Michael’s lessons had ended and he was now standing in front of his clubroom door.
He was bored out of his mind, he didn’t even need to learn anything as his brain automatically captured everything, he just had to listen.
Michael just hoped this club wasn’t a complete dud, he had not made any progress in his mana control sessions, even after spending the entire night practicing.
The door to the clubroom looked shabby, it seemed this particular club did not receive any funding.
But Michael wasn’t one to judge based on appearances.. he just hoped he wasn’t completely off the mark.
Opening the door, what greeted his eyes was a desk split into two and a single girl sleeping in between it.
“…” Michael was left speechless. Just where did he go wrong?
“Hello?” He walked up to her, however, she was unresponsive, still soundly sleeping.
‘Do I just wait then?’ Michael was not sure what to do, Lena did say she informed every club about the new members ‘So did this girl not get the memo?’
He decided to just simply look around the clubroom, there was a bunch of paper with scribbles on it.
‘How to control mana? : blank, what is mana? : blank. Is this really a mana control club?’ Michael was getting mixed feelings about this, every single assignment he had picked up thus far was blank.
Not a single bit of progress was written down, what was he supposed to do now? Leave?
Just as he was rethinking his choices he felt something fly at him so he immediately stepped to the side.
However, he was not able to fully dodge it and the impact made him slide back straight into the clubroom wall.
The perpetrator was the girl “What do you think you are doing trying to steal my research!?” She shouted at Michael and began sending more colorless spells at him.
Since he could fully see them now, he was able to dodge them, however, he couldn’t quite tell what kind of magic she was using.
“Stop I am the new club member!” Michael shouted as he kept dodging her attacks.
She didn’t seem to hear what he said, so Michael decided to defend himself, he cast Shield of Nourishment on the girl and punched her as hard as he could.
The impact sent her flying, stumbling over the pieces of paper strewn across the ground. His skill blocked out the damage completely.
“Ugh..you fucking bastard..” She said through gritted teeth.
Michael sighed “Stop.. I joined your club.”
Those words seemed to have worked as she finally stopped her attacks, looking at Michael with a confused expression.
“Are you stupid? Why would you join?”
Michael’s smile twitched ‘She really does not have a filter huh.’
“I am curious about how to control mana, I need it for something important you see” Michael explained, however, her confused expression did not disappear.
He noticed she had quite the peculiar appearance, black hair and black eyes, with some kind of white stars in them, something Michael had not seen before.
“Whatever, the name’s Claire, clean this shit up I’ll be right back” She pointed to the broken table and left the clubroom.
Michael was left stunned in place, what was he? Some sort of a vacuum cleaner?
Get back to work lackey number 1.
‘Lackey my ass, I am sure she is not always like this…’ Michael replied with a tinge of doubt and began dismantling the table.
He finished pretty fast so he decided to organize the scribbled paper that was all around the room.
As he was picking them up and sorting them by the amount of scribbling done, he stumbled upon something.
‘What are skills? : Catalysts.’
Michael found this interesting so he put it to the side, when Claire gets back he will ask her about it.
He finally finished sorting everything and realized that most of what was written was garbage, some things not even related to mana control at all.
As he was looking around the now clean classroom, he let out a sigh ‘Am I really making a good choice here?’
The door was flung open and Claire walked back in, some lunch she brought from the cafeteria in her hand.
Taking a glance around the room, her gaze finally landed on Michael “Good job, sit down or whatever I have to debrief you.”
Michael looked around and didn’t find any chairs to sit on, however, as he turned to look at Claire, she had already found a seat on the ground.
He decided to humor her and sat down on the ground as well, just a bit in front of her.
Michael waited as she slowly finished her food, before throwing the tray to the side.
“Alright, so first tell me what you know about this club.”
“It focuses on how to control mana?” Michael replied in an unsure manner. He didn’t know much besides that.
“Yeah, that’s basically it, though I didn’t make much progress by myself, for some reason no one else wanted to join the club” She explained with a slightly sour expression before continuing.
“But I was able to figure out just a tad bit, enough to not get the club completely disbanded.”
Michael nodded and listened along.
“However, due to the lack of members because of this new rule they implemented, it was almost disbanded, thanks for joining” Claire flashed a small smile at him.
‘So someone who chases the unknown and others find it completely crazy, seems to check out.’
The people think skills are all there is, most don’t question anything. I am allowed to guide you along the right path but not give you straightforward answers, at least not right now.
Michael snickered back ‘Yeah, just for you to disappear when I am close to figuring something out.”
Claire suddenly stood up, a smirk on her face “Anyway, that’s that, since you are now a part of the club, I will teach you how to control mana.”
Michael looked a little confused “I thought you said you only knew a bit?”
“Well yes, I can only control attributeless mana, as you probably could tell from earlier” She said as a small colorless flame appeared in her palm.
Noticing Michael’s expression she explained “As I said, attributeless, meaning while it may look like a fire, it is not, it doesn’t burn anything neither is it hot, it is simply a shape that is easier to control, at least for me.” She wriggled the fire into the shape of a dog.
‘Amazing..’ Michael couldn’t help but think. It really was amazing, something like that would definitely not be counted as a skill.
Claire then made the fire disappear and looked straight into Michael’s eyes “Whenever you use a skill, where does the mana to use it come from?”
“I don’t know” Michael replied with a shrug. He couldn’t find that out even after extensive practice.
Claire just simply sighed “Of course you don’t, look, use a skill but focus on a part of your body, for example your brain or even your heart.”
Michael ignored her look of disapproval and tried doing what she told him, casting Purify and focusing on a single part of his body.
And surprisingly, there was finally some sort of movement, albeit very little.
Seeing the shocked expression on Michael’s face, Claire laughed “See? Cool right?”
Michael could feel some sort of flow of mana around his heart, every single time he cast Purify, a little bit of the flow gets cut off, however, he could see it slowly being replenished.
‘So this is where my mana was all along, in my heart..’ The revelation brought yet another round of excitement, he was one step closer to achieving his current goal.
He turned to Claire “So how do I use this?”
However, that earned a small smile from her as she walked back to the entrance of the clubroom “Figure it out yourself” and walked out of it, leaving Michael all alone.
‘I forgot to ask about the catalyst thing..’ Michael let out a sigh.
‘So? This is it then?’ He asked the system for confirmation, however, no response came.
‘You should know silence is also an answer’ Michael scoffed and got up, heading back home, he still had to head by the new dungeon he got.
It might help him learn to use mana.
After he finished everything he wanted to do, he went to the dungeon, unlike the other one that was close, this one was fairly far, walking to it would take a few hours, thankfully he had a driver.
Arriving at the dungeon location, he went through the same protocol as last time, they go in and capture a monster, check its level and finally let Michael go in.
The mobs this time around were level 12-13, the dungeon being evaluated as Level 20 was due to the boss monster, its influence carries on to its underlings as well.
Hence why Michael does not earn EXP from them, if only the boss was higher leveled…
The monsters this time around were giant rats, something Michael did not enjoy seeing.
He stowed away his sniper, keeping it for emergencies, today he was planning to focus on mana control, he wants to finally be able to project it outwards.
‘Time to get to work.’
