Free Web NovelChapter 73: 73. Mana Breathing.
Right after Austin read the two new missions displayed before him, the urge to sleep instantly vanished.
Now, time passed and with the dead of night settling around the mansion, Austin found himself sitting cross-legged in the centre of his bedroom.
His eyes were closed and his body was as still as a statue carved from stone.
In his open palms, there were two small blue mana crystals glowing faintly as he tried to absorb the mana particles within them.
Based on the memories he had inherited from the previous host, Austin had heard a thing or two about mana breathing techniques before.
They were typically guarded as closely as a family’s most prized heirloom, and were passed down only to direct bloodline members, because a good technique could mean the difference between a noble household’s rise to power or its slow decline into obscurity.
The reasoning behind the secrecy was simple enough once Austin thought about it.
A mana breathing technique was, at its core, a method for replenishing one’s depleted mana reserves without relying on potions.
Those who couldn’t afford expensive mana-replenishing potions, or simply preferred not to depend on them, used breathing techniques instead.
But not every technique was created equal.
One household’s secret method might restore a person’s full reserve in ten minutes.
Another household might find it difficult to replicate such a feat, and might only be able to refine a similar technique after countless trials and errors over generations.
These accumulated wisdoms of household ancestors who had nothing better to do than meditate in caves might, in the end, only manage to restore a person’s full mana reserve in five minutes.
Yes, it sounds impressive, but not everyone becomes successful in doing such things.
And so, naturally with this thought in mind, Austin had been more than a little curious about where his own technique would fall on that scale.
After all, the system had labelled it Legendary-Rank.
So if the difference between an ordinary noble technique and a slightly better one was the gap between ten minutes and five minutes, then surely a Legendary-Rank technique had to be on an entirely different level altogether, right?
This was what Austin had been pondering over the night, and that’s why he had spent the better part of it running through the meditation sequence the system had laid out for him.
For hours, he had been following the technique guidelines regarding the necessary breathing patterns, the rhythm of mana circulation through specific points along his body, and the precise mental focus required to draw mana out of a crystal and into his body.
Of course, it hadn’t been easy, because his mind continuously kept wandering toward Nora sleeping peacefully behind him and toward Luna’s soft cooing sounds in her cute little crib.
But eventually, after what felt like hours of failed attempts and frustration, Austin finally noticed something clicking into place.
And that was how he’d ended up here, kneeling on the floor with two crystals in his hands, fully committed to seeing this through to its end.
He had to know if this mana breathing technique would allow him to fully restore his depleted mana reserve within at least a minute. ƒree𝑤ebnσvel.com
And so, the room remained quiet around him as Austin’s awareness spread out within the room and beyond.
Now, he could hear the faint chirping of insects drifting in through the gap beneath the window, but he continued what he was doing.
He breathed in slowly and calmly, exactly as the technique demanded.
He drew the air down into his stomach before holding it there for a count of four.
Then, ever so slowly, his body began to glow in a blue hue.
It started faintly at first, looking like a soft outline of blue light tracing along his arms.
But as he kept going, the light grew steadily brighter as the seconds ticked by.
Even within the two crystals cupped in his palms, tiny motes of mana particles could be seen stirring and swirling before streaming out of the stone in thin, glowing threads that curled toward his skin and sank into him, vanishing the moment they made contact with his flesh.
It stung at first, but Austin kept his breathing steady throughout his meditation, refusing to let this strange sensation break his focus, even as the feeling of mana flooding into his body grew more intense with every passing second.
He continued this for a while, and it didn’t take long before the light around him began to dim.
When Austin finally opened his eyes and glanced down at his palms, the two crystals that had been there moments ago were simply gone.
Instead, what he could see were small piles of blue dust.
Looking closely, it almost felt as though the entire crystals had been hollowed out and ground down to tiny dust particles.
It felt surprising and amazing at the same time, but just then, Austin’s system notification popped up quietly in the corner of his vision.
[Host’s mana capacity has increased by +5 mana units.]
"What?" Austin’s eyes widened in surprise.
This wasn’t how mana breathing techniques were supposed to work.
Every story he’d ever heard about them, based on the fragments of memory inherited from the previous host, described mana breathing as a method of recovering depleted mana reserves.
This basically meant that mana breathing techniques were used to refill what you’d already lost, not to gain more than you’d started with.
But right now, his system technique had done not only one of them, but both.
It had absorbed the crystal’s entire mana content and converted a portion of it into a permanent increase to his own mana capacity.
How was this not another amazing cheat by his ever-impressive system?
"Awesome."
Austin couldn’t help but mutter the word out loud as he grinned at the small pile of dust in his hands.
And so, without wasting another second, Austin reached for a new set of two mana crystals from his item box and resumed his meditation once again.
Now, Austin was fully intent on repeating the process with the hope of seeing just how much his body could keep absorbing to increase his mana capacity.
