I awoke in the tent, the birds chirping and the light seeping through the dark fabric. I did my daily quests and got ready before I woke up Gramps.

**

“We’ll be going over the basics today.” Gramps smiled as I groaned. “You spent 8 years doing advanced but I haven’t seen you do the basics.”

“But I don’t need to-” I tried to protest but one look from gramps and I knew there was no skipping this lesson.

“The journey of big success will always begin with learning how to take the small steps at first. Sometimes the smallest things make the biggest difference.” he spoke wisely.

Gramps positioned himself opposite me and I stood, shoulder width apart, ready. I smirked, rolling my shoulders back and Gramps looked at me carefully before returning a humble smile. His smile fell as he flexed his muscles and the shirt he had on, ripped into shreds.

DAMMMN! HE BUILT DIFFERENT!

The man had huge biceps that demanded awe and broad shoulders; straightening himself he almost grew a foot taller. His thighs tensed and formed. He sucked in his stomach and abs replaced the fat like stacked Lego bricks. He tilted his head, smirking back at me.

“Damn.” I scoffed, stretching my arms. Although I was considered fit for my age and had muscles, I wasn’t THAT fit. Gramps was built like a bodybuilder; he had no fat. It was all rock hard muscles.

“You gotta teach me how to do that later on.” I added on, my eyeballs popping out of their sockets. Gramps laughed.

“Okay Zeref. Fight me.” he said.

I was taken aback a little. I thought we were training??? Nonetheless, I pounced at him like a jaguar.

Deciding to use my ice mana, I formed a huge ball of glossy ice, chucking it at his centre but he easily dodged. I tried it again and again but he dodged every single one, despite his large and easy size. He should have been an easy target but he was still so fast!

I switched up the mana into fire, throwing balls of fire in his direction, aiming for the most weak and vulnerable spots. Gramps yawned, letting the fire hit his arm and disintegrating it. UGHHH!

His fist slammed into my jaw, throwing my head back before kicking my feet from under me and sitting me on my butt. I maneuvered my body into a twisted leap, swinging my leg under him and getting him on my level. I stood up while tumbling back, shaking off the pain resounding from my jaw.

“Zeref, think small!” he yelled, giving me some time to breathe.

Small? If I’m going to be fighting contestants, everyone’s going to be going big. Thinking small would be useless.

I kissed my teeth, rolling my shoulders back and flash-stepping towards him. Reeling my ice fist back and swinging it full force onto his chest, he flew backwards but still on his feet. I didn’t waste time, growing icicles into the air and flicking my wrist towards him. The ice crystals flew into him but he dodged all of them, making his way towards me. His fist blew into my rib but I blocked him by a millisecond. I expanded a gravity wave from my body, sending him back into the air.

In a second, he was back in my face like a relentless monster.

How did he get there?! I brought up my hands in front of my face, below my eyes and braced for impact. The punch broke through my defence and made contact with my chest; flying back like a rag doll my body tumbled to the ground, bouncing like a pebble on water.

[You have suffered 2000 damage]

Ugh, he was strong!

I picked myself up slowly and clenched my jaw tight fighting the pain. Gramps walked closer slowly, the mana particles in the atmosphere vibrating in fear with every step; my body felt heavy under his gravity mana. What kind of wild beast was he?

‘Godspeed’

With a single chant the familiar feeling of lightning empowering me spread throughout my body and I let out a smile. With a single step I covered the distance and everything went black and white for me as I charged in, imbuing my hand with ‘Indra’s Spear’.

“You think you’re the only fast one?” Gramps spoke and my eyes widened in shock. The tips of my fingers were millimetres away from his stomach, Gramps swiftly maneuvered around me and grabbed my arm. He was faster than me?!

“I told you to think small.” he said as time went back to its normal state, he wacked my face with his fan again continuously, “Think down to the molecular level. The reason you’re weak is because you think that only big and advanced spells can do damage. Why don’t you compress your mana, increase your control over the finest molecules of mana, intricately controlling and ordering it; at the moment from what I’ve seen your mana control is poor, you’re wasting at least 45% of your mana with unnecessary moves like these stupid fire balls and ice crystals.”

