The Place Where Everything Begins

Chapter 16 - Getting Stronger

Upon arriving home, Jeremy ordered a sumptuous meal from the nearby restaurant and took a long shower waiting for the meal to be delivered.

He decided not to care about his health anymore.

The time wasn't long before he wouldn't be able to eat Earth's foods any longer. There were not even two weeks before the tutorial events started.

After finishing everything, he did the regular meditation. He then went to sleep for 15 hours straight, only to wake up after the time hit midday to eat another sumptuous meal of McDonial.

Right after, he picked up his iPhone X Plus and called Charlotte.

*Toot* *Toot* *Toot*

After the phone rang three or so times, the sounds of a phone being picked up from the other side were heard.

Not waiting for Jeremy to speak first, Charlotte started the conversation directly.

"Hellooooo... Jeremy? What is it?" Came the voice of the energetic Charlotte.

"The things that I have promised to you guys on the phone since two weeks ago are almost ready. Bring all of those people here two days later at 5 p.m."

"Okayyy! Anything else?"

"That's all I have to say. Bye-bye."

"What!? Wait wai..."

*Tut* *Tut* *Tut*

After Jeremy hang up the phone, he went straight to call his other two friends and told them the same thing.

Meanwhile, Charlotte, who was hung up on by Jeremy, was now pouting and grumbling at her phone ceaselessly.

...

*Fwuuuu...*

Jeremy exhaled and thought.

'Let's do it. It was time for me to be stronger yet again... in this 'almost' mana-less world.'

Right now, Jeremy was sitting cross-legged on the floor beside his bed. At the same time, there was a bottle of light blue colored fluid placing right in front of him.

Both Jeremy and the bottle situated on top of strange-looking and weird-shaped lines inscribed on an animal's hide filled with strange characters then and there circling around them.

They were two null elemental revised arrays. One of the two arrays was used to absorb the mana into Jeremy's body, while the other one's function was to convert the mana's signature into his.

As a result of there were not enough mana particles within the air. The fluid inside the bottle would be used to complement the process of his advancement into a Journeyman Mage.

For one to become a Journeyman Mage. That person's body and mind had to get accustomed and acquainted enough with the three mana whirlpools within their dantians.

After that, that person had to accumulate enough mana particles inside their dantians and let those particles resided within the dantians in a dormant state.

Upon all of the above processes were done. That person would be qualified to become a Journeyman Mage.

But before that, they had to condense those mana particles and convert those dormant mana particles into mana fluid in the three dantians simultaneously.

And if they could successfully condense the droplets, they would finally become a Journeyman Mage.

The procedures above might look simple at first glance, but it was like climbing Mount Everest barehandedly for an average mage with a low overall aptitude for magic.

The hardest part laid in the condensing process.

On this part, a mage had to put their highest focus on the 10th stage of meditation, 'tranquillity and equanimity.

Not only that, the mage had to be much more familiarized with it more than when they entered the Apprentice Mage substage.

As a result, the mage was required to enter this stage with effortlessly stable attention, mindfulness, joy, tranquillity, and equanimity. After that, they needed to enter the deepest part of stage 10, which was 'persistence of the mental qualities'.

Only after accomplishing those actions could the 'average mage' be able to persist through more than 1 hour and a half at the least until they could successfully condense a drop of mana fluid inside one of their dantians.

Furthermore, the mage had to do it dantian by dantian until they finished all three dantians.

Just like that, the mage would finally be called a 'Journeyman Mage', one step away from a True Mage.

Now, let's talk about a general detail about a dantian and a whirlpool. First of all, imagine a CD of which the outer perimeter was the whirlpool revolving around itself continuously in three dimensions.

Meanwhile, at the center of which was just a small circular space would be where the mana fluid resided.

However, a dantian in a human's body was only around 1-centimeter diameter in size. How was it able to host the mana fluid inside, right?

It was because every dantian had its subspace inside of which the real size was several times bigger than its actual size.

For example, when Jeremy became a Journeyman Mage, his dantians' subspaces were around 5-centimeter diameter in size each (2.5 cm radius), which were enough to accumulate more than four cubic cm of mana fluid inside each one of them.

If using standard calculation formula, his dantians could contain a total of 65 mL of mana fluid in volume, but that was not the case here. In fact, it could only hold around 4 mL of mana within a 1-centimeter radius at the center of the 'disk'.

As a result of the other part, which was the rest of 61 mL, it operated as a whirlpool circling around the center space of the 'disk'.

Everyone out there might be wondering that only a single drop of mana fluid was enough to be a Journeyman Mage?

The answer was... YES.

And it would be best if you did not underestimate the might of a single drop of mana fluid.

If utilized with appropriate means and methods, a single mana drop could easily destroy an entire house into smithereens.

That's the power of a wondrous thing called 'Mana'...

Right now, Jeremy was trying to use this breakthrough opportunity to absorb as much as possible of mana from the atmosphere and enchanted fluid bottle.

This was one of the rare opportunities to absorb mana into his dantians without affecting his foundation after all.

...

*Fwuuuu...*

After several minutes later, Jeremy exhaled and opened his eyes.

"Success..."

Jeremy mumbled quietly.

For him, breaking through this time was not hard at all, unlike when he was trying to form a whirlpool inside his upper dantian. The differences in difficulty felt like heaven and earth for Jeremy.

This time he had absorbed more than 2 mL of mana fluid (40 mana droplets) into the center of the 'disk' inside each of his dantian. That made a total of 6 mL that he had absorbed from the 50 mL bottle.

That left with only 44 mL of mana fluid inside the bottle.

Right now, he could be considered a Mid-stage Journeyman Mage, and he was only one step away from becoming a True Mage.

Nevertheless, his combat power, together with his defensive measures, were definitely more substantial than most Class 1 Mage from the fact that the pureness of mana was top-notch.

Furthermore, to complement the pureness of his newfound mana was the endless experience and knowledge from his past life.

It could be said that he was unrivaled against the opponent in the same realm...

...

[A/N: Please read the Author's thoughts below. Also, you can calculate the volume of Jeremy's dantians by using the equation V=4/3?r^3. Lemme help you with this; his dantians' capacity was around 65 cubic cm each from the calculations. For the reference of water, 1,000 cubic cm = 1 liter, and 1 cubic cm = 20 droplets of water in volume. Well, assume that mana density is equal to water density, then from now on, I will use 'mL' instead of 'cubic cm'.]