It had been a month since the minor incident of him accidentally harming himself, but things had been going at a good pace ever since then.

Even though his mother's healing spell was a little clumsy and had a chance to leave a few scars, his new ability to heal had come to the rescue, completely healing him from scratch while breaking down the tiny glass shards that his mother's spell might have left behind.

Yes, you heard that right... Silas had a healing ability... It only took him 3 months to find out how to use them, but he got there in the end.

However, he didn't mull over that fact for too long... Sure, he thought that he was becoming slow in the head for a few hours, but afterward, the only thing he could think about were the implication of such a powerful ability, and how he could implement it into his life to improve his battle capabilities.

While increasing his battle potential and capabilities wasn't his main motivating factor, it was one of them, and the reason for that was simple.

His father was a knight, his mother was something called a diviner, and Keira, his grandmother, was a mage.

That sentence alone spelled danger. The fact that his whole family had based their entire professions on fighting or helping in battle told Silas that the world he was in was going to be a ruthless one.

Sure, he loved to learn, discover and create, and even though learning about magic was exactly that, what was the point of learning and discovering new things if you're too dead to implement any of it?

So for the last month, Silas cultivated and practiced his spell creation in a non-ending cycle, only taking breaks when his mother chose to breastfeed him.

"Are you sure your child isn't dead?" Keria glanced at Silas, who was simply sitting on the kitchen counter without moving or making a single sound.

"Yes! I checked his pulse three times already!" Rhea shouted back with the tone of a scolded child.

"Heh... Maybe he's cultivating?" Keira chuckled.

'If she only knew how right she was.' Silas thought and continued to circulate the mana inside his core. He felt like he was on the edge of something, and he assumed that feeling was that it felt like being one step away from a minor breakthrough.

He had understood that his mother and grandmother were incapable of feeling mana the same way he could, and they probably couldn't manually control their mana to the same extent as Silas.

Actually, it explained why they couldn't use spells they were not attuned to, and why there were unawakened people on this planet they called "Gilea."

Silas slowly looked at his grandmother, who had gone back to her own cultivation after her small remark about him.

Closing his eyes, Silas began thinking of the life equation... Unlike the rest of the elements, the life equation seemed to have been an element of its own that wasn't linked to mana.

Due to that, Silas couldn't think of the life equation the same way he thought of his mana.

Every time he used his mana to create a spell, he found that he would break it into 4 different sections, each one representing a different element. It dramatically lowered the speed at which he would create spells and the power behind his spells, but it also explained why the average person doesn't awaken.

When Silas opened his eyes again, they were a dull green. His vision changed into black and white, and he could finally see runes and the flow of mana around him.

And since he was looking at his grandmother, he could also see that she wasn't cultivating the same way as he was...

'Since she is only attuned to the fire element, she only siphons the fire element of the mana around her and uses it to cultivate her mana core.' Silas looked down at her solar plexus, where a mana core shone with a pristine crystalline amethyst light.

Silas turned his head toward his sister and narrowed his eyes when he saw very small amounts of silver energy leaving the mana around her and entering her core. She had recently turned 5 years old, so if he luck was right, she'd be really close to an awakening.

'It means that anyone without an affinity can't awaken, but if they do ever awaken, they'll have an affinity toward all the elements.' Silas thought, sighing when he realized he didn't have a notebook to write any of that information down, so he simply allowed it to remain in his mind.

'However... If the theory I've built up for the last month is correct, I should be able to release the full potential of my mana by forcing one of the elements to take full control of all my mana. This way, I won't have to split it into 4 different elements and lose about 75% of my mana's efficiency.' Silas stroked his chin, making his mother chuckled.

However, that's when he caught a glimpse of his father training on their front lawn with his blade.

At first, Silas didn't see the point of using a blade. Hell, he didn't even understand how his father had even become a knight if he had no elemental abilities, but that's when he realized that magic was only one of many paths mana could open up for a person...

His father seemed to exude and cover himself with mana in a way that Silas had never seen before. His father's technique and control were incredible, but over the last month, he had quickly realized that the mana manipulation was almost instinctual.

His father called it "Toki," and the books described it as a form of energy manipulation that comes from the soul. Of course, that wasn't true since what Silas saw was a form of mana manipulation that didn't use the core, nor did it use any elements.

It was the reason why mages couldn't use toki, and toki users couldn't use elemental magic either.

*Creek*

His father walked in through the door covered in sweat and panting from his training session, yet his face had a full-blow smile on it.

His smile was a little refreshing to see. Such a pure-hearted and simple smile would have brightened anyone's day, and it did for everyone who saw it, even Silas.

"Hm?" Lochras turned to Silas and looked him in the eyes.

"Hey, Rhea. Did you know that Silas has green eyes?" He asked, making Silas turn slightly pale as he quickly deactivated his ability.

"Really?" Rhea turned Silas's cheek to see, but when she looked into his eyes, they looked as dark brown as always.

"Dada coo-koo?" Silas pointed toward his father.

"Yes. Your father is delirious." Rhea sighed and looked at her husband disapprovingly.

"Mommy? Maybe daddy is tired?" Syra chimed in.

"Or he's lost his mind? I've seen it back when in the military, you know. Knights eventually go crazy." Keira chimed with a short cackle before returning to her cultivation.

"I don't appreciate all of you attacking me at the same time..." He pouted and looked into Silas's eyes again.

"I guess it was just the lighting, then?" He tilted his head before shrugging and going to his room to shower.

'Phew.' Silas sighed, and just like that, a year passed by in what felt like the blink of an eye.L1tLagoon witnessed the first publication of this chapter on N0vel-B1n.

[A/N: Toki is pronounced "T-Oh-Kee," but I guess its up to you on how you want to say it.]

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