A sweep of a mighty paw. An elegant dodge. Several jumps to get into a better position. An exchange of hits. Dazzling speed and blurring motions. The figures before my eyes moving once and again, no care for stealth. Claws drawing blood. A pained roar and a rumbling growl.

Growling all the time, those lazy monsters always playing around. Doing so much noise and distracting me out of meditation.

A slow stomp signals the start of another round. A struggle on hind legs. A loss of balance. A victor, roaring to the heavens. A defeated foe, lying on its belly. Excitement is palpable in the air. The victor's pride rising.

I raise an eyebrow. But fail to do so. I raise both eyebrows instead.

The victor jumps, landing over the defeated foe. Paws firmly on its back. A hostile rumbling leaving the defeated one, shaking me to the bones. The victor's pride going dangerously near the defeated's back. The victor's pride going... inside?

Wait, what?

The creature starts to move his hips against the other creature's. The sound, a rhythmical slap that fills the clearing, like drowning all other sounds in the background. Meanwhile, the other creature struggles half-heartedly to escape the predicament. This game is savage.

I keep looking at them for a full minute, trying to puzzle what I am witnessing, to understand the cause for them to make so much noise as to kick me out of attunement. Then, understanding suddenly struck my head, as hard as an angry merchant when he catches you red-handed stealing his oranges.

So this is it, eh? It's just like Ars told me. To think that I didn't believe him at the time. In my defense, there were too many drunkards' laughs for it to be taken seriously or as trustworthy information. Maybe I should hold those pieces of advice he gave me in the past in a little higher regard from now on.

I yawn. I have been rather tired lately.

After entertaining the idea of throwing cold water to the creatures I leave them to their recreational activities and go back to what I was doing before. I close my eyes and try to get again the concentration that slipped away from me a couple of minutes ago. Easily reaching attunement with the world I take a hold of my mana, from my mana pool.

Once in control of some mana, at this point, a magician would shape the mana into a matrix to chantless-cast a spell. That is not my purposive and thus not what I will do with it. After siphoning a certain amount of mana, enough as to not escape my mediocre control, from my mana pool I start to move it around my chest, once and again. As time pass I start to notice how the mana slowly takes another form, starting to change little by little.

At some point, when the mana didn't change anymore, I free it from my control. It started spinning on its own, around the center of my chest, more exactly from where I feel my mana comes when I bring it from my mana pool.

I always perceive my mana as currents of a light blue shade. The new mana, that hovers out of my mana pool, has a yellow 'coloration' to my senses. It's named inner-mana but more commonly called qi or spiritual energy. Ironically, external-mana is the one inside the mana pool. There are many differences between them, the principal being that you can't cast spells with it. I knew it already but still tried it out of curiosity. Nothing happened. I was a little apprehensive before trying, though. I thought that maybe I would trigger a backlash but fortunately, not even that happened in the end.

Spiritual energy strengthens your body according to the amount that you have accumulated, it is over time, though. That is the passive effect. Also, I am not exactly sure of that but it is something between those lines. The active form of using it is to burst your strength temporally or other tricks that I am not aware of, even on serious writing about aura they are vague about it, as secretive as with spells. The more remotely similar to an aura manual that I found just had a few exercises. Sadly, I don't remember those. I wasn't very interested at the time, and less after not finding anything useful about it. After all, we were supposed to start learning it eventually under a teacher.

It's like another mana pool. That is how I feel it. It's more accessible but it doesn't grow on its own, unlike the normal mana pool. It's easy to fill as long as it's empty but when it's full it becomes harder to grow but it's the only way to do it.

Back in the town, we were forbidden from training spiritual energy until a certain age. The elders wanted us to focus on magical arts and spells and once we got ten years old start with the other training, as support to our strength. Some people acclaim that training in both, magic and spiritual energy, harms our ability to use each other. There have been records of that happening but, in fact, those happened when they reached a very high mastery over one of them and in consequence making it harder to use the other. However, it was always dismissed by the people of the town. They believed that even if it wasn't proved to be safe it was too good of a benefit in the short term to pass up, after all.

I haven't come up with a way to successfully use it yet but growing up my maximum capacity has been going well. Lately, I have been trying to identify as many patterns as I can, detecting the similarities between my spells. Doing that is more difficult than I thought and if it keeps going that bad I will need to experiment, and that will be dangerous. If I ever do it now is a good time, the stronger the mage the higher the possibility for the backlash to be nastier, even so, young mages aren't exempt from dying by magic going wild it's just that is more uncommon.

Different from expanding the mana pool or speeding up its gathering speed, training spiritual energy is awfully boring and I quickly grew bored of it; so I tried to do something I didn't try before when in the state of attunement. What I mean is actually doing something else at the same time. Two things at a time. I didn't try it before because I considered it unnecessary. Just reaching attunement and maintaining it let me feel great, safe, sharp, the time pass flying. Leaving it makes me feel refreshed as if I slept just the optimal amount of hours. But I still need to sleep.

