Weight Training

While Yuri was unconscious his new heart went to work, and his blood began to run blue little by little. Yuri felt coldness in his veins, his body grew feverish and his breathing hurried to combat the supposed illness.

With a start, Yuri leaned his torso off the floor while gasping like a drowning man. His golden eyes, unbeknownst to him, glowed as bright as lanterns for a single moment before dimming again. For a minute more, he panted and controlled his breathing. He got up off the floor groggily and checked outside his window. He knew it was dark when he completed the ritual, and yet the sun was glaring in his face currently as he looked out towards the ocean.

'Ah... shit'

He quickly twisted his body and ran out of his door, not even bothering to lock it, before charging in the direction of his new master's tower. Luckily, he slept in the same clothes he wore yesterday. It seemed he would be making a terrible first impression as a student.

Yuri bolted to the dais that led to the Arch Mage tower and was immediately teleported to his destination. Savos was tapping his finger on his desk, seemingly unimpressed.

"You are two hours...!" Savos began before interrupting himself and doing a double-take towards his student.

Savos eyes changed color and shone a purple hue for a moment, but he frowned. He was unable to investigate the source of the child's massive mana growth.

"What have you done, Yuri" He returned his eyes to his level and retained the frown.

"What do you mean, Master?" Yuri sweated, trying to pander.

'Is it really that obvious?'

"Yuri... What have you done?" He repeated.

"Well, I've been using the focal points to meditate and increase my mana count recently. If you want my method you are more than welcome to..."

"Meditated?! How do you meditate, by drinking the whole damn thing?!" Savos stood up from his chair and walked toward his new apprentice before putting his hands on his shoulders in a fatherly manner.

"Be honest with me Yuri..." Savos paused dramatically, then leveled at him a strange question: "Are you the bastard son of Magnus?"

"No, sir." Yuri deadpanned.

Savos released his hold from him. The bell in his pants didn't ring.

{A/N: No, that wasn't a metaphor. Side note: When I wrote this my mind wandered to him walking around with two lie bells on his ass, making him look extra thick. "Hrrrrnngh, I'm trying to sneak around Yuri but I'm too dummy thicc and the *ring* of my ass cheeks keeps alerting the guards"}

'This kid nigh doubled his mana overnight and based on what he did yesterday to those dummies I am no longer a match for him. Better not try to dig too much anymore.'

While Savos was pondering, Yuri was checking his status.

┍━☽[❖]☾━┑

Status: Yuri Nightingale

Titles: Champion of Akasha

Race: Arch Human

Power: 40

Speed: 40

Perception: 40

Mana: 320

Stamina: 240

Record Points: 6670

Skills: Mana Construct, Basic Ice Manipulation, Basic Fire Manipulation, Basic Wind Manipulation, Basic Earth Manipulation, Basic Lightning Manipulation, Basic Mana Manipulation, Shroud of the Hunter.

┕━☽[❖]☾━┙

It looks like his mana got a big boost, and his basic stats gained a small leap alongside it. He could still feel his blood being purified, so he doubted this was it. Perhaps his spell control gained another benefit with this kind of meridian system.

"Alright, Yuri," Savos interrupted, "Follow me" and walked away.

Yuri followed him to a teleport dais in the direct back of the tower, hidden by his garden and a separate alchemy partition. Savos stepped on it, and Yuri followed suit. Then, with a snap of Savy's fingers, they were gone.

This one took a bit longer, and when Yuri came to he could feel his head ache and the pressure behind his eyes and ears build somewhat.

He looked around and saw a Greek-style architecture wrapping around a field made of smooth stone bricks and surrounded by shrubbery. Pillars and busts of long-gone men and women dotted the place and competed with each other and the plants for every foot. The perfectly smooth field was as big as an aircraft hanger. 200 feet wide and half a mile long it must've stretched. That was only to his right. To his left, an Italian-looking balcony with potted plants on its two end corners and marble tables overlooked a marvelous view. They were only 50 feet above sea level and the adjacent scenery proved it. A wave collided against the jagged rock and sprayed upward all the way to the bronze and wooden railing of the balcony, giving the umbrellas attached to the tables time to shine, or not. A shield prevented the water from even touching it.

"We are 500 feet below the College. You didn't actually think it rested on a precarious overhang, right? While possible, it would be a logistical nightmare and an outrageous expense. Only less knowledgeable students and tourists aren't in the know. All the underground space we use is camouflaged to give the impression that it doesn't exist and make us look much cooler at the same time. We use this space as a personal practice field for the strongest mages in the college, and for experiments that aren't widely accepted by Nords, among other things." Explained Savos.

"Experiments like what?" Yuri took on a strange tone...

"Master Conjurers can practice Necromancy here without being judged, for one" Savos frankly told.

"That makes sense."

"Enough of that, Yuri. The field is shielded against noise, impact, and magic of every kind. You are free to practice here any time you like. I'll leave your destruction studies to you, for now. You can come to me with any questions. But we need to get you a certain spell immediately if you want to save time" Lord knew Yuri didn't need more destruction work, so Savos wanted to test his ability with Alteration.

"And what spell would that be, Master?"

"Instantaneous Translocation"

"Huh?"

"Instantaneous Translocation is a big phrase that means to move one's own position from one place to another instantly without crossing any of the distance between your starting location and your ending location."

'Teleporting! Haha, I can't wait'

"And how exactly does one go about 'Translocating' themselves, Master?" Yuri asked with a beaming smile.

"A good question, my boy. To translocate oneself, they must first cover themselves in a spatial protection ward I am about to teach you in their entirety."

"Another ward..." Yuri complained out loud.

"What was that, my dear tardy student?" Savos' smile didn't reach his eyes.

