The Good Teacher

Chapter 107 Learning To |Introspect|

A/N: Read Chapter 114 before this one. You can choose not to, but it will make more sense if you do so.

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Recently, Guy stumbled upon an interesting discovery while teaching Yoga to Dora. He didn't notice it at first because he was so concentrated on instructing her, though it became more apparent as he repeated the stances by himself for the purpose of meditation.

Interestingly, Yoga could double as the orthodox meditation method used in this world to replenish mana and centre one's mind prior to cultivation. In fact, it happened to have a stacking effect as he transitioned through different poses. After a few tests, Guy found that the increase was geometric in that the rate doubled with each new pose added to the sequence.

However, with every new pose, while the rate doubled, it wasn't a discrete jump, it was parabolic. Therefore, after a point, the rate would plateau and would start to diminish eventually. Guy found that if he transitioned to another pose at the plateau he could reactivate the parabolic trend and maintain the momentum.

The reason for this happened to be how the various poses motivated the flow of mana through his mana channels. As previously established, meditation is the easiest strategy for a mage to replenish their mana. But why is that?

Mages cast spells by channelling the mana stored in their cores. They cannot channel the ambient mana in its unprocessed, raw form. If they try to do so, they may damage their mana channels, sometimes irreversibly. Therefore, the mage must first direct the ambient mana through their core, which purifies it, before piping it through their mana channels. But how can they get the ambient mana to enter their cores?

There are many ways for a mage to achieve this. Natural osmosis of mana through skin, flesh and muscles is possible, but it is unbearably slow. One could also directly inject a large infusion of mana right where the core is through some sort of a piercing device. Although efficient, it would be painful and potentially dangerous. Alternatively, they could ingest mana-enriched food and extract the mana from their stomachs.

But the most common strategy is to let the mana reach the core through the naturally existing blood vessels. Essentially, the human ingests ambient mana via inhalation, lets it piggyback on the blood cells flowing through the lungs, through the heart, and then directly to their cores.

Meditation is the preferred method to supplement this process. By consciously channelling mana throughout the body, through the plethora of channels off-shooting from the core, a sort of vacuum is created in the core. This in turn pulls more mana from the blood flowing in the vessels thus increasing the passive ingestion of mana by inhalation, and decreasing the rejected mana through exhalation.

To optimise the mana influx, the mage needs to channel their internal mana through all the blood vessels exiting the core. This process is time-consuming and takes years of experimentation to perfect, as no two mages have the same mana channel configuration.

However, Yoga seemed to make it almost trivial. Each pose happened to excite mana flow through one set of mana channels. After exhausting those channels, the practitioner simply moves to the next pose that excites a different set of channels. This process is continued till either all possible sets are exhausted, or the mage no longer feels the need to replenish mana.

There were, however, some caveats to this. For instance, there were cases when two poses happened to excite similar or intersecting sets of channels. In those cases, the rate was greatly nerfed. Guy had to experiment through a bunch of different poses both from memory and from the reference books in the RoK until he put together the optimal Yoga sequence for himself.

On top of this, Guy also found out that the sets determined as optimal for him weren't necessarily so for others. Markus and Jean, for example, couldn't enjoy the same rate increase from following Guy's sequence. Instead, Guy had to fashion a different sequence of poses for his students to achieve the same result.

Apart from the benefits of mana replenishment, Yoga also offered an insane boost in concentration the longer Guy practised it. Surprisingly, this concentration boost also stacked which turned out to be both a boon and a curse. Guy realised that there was an optimal amount of concentration someone could have before it simply turned into tunnel vision.

This secondary benefit was of immense use to Dora, who struggled with centring herself, but for others, with an already sharp sense of focus, it just made them more intense. One time, Guy forgot to pace his meditation and ended up fixating on his breath. Through it, he figured out that his every sixth breath, and every twelfth breath after that was elongated by an eighth of a second. He also found out that he flared his nostrils during exhalation three per cent more than during inhalation.

The worst part about this heightened state of concentration was that its duration also compounded. In the previous case, Guy was stuck measuring his breath for almost five hours!

Ultimately, Guy determined the sweet spot and found that intermittently diverting his focus to another focal point when practising a pose offered sufficient disruption to hamper the compounding without sacrificing the growth in mana replenishment rate. The diversion couldn't be too drastic, nor could it be so negligible as to not make a difference.

With all that being said, why was Guy still focusing so intensely during his meditation at the moment, one may wonder?

Well, after a rather fruitful discussion with Al, he had learned that as a mage in the Foundation Establishment, he could now train himself to personally inspect his core. To do this, he would need to dip his toes into a rather arcane subsection of magehood - spirituality.

