With my increased INT and WIS, reading the Mana and Psy books was a breeze. From my understanding now, the three energies were a trifecta. Building off each other to create something

better than they could individually. With all three of the same author's basic books, the writing style and composition of information was easy to compartmentalize.

The same as the Qi book, there were quotes for both mana and PSY.

Mana is the byproduct of the soul, the Deepest, Clearest, and Cleanest connection one has to the source. In some way, mana is Source energy but personalized to the individual. For mana comes from life and only life. For one to breathe, think, and act. Mana is there to be discovered.

When the first sentient learned to create was when PSY was formed. To bring into existence what has never been is the pinnacle of taking from the source. Which is all in all ways, bringing forth the singular idea or thought needed for development. For PSY is Abstraction into Concrete.

Mana, similar to Qi, had spirit roots, stems, and branches. With spirit roots being almost identical in function to Qi vessels, circulating mana throughout the body. But unlike Qi, it's needed less for the body since Mana's nature is to spread itself out and expand. Some people are even born with none and can use magic perfectly well, not efficiently but good enough. Personal creation of spiritual roots is entirely possible and painless. It sucks that this book doesn't give a guide, but at least I have the information. Next was the stem. In simple terms, you can call it the continuation of the dantain soul connection I made. But having it fully extend from my dantain to my brain where Psy is created instead of stopping halfway to my soul. Finally, after the stem was formed, the branches could connect the neurons in the brain with mana to reinforce the already established connections. You would think this would be in the PSY book, but this is where it stops. Branches don't have much use on their own. Other than the expenditure of mana for the increase in the Mental stats.

With Psy having a specialty of embedding beast cores to maximize the perceptional awareness of oneself. Once fully integrated into the user's body part, being the eyes, brain, and pineal gland. Gives the user a totally different level of control on the perception of one's and others' reality. The interesting part which Herald Kingsfold noted in his Psy basic was. Suppose you were to connect all three fundamental basics into a diagram. It would form a tree with the Qi meridians being the soil to which the spirit roots attached. To fully develop upward towards the head to then flourish once into many branches, the beast cores acting as budding fruit that can be plucked and used as the user sees fit. Once again, rank had significant importance to the final product. The tree branches connected to the brain's neurons fed the beast cores mana with higher-ranking ones giving higher flexibility and control of their Psy ability. Out of all 3 books, the mana was the smallest, only 100 pages total and Psy around 150.

With Qi being the physical of the world, Mana was the alteration of the physical, with Psy being the perception of it. This tricked me up. An example Herald used was fire magic. The flames created from a fire mage would act the same as any fire, burning anything it comes to contact with. One could use both mana and physical material to fuel it to grow in ferocity. But a regular flame could only grow with physical material and, if injected with mana, would either become a disaster leading to explosion or a fizzling of the fire. To overcome that obstacle, one would first have to absorb/convert/transmute or anything skill related for it to be mana compatible. With Psy, it all about one's perception of what is 'true.' Another example is given in the book, which was one of the simplest for me to understand, was telekinesis. Say one wanted to lift a 10-ton boulder with their Psy skill. All you would need to do is visualize the boulder to be lesser in weight than it indeed was, then with a pure intent implant that into reality to use Psy as a cost difference. That could change the 10-ton boulder into nothing more than a gram to them, but it would still be 10 ton to another. But if another user's intent were to increase said boulder to be 20 tons and more 'pure' and effective in implementing that intent, that would override the originals user's Psy skill. Now I wonder what an SSS rank Psy skill could truly accomplish, to alter entire areas perception of time to accelerate or decelerate aging to make one immortal or to rapidly evolve a whole group of monsters without their knowledge at all. Or even the ability to stop the act from being performed on you. True manipulation of reality, just like a god.

The last two books weren't important at all compared to the Heralds. But they did have a couple of interesting concepts that piqued my interest. One being Qi breathing and circulation techniques. They didn't give permanent improvements but would provide a 5% buff to Qi efficiency for 24hrs for every 1 hr of use. The buff wouldn't increase higher than 5% better than nothing, in my eyes. The same would go for spirit root growth, which requires the depletion of one's natural Qi supply to feed their soul to make purified mana. So much to do and never enough time. Tomorrow was my big day. With this knowledge, I had at least a running start. I wouldn't be a pup walking into a lion's den but a bear cub ready to tear some ass. This next month I honestly can't wait for this to be my start to my journey for being Humanity torch. How long do I have until all of humanity comes here to this world? Questions to be asked and answers to be sought. With that, I closed my status screen and went over to the little cot Emilia made for me while in deep reading. Attached to the cot was a note, "Sleep well, Jack, I didn't want to disturb you." She truly was a mother through and through. I would use Astral projection and train some more, but I think it would wiser to rest my body and soul. With that, I slumbered off into my dreams.