Caen sat atop the sloping roof of his family home, drawing ambient mana into his spirit.

Most nights, Caen drained a small fraction of his mana reserves, letting them refill passively in order to strengthen his spirit.

While he attuned the ambient mana to his spirit, he occupied his attention with a visualization technique. Two pinpricks of light unfolded in his mind's eye, forming the base of a phantom triangle. These represented his two bloodlines. The third point of the triangle was dull and even more ephemeral than the entire construct. This was supposed to represent the third bloodline, which he hadn't yet located.

The whole thing held for no longer than a second before falling apart, as it often did. The past hour had yielded similar results. Klaver's Variate was a visualization technique that was meant to aid his bloodline-locating endeavours.

With a calming breath, he resumed the visualization technique, reconstructing it into a crescent—the shape used to represent two bloodlines. This time, his visualization did not even last a second, which of course indicated that he did not have only two bloodlines. But he knew that already.

Sighing, Caen opened his eyes and found a dust sprite crawling onto his leg. It was a clump of dust particles, no larger than his fist, made damp by the humidity of predawn. He smiled. Even if he could spare the mana to dematerialize them, he wouldn't have. Sprites were pretty harmless, except when they weren't. But this one was fine. It'd been bumbling around the rooftop for some weeks now. He gently lifted it and dropped it on the shingles beside him, where it began rolling away.

Caen fixed his attention on a pebble he'd placed within arm's reach. He carefully began contorting his spirit in very distinct patterns, which constituted the major component of a Kinesis spell.

Every spell fundamentally required a mental and spiritual component. Visualizations constituted the mental, and spirit patterns, which were intricate and intentional movements of the spirit, constituted the spiritual. Bodily components included finger gestures, breathing sequences, and incantations, which were more supplementary than anything else. A visualization occupied a portion of his mind, and he muttered an incantation, moderating his breathing as his fingers smoothly slipped through a series of gestures.

Caen's magical abjection made casting the most rudimentary spells an uphill slog for him. He strained to shape his mana into the relevant spell construct, his spirit moving sluggishly and reluctantly. It felt like trying to manipulate a limb sewn onto his body. The visualization crumbled time and time again, but he had grown adept at quickly reconstructing those. He muttered the incantation many times, fingers repeating gestures over and over.

When properly adapted, this spell could be cast in a matter of seconds. It took Caen several minutes. The spell took. And just as the pebble began to lift off the roof, the spell construct collapsed. The pebble clattered back down.

Caen had executed every step to the very best of his meager ability. He let out a soft sigh and repeated the process a few more times before moving on to a different discipline.

With some effort, he cast a Gleam spell on his fingertips, making them glow. This spell, in particular, only took him a few tries. He was very used to casting it. Caen moved on to a Flora spell, and then other spells afterwards. Every morning and night, he ran through his repertoire. It was good practice.

After an hour, he checked the time on his pocket watch. It was almost time for his sparring session.

Caen rose carefully from the roof, snatching his weighted training glaive with a grunt as he did. From his vantage here, he could see the rousing hamlet below. The sun hadn't fully risen yet, and the commune around him was still quiet. He tossed his glaive onto the grass first, then jumped onto the roof of a neighboring bungalow. From there, the drop to the lawn below was easier, though the weighted vest he had on threw off his balance slightly.

He picked up his heavy weapon, latched it onto his back, and sprinted at full speed towards the copse of trees by the edge of the commune. It was a five-minute run. He resumed pulling in ambient mana once more. Maintaining his breathing sequence while moving so quickly was good stamina training. By the time he reached the grove, Caen was fairly winded. He leaned against a tree, stopping the breathing sequence so he could catch his breath.

Aunt Vensha was sitting under a tree, meditating. Her pale skin stood in contrast to his olive skin. She wore loose pants and a weighted vest of her own. A dulled broadsword sat in her lap. She was a tall and heavily muscled woman with close-cropped hair.

Even though he was just seventeen years old, Caen was nearly as tall as she was, but nowhere near as broad.

“You're early,” she said, eyes still closed. A tendril of her spirit grazed his, and Caen unfolded his spirit tendrils to return the greeting.

“I'm always early,” he said between breaths. He didn't return his tendrils back into his spirit. Caen was usually very particular about preserving his spirit mass, as doing so made it easier to cast spells. But it was also good spirit training to cast with the extra layer of difficulty.

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“Do you need some time?” she asked.

“Ready when you are.”

With an unnatural grace and nimbleness, she was up and sprinting through the woods, Caen behind her. She was running at a meager fraction of her full speed, and Caen could barely keep up.

