-- Clara POV —
Hearing cultivation, most think of it as a fun, maybe not so little, adventure. That is partly true of course, but Luna and I were only twelfth and thirteen years old. This meant, that together with learning about our chosen disciplines, we now also needed to learn about cultivation and the history, dynamic and state of a world which is so much bigger than our current one.
I already had too little time for too much things before, and now I added another huge truckload of work. Luna does not care much and apparently I hold myself to impossible high standards. I know, that I will now live at least ten times longer through this ascension of my self, but I was restless. I also had problems which I needed to address, through you guessed it, cultivation. Even if I started now, it would still take a long time for real results to show. Alas, I did not have that time, neither could I rush it.
It all boils down to both my impossibly high standards and single mindedness in the end.
Hell, I could probably get a mastery in calligraphy due to the sole reason of decorating wardstones and writing their designs.
My only real free time in the end was teaching the fast track class of mind arts and playing with Mosaic.
This means, that I need to decide upon my future time management. I needed to keep up physical fitness, as the adept stage mostly amplified existing strength. There were naturally still ways, to increase your physical fitness through cultivation, but I had no such technique yet, not to forget that I want to try to create my own. Even for those types of techniques though, the foundation, the basic physical fitness, was very important.
Potions and wards were non-negotiable as well, as they are an important asset for my future growth.
The remaining classes in school were also needed, especially wand subjects. I could probably test out to at least OWL grade, but my understanding of the theoretical part of subjects like charms or transfiguration was too shallow as of now. Cannot be all knowing at thirteen, I only have so much time in a day sadly.
This leaves me with occlumency, which I usually do as sleep replacement, except the few rare true sleeps here and there. Meditation, the cornerstone of advanced occlumency is also a requirement to cultivate, though not as stringent. The only problem was, that it would probably drain me more than occlumency.
This would mean, that my occlumency will stand still for the foreseeable future. It was not as bad as it sounded, as most would attest, that my mindscape alone was highly unusual to even have at my age, not to talk about having developed it as much as I did, though I had a few missteps here and there.
The first cultivation phase would be plain boring planning for now.
On another node, it was time for another fast track class, which was scheduled for tomorrow at seven o'clock in the morning, which came way too fast. Everyone was on time, Lupin still avoiding me like the plague. „Good morning! Today, we will officially conclude the basic intent infusion training. There are multiple possible next steps, but I will concentrate on two of those. The first topic will be homework for the next lesson", I said, before giving each of them copies of a handwritten book: „I have summarized the information for you. The spell you should practice is called automata fila. It creates threads of pure mana. At the start it will only be one, but it can be an uncountable amount of threads, as long as you can control them. In the books are multiple detailed explanations and tips for practice and progression in the spell, summarized to shapes, objects, paintings and puppets. The first three will train your precision, speed and strength of the mana threads, while the last will test your coordination. It also is a good exercise for multitasking and creativity. You can naturally come to me, if you run into a roadblock."
„Back to todays topic though. You have already sensed mental energy outside of your body and it is time I answer a question of Draco. Why sense and utilize mental energy outside our bodies, if we could start with sensing our own. Any ideas?", I asked them, but only got negatives in response. „Most would say that I certainly skipped the first step, but I see it differently from them. Your mental energy is part of your body. Can any of you sense your blood flow? No, you normally cannot without years of training. Mental energy is more abstract than blood though, so how can you find something, which you do not now how it looks or feels, where it is supposed to be or how to use it? Now we are on the same page", I smiled, as I saw the realization dawn on them: „It would just be a pointless search. Boring and unpredictable with the results. Some may advance in single days, hours and most will need months to years for that exercise. Todays first part is meditating and finding your own mental energy in your own bodies."