He stopped his onslaught and I huffed and puffed, my face all swollen from the punishment. I could see why all the kingdoms feared this man. A total beast. I bet he was probably only using 20% of his power.

**

We both sat down on boulders near the tent munching away at the food Miss Elena had made for us. I pondered what Gramps was talking about. I guess it was true, I had learned many advanced skills but that wasn’t going to be enough to beat the other contestants. I had to be fundamentally stronger, so my base power would be strong enough and my stamina would increase.

“Zeref.” Gramps called out, still chewing his food.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t want you to use Godspeed ever again.”

As he said that my eyes widened in shock and my jaws stopped chewing. What was this man on about? ‘Godspeed’ was my best skill.

“What do you mean?! That’s my best skill. How am I meant to beat these contestants?”

“Stop being childish, your highness and listen to me. First of all your body is still too weak to handle the sudden change in speeds and your mana control while using it is terrible. This is causing the mana meridians in your body to get damaged under the high resistance of the lightning mana.”

As he said that my mind focused on his last words. Resistance. So my body was like a circuit? The high voltage running through me whilst in ‘Godspeed’ was too much for the wires or my mana meridians (vessels that carry mana around the body) to handle, causing them to become damaged. This was bad.

“The more you use it the shorter your lifespan will be.” Gramps stated, taking another bite into his sandwich.

“So how can I overcome this?” I asked, worry resounding from my voice.

“Of course, there is a solution to every problem, you’ll need to first strengthen the muscles in your body.”

“I don’t wanna look like you!” I retorted.

“No. You fool.” Gramps laughed, “The muscles you will be building will be different to mine, they will be extremely compressed high density muscle fibres.”

What the hell is that? I scratched my head hearing the last part but I nodded in understanding anyways.

“Secondly, you’d have to increase your span of control over even the slightest of mana particle movements. This way your mana would deplete less rapidly; thirdly you have to increase your control over all your elements, especially the lightning element. Therefore, I’ve decided you’ll have to learn a new meditating method to overcome your mana control issue.”

“Can we start now then?” I asked, finishing the last bit of my sandwich and melting ice into water to drink.

“No, your training will start in the night but for the time being go hunt some beasts.”

I nodded in understanding before getting up and equipping Voadhailis’s claw from my dimension ring.

“Wait, there’s a challenge.” He gestured to me to wait with his hand, “You can only use body augmenting. No spells. No nothing, only body augmenting.”

Body augmenting was strengthening the body using mana. In my case I could coat myself in lightning mana. I Hadn’t learnt the body augmenting spells for my other elements so that was on my to do list. This old man was two steps ahead of me in knowing my flaws.

“Say less old man.” with that I used ‘lightning aura’, causing sparks of lightning bolts to form around me and I sped off into the jungle.

Time to go hunting.

**

When I returned I had slayed a total of 2 A rank beasts with increased difficulty so I kinda cheated using skills to kill them; 5 B rank beasts using lightning body augmenting and a couple C rank beasts. If I had to guess, by selling the number of beasts in my dimension ring, I could make about 400 platinum coins. Nice!

“Stop slacking, your training begins now.” Gramps said in a strict manner as I laid lazily on the cold grass.

“But I’m tired as hell, how am I meant to train?” I groaned.

“You’ll be learning how to meditate and control the mana flow in your meridians whilst you sleep.”

I cursed under my breath knowing this was going to be a long night.

**

*Whack* *Whack*

“Focus. You fell asleep again!” Gramps shouted. This technique was harder to master than I realised.

I sighed heavily, before meditating and trying my best to not fall asleep. I just had to somehow split my consciousness so one part was asleep and recovering and the other was focusing on controlling the mana flow, but I hadn’t figured out how to do that yet.

“You’re not sleeping until you master this technique!”

“But that means you won’t sleep either. Hahahahhaaha!” I laughed as the fatigue was making me say stupid things.

*Whack* *Whack*

“Ow!”