Chương 70: Mana Manipulation Instruction

The little metal ball struck the maze, triggering a buzzer. I gently shifted the Mana thread, and the ball moved away.

"You are losing structure at this location. Tighten up your curve here," the instructor used a rod to point out the portion of the maze I was sending a Mana thread through. I carefully made the adjustments.

"Continue." The training method for Mana Manipulation was highly structured to maximize level gain as quickly as possible. It was an instructor, not a Tutor. A Tutor would have high skill levels in both the skill and Tutoring or Empowered Tutoring. An instructor knew the skill, but they followed a detailed lesson plan created by a professor in the College of Advancement or in one of its affiliated training halls. The plan involved a student doing tasks, which the instructor then corrects.

Completing all tasks helped a student fully develop the skill. The gain from the structured teaching method offset the instructor's lack of teaching skills. The teacher only needed the steps and gear to instruct a pupil. The speed of step completion determined the leveling speed of the skill in a repeatable and controllable process that had been optimized over the centuries. Despite the training, leveling speed was average, depending on learning pace.

The College of Advancement was famous for this type of organized learning. That is why, even those who dropped out before the seventh year were pretty successful, having already mastered skills. Ultimately, how quickly each person learned depended on their pace through the lessons. Mana Manipulation required me to extrude a Mana string, then control it to move a metal ball through a maze. It wasn't really a maze, as I knew the route, but an obstacle course.

I had to keep the thread aligned while moving it up and down to get to the next vertical opening with a gate. The buzzer sounded when the metal ball contacted the maze wall. I moved it away cautiously, and the buzzing stopped. The instructor pointed with his rod.

"You let your Mana thread become distorted here and here."

"I can't move the Mana thread anymore," I replied just before it completely broke apart. The instructor flipped a switch to stop the buzzing.

"You lost your mental conception of the Mana thread. You need to picture it clearly to maintain its cohesion outside of your body." The instructor moved the metal ball back to the start.

"You are two-thirds of the way through, but the last third is the most difficult. Tighten up your curves. Now try again." The instructor flipped a switch, and I brought my hand forward to extrude a Mana thread. I could sense the Mana thread. It wasn't me, but an extension of my body. It was hard to describe precisely. As my skills improved, this feeling increased. That was also the reason Mana Sense was a necessary skill before Mana manipulation.

Without sensing your own Mana, mistakes would be easy, and progress would be difficult. The goal of an instructor was consistent learning, not rapid learning. The objective was to master a Tier 1 skill in six months, a Tier 2 skill in a year, and a Tier 3 skill in eighteen months. But higher-level skills were more complicated than a simple multiplier. Though the College of Advancement made it appear that a Tier 3 skill was only three times as hard, it came from the skill's weight on one's soul.

The truth is that leveling higher-tier skills was more difficult for most. It wasn't their fault, it was just that advanced skills were hard to measure. Thus, there were no standard time frames for Tier 4 skills, as suggested by the College of Advancement, and no one had mastered a Tier 6 skill. When she was training me, I asked my mother, and she said Tier 6 was a struggle. Sadly, there were no shortcuts or simple paths, unlike the College of Advancement's methods for lesser skills. Love what you're reading?

Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. Once I saw the training and felt myself improving, I understood my mother's initial reservations. It would have fostered a bad mindset. It was all a lesson plan, and no self-discovery. My mother's training was akin to that of a combat instructor. It wasn't easy to level combat skills in a safe environment. Also, the objective wasn't merely to level skills.

I was starting to see why the College of Advancement had never had a supreme legend. There was no self-discovery, just focused learning and maximized level gains of known skills. That's also why the school didn't focus on melee combat. The Dungeon was the best combat instructor. Combat was the fastest way to improve fighting, even though tutors offered teaching and help. I had too many skills that required improvement.

Students at the College of Advancement were expected to gain 100 tier 1 skill levels every three months. That was the minimum requirement. Top graduates gained anywhere from 3 to 5 times that much. I had conversations with the teachers Thoron had set up for me. If someone earned 2, 000 skill levels each year, they'd be top of the class. Most graduates would pay for a second power leveling after graduation before starting their work full time to keep pushing level gains for as long as possible while they were young.

About a third would return to the College to continue learning as a teaching assistant, hoping to become a Professor one day. One-third more graduates would perish in a dungeon or because of reckless skill advancement. Other institutions, corporations, or nations hired the final third as advisors. Neither my mother's connections nor my father's wealth could get me a tutor from the College of Advancement. Such people seldom would tutor beginners with tier 1 skills.

Many who join would concentrate on a single skill chain, such as runes, and put their full effort and time into particular skills. Although it could appear that focusing solely on tier 1 skills would simplify things in the College of Advancement, it didn't. In year 5 and beyond, only tier 3 skills or higher were used to compare students, not tier 1 or 2. Years 3, 4, and 5 each lost a tenth of their students, dropping from 10, 000 to 1, 000 and finally to 10.

Each person had three years to perform no matter what, but the atmosphere was extremely competitive. Tutor Damian advanced to year 5 because he met the 100-cutoff but missed the 10-cutoff for graduation. The more I understood the College of Advancement, the more I realized I needed to improve, especially to become the top student. The top three students received a scholarship, and each year's top student got a tutoring session with The Mathemancer, the College of Advancement's founder and dean.

The tutoring they got from him for even one day was incredibly valuable. The high regard for The Mathemancer showed the true value of my mother's year of training me. The buzzer sounded and was then silenced. My Mana thread was entirely severed. As the instructor moved the small metal ball back to the start, he pointed out that these three locations made my Mana thread unstable. I took his words to heart and restarted the exercise.

This exercise was crucial because Mana Manipulation streamlined the mastery of spell skills. Mana Sense, like it did for Mana Manipulation, eased mastery, even outside skill chains. Most people attempted to master Mana Manipulation before their fourth year at the College of Advancement. This would allow them to practice tier 3 spell skills to gain tier 3 skill levels and not get kicked out. The competition was incredibly tough because those who stayed saw their job prospects shift.

The graduates had many job options, but the difference between leaving in year 5 versus year 3 was substantial. If you claimed to be from the College of Advancement, people would first ask your graduation year. My dwarven Mana Manipulation instructor only went as far as the third year. That explains his job at a training hall. Without knowing Thoron, he would have had a hard time getting this job. Only a certain number of instructor and Tutor roles were available.

Because of its high price, this training was not easily accessible. This training cost me a gold per day. Though I could've gotten it free at the College of Advancement, I wanted to prepare for the training. The Dungeon was the only available alternative, and I was done with that after a year there with my mother. Even after reaching the 8th layer, the grind was exhausting, and I needed a break. Though my mother might call it weakness, I knew she took breaks in the dungeon.

Battling dangerous Champion monsters would advance me, but I had too many skills. I couldn't change anything about it. My foundation was too large. I had 64 skills last check, far over the 20 that was expected for my age, not counting the tier 6 curse skill. I had a few bad skills, and I needed to level the rest. Runes Mastery and Weapons Mastery would be a struggle to achieve long-term success. I didn't even want to think about how long whatever resistance skill I needed would take.

This all required me to work extremely hard to hone my skills.