„But, it is not a physical organ though? So where should we start?", Daphne asked. „Good observation. I would have come to that any second now. You use mental energy and trace it to the source. It is as easy as it sounds. You just need to focus your sensing of mental energy inward, instead of outward and I expect all of you to succeed in ten minutes.", I answered. Everyone started meditating right after and like I predicted, no one needed more than ten minutes. „Perfect. The next step is keeping up the sensing of your mental energy twenty-four/seven, which will also be homework for the next few weeks if not months. The reason for that is twofold. First, mental energy is not an infinite resource, it can run out. Intent infusion into words needs such a negligent amount though, that it does not even overwhelm your natural regeneration, for which you will also need to get a feel on. If we take intent infusion a step further though, it will rapidly drain your mental energy. Worst case, you will fall unconscious. While you work on that though, we will practice spell infusion next. And no Hermione, not on that spell. We will use the disarming charm. I think, that everyone here has already learned it?", I explained, finishing with the question, getting a positive from four of them.
„Conscious intent infusion into spells is not that different from words. Just a lot more volatile, which is while we will practice at the target range, Hogwarts Inc. helping in your security", I joked: „Like I said, you will be using the disarming charm with 6 different intents. The common one is come to me or my hand.
You will need to find your own style of intent infusion. I, for example, use concise short orders like my hand, to me or forward but you could also use more complex intents for the same results, though you will see in time, that some intents need more mental energy than others.
The six intent infusions for today will be forward, into your hand, backwards, up, down, right and left.
The goal of this exercise is to make the intent infusion purely informational, without any emotions, feelings or ballast attached to it. Conversely, your spell may loose power. Any idea why?", I asked.
Hermione blurted out: „Because emotions amplify our magic. Subconscious intent infusion for spells use these emotions to make the spells stronger. We now strip away those emotions, which means we will use the power, they previously brought."
„Yes, very good Hermione. This might sound idiotic though. Why practice something, which lowers power? There are two reasons. Sometimes you do not need more power and waste mana through it and if we really infused emotions consciously into spells, we would have even more explosions and disintegrations of material than today. This is also the reason, that you will not use intent infusion in any spars, until I deem you ready, as you could destroy your partners wand. Who wants to try first? No shame in failing", I joked and tried to motivate them, though it proved unneeded, as four hands shot into the air.
I realized pretty fast, that I had underestimated those four, as over the next four hours, not a single explosion happened and their utilization of the disarming charm spiked in efficiency and proficiency. At the end of the lesson, I needed to pry away all for of them from practicing: „That is it for today. I must admit, that I underestimated you. Another small homework is to write down any harmless spell you know, their original intent and possible alterations, let us say at least twenty. You are allowed to use this room for practice, though I would like to be present for now, as explosions are nasty and dangerous, even though none occurred today. Please do not underestimate the dangers of it." I dismissed them shortly afterwards.
So I now had the whole day remaining, to plan my cultivation technique. Creating one was easier than you would think, we hard part was making it have no negative side effects or any positive effects at all.
The adept stage basically layers an ethereal mirror of the body made out of mana over your physical body, which is called mana body.
The most basic techniques are mirrors of the bloods circulation system, with the heart as central core.
More advanced methods use multiple core locations like heart, lung, brain, liver and stomach. Another step above that are techniques, which depend on skin, muscles, tendons and bones. Even better ones additionally use blood itself and nerves.
Generally, the more detailed you sync the technique with your body, the better it is. That is the reason behind the encouragement to experiment with your cultivation technique. Could it have disastrous ramifications? Yes. Is the eventual improvement of potential and power worth it? Yes.
I needed a technique of at least the third level, as my goal was to improve my nerves. I had more ideas, but they would need to wait until I am there. To be fair, I would probably come up with something so braindead and impressive, that it will eclipse any type of scale.
The current plan looks like this, though any mistake would still kill me, so I needed to be meticulous while planning.
The centerpieces were cores, to be exact the largest reservoirs of mana of my cultivation technique, aptly named mana cores. I wanted seven or three of those, anchored to important organs. I will definitely use the brain, heart and lung. Kidney and liver would also be appreciated. That means that two cores were missing. I have thought about this very long, until I had an crazy idea. The brain and lung had two sides, so I could also assign them two cores.
