Khan didn't mind the lack of the two spells in the initial wave of rewards. He guessed that the Global Army couldn't send them without adding magical items, so it made sense for them to take longer to arrive.
The books that Khan had requested had also arrived on his phone, but he ignored them for now. The mental techniques captured the entirety of his attention. Part of him even found it pointless to start studying the vast amount of knowledge on his device when he had just gained something that could theoretically improve that process.
Khan quickly pressed on the label "simulated mental battle" to check his first technique. A series of descriptions and multiple exercises that the phone could project through holograms appeared on the screen, and he studied everything carefully before activating the actual training.
The mental technique was simple in its theory. It didn't try to obtain any specific feature, so every type of mana could activate its effects. Its purpose was to create mental battles that could replace training areas or actual fights and allow soldiers to improve or retain their physical condition.
According to the descriptions, the "simulated mental battle" would still force the involved muscles to activate. It could even make the soldiers experience injuries suffered during the imaginary fight at its highest levels.
The effects' intensity and what remained on the body depended on the meditative state's depth reached during the execution of the mental technique. At its highest levels, the soldiers could even surpass what real battles gave.
Needless to say, Khan couldn't wait to learn and master that technique. He loved the training halls and their flexibility, but the "simulated mental battle" could give him far more. His location, situation, and condition wouldn't matter anymore after becoming good at that type of exercise.
The mental technique obviously had many layers of difficulties. Delia had told Khan that he probably wouldn't be able to perform it right away, and the descriptions on his phone explained why.
To activate the "simulated mental battle", Khan would have to gain access to a deep part of his brain, the area where his organ stored his memories. Then, he had to flood it with mana and force his energy to use some of the details found there to create an imaginary battlefield.
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The weaknesses of the mental technique stretched past the difficulties connected to its activation. The soldiers couldn't create opponents or situations out of nowhere. Their memories had to contain enough details about the intended battles that they wanted to imagine to make the "simulated mental battle" work.
Moreover, the soldiers needed a deep understanding of what they wanted to create. Seeing an opponent wasn't enough. They had to know a few basic features to make a similar mental copy. Of course, a high number of details would allow them to build something extraordinarily lifelike and push them deeper into the meditative state.
Other issues involved the strain that the mental technique applied to the minds. The "simulated mental battle" had to affect the body. Otherwise, it would lose every purpose, so the soldiers had to use large quantities of mana to make those effects possible.
The mana alone couldn't solve everything either. The mental technique worked like any other martial art since it put the brain under heavy stress. Abusing the "simulated mental battle" could lead to headaches, internal injuries, or even death. Those issues could appear even during deep meditative states in case of a defeat during the imaginary fight.
The great difficulty for the activation, the limited number of assets available for the mental battle, the vast amount of mana required to apply the effects on the body, and the heavy strain on the brain made the technique extremely complicated to use correctly. Khan even began to wonder if something like that was healthy for a first-level warrior during his read.
The many difficulties and possible drawbacks didn't scare Khan away. The two techniques gained on Nitis had similar dangers and harsh requirements. His current ability to manipulate mana didn't even allow him to activate them on his own, so he guessed that the mental skill would join that list for now.
Khan promised himself to test the "simulated mental battle" before jumping to hasty conclusions, but he put it away for now to approach the second mental technique. The "enhanced reading" featured a similar menu with shorter descriptions that stated its lower requirements in terms of understanding, training, and consumption.
'This one is quite easy,' Khan concluded after a quick read of the instructions. 'I only need to send set amounts of mana to my eyes and move them toward a specific area of my brain in a short time. I also need to stick to a precise rhythm, but I bet that I can memorize it in no time.'
His experiences on Nitis continued to show their incredible value. Khan had become relatively decent in his control of mana, which only involved the use of the energy outside his body. Everything would be easier when the process had to happen inside him, so he didn't hesitate to memorize the instructions and attempt to replicate them.
Mana came out of his mana core and flooded his brain with tiny masses of energy meant to become an essential aspect of the mental technique. Then, Khan placed them right behind his eyes and moved them slowly toward the spot marked by the instructions on his phone.
Khan repeated the process a few times, moving the masses of mana from the very front of his eyes to the center of his brain to memorize the path that they had to cross. It wasn't hard to control those lumps of energy after his training in the Niqols' approach and his exercises for the Wave spell. Still, the "enhanced reading" required a high speed and a specific rhythm to bring the loss of information to the minimum.
The instructions on his phone described how the actual memorization happened after multiple cycles of the mana going back and forth between his eyes and the center of his brain. The specific rhythm also maximized the amount of knowledge that would become a permanent part of his memories.
That mental technique featured similar drawbacks to the "simulated mental battle". It would put his brain and eyes under heavy stress and deplete large quantities of mana. Those requirements and possible adverse consequences were only light compared to the other ability. Still, they remained something that Khan had to be wary of, especially since he knew his character.
Khan kept his eyes closed as he moved the lumps of mana back and forth. Once he got that part right, he started adding the other steps required by the technique. It seemed that each mass of energy could transport only a set amount of knowledge, which would basically force him to replace them after two or three cycles.
The addition of that step brought Khan back to step one. He could preserve the intended speed with individual lumps of mana but replacing them always made him waste time and lose his momentum. It took him a while before he could get that part right too.
The last step was the harshest since it made Khan apply a specific rhythm to everything learnt previously. He had to move and replace the lumps of mana without ever getting off-track. An eventual mistake would affect the knowledge transported during the last cycle and force him to start the technique again.
Failing didn't sound too harsh in terms of drawbacks, but Khan changed his mind after experiencing that first-hand. The strain on his brain was manageable while the technique was active, but its abrupt end and its following restart created clear discomfort in the shape of a vague headache. That feeling even intensified as he continