Mikel wasn't exactly a lady's man.
He was deadpan, reserved, and often awkward. He kept his mouth shut and only opened up to his best friend - Flint Westwood - whom he had lost during the hunt. Always cynical about the world around him, he was a loner and planned to stay that way.
Until of course, this woman decided to take him away, now whispering in his ear. Mikel was so shaken that he froze up, a reaction that a sadist such as Victoria took pleasure in. Still, training was training, and she took a step back.
"Weapon mastery is a useless attribute in the grand scheme of things."
Victoria never held back on her thoughts, and didn't care how she came across to others. She never had to, after all the Nether Witch was the most powerful hunter there was and the idea of caring about what people were was the last thing on the list.
Fortunately, neither did Mikel about hearing a few insults. Deep down he knew he was weak, and after the incident of losing his best friend, he knew that his so-called 'talent' of weapon mastery was futile in fighting the Nether creatures.
"Now tell me why I say that weapon mastery is useless. Let's see if you've been listening; and understanding."
"Inefficiency." Mikel answered right away, eyeing the ground in shame.
"Elaborate."
"You can't carry too many weapons in the Wild Zones, because it'll slow you down, and during the hunt it's hard to switch weapons in real time against the Nether Creatures."
"Huh, you're not so useless after all, I suppose you do have a brain."
Mikel bit his lower lip in frustration, but didn't say anything back. Weapon summon was the way to utilise his otherwise subpar gift, and he understood the rationale perfectly.
"Close your eyes." Victoria commanded, Mikel followed through.
"Take deep breaths, and imagine your blood circulating through. Every usage of mana is dependent upon imagery, and you need to draw a picture of all your resources flowing through every part of your body, top to bottom."
Mikel, in pitch black, concentrated on himself, trying to make the mana flow. His eyebrows were twitching a little, his breathing quite uneven, and he was almost forcing the issue before Victoria lightly tapped his forehead with her index finger.
"Breathe." She muttered to him, in a deep, enticing voice. "Relax and breathe."
It was interesting to Mikel how fast he was able to relax with Victoria's words. It was as if there was power to what she was saying, and with that short and sweet advice he managed to get into the zone, and he felt his body warming up with temperature increasing.
'Good boy.' Victoria thought to herself.
"Keep that state. Stay like this for as long as you can. If you're doing it right, you won't feel any leg pain even when you're standing upright like this, and when you can do it for the whole day, that's when you're ready for the next step."
It was uncomfortable. Agonising even. The time felt like eternity and consciously imagining every resource flowing through felt exhausting after a while. The more he meditated, the more his boredom and aches grew in his body, and it got to a point where he started to miss Victoria's snarky remarks.
As much as Mikel was trying, at a certain point he started to feel some resistance inside his body that prevented him from maintaining the state, until eventually he went out of breath, as if he did a long marathon or a sprint.
Victoria sighed.
"Ceebees really are hopeless huh." She shook her head, shrugging her shoulders. "After you recover, make the mana flow again. Try to get to a point where you can do it subconsciously, as if it was a passive. A mediocre thing like you probably will take months or even years to perfect it all, but it's whatever. I am a patient woman."
Patient my ass. Is what Mikel thought, but he held it in. I suppose the so-called Nether witch has a weakness after all - lack of self awareness.
"Until you can carry on this state during your everyday activities, you will have this session in every single one of our training sessions. We have to get this right before we move on."
With all her flaws in the human decency department, Victoria did have one upside; the ability to keep to her word.
Days turned to weeks, weeks turned to months, Mikel would consistently work on the manaflow, and during that time Victoria taught him nothing about combat. When she wanted Mikel to master the manaflow she really did mean it, and even during her raids in which she had to leave Mikel at her house - due to her missions simply being out of his depth - she would regularly contact him to make sure he was still working through his monotonous training.
It was a fine afternoon, around 2 months later, when he could finally summon a screen infront of him as he saw himself in the mirror:
[Manaflow Level 0 -> 1]
A line of text which he could finally see without having an expensive scouter, a single progress that will snowball his talent as a hunter. He simply stared in awe as he finally learned to do this, before Victoria told him, in her gentlest tone yet:
"Took you long enough."
"This is…"
"One of things you can do when you got that mana flow. You can control your senses, and incase of sight, you can 'visualise' information that you subconsciously gather in front of you, similar to the scouters you can get from the Exchange Center."
"Huh."
"Try and use it like a scouter. 'Browse' something. Just like using a scouter."
[Browse -> Dictionary -> Hunter]
[An awakened human being with mana and 'gift' that can fight Nether creatures.]
"Woah." Mikel was easily amused.
"All things have essence, and mana is about using essence as a resource as well as accumulating it. Awakened hunters can use mana, and when they die, the mana they have goes back to the air, carrying the essence they have accumulated since awakening."
"Meaning…"
"The status screen in front of you, is an accumulation of hunters that came before you and what they have learned. It may be blue, but it's written in red. If you catch my drift."
Victoria smiled, and it looked rather malicious.
"This whole world is a giant strand of data, written and read by the language of mana. Start looking at the world that way, and magic becomes easy."
She took a step close to Mikel, her confident, slim yet perky body in full view.
"Try and 'analyse' me. Go on."
Mikel gulped and immediately tried again, focusing hard on his eyes as he made eye contact with Victoria.
[Victoria Grace Level 99]
[Hunter Grade: S+
Gift: Master of All Trades
Strength: 99+
Agility: 99+
Intelligence: 99+
Magic: 99+
999999999999999999999999999@(*$!]
"Ah!"
A sudden shot of pain was felt by Mikel's eyes as he quickly shut down the excess manaflow onto his eyes.
"When the information or essence is excess, or too advanced for you, it can sometimes hurt you if you don't have good mana control. A sensory overload of some sorts. Like a toddler trying to read Ulysses." Nonchalant, Victoria simply explained as if she knew exactly what the problem was. "You learned it the hard way."
"Is this normally painful?"
"Nope. I didn't feel a single pain, and I didn't take months to master it either, let alone just going from 0 to 1."
"You're quite a show off aren't you?"
"It's a simple objective fact."
Mikel at that moment thought how they really have 0 synergy with each other.
'Oil and water I guess."
"Let's go out to the fields."
Victoria proclaimed as she grabbed Mikel by his wrist.
"The fields?"
"Join me for a picnic; and a wild one at that." Said the Nether Witch with the most mischievous smile.