What I did is try to train both ways to use mana. Speeding up my natural mana 'regeneration' and training aura at the same time. It worked. I was on ecstasy but when leaving attunement I found out that I was tired and not refreshed. Not really a problem taking into account that I was about to go to sleep anyway. And if two was possible then why not three? Well, I passed out after leaving attunement and didn't wake after several hours.

Better to not extenuate my body like that.

I have been trying to copy something I noticed of the creatures too. First I thought they used their inner-mana all the time but I couldn't be more wrong. In fact, they don't, it's very rare for them to use it for an extended time period. I know since now that I have a better grasp of my own inner-mana/spiritual energy I have started to feel theirs while I am meditating. I have noticed that they almost do not use spiritual energy when we rest and still have their incredible strength and speed. I think that the few times they actively use it is on hard fights, like that with the Shadow Crawler on my first day.

I am pretty sure that other monsters really use spiritual energy every time they can: birds, the endless swarms, and even the freaking plants sometimes.

Of course, the question nagged at my mind all the time; if the Mingan don't use it then why are they so strong? A trait that every monster has? Not at all, I know that is rare for monsters to be so strong even here in the Great Wild since I have seen them. Maybe they have a lot of spiritual energy so their body is strong as a result, I thought that but then I noticed it, the cubs are really weak but their young ones are very strong. Quick growth in little time, not enough as to have so much aura, and neither enough time, I think.

Spiritual energy nurtures the body. Some say that it purifies it. This nurturing is done over time but without actively using it the difference of strength between a spiritual warrior and a regular warrior who trains his body is actually not much.

The difference between cubs and the older creatures is outstanding but between the young and the older not so much so whatever they do to increase their strengthening, as I theorized is how they get so strong. It starts to lose efficacy upon reaching a certain plateau. Unless they are just special or the exception I think that they somehow do that and I want to know If I can copy it. It's worth trying to find out. If I succeed it would give me an edge to survive and leave this place.

I haven't advanced much in some of those and my search for answers has left me with little sleep.

Monsters train their inner-mana by instinct, some for thousands of years. I doubt that any of the creatures here is that old but I have seen some monsters that may be very old get their ass kicked by the creatures.

Also, I sense something strange going on with the creatures but I can't point my finger at it, it's just a weird feeling. And it's easier to feel it in the cubs, like something happening all the time inside their bodies, maybe it can give me some answers because I think it's related to their strength.

It´s hard to try. Especially because my spiritual energy runs out pretty quickly for whatever I try to use it. I have tried to cover my hand with it to start experimenting with the theory but I just don't notice any difference. I can't cover my whole body without it running dry after a few seconds.

After doing that for a while I felt silly. First, I sensed the strangeness inside the creatures' bodies, not covering them, and second, like normal mana it dissipates fast when leaving my body. I guess that covering a body part with spiritual energy may work as a quick power up but it's of no use in this situation.

Sigh, I feel that I have been wasting so much time. Doing this would be easier with a teacher but out here I am alone, try and failure are my only teachers.

I deduced that there may be one last thing which can help me with everything of that. An advanced skill, difficult to master. Mastering the state of attunement itself, reaching it without the need to meditate, or at least to not lose it each time I stop meditating. It's an open secret that it's a useful skill to have when you are in combat and it could be helpful with figuring out the creatures' secrets, and if not, at least it won't be detrimental to me.

But I haven't progressed with that at all and I have been practicing for months now. I have been in a rather bad mood, I am missing something but I don't know what I am doing wrong. Each time I try it and open my eyes, attunement slips away from me and I feel like trying to remember a dream once you are awake, but the more you try the more you forget about it.

Bah. To tell the truth, there is no point in being angry about it, I have known it since the beginning. Even if I don't manage to do some things right now, I will get them eventually. There are other things where I have made and can make more progress.

I will just focus on what I am good at. I shouldn't slow down my pace but quicken it. My stamina is better and the Great Wild doesn't seem that sinister anymore.

Many things have happened but I have coped up with it relatively well.

Failure is necessary, it's there where I can find improvement.

My worries dissipating, I open my eyes and stand up with a jump I feel well-rested and refreshed. I need to spend some energy maybe today will be the first time I go to the profundity of the woods beyond the clearing with the creatures. Sudden movement makes me snap my head to see at my back. A creature jumped over fifteen meters onto a tree with a little burst of energy.

It was a pretty high jump. The more we go inside the Great Wild the higher and sturdier the trees have become. Naturally, the mana density in the air has thickened little by little.

I start to walk, feeling eerily more aware of everything. Easily feeling the mana in the air and the strangeness of the creatures seems to be glaringly more noticeable.

I stop and look again at the creature that jumped to the tree branches. Did I feel the spiritual energy the creature used on a short burst from this far?

I couldn't do that before.

The realization hits me and suddenly everything feels normal again, kind of void and empty. I was still on attunement after leaving meditation. And I held onto it while moving.

What? How?!

Forget about focusing on what I am good, I need to try again or I will not die peacefully.