"Nothing, Master!"

"Great, now to build this ward you must cast it with the sole intention of not only keeping you in one piece but identifying you as a whole object and being capable of containing all of you no matter where you go. This ward can double as a weak reflection ward toward physical forces, but its last and most important purpose is to push whatever is on the other side of your landing point out of the way. Otherwise, foreign air will fill your lungs without being filtered, along with your other organs. Embolisms will form in every vein you have. You'll look like someone filled you with marbles instead of blood. So master this reflection ward." Savos said and handed him a tome. "Then next I will teach you how to spot an empty exit point so you don't kill someone".

"I will, Master" Yuri wasted no time opening it.

It was a very simple ward. Reflect, Contain, Protect, Fortify, Eject, all that jazz. It appears that the ward didn't count on protecting the user from spatial turbulence, meaning it most likely isn't a threat on this world. The protect, fortify, and eject parts were for running into things in case someone missed their landing spot and would forcefully propel the person inside the ward out of the area before they landed.

At this point, Yuri wondered why they don't make portals instead. They had to have had the idea since Mehrunes Dagon used them in the Oblivion crisis.

But he digressed. The ward was transparent, unlike the more common blue-tinted ones. He cast it for very little mana but found that keeping it up cost a bit more than average since it had so many purposes.

[Unique Spell Learned: 50 RP]

Savos barely sat down at the table by the balcony when he looked at Yuri's finished ward and realized he would have to stand right back up again. What a bother a genius is.

He got up again and walked 50 yards very slowly while Yuri was fiddling with the ward and seeing if the book had more to say.

"Excellent work, Yuri. Your ward is so solid it's combat-ready." Savos gave him the practiced amiable smile of an elder.

"Now onto the next part. To spot the place where you are going to translocate requires a spatial awareness of the entire distance you will be jumping. You should never jump to the edge of your awareness, however, and risk unintended collisions with approaching objects. This spell doubles as a way for a mage to perceive their surroundings passively, and is taught to all Expert Alteration mages. You don't need this spell to translocate, and one can even use their understanding of a place they had previously visited to go there, but it is terribly dangerous to do so and is not recommended." He said while handing Yuri a blue hardcover book.

"This spell is a bit complicated. It doesn't tap into forces that you have used yet but depends on the very fabric of reality" Savos used vague and mystical words to define 'space'. He then made his way back to the table, certain that this would take him longer this time.

'Teleporting and spatial movement is a very familiar concept to a weeb like me, Savvy. You don't need to worry about...'

Yuri looked at the book and got a little confused. Becoming in tune with nature? Dipping one's hands into Aetherius and feeling its current? When did magic become so philosophical?

He quickly closed the book and blinked a couple of times to get that out of his head. He feels the ebb of space every time he uses his inventory, no need to mystify it.

He closed his eyes and tried to feel past 'Aetherius', I mean... reality. Yeah. Nature can suck it. He didn't spread his mana out, he used himself as a conduit for the spell and tried to imitate the feeling of the inventory all around him.

He didn't feel it immediately. Mana was everywhere, and that was what he instinctually focused on. It wasn't helping. It was like owning a telescope in Hong Kong: the smog made it meaningless.

He gathered all the mana in a 15-foot vicinity and made it a dead space, then went back to feeling before it had time to diffuse mana back into it.

That kind of worked. Instead of the atmosphere, he imagined peeling back a layer and finding a void that hid behind the curtain in every single inch of the world. Not just a linear plane, but as if outer space existed in the same area as the material plane. He reviewed all he knew about relativity. About gravity and its space bending behavior, about black holes, his mind wandered through the cosmic background.

Yuri had long since felt the space, and the mana had long since reclaimed the dead spot, yet he was still in a strange feeling of meditation. And before he knew it, his eyes had opened.

Wait...no they didn't.

Yuri wasn't seeing in color but black and white. He could feel his eyes were closed, yet he could see around him in a 360-degree view. His mind was translating what his metaphysical senses were sending it just like it did with his eyes. He stretched his 'vision' and his view zoomed in as if he was walking forward. Like google earth, he moved without moving. He 'walked' all the way to the table Savos was sitting at while reading. He looked at the chair that was across from him, sat down, wondered. 'How do I move from here to there?' Then he also wondered, 'Aren't I already here?'. Yuri kept the Einstein Rosen Bridge theory in mind and broke through a metaphysical and a metaphorical curtain. He opened his eyes while the feeling of breaking through the surface tension of a pool enveloped him.

"AAAH!" Savos flinched and nearly slammed the book into his reading spectacles and giant nose.

"What the... you skipped ahead again!" Savos was amazed. "Wait, you didn't even ward yourself!" Savos was enraged. He translocated 150 feet on his first try, and still forgot to ward himself.

"Haha, I was too excited." Yuri sheepishly replied. He had perfectly landed on the chair, then crossed his leg nonchalantly.

"Hmph. Ward yourself next time, Apprentice. You'll get yourself in a world of hurt without it." Savos said while putting the last book he was about to give him aside.

"That Spatial Awareness spell is the backbone of many Alteration spells you will learn, including for telekinesis spells and other detection spells. It will also support a number of ranged casting spells and increase your combat readiness constantly. I recommend you practice that one just as constantly and create for yourself a passive awareness field with it." Savos earnestly recommended.

Yuri took it to heart. This spell would likely serve as an edge that will last him a long time, and an excellent tool, let alone a simple lifesaver. This time, he was truly grateful.

"Now, onto the next one." Savos flicked his wrist and several of the smooth stone bricks in the floor lifted themselves and flipped over to face them vertically. On their underside faces, the numbers 10, 25, 50, and 100 could be seen.

"Weight training"