome again to the annual Guild Ranking, everyone. I'm happy to report that this may just be our best year yet."

Kaspian's smile reminded me of a proud older brother. He definitely wasn't lying.

He looked at the paper in his hand and continued.

"Today, the following number will be promoted one rank from their current.

Three A Classes. Five B Classes. Twelve C Classes. 25 D Classes."

Hm. Wonder who's gonna be called.

"From D Class and up, we have..."

I tuned out the Guildmaster's voice for a while and nudged Jasmine.

"Let me know when we get to the B Class announcements," I whispered to her.

She nodded silently and turned her attention back to the front.

Meanwhile, I focused on my magic. Dulling my senses, removing unnecessary information from my brain, and dedicating every waking moment to controlling mana.

That's what I learned from Jay, among other things.

He taught me how to maximize my control by throwing away whatever even slightly hindered me in the moment and 'escaping into the mind'.

Here, it was dark, dull and lonely. No structures of any kind, no papers to look at, no reality to analyze.

In this realm, I am God. The one and only God.

At first, it was difficult, being locked in a dark realm with no sense of space or dimension; scary, almost.

Getting used to it was the hard part, to say the least.

But after some time practicing, visualizing and training my mental state to handle the constant sensation of absolute isolation, now it was as easy as breathing.

With the use of my mind I could shape it, change it, and make it something I could comprehend.

The once void of black, eerie stillness could now become a forest full of wildlife, or a dungeon filled with mana beasts, and so on.

I settled for my room, though.

One of the only places I knew like the back of my hand.

"This place takes me back..."

I ran my hand across the wall, stopping on the portrait of our family.

A smile tugged at my lips before I turned and moved to the middle of my room.

Inhale... Exhale. Deep breath in... Deep breath out. And... Release.

The liquid-like aura oozed out of my body again, hanging onto my limbs loosely like a coat hanging over my shoulders.

An instinctual feeling of absolute control came from them. As if the mere thought of moving them would be followed like a command.

Whether to cover my body and harden like armor or stretch and gather like tendrils, the almost viscous substance was like an extension of my body.

"If only I could do it outside of this place..."

I went through a series of exercises meant to hand-eye coordination and micro-control, ranging from little movements to lifting entire objects.

Even with the practice of keeping it active while moving around, I had to think of the exercises in such a way as I did Mana Rotation: to split my mind into parts, where one task happened here, and another happened there.