Magic practice

(announcement for the story. Mp amount will now be a percentage instead of a stat, for example, instead of 50/100 mp it will be 50% mp)

Eric was currently trying to use the different 'spells' he had been thought by a witch as payment for helping her in finding some 'magical ingreadiance'. The current spell he was trying was the most basic one. It was less of a spell and more of a training exercise. The way it worked was by taking your 'mana' and shaping it in your mind into torrent objects, this was done to train your mind and control over mana so that other spells would be easier. The more complex the shape, the better the exercise would work. Eric was currently sitting cross-legged with his hands on his knees in a sought of 'meditation'.

The problem with the way this spell worked was that he needed to control the mana in the first place, which seemed to be almost impossible at the moment. Let alone make a shape he had only barely managed to even move his mana at all. It wasn't all negative though, while he had been doing this he had found out that he could convert his energy in a 1:1 ratio of mana to demonic, which meant that he. Wouldn't need to worry about running out of mana while in hell. Another thing was that while he couldn't control his energy well he was still able to absorb it from the outside world with relative ease compared to others. Through conversations he had learned that while others couldn't use demonic energy they could still absorb it and turn it into mana, this was incredibly inefficient compared to him though.

While Eric could just absorb some demonic energy from the air and turn it into mana with basically no loss except the time spent doing so, others had to absorb at least ten times as much demonic energy to get half as much mana. He guessed it was because they couldn't absorb demonic energy directly and had to come it to man before absorbing it. Back to his main problem, Eric had a few different thoughts on how to solve it, one: make a focus so it is easier to control mana, two: do something else to train his usage of mana, or three: brute force it until it worked.

Currently, he was going for number three, the reason being that if he tried to use a focus it would become a crutch and he would never really learn how to use mana, plus he didn't even know what to use as a focus there was no guarantee that number two would work or if he would just come back to this problem. So he decided to just brute force it until it would work, and besides, he had already moved it just a little meaning that at some point it would work.

Over the next few weeks, Eric continued to progress in his training while following the orders of the demons such as, move this here, build that there so on and so forth, just because his current job was combat slave didn't mean he didn't have to do other things, especially since there was nothing for him to fight except other humans. Speaking of which, be had solidified his place as one of the stronger humans by bearing the shot out of most others.

Because he has a rather nice tent some people wanted to take it from him So he beat them up, as time went on more tried and more failed, to the point that they just stopped because all the other strong people had there won't tents or weren't strong enough to beat him. Through this, he accumulated a group of followers, which included, a guy that couldn't die and had rapid regeneration as his gift, someone with extremely high intelligence and learning capabilities along with one guy who could create large puppets out of almost anything and control them. But those were only the notable ones, many either didn't have very strong powers or were useless in the current situation.

The cost of the three note-worthy people's powers where the unkillable one would feel three times the pain and couldn't use mana for spells, The smart one was feeble and sickly, while the puppeteer couldn't speak, see or hear with his real body and had lost his arms. Eric only kept them around because they would be useful in the future.

Back to him, over the last few weeks, he had managed to shape his mana into basic shapes like spheres, cubes, and the like. Recently he had been adding texture to the shapes like rough, smooth, or spiky. As he did this he could feel his ability to use and manipulate energy outside of his body was growing. While before if he emptied his mana reserve to 0% it would take him a whole day to refill back to 100%, now it only took half a day. With the success of his initial plans, he moved on to his second training exercise, using mana to strengthen his body. During his stay in hell, he realized that the demons were many times stronger than him in all physical aspects be it strength, speed, durability, or even reaction time.

The way he was going to strengthen his body was to do some basic exercise while pumping energy through his body at the same time. Something he had realized through his experiments is that if used energy properly he can substitute food and water in maintaining bodily functions. After playing around with this new ability he began to experiment some more. With some time and practice, he was able to increase and enhance all physical attributes such as strength, speed, and durability. This was temporary however as he needed to use mana to enter this state. Eric figured that he could implement energy into his body while he was exorcising bit by bit permanently increasing his entire body, not just speed or strength but reaction time and other difficult-to-train things.

But this was for later. Now, he had been given his first job as a combat slave, sparing with the younger demons to train them. Although he was told 'sparing' he knew it was more just them beating him and the others until they couldn't resist, a kind of will-breaking torture. They all had formal training, were well-fed, and knew how to use demonic energy along with a multitude of other things.

Meanwhile, most people here could barely put up a fight against a stronger human let alone a well-trained and combat-ready demon. Only Eric and a handful of others stood a chance against them.

Later that day he was standing in the middle of a ring drawn in the red dirt of the camp. He hadn't been given any armor and only had a wooden pole as a weapon. Meanwhile, the demon in front of him was holding a well-made wooden training sword and had full leather armor. The demon was about the same height as him with small horns coming out of his forehead and made blue skin along with claws at the end of his fingers. Standing in between them was a taller demon in armor with a sword sheathed on his hip.

"This is a practice spar, no going for the vitals and no permanently harming the opponent. The match will end when one of you gives up or is unable to continue. You will start on my mark." even though he said this Eric had seen several fights before his and whenever the demon broke a human's bones or kept beating them after they surrendered there was no consequence, meanwhile when a human so much hit a demon to heard he was beaten by the demon watching there match.

Now, was Eric going to just stand there and be beaten? Fuck no. He didn't give a shit if the guy he was fighting was a demon, human, or even a fucking god. His hands were rated E for everyone.