They made their way down the rocky incline, forgoing the steps hewn into the brown stone. Beslin, a hamlet, surrounded the commune, an asymmetrical cluster of buildings. Few horse-drawn carriages ambled along the dirt road. Only a handful of people were up and about. Further out, air horns blared twice in intervals, signaling the arrival of the morning train.

Aunt Vensha led them east, cutting through a wide pumpkin field.

They soon came to a stop at a patch of empty flatland dotted with the occasional tree. Even the air horns sounded distant here.

Aunt Vensha held out her blade and began executing sword forms slowly. The dense muscles on her arms and shoulders bulged with each movement due to how heavy her weapon was. Caen himself could barely lift it off the ground entirely.

Despite being very much out of breath, he quickly joined her.

Both this glaive and the one he used in actual combat had been forged by Vensha herself, and she'd made sure to have this one weigh much more than the typical oversized weapon. It was unwieldy and a little unusable in a real fight, but it was good strength and coordination training.

They both worked in unison, gliding through forms and techniques. His aunt had been training him in arms mastery since he was ten, but before even that, she'd started with these. Caen lost himself to the movements for a time.

Then Vensha hefted her blade and lunged at him. Caen had already seen her coming out the corner of his eye, which let him know she hadn't empowered her body. He wouldn't have seen her move if she had.

He parried her blade with some effort. She kicked him in the stomach and sent him tumbling backwards.

He rolled to his feet, moving his spirit in a series of patterns to empower his body. Breathing mastered, incantation tumbling from his lips, Aunt Vensha saw what he was doing and, annoyingly enough, waited for him to finish. Since none of his spells were properly adapted, hasty casting was very dangerous. With the visualization held firmly in his mind, the spell took.

His muscles felt like they tightened and loosened at the same time. The weight of his weapon lessened considerably. His body felt lighter. Caen darted at Vensha with inhuman speed. Then the working failed. The full weight of his powerlessness crashed down on him.

And following it, Aunt Vensha's blade. He managed to slip aside and met her next strike. It sent rattling vibrations through his bones.

The rhythmic clashing of steel resounded over the open field as they exchanged blows.

Caen was being pushed to his absolute limits. And she was still going easy on him.

As he ducked under a blow from her, he tried casting a Body-enhancement spell on himself once more to grant him a sudden spurt of speed. She retreated, waiting for him to do so. After two whole minutes, the spell took and he dashed for her. Then it fizzled out the next instant, throwing off his balance.

He caught himself on his free hand, Aunt Vensha's sword hovering inches away from his neck.

Caen let go of his glaive and slumped to the ground, staring up at the sky.

“What spell was that just now?” Vensha asked, coming to sit down beside him.

“Body-quickening Basic Spell 2.” It was one of the most unimaginative names for a spell Caen had ever heard.

“Great for sudden strikes. Good thinking.” She cracked her neck. “It will definitely be a while yet—but one day, you'll rise out of abjection and have a very strong rating of 1 in Body-enhancement. Your passive augmentations will be without equal for that level. And from then on, you'll have much less of a problem taking it further."

Caen gave her a weak smile. He used to say this a lot as a child, and everyone would echo him. He'd stopped saying it at twelve. Vensha repeated it often, though. And while Caen appreciated this, he wanted more. Seventeen years without a single passive augmentation should have been a death sentence for him, but he'd been born into a family of healers.

“The team and I are going hunting for parts tonight,” Vensha continued. “We'll need a Gatherer if you're feeling up to it.”

Ever since Caen had gotten his certification as an F-rank Valiant— Gatherer was a kind euphemism— some months ago, he'd been going into other Planes of existence with her Valiant party as often as possible.

“Which Plane?” he asked, curious in spite of himself. There were only three Planar Apertures within miles of Beslin. “Is it Redshadow?”

“No, Mal-dawn.”

That was a nearby Plane with copious amounts of a special planar material, specifically shrubbery and vegetation.

Vensha seemed to notice his disappointment and snorted. “You’re obsessed with Redshadow.”

“Just a little,” he admitted.

Sometimes, he felt a cold chill whenever he went past the Aperture to that Plane. For this reason alone, he'd entered Redshadow so many times already, hoping to make sense of his mysterious cold chills, but nothing had ever come of that.

The Mal-dawn Coppice Plane, in comparison, was a fair deal less interesting.

“I think I'll pass,” he said. “Not really feeling up to Gathering. I'll probably be at the tri-clinic all day.”

“Well,” Vensha said, rising to her feet. “If you change your mind, we'll be at the archway by sunset. Alright, let's see if you can pull off that Basic Spell 2 this time.”