Alex looked around the guildhall training yard, trying to imagine it full of people. He had no experience running anything like this and really hoped Dungeon Inc. had a plan to help. At the very least they were going to need people to support the daily operations. Some admin people, cleaners, cooking staff, combat trainers and who knew what else. He opened his HUD and pulled up the note app, adding to his growing list of questions and tasks. At some point he was going to have to either send it to Valentina, or ask for another meeting to discuss everything.

  For now, the training yard was quiet other than the sound of water trickling over rocks and falling into the small pond in the corner garden. That and the sound of construction coming over the walls from the other guildhalls on the street. Three men had knocked on their own front door that morning and were busy installing chunky baseboards throughout the Side Quest Heroes hall.

  Alex leaned forward on his bench, elbows on knees, watching the empty air in front of him. Although it wasn’t empty air exactly, not to him. The space in front of him danced with golden mana. He watched as the motes shifted back and forth on their own currents. He noticed that the mana pooled more heavily near the pond and the people sitting around it, but thinned toward the open yard.

  That made him think of Mei Lin’s shop and how dense the mana was around her house in general. He added another note to his list to ask her why that was. Was it her extensive gardens? Or was she doing something to increase the density of mana in her shop? Was she even aware she was doing it?

  Kira and Mel, sitting across from him, couldn’t see any of it of course. And that was the current problem. They both wanted to learn how to use magic, but neither could see what they were doing. It was like teaching someone to dance in a dark room, or trying to teach them to code without a monitor. How did you teach someone like that? When you couldn’t see what you were doing, you were left trying to memorize forms and patterns and just trusting that it would do something eventually.

  “Okay,” he said. “So, again, you can’t see it, but have to trust me that there is mana floating all around you both right now. Step one is trying to draw that mana into yourself. Or at least, to yourself. When you do it right, it feels like contracting a muscle or limb that you didn’t know you had. It feels a little like opening or closing a new hand.”

  Kira nodded once. Mel shifted in her seat, but looked excited.

  The mana was there, they just needed to touch it. And if they did, he would see it. “ I’ll let you know when I see any movement or change. But don’t get discouraged if you can’t. It took me a couple of days before I first drew any mana at all and I could see it around me the whole time.” Of course, he hadn’t really known what he was seeing at first.

  Mel laughed and leaned towards Kira “Yeah, and then he blew up a table with it!”

  Alex rolled his eyes, but continued with a smile, “step one,” he said, “is breathwork. Breathing matters, but not because it’s mystical or anything. Not exactly anyway. It helps set a cadence that will help your control. When I first arrived, Reach taught me a breath pattern that really helped me.” He demonstrated the deep breathing exercise that he had learned from Mei Lin, which was a more refined version of what Reach had shown him.

  “Then, when you inhale, I want you to imagine grabbing onto the mana around you. It will feel a little like a gentle heat in the air. Like an energy around you.” He thought about that for a moment then corrected, “or, like warmth radiating off a hot road in the summer… That’s what you are feeling for.”

  Alex leaned back as the other two closed their eyes and started deep breathing. He watched the air around them carefully.

  Mana flowed around them, diffused and floating on their own current. There was no real interaction from the two yet, which was fine. He would have been more surprised if one of them was able to pull mana on their first try. The goal today was really just to help them focus on their breathing.

  “Now,” he said, “as you breathe, just imagine that you are pulling in little motes of mana with every breath and storing them inside. Like a vacuum.”

  “Gross,” Mel said, her nose scrunched up. Kira laughed at her but kept her eyes closed.

  Alex watched them breathe for a few minutes. Kira looked calm and relaxed. Mel had a fiercer look on her face like she was determined to force a win by sheer effort alone. He saw a few small shifts in the mana, just little jumps, but it was hard to see which of them might have caused it. Maybe next time he would have them sit on opposite benches.

  “Don’t try to force it,” he said. “If you strain, you’ll just tense your body. We don’t want muscle tension for this. It’s like a meditation practice.”

  He watched them breathe some more. This was a frustrating process. Not the teaching itself, but the fact that he didn’t know how to teach it.

  None of them were expecting any great progress, but they had a couple of hours and he’d offered to try and teach them after Mel caught him reading the beginner technique book that Mei Lin had given him that morning. According to that manual, everyone had the ability to build a dantian, although very few people would be able to progress much further than very basic mana control.

  But then, he wasn’t even sure if any of it even applied to people from Earth. Maybe it was just the natives of this world and a few lucky people from back home that could use magic. Which would be unfortunate because magic was exciting and everyone who saw a little wanted to be able to do it themselves.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  But, even if they could, was that practical?

  Not for Dungeon Inc. for sure since their whole premise was to build traditional style adventuring parties. They weren’t looking for teams full of mages any more than teams full of archers. But… Did it matter what they wanted? This was a whole new world and it really didn’t care about Dungeon Inc.’s Q4 marketing plan.

