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Elizabeth Williams is a 16-year-old Third-year high school student and Nick’s best friend since childhood. They were so close and did basically everything together for the better part of their childhood. They would usually meet up at his house and play throughout the day. He started becoming distant when his parents died. Though it wasn’t unexpected, she still tried her best. She’d visit him at his uncle’s place, and spent a lot of time and effort keeping their friendship. At this point, they were nearly inseparable – or at least that’s how it was supposed to be, but without a doubt, they were nowhere as close as they were in the years before. She could still do as much as tell if something was on his mind, she was still the closest friend he had, but the distance between them had been growing. He was getting more distant as the days went by.

For the last two days, Nick seemed unusually distant; ever since she found him crying on the roof. The days after that, he’d leave school immediately after the bell rang, as though he had somewhere he was hurrying to. It was rare for him to just run off like that, as he usually enjoyed taking his time packing and getting ready before leaving the class. She decided she’d talk to him and figure out where he was running off to. It might seem a little intrusive, but considering their friendship, it’s just normal to want to know. Meanwhile, Nick was in his own world all that time. Utilizing the abilities of his magic eyes, he looked at the world around him which was now very colorful with the different magical energies around, in people, and the air. All the while practicing control over his own mana. It took a lot of concentration and due to this, he paid almost no attention to what was going on in the class around him.

After hours of feeling and moving his magical energy, his concentration was finally broken by a tap on his shoulder; it was Liz

“The lunch bell has rung… You’ve been spaced out all day. Are you okay?”, She said with a worried expression

“I’m fine, no need to be so worried”, He answered with a little smile.

“You’ve been acting unusual recently, you’ve even been spaced out all this time, you leave school early. What happened to you?”, She said in one breath, all her current worries.

“Oh that”, He said with a laugh.

“I just got this really cool game, it’s plenty hard and I’m trying to clear it as fast as possible; I was thinking about playing strategies. You can come and check it out if you want”, he added.

“Oh, then why was I even worried?” she said with a facepalm. The rest of the day continued smoothly with him with Nick putting most of his concentration on trying to control his magic power.

‘What about his schoolwork?’, one may think. But Nick already had a good enough cumulative grade. One term of slacking wouldn’t harm him so much. And either way, he wasn’t the type that failed tests, so he was sure to get by just fine. Losing a few marks wasn’t going to deter him from learning magic.

At the end of school, he left for the old house like the last two times and entered Eden’s office from the study door.

“You came,” Eden said from her chair

“Of course, I did” Nick replied in a matter-of-fact tone.

“Or was I not supposed to come?” He asked

“Well, you can come anytime so it doesn’t really matter” She replied.

“So where do we start today?”, Nick asked with anticipation showing clearly, in his eyes. “Hmmm,” She thought for a while.

“Your mana is a lot more stable than yesterday, meaning you must have practiced a whole lot. So, I’ll give you a special service” She finally said.

“What could that be?”, He enquired further.

“master in magic”.

“Cool,” he said, very interested in the sound of what she was saying.

“Ok then,” She said, opening a portal beside him,

“Get going. It’s not going to be easy. But don’t worry, you most likely won’t die” She said with her voice becoming low at the last part.

“What do you mean probably?” He asked, starting to panic

“I mean I’ll save you if you’re about to die or unless you fall for an instant-death attack or trap. And why are you worried? Aren’t you the main character?” Eden said with a smirk.

“What’s that smug face for?” Nick asked Irked

“And what do you mean by the main character? And there are instant-death traps?” He asked clearly annoyed by the fact that she was literally playing with his life.

“I mean, you really fit the bill to be an MC, I mean I could put your story in a book; It’d do great”, She said with a hearty laugh.

“And I was just joking, you won’t actually die; Just like a dream, you’ll be ejected at the point of death. I’ll also fix all the damage to your body and clothes, can’t say anything about the mental fatigue though, so get going. I’ll guide you from this side” she said as she pushed him through the portal.

On the other side, was a wide hallway. It was lit dimly with some light-emitting rocks lining the edges of the ceiling on both sides, emitting a warm light.

He took a step forward and something strange happened. He felt his magic power depleting very quickly. Activating his magic eyes, he noticed. There was no light except him. He was the only source of mana in this cave.

“So, you noticed” Came Eden’s voice from seemingly nowhere.

“This hallway has special properties of absorbing all the mana around and in it. Though it absorbs quickly, if you can completely stop your mana from leaking, it won’t be absorbed. In other words, if you can confine your mana in your body, you’ll be able to get through”, She explained.

“Ok then,” Nick said and then took another step forward, then proceeded to fall to the floor, losing his consciousness in the process.

He woke up a while later, on the floor in Eden’s office, to the cold uncomfortable feeling of the floor on his back. Eden was standing over him and looking down at him.

“I overestimated you,” she said,

“It was a mistake on my path. Your mana was so stable I assumed that you could at least manipulate it properly by now. But it was just you getting more accustomed to moving your mana. Think of it this way. You do a lot of basic finger exercises using a keyboard. But it’s finger exercise, not keyboard playing exercise. You’d be very used to moving your fingers around a keyboard, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to play any music. In the same way, you’ve been actively trying to feel and move your mana so much, and you’re quite good at it, or you’re wasting a lot of time practicing. Because of this, your mana is a lot more stable than it should be. But in reality, though now it’ll be a lot easier to use magic, your mana control is still worse than someone who spent years meditating even with no thoughts whatsoever of magic” she said.

