21 Optional Lore Chapter. (Skippable) Warning: Very Boring

~14 days before TP-1

"No! Look more intimidating, you idiot!" my mom yells at me.

"L-like this?" I try and make an angry face, but since my mom has been shouting at me for the past two hours it looks more like I'm about to cry instead.

"You look as intimidating as a cabbage." My mom looks like she's lost hope in her son.

"Come on son! You can do it!" My dad's cheering for me, sitting on a picnic cloth eating sandwiches like he's watching a movie. Is me going through emotional trauma that entertaining for you?

We're near the bottom of the mountain, where hopefully no one would see us.

"Alright, I need a break." My mom stops. She looks like she would drop kick me off the mountain at any second.

This is what I go through in combat training. We generally work first on my aura. Apparently I'm not intimidating or scary enough. Then we move on to combat.

So basically, we're 5 minutes into combat training and I've already proved that I'm astoundingly bad at this.

Fighting scares me. I just got to live life with a normal face. Why would I risk throwing it away?

Plus, pain kind of hurts and I cry when I get an ouchie. Which drops my intimidation factor from 'just a kid' to 'geriatric old man in a wheelchair'.

I can see my mom in the corner, calming herself down. I can hear her whispering "just take a break whenever you feel mad. Just take a break if he makes you angry. We got this, let's do it."

My mom looks motivated. Looks like she found a way to solve the rage issue. All her forehead veins disappear.

She says, "alright break time is over." Takes one look at my face and veins immediately pop back out of her forehead. "never mind, 5 more minutes. Your…your fucking FACE AAARRRGH!"

I want to cry. Someone, get me out of here.

"Okay, I'm calm." My mom says. She takes deep breaths. "Forget the intimidation, I figured out that it's not your fault. It's just the way your face looks. We'll just do some combat training."

"Make spears come out of the ground." My mom says. "Hit me hard, don't worry. I have reinforced my body."

"Okay." Shit. My efficiency has barely improved. "Hnnnnnnnrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhh" I put all my magic into it. All 245 Hozon, i can't stay in full power for more than 10 seconds. I have the most output in this tribe, and probably among a few other tribes. I am a natural calamity, I can kill anyone who-

Two twigs come out from the ground and tickle my mom's feet.

"I give up." My mom looks like she peered into hell. She looks like she aged 20 years in a span of the last 5minutes she spent teaching me. "7 months. 7 MONTHS WE'VE SPENT TRYING TO LEARN THIS. AND YOU COULD ONLY MAKE ONE EXTRA, EQUALLY WEAK TWIG COME OUT OF THE GROUND."

She looks at my dad desperately, "Papa, please help me out here."

"No way, I'm enjoying this." My dad is lying down, chilling. "This brings back so many childhood memories. You're just as bad as your dad, son. Hahahaha" my dad laughs. "Plus, I'm not a combat guy, I'm a builder."

"Papa, his fundamentals are all wrong. He seems like he's still at a 0.2% efficiency. Please, help him improve his efficiency at least."

"Oh, I can definitely do that." My dad gets up and stretches his body. "Mama, you go for a walk. I'll take care of this."

"O-okay." My mom walks away and I'm left with my dad.

He stares at me intently. "Wow, you suck at this, dude."

"I don't wanna do this." I say.

"If you had gotten 3%% efficiency, would you say the same? If you could use your darkness magic, would you still not want to do this?" He asks.

"Of course I would want to do combat practice if I'm really good at it." I reply. "This is just painful. Plus, what even is the point of this?" I ask.

"Your mom is right, you know. There will be times where you'll have to fight. It is inevitable. Trust me, I can give you a billion reasons."

"Okay." I'm tired as hell.

Wait, what's my dad's efficiency? I've never seen him perform magic before.

"What's your efficiency?" I ask him.

"Just a measly 6%" he answers.

6% is nothing to laugh at, its a bit better than people in his age range (100-150 years have a 4-5% efficiency.)

"Let's do the math." He says. "Your efficiency is 0.2%. Even when you use your full 245, only 2% of it, which is 0.49 Hozon of your 245 Hozon is being converted to usable magic. Add that to the fact that you're supposed to use only 80 in public, and you realize that you suck at magic.

I, on the other hand use 6% of my 70, which means I can convert 4.2 Hozon of my 70 to usable Magic at best.

Your mom uses 8% of her 106 which is 8.5 Hozon being converted to usable Magic.

Even if your magic quantity vastly exceeds that of anyone in the tribe -even the general's son who's got 220- your low efficiency makes you even worse than me. "

"I know that, dad." I tell him. "But you've been alive for like 120 plus years. I've only started learning magic for the past three years. You can't expect me to get as much as you people."

"Exactly." My dad tells me. "Your mom expects too much. And let's be honest, she kinda sucks at teaching. Instead, let's have fun." My dad tells me. "Magic is dope as hell. She makes it tedious and boring."

"And you suck anyways, so doing this magic learning just for fun isn't really going to hurt any bit. You either stay suck-y which is expected, or you get better, which is good. You have nothing to lose."

"O…kay?" I reply. I'm done with magic. I'm not interested in it one bit anymore.

"Do you think Earth Magic is bad for combat?" He asks me.

"Yeah. It's the lamest inclination to exist." I reply. "I wish I had ice or electricity Magic instead if I am to get into combat."

"Remember the Radar trick I thought you? The one where you force the earth magic into the ground and make it bounce back to you if it encounters anything weird?" He asks me.

"Yeah." That's what I use to detect precious metals. And I've modified it to detect people as well. That's how I found Junior in the cave.

"Imagine if you could find a way to do that, but make it detect people instead." He says.

"Actually, I kind of did." I answer.

"Woah, dude that's so cool!"

"No." I reply. "That's boring as hell."

"No, think of this: Imagine if you could extend your sonar to like 2-5 kilometers. And use both the Earth Sonar and the Human Sonar. You'll know where every object and human is in a 5 kilometer radius as long as they're touching the ground."

"You could even be blindfolded, but you will be able to "see" everything in a 5 kilometer radius. Nothing in 5 kilometers of you will be able to escape your observation unless it's in the air."

That…does sound interesting.

"Close your eyes." He tells me. "Now keep sending every type of type of Earth Magic waves, from Sand to Metal to Diamond to Biofuel to Plant to the weird Human Wave thing that you learned. Slowly increase it's minimum and maximum radius with each wave sent. Keep is sub-100 because as long as within 100 you can use magic infinitely."

I close my eyes, and I send all the types of Earth Magic waves. I tell the Magic waves that they can only work within a certain "ring", and I slowly increase the size of the ring.

I'm closing my eyes, but I "see" everything. My dad is sitting to my right, cross legged and both hands on the ground. I "see" the cluster of pebbles behind me. I "see" a colony of ants 750 meters to my North-East. I don't only see the surface. I also see what's underground. The ants have dug about 40 different "rooms" under the ground. I "see" the queen ant in the lowermost room guarding her eggs.

I "see" my mom standing behind a tree 650 meters to my left, she seems to be leaning on it.

I can extend this radius further. Let me use 190 Hozon. I'll only be able to be in that state for two minutes, but let me try seeing what is going on in the balls Tribe.

I send the waves not around me, but this time directed towards the tribe location.

The tribe is about 1 kilometer away from us, yet I can see them clearly. A flurry of footsteps in the Bazaar. Mr Money is still in the store, lying down on the floor for some reason. Junior is in the mine. She has a bit of platinum near her feet. Jim is sitting in his room, doing nothing.

The abandoned houses area where Junior is living has a lot of corpses, all buried 4-5 feet under. All of them have become skeletons. I see skeletons of men, women, children and foetuses still in their mother's skeletal belly.

I sense some movement under the soil. I didn't send enough magic to get a clear picture. I concentrate more magic to that area. Maggots, feasting on what looks like a mountain goat.

The mountain goat's friends seem to be further north, sleeping or playing with each other.

Nothing escapes me. I see everything. I know everything that's going on. Both on the ground and 3 kilometers under. Holy shit, it's like I have eyes everywhere. I'm-

"Argh." I grunt, . I ran out of magic.

But more images keep coming. That's because I sacrificed speed for clear "images". If only I had a higher efficiency, I could get high quality "images" under seconds.

Finally, after 5 minutes it seems to have stopped.

My dad is looking at me in awe. "What did you see?" He asks.

"Everything." I reply.

"That was such a complex technique. How the hell did you learn it that fast?"

"It wasn't that..hard to me.." I reply.

My dad stays silent for a bit. He then says, "You might suck at efficiency, but you're great at creating and learning new techniques."

"The radar was not very accurate. It gave information way too late." I reply. Due to my incredibly low magical efficiency, I got the images about 2.5 minutes after sending the waves on average.

"But see? Even Earth Magic is cool." He says.

I have to admit, that was pretty cool.

"Think of all the other cool things you could do with Earth Magic." He tells me.

I think for a bit. "Will I be able to….like, make a giant stone monster that spits lava?" I ask him.

"Of course you can." My dad replies.

"What if I can shoot stones so fast that they burn while flying and practically melt anyone who touches it?" I ask.

"Sure, you can do that."

"What about a monster head that emerges from the ground and bites people in half?"

"Hell yeah."

"What about metallic wires that emerge from my hands and trap and slice people?"

"Of course."

"What about…." We keep talking.

Magic really is cool as hell.

"Well, it's about time we go home." My dad tells me after about an hour and half of talking about the weirdest ideas.

We both walk home.

"Enjoy using magic, son. You'll learn much faster that way."

"Yeah."

"Uh oh." My dad realizes something, "I did not teach you how to improve your efficiency one bit. Your mom is going to kill me."

"Nah, you taught me something better," i tell him.

"Yeah, that's right. When you see your mom, tell her about all the cool stuff I taught you, alright? You have to save me." My dad tells me.

"Don't worry dad. I got you."

I send a radar. "Mom's at the house, in the first floor bedroom, lying on the bed." I tell him.

"Alright now this is getting creepy." He replies.

We enter the house. My mom is waiting for us. "So, what did you and your dad do?" My mom asks.

"Ummm…we had fun, and talked about like monsters and stuff?" I tell my mom.

My dad slept on the couch that night.