Vale allowed a couple of minutes for his words to be absorbed by the students.
He continued further, "Now that we have dealt with humanity's need to cultivate, we will move to what cultivation is."
"Anyone?" he asked.
This time, the hand count was lower than before. The first reason was obviously the way Vale had handled the previous topic in an abstract yet logical manner, and hence, not everyone was interested in spouting general nonsense. The second was the sensitivity of the topic. Cultivation, though seemingly simple, was a complex subject. Putting it into words was not something everyone would be willing to do.
Seeing this, a chuckle escaped Vale's mouth. "Afraid already?"
Even so, he pointed towards a thin girl who keenly had her hand raised.
"Sir," she answered, "cultivation is the process we follow in which we absorb the mana around us and slowly increase our strength."
"The strength of a person is measured through different ranks. Starting from the lowest F Rank, we move towards E Rank, then D, C, and so on."
"A fine answer," Vale smiled. "But there are certain more points that must be considered."
"Firstly, we of course absorb mana in our surroundings to slowly increase our strength; but how exactly do we absorb the mana?"
"There are two kinds of absorption," he said. "First is the natural absorption of mana which begins in every person as they turn eighteen. As you may be very well aware, this is the reason for our mana poisoning if we do not get our companion or get our mana veins sealed. The amount of mana absorbed naturally is very small and becomes almost negligible once our strength rises."
"Why this happens? No one knows. It just happens."
He continued, "The second is the voluntary absorption of mana that we do through different cultivation techniques. In a way, this is the real cultivation."
"Our body has a natural affinity to absorb mana. Once that mana is absorbed, it is pumped into the mana veins inside our body. These mana veins are a set of interconnected networks inside our body. As the mana travels through these mana veins, they are refined by the veins, i.e., they are converted into a form suitable enough to be stored inside our body."
"Am I making sense?" he asked loudly, to which a loud agreement echoed in the class.
He continued further, "And where is the mana stored? In our mindscape or beastspace, as we call it."
"Now, this mindscape is a supernatural space that unlocks only after we get bonded with our companions. Without this mindscape, humans have no place to store mana."
"Where is the mindscape located?" he questioned with an amused face. "Well, definitely not in our body. We do not know where this mindscape is located or what is the process behind it becoming available only after we bond with a beast. It just happens, and trust me, there are a lot of people doing a lot of different experiments trying to find answers to these questions. We have hardly solved any of them."
He continued, "Now we absorb, store, and refine the mana. What happens afterwards? How do we break through? How do our ranks increase from F to E to D and then further?"
"Once the mana starts to accumulate in our mindscape, it slowly gets filled. A point comes when the mana in our mindscape gets saturated which means no more mana can be stored inside our mindscape."
"At this time, our mindscape evolves or goes through a breakthrough- and its size increases further."
"Now, this is not as simple as I told you. Making a breakthrough is a slightly complex process, and there are certain precautions we must take before attempting one. We will talk about it in detail in the next few classes."
"As many of you might have guessed or might already be aware, the size of the mindscape is quite important. Not overwhelmingly important, but up to a certain point."
"The mindscape of every person is not the same. Some people have slightly bigger mindscapes, and some have smaller ones."
"The person with a bigger mindscape will naturally require more mana to increase their rank than a person with a smaller mindscape. But on the other hand, the former will have a larger amount of mana reserves compared to the latter. Meaning that the former will be stronger."
"Although the difference in the sizes of the mindscape of two people is not very pronounced," he added.
He continued after few moments of pause, "There is one small thing I would discuss before the class ends: mana veins."
"I described the functions of mana veins—refining and making the mana suitable to be stored in the mindscape."
"Like the mindscapes, mana veins are also not identical in humans. They are different and some people have unique veins too."
"But the difference in mana veins affects humans more than the difference in mindscape."
"One person might have wide and strong mana veins, which means they would have the capability to absorb a larger quantity of mana in the same time period compared to a person who has narrower mana veins."
"But there is another thing," he continued. "As I stated earlier, there are certain unique type of mana veins."
"Veins which provide different kind of abilities to the human. One may have 'lightening veins.' He will have a very fine control over lightening related battle techniques."
"Similarly, there a myriad type of veins with myriad abilities which we can find in humans."
"And if you have one of those veins," he added. "And do not know about it yourself, we cannot detect it."
"I mean at our academy we do not have the capabilities to probe mana veins. You will have to wait to travel to some big cities. At those places you can get your veins probe and find out if you have some hidden abilities," he added with a chuckled.
"This is all for today. Next time we meet, you would have gone through your first practical i.e. combat class."
"And I believe that today is the day when you all will receive this week's cultivation quota," he added further. "All the best and off you go."
The class was dismissed.
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