According to Al, although it is possible for a mage to gauge their and others' cultivations at a superficial level, one can't truly view the entire picture without delving deeper through spirituality. Spirituality also has other functionalities as one advances through it, however, due to its difficulty it is often sidelined in favour of processes of immediate concern. Nevertheless, every mage MUST learn one important skill from the spirituality toolbox, and that's |Introspect|.

|Introspect| is the spiritual counterpart of the ubiquitous |Inspect| cantrip. To elaborate on that abstruse definition, while |Inspect| offers insight into the physical nature of things, |Introspect| offers insight into the abstract realms of reality. How do particles interact? One can observe it through |Inspect|. How do two opposing world views affect a person's growth? This is where one could use |Introspect|. In simpler terms, the skill |Introspect| could make all psychologists' and most psychiatrists' lives immensely easier.

In the beginning |Introspect| is a skill solely to be used to gaze into oneself. It is mostly used by mages to aid their cultivation path to ensure that nothing goes haphazardly wrong when they absorb insights. Through practice and experience, one can learn to extend this skill towards targets aside from themselves. This external application is hence called |Extrospect|. This was the same skill used by Al to peer into Markus' cultivation.

Needless to say, |Introspect| wasn't an easy skill to grasp. To approach it, one must first clear their minds from all distractions and direct their concentration on their deepest and most repressed thoughts.

That was it! No matter how hard Guy searched, he couldn't find a more substantial methodology.

'Again with the abstract explanations...' Guy sighed exasperatedly at that time. 'It's like the Way of the Burning Fist all over again!'

Nonetheless, after some consideration, Guy realised that he could match the first and half of the second condition by practising Yoga without adjusting his focus in between. So with great reluctance, Guy proceeded to do so.

Slowly, as he progressed through the sequence of poses, Guy could actually feel his mind filtering out all the noise from the surrounding. Every sound, every smell, every touch, even every taste his brain deemed irrelevant was slowly phased out. Little by little, Guy was entering a state of complete blankness. His mind was literally empty of all thoughts.

At that point, Guy quickly alerted his idle mind to focus on himself.

'Who am I? What is my purpose? Why do I do what I do? Why am I like this? What is wrong with me? Do I even deserve this? What did I do to benefit from this? I'M NOTHING BUT AN ENTITLED PRICK! I SHOULD HAVE JUST DIED!!!!'

"AAAARGHHH!" Guy grunted while clutching his head in pain. He had dived in too quickly! Al had warned him about this. |Introspect| wasn't a trivial skill. In the process of grasping this skill, one is forced to confront their deepest fears. It is impossible to barrel through this.

"Deep breaths..." Guy repeated. "Slow and steady. Slow. And. Steady."

Guy calmed himself and waited for the stabbing headache to pass, after which he restarted the sequence of poses.

After a while, he once again entered the same state of complete blankness. Just as he practised before, Guy directed his focus inwards.

'Who am I?' Guy quickly stopped his subconscious from moving further. He couldn't risk it like last time. The game had to be played at pace.

One at a time, Guy walked through each barrier his soul thrust forward in the form of a question with equally incisive answers. Guy was a mature man in his past life. Having to constantly observe and expose himself to the devastation of those truly unfortunate, he would often leave with a heavy burden in his heart. He had quickly come to terms with the fact that he was in a position of extreme privilege that couldn't be enjoyed by most others in the world.

His conscience recognised this and would often eat away at his sanity! To combat his, self-afflicted, deteriorating mental health, Guy scheduled regular appointments with his psychiatrist. Through frequent conversations and directed dives into his psyche, he had gotten to know himself better.

Unfortunately, though, Guy hadn't put much effort into improving himself, much to his psychiatrist's chagrin. Guy had simply learned to live with his flaws, some of which ran so deep that those gazing from the outside would never even know they existed.

'Do I even deserve this? A second chance? Another shot at happiness?'

Guy sighed internally when faced with this question. Yet, without hesitation, Guy answered, "No."

BOOM!

An abstract explosion rippled through Guy's soul as a pair of massive gates jerked open in his mind. It was the sign Al told him to look out for. It was the indication signalling that Guy had grasped the ability to |Introspect|!

Guy couldn't afford to divert his focus and celebrate this accomplishment. He paused for a bit to calm himself and metaphorically passed through the gates.

Suddenly, he felt his senses rolling through a vacuum! His focus was being taken somewhere.

But where...?

As though to answer the question, he was unceremoniously plopped down from his rapid and claustrophobic transit to a new room.

Guy once again paused to sharpen his focus. As his surroundings became clearer, he exclaimed with a mixture of shock and confusion, "W-Why am I here?"