  Alex took a deep breath himself. Regardless of what Dungeon Inc.’s plan was, he could see that a lot of people were going to want to train to use magic. Which meant that, if everyone from Earth could use magic, the show was going to become full of multi-classers before long. And he couldn’t exactly spend all of his time sitting beside every recruit, watching to see their progress. He would need to figure out some repeatable steps. Some kind of sequence that produced a measurable outcome.

  Technique.

  Mei Lin had said techniques were basically structured paths. Repeatable processes refined over generations. And each sect had their own.

  So what did that mean? First, there was no right way to do magic. Maybe some better ways, but no single correct way. Second, he could either try and find more of those techniques to bring back and use them to train people here in the village, or he could develop his own techniques. Neither of which seemed like it would be easy.

  He wondered if he could program any of the techniques from Mei Lin’s books into the ANIP training system. Maybe not anything related to interacting with mana in the first place, but there seemed to be a lot of techniques designed around the control of mana once you were over that first hurdle.

  And while the system likely couldn’t detect magic, it could maybe find some consistencies in the body when people did pull in mana and use it. Things like heart rate variability. Skin conductivity. Micro tremors in muscle fibers. If it couldn’t see mana, it could at least see the body reacting to it. Maybe that data could be used to help train people.

  But that was future work. For now he was stuck in manual mode.

  “Okay,” Alex said. “Let’s try something new.” He thought over the third breathing exercise in Mei Lin’s book. It was a meditation designed to help recruits form or enhance their dantians, but needed a modernization. He considered how to explain it for a few moments. Then, “instead of imagining pressure or energy from outside, imagine a weight.”

  Kira looked thoughtful while Mel frowned.

  “Think about holding a dumbbell or something else heavy. Just, try to imagine feeling that weight settling into your grip.”

  Kira nodded slowly.

  “Now try to relocate that sensation to your core. Not your stomach muscles exactly, but that’s the right area. Try and move the weight into the space behind your navel.”

  He focused on Kira first.

  Mana around her remained static.

  She was trying too hard.

  “Don’t focus too much on winning this. Just relax and feel the weight in your core while you breathe. Long breath in, hold. Slowly release. Hold,” he said as he watched them both. “Just simulate the sensation.”

  The mana field flickered again. Not strongly, but there was definitely movement around them. At least one of them would learn to do this if they kept at it.

  Alex felt a spike of excitement but forced his voice to stay even.

  “Okay, keep doing what you are doing. Just breathe and feel the weight. Don’t try to pull.”

  Mel swallowed and nodded slightly. Kira just remained focused, with a blank expression on her face as she took another deep breath.

  After a while he smiled and called both of them back to the present. They had remained in this last meditation for about 10 minutes which was impressive considering Mel was the type of person that usually never stopped moving.

  “Alright,” he said. “Congratulations. There was consistent movement in the mana around you both by the end. I don’t know how long this will take, but keep it up and you are going to get there.”

  Mel clapped her hands and started rummaging in her pockets while Kira asked, “So, what’s this called? What we’re doing? Other than just breathing or meditating I mean.”

  “The book calls it Core Induction. There are a series of six breathing and focus techniques that are supposed to help form your first dantian”

  “First?”

  “Well, I don’t know a lot about it, but I think it changes over time. Not first in an ‘it gets replaced’ sort of way, more like the first stage I guess,” he said. “Doesn’t really matter for now though. What matters is that you know the first forms now, and it’s working.”

  It would be even nicer if he could use the HUD to gamify the training in some way, like how they trained with their weapons. But this was a more abstract practice.

  Still, with bio metrics, maybe they could show people a bar that filled as they hit the right internal configuration.

  The way they trained magic in the East was a mystical experience according to how Mei Lin had explained it to him. He wanted to find out more about how they trained magic in the west. Mei Lin had talked about magic colleges but didn’t know much about them.

  “Here!” Mel said excitedly. She peeled the back off a sticker and stuck it on the back of Kira’s hand. Alex leaned over and saw a picture of a panda giving a thumbs up.

  “Mel, we’re not supposed to have Earth stuff up here,” he said.

  “I know, I had to sneak them up. Nobody is going to notice.” She looked over at Kira and said, “well, maybe move it up your wrist so it’s hidden beneath your cuffs!”

  Alex just rolled his eyes.

  ***

  Professor Halden Marr, First-Year Mana Dynamics

  Collegium Astaraea

  A valid technique is one that produces the same effect when performed correctly by different students under comparable conditions.

  Anything else is a coincidence.

  You should keep in mind, during your first days on campus, that you are not assigned foundational techniques because we doubt your creativity.

  You are assigned them because they produce measurable, repeatable outcomes across a wide population of practitioners.

  One day you may create your own take on our college's techniques, but until that day comes, learn the right way to do it.

  If you like detective noir, divine relics, and a system that can't be trusted — you might like this.

  Inspired by classic noir in a magical system world.