Meditation

'That doesn't seem to be too difficult...' Luke wondered to himself staring at the crystal in his hand, 'So I just fill it with mana, I am not sure how but maybe I can try using that,'

Luke closed his eyes, crossing his legs as he held the crystal with his hand, one hand holding the crystal from the bottom and the other one covering it from the top.

'Let's see... the mediation ritual that I always did back when I was still alive in my original body... back then it was just me imagining a fire to calm myself down... but now in this world, my imagination has a real output... the spiritual energy I try feel back then is mana for me now... so if all my knowledge from years of consuming different animation is correct, this could work.'

Luke calmed his breath, imagining a dark space in his stomach, in that dark empty space, he slowly imagined a single flame burning, the flame was akin to a lit matchstick, with every breath and his concentration solely on the flame, he imagined the flame getting bigger bit by bit, as if his concentration and deep breaths were fueling the fire, the flame kept getting larger and larger.

Normally, the mediation would end once he filled the entire dark space with fire, but this time, he had to do something different. Once the flame in his mind got big enough to the point he was satisfied, he imagined the flame slowly traveling from his stomach towards his upper body, the flame traveling through his body slowly reaching his arms and then to his hand.

'Now I just need to fill the stone with the flame!' 

Imagining the flame slowly leaving his body through his palm, he envisioned it slowly entering the stone itself.

Michael who had finished his explanation regarding the stone, was waiting for the two of them to finish processing the information that he had given them, Jacob who had done this before obviously didn't need much help explaining so the one he was waiting on was Luke.

But to his surprise, before he could even explain to his son how to begin using mana, the other party seemed to be in some sort of deep concentration, holding the stone in almost a comical fashion.

"Dude!" Jacob who was looking at his brother too wanted to wake him up from his stupor but Michael stopped him, before long, in front of their eyes, the stone in Luke's hand slowly started getting darker and darker by the minute shocking the both of them.

The crystal got dark enough to fill the crystal completely, but with Luke not stopping, the crystal ended up exploding.

"Shit!" Luke opened his eyes as the shards of the crystal hit him on his stomach, luckily the exploding crystal didn't have much of an impact other than shooting shards of it randomly flying around.

He looked up to watch his brother and Michael staring at him like he was an alien from outer space, "What?"

"What do you mean, what?" Jacob spoke first, "How did you do it with such ease?"

"Didn't I fail?" Luke asked unsure, 

"The only thing you failed at was knowing when to stop," Michael replied, "You filled the crystal with too much mana than it needed, hence it exploded. But even I want to know how you accomplished it with such ease."

"I don't know." Luke shrugged trying to play ignorant, "I just imagined mana within me, and had it flow from my hands to the crystal. I didn't know if it would actually work."

Michael and Jacob clearly had more questions but Michael decided otherwise, "Sigh! It's fine then, I was about to teach you how to do it, but you seemed to have accomplished it on your own. The basis of filling these crystals is the same thing you just did, but we tend to imagine using a spell to fill the mana, but it seems to work for you so I won't complain."

"Next time, keep your eyes open, and once the mana crystal reaches its threshold, you need to learn how to stop." Michael said, "Carry on filling the rest of the crystal until you get the hang of it."

Michael said what was needed and left the two of them alone.

"You are a weird one lil bro," Jacob said fiddling with the crystal in his hand, the crystal had just begun changing colors when it cracked, "I have never succeded once, no matter how hard I go at it."

Luke kept his hands on his chin going over to the crate and picking another crystal, and just as he did previously, he held the crystal but this time instead of focusing on creating the fire in his mind, he directly started just pouring the energy he felt previously on to the crystal. A continuous but steady flow of mana onto the crystal.

And just as before, the mana began filling up slowly until the crystal couldn't take it any longer and exploded.

'So my problem seems to be knowing when to stop, despite me stopping my imaginary energy from flowing, I couldn't stop my actual mana from seeping into the crystal.' Luke turned towards his brother who was cracking the mana crystals one after another, 'On the other his problem seemed to be more towards his flow, I wonder if it would work if I try this...'

Luke to test the theory on his head tried several different things, each one resulting in either the crystal exploding or cracking or even the mana seeping out of the crystal as a result of it being underfilled.

"Hey! Try imagining your mana filling up the crystal slowly, but not too slow." Luke said turning to his brother who just looked at him in confusion, "I'd imagine a river flowing slowly and steadily through your body into the crystal. You already use magic, so you should know the feeling of not changing the output of mana midway through the spell, right?"

Jacob narrowed his eyes, as he took another crystal and did just as he was told, and for the first time, the crystal began filling up without cracking but due to Jacob being too excited he cut off his mana flow, which resulted in the mana seeping out.

"That was awesome!!" Jacob stood up clearly excited, "You're not completely useless my little brother!"

Luke shook his head as he glanced at the crystal in his hand filling up the crystal once again, resulting in the crystal exploding once again.

'God damn it!' Luke couldn't help but be frustrated as he turned towards Michael who had set up his desk outside of the house and was currently working on it, "Hey dad!"

 Luke walked over to him, "What are you doing?"

"Working!" Michael said in reply without even glancing at him,

"All we do is sit in our house, only occasionally going out to hunt creatures, what work do we really do?"

"It's nothing you should concern yourself about," Michael continued with his work, "Do the stones keep exploding?"

"Yeah..."

"Then you just have to keep trying. There's no shortcut for it." Michael said, "If you're going to ask me why, give it up as the best guess I can give you is that your mana reserve is too large for someone your age, which causes the overflow."

'Are my questions a kryptonite to you folks?'

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Heya! 

The meditation I am talking about here is "Inner Fire" meditation, or "Tummo" which is a part of Tibetan meditation.

Although, it might not be all accurate as I have sorta edited a bit to fit the novel.

Also sorry for the late update, I fell asleep quite early yesterday. So this is the update for yesterday, today's update will carry on as usual.

Thanks!