That means the most basic requirement was down. The sequence of creation was also important. Heart, kidney, liver, lungs and brain in that sequence.
The cores themselves could have intents imbued:
- The liver's core neutralizes any charges
- The heart's core neutralizes any foreign influences
- The kidney's core neutralizes any elemental properties
In the end I have neutral unaligned mana through this mana cleaning process.
The moment these three cores are formed, they need to be rebuild with the cleaned mana instead of normal environmental mana, possibly boosting their performance.
The other four cores would have mana storage amplifications imbued in them.
This should get my cultivation to common newcomer, after a little gaseous mana is accumulated.
Then I needed to achieve the substages, before I could continue to uncommon.
Entry would be fluid mana in my cores, whereas advanced would be plasma mana in my cores.
At elite I need to add three static rings of solid mana around each core, which have sub intents imbued. At this stage I will rebuild the cores in heart, liver and kidney, their intents now being imbued in the three rings of both of the cores of the lungs. With this, all seven cores will have the same core intent imbued.
For peak I needed seven of those rings.
Changing makes the rings moveable and their intent changeable and breathing, if I decide to take it that far. No forget that, I will take it that far. At that stage, as sets of seven, the circles would slowly fuse with the core, strengthening it, after which new rings will be created. Rinse and repeat. Maybe even with different intents each time, if that is in any way possible.
The step into uncommon would be rudimentary connections between the heart and any other core. Newcomer will be just a connection from each core to the heart, while entry will advance that to a circulating system. Advanced will need connections between each and every core to each and every core, before elite adds a specific structure which should mirror the blood circulation, this is commonly known as pathways.
Peak will then need to rearrange those to include any spot in the body and not just the torso, while I am working on the supposed milestone for breathing today.
At changing, the pattern of circulation will change depending on my needs through an intent imbued directly into the connections.
It sounds easy, but they are damn complex arithmancy problems. I could probably also go for an arithmancy mastery now that I think about it.
After twenty-four hours, having missed a charms class, I finally found the missing puzzle piece. The circulation system should be able to handle multiple patterns at the same time at breathing.
At the end, this will all just bring me massive mana reserves and a pretty standard absorption speed, which I would need to address in the next stage. I decided to whole myself up for another day, only disturbed by the rare students seeking advice on the mind arts.
Over the next eighteen hours I found out, that I needed to disassociate absorption from breathing alone. At that point I realized, that I needed to change my approach for the intents in the rings. All cores would have the same configuration.
This would be done through absorbing ambient mana through the whole physical body instead of only breathing. That meant, that I would need the mana cleaning in every core, as they formed the foundation for everything else.
This foundation is a single entity, which meant that I did not need the specific intents on specific cores. This single entity also had the single intent of mana storage amplification imbued.
This also means, that core should have the same configuration of intents for the rings, consisting of the three mana cleaning ones together with regeneration and absorption.
At that point I also realized, that regeneration and absorption are not the same, needing a ring each. That might sound stupid but I am not infallible after all.
The last two sub intents would be amplifications for my senses and cognitive abilities.
The rare newcomer threshold is that the skin of the mana body can absorb ambient mana. This skin gets created with the creation of a mana body and I only need to imbue an intent for mana absorption and sensing.
Entry depends on using my pathways to deliver the absorbed mana to the nearest core to be processed, while advanced isolates the absorbed mana until it reaches the core, so that no charges, elemental properties or outside influences affect my mana. Elite handles the waste of the mana cleaning, as it can no longer be removed through exhaling, whereas peak improves my sensitivity to mana in my body even more, marking every absorbed mana particle with a specific type of intent. Changing allows for continuous one way paths to my core, disassociated from any other pathways, reducing the effort and increasing the speed of the absorbtion
Breathing brings the biggest change, as it can change elemental properties, mana charges and some types of foreign influences into nourishment for the body, which meant that it reduced my need to eat and drink slightly, though I could not life on that.
This went rather smoothly, though at the end I needed to run to be punctual for the potion fast track class.