10: It was that easy?!?

A smile grew on Andrews face as he got a great idea. "Hey kid, how would you like me to teach you to cultivate?"

Cage vigorously nodded his head. While Andrew wasn't the strongest, Cage had no doubt that Andrew was talented. Managing to escape from people three stages higher than you was already an incredible feat.

Andrew was happy, "Great! I'll teach you the basics tomorrow."

On that note, Cage and Andrew both went to sleep.

Cage could hear Andrew silently breathing while asleep. Cage wanted to go to sleep, but he couldn't. It was like when a kid can't fall asleep on Christmas eve because they are too excited, although in Cage's case it was more in anticipation to learn to cultivate his soul.

He hadn't realized it, but he was physically and mentally exhausted. Both from the rehab and from processing all the information Andrew gave him. Eventually, he dozed off as his mind went blank.

-=-=-

Cage woke up feeling refreshed, he had quickly adjusted to his new living conditions and the low quality bed didn't bother him. He was sleeping in a crib made of dirt before when he was still an infant so he considered an actual bed, albeit low quality, a major improvement.

Remembering his conversation with Andrew yesterday, he quickly regained his excitement from last night. As if on queue, Andrew called out to him.

"Kid! get over here!"

Cage walked over and obliged Andrew's command. He greeted Andrew with a wave of his hand and naturally, with silence. "..."

"Glad to see you doing well still. You have your rehab session soon, and unfortunately our schedules don't line up until later in the day at night. As such, I will teach you later when we are actually able to see each other."

Cage nodded in response. It made sense and he had already realized that they wouldn't have a lot of interaction time. Andrew's decision made sense because they both didn't want to wake up early. Andrew's reason made sense because he was old, Cage didn't know how old, but knew he was probably long past the base lifespan of a wolf beast person. For Cage though, he thought it was because he was a cat beast-person and cats naturally would like to sleep more.

Cage was curious on what he was doing wrong when he tried it, he had a few ideas but he didn't have a lot of hope in them. He was very joyful at getting a proper instructor for it.

Similar to yesterday, the assistant walked over and guided Cage to the rehab room. There was still the lobby full of injured people, but they were different people than yesterday. Cage assumed they had been healed and then went back to work.

Once at the rehab room, they got right to work if you could call it that. The vocal exercises were the same as last time, but with slight variations every so often. The second part was also the same but the speed was gradually increasing more frequently.

After Cage completed the two exercises the assistant guided him back to his room. Like yesterday, there was once again a bowl of room temperature soup waiting for him. He guessed that there was something in it that gave him the energy to keep doing tasks for the day because he only ever received one meal a day and one bowl of soup wasn't enough for an ordinary person to have enough energy. He thought about it for a little bu decided not to dwell on it, he would ask Andrew about it when he was able to talk again.

He once again worked on his breathing control and endurance while he waited for Andrew. It had only been a day, but he could already feel the improvements to his stamina. He already knew that after he was able to walk again he would work in the mine. The increase in stamina would surely be beneficial.

After waiting for a few hours and busying himself with mindless activities, Andrew finally came back. He was a little pale and was sweating but he still had a smile on his face. "I'm done with my treatment, I'm sure you have been anticipating this all day so let's get straight to it!"

They both sat in their rooms staring across the hall to each other. "I'm going to assume you don't know anything on this. As I said earlier, I'm going to start with the basics."

Andrew adjusted his position to be more comfortable before he began to explain. "The first thing you need to know is that the energy you can sense is called mana. It is a part of all living creatures and makes up the world as we know it. It can also be used with magic, but I'm not a mage so I don't know much about that."

"To cultivate, there are two methods and both involve mana. The first method is the Spiritual method, the second method is the mortal method. Both methods increase your soul stage and use magic but the main difference is the abilities of each method."

"One can ever only use one method, this is the way the world works. For whatever reason when you try to cultivate for your first time, the mana will embed a method into your soul that is suitable for you. I ended up with the Mortal method, I am a warrior at heart after all."

"I will tell you about both. The spiritual method allows the user to cast magic spells. They are known as mages. The Mortal method allows one to use magic techniques, otherwise known as skills. They are known as enchanters. I'll only tell you about them later though. When your soul strength increases, your physical traits increase as well, but the amount varies between races."

"-ah, that reminds me you probably don't know the other two. The three major races are hyumans, beast-men, and elf's. There are other sub races too, but they are a minority. Beast-men have always leaned more towards the Mortal method and had better physical strength, the elf's lean more towards the Spiritual method and have a better control over mana, and hyumans have always been more balanced between the two."

Cage was a little surprised to know that there were so many more races. 'I didn't know that elf's existed, do they have pointy ears or are they short, or both?'

"Getting back to cultivation, I'm going to teach you how to now cultivate. It is very difficult the first time, but don't worry about that. It normally acts as a test of sorts to filter out the talented from the untalented. If you don't have the talent then there is nothing I can do."

"You will need to meditate first, so close your eyes and get in a lotus position."

Cage listened to Andrew's instructions, he decided to trust Andrew because he seemed to have good intentions. He closed his eyes and began to meditate only listening to Andrews voice.

"You should be able to sense some type of energy around you, That is mana. To cultivate you need to get the mana to your soul. The mana will travel into your body through the pores in your skin, into your blood stream, and make its way to your soul which is located in your heart. Your mana pool is in your soul so absorbing the mana will go to your soul and increase your mana pool. having a stronger mana pool will cause you to have an increased soul strength."

'Damn, it was that easy?!? I was way over complicating it heavily. I let myself be biased from fiction in my old life. That was a mistake, I thought it would be some type of super complicated mystical art but it was just simple. I just need to absorb it, it's just straight forward isn't it...' Cage sighed internally because of his futile actions.

Cage was upset that all his hard work was more or less for naught, but he did learn same helpful information like sensing mana and practice meditating and focusing on one thing.

Cage focused on the mana in his environment. He could feel his pores opening and could feel the mana flowing in. The mana got absorbed into his bloodstream. It felt nice like a cool breeze on a hot day or getting into a bath after working hard. As the mana approached his heart, he could feel the energy get excited.

His soul felt energized. Cage was a little curious as to what was going on so he went to observe his soul in his soul-scape. He could see glowing streams of mana flowing into his soul. The streams flowed into the body of his soul and settled there. If he focused, he could see his soul get slightly bigger. However, something unexpected began to happen. As the mana settled in the body of his soul, one of the golden cores he had began to shrink. It kept shrinking until it was a fifth of the size it once was. Spikes began to form on the smaller core and the core began to form a very dark purple color. The spiked core then merged with the original golden core like a rock thrown into the ocean except there was no splash.

Cage was confused because nothing happened when his cores merged, but his confusion was replaced by another type of confusion. He could feel a large amount of mana converge on him.

Andrew's voice permeated through his ears. "Don't expect to get it in one day, it took me a month to get my method So don't feel dow-"

Before he could finish, a large fluctuation of mana began to gather at Cage.

Andrew was shocked, '...Is he already gaining a method?!? It hasn't even been 30 minutes since we started!'