“I’m just surprised you could say all that in one breath,” Nick said while sitting up.

“And it was quite rude” he added as he sat on the floor.

“So, all I have to do is not let my mana leak, right?” He asked, with a determined look on his face as he got up to his feet.

“Sure,” Eden said with a bright smile and she opened the portal again, then he walked through for his second attempt. At the beginning of the hallway-like cave, he took a deep breath.

‘Concentrate feel the mana, confine the mana, don’t let it escape’

After a couple of seconds, he stepped forward for his second try at the very first part of the Labyrinth of trials, which ended as quickly as it started; He had barely taken a few steps before his mana rushed out of his body, which like a puppet whose strings had been cut, fell to the ground. It was a complete failure. Waking up again, he looked at Eden who was squatting beside him.

“Send me back,” he said.

“ok” Eden replied with a sigh and opened the portal Entering again, He took some steps back and noticed that he didn’t go back through the portal. He took more steps back and started sprinting.

‘If I can’t reach the end normally, I just have to get there before my mana is completely drained’ Reaching the point that was supposed to be the beginning of the Labyrinth, he lunged forward. The result was – another failure. Couldn’t put enough concentration into holding his mana, and ended up losing his mana mid-air, making him crash brilliantly into the ground.

“I think sending you there was a bit unfair,” Eden said with a troubled expression

“The labyrinth of trials isn’t as easy as it seems. I may say all you have to do is learn to control your mana, but to be able to control your mana to that extent that the Labyrinth won’t be able to take it, requires extreme amounts of skill. Though it’s not impossible to get past, it’s a game with set difficulty at impossible, especially for a beginner”, she explained.

“Well, I guess, we’ll go for some more basic exercise before you challenge it again”, she said. He could only see this as a challenge, a challenge to his pride that had just been massively wounded. He couldn’t but think she did this purposefully.

“Ok,” he said, reluctantly.

“Ok, now I’ll teach you the most basic form of magic. It’s so basic, that even people that don’t recognize magic can do it. Well, those people would be people that have dedicated their whole lives to meditation or martial arts” she started.

“It’s body strengthening using mana. Normally, mana is an internal force one does not interact with, but it can have a lot of effects if you can manipulate it to any extent. There’s even a whole school of magic that just specialize in using magic flowing in the body. Though it’ll be better to just call it a martial art school that stumbled unto magic. You just bring the mana out from its regular astral flow and make it flow in your physical body. You should picture pulling the mana out, and you should probably focus on doing it for particular body parts rather than your whole body at first” She explained With determination in his eyes, and with his last bit of pride, he closed his eyes. He had already tried something like this before. He was able to send mana to power his magic eyes, so something like this wouldn’t be a problem. Concentrating deeply, he tried it. Picturing his mana coming into his body, his body felt slightly lighter. He focused all the energy to his hand.

“Good,” Eden said.

After a few seconds, his body became exhausted, his mana had run out.

“You don’t have much mana right now, you’re still a novice. But there’s something that can help. It’s a method your dad used to increase his mana up to insane levels” Eden said.

“How good exactly was my dad?”, He asked. It was a question that always crossed his mind, but he never asked, until now. His curiosity had gotten the better of his fears.

“Your dad”, Eden said, then paused to take a deep breath

“In terms of raw power, he could sink a small country on a whim without much. If it was his mana control, Lemme just say, there was a time he was in a meeting of sorts with other powerful magicians. His mana was so well concealed, they overlooked him at first, till someone recognized him by face.”, she said with an expression as if she was in the past.

“There was never a dull moment. Everyone was always on their toes, waiting for the next crazy thing he’d do. One moment he was in another world, the next, he’d be lost somewhere in time. He did settle down when he met your mom”

“Ok” Nick said with newly found determination.

“Open the portal”

Eden did as he said, and opened the portal again which he walked through to face the labyrinth for the third time. Concentrating the most he could, he gathered as much of his mana as possible into his feet for body strengthening, went into a crouching position and leaped into the hallway.

With his magic enhanced body, he was able to throw himself forward with quite the force, but there were problems. His mana had drained quickly, leaving his body to crash in the middle of the hallway with all that force and slide a bit on the floor.

“That was a great attempt,” Eden said, looking at him when he woke up.

“Normally someone that just started learning magic wouldn’t be able to pull off those levels of mana control you just showed. And you don’t have much mana. You haven’t done any mana building exercise and you’re basically a regular human in terms of mana quantity, so you won’t even be able to last in the Labyrinth either way.” She started

“Now for the mana exercise that your dad used, it’s called ‘Reharness cultivation’. It takes a lot of concentration and mana control to pull it off. You expel all your mana, and just before your body disconnects from it, you pull it back. It’s a simple exercise, but it works wonders. And to train your mana control outside your body, gather mana just above your hand and give it a shape, preferably round, then keep it for as long as possible” she said as she bid him farewell and threw him an amulet

“What’s this?” He asked

“It’s a mana recovery amulet, it gathers mana from the air and channels it into your body for faster recovery, it should help your training. It also has an extra protection ability to make a very powerful barrier. You could give it to a friend that needs protection when the time comes” She answered.

“Ok then, bye” he said as he wore the amulet and walked out the door. Like the last time, he was in front of the house. And with his pride completely broken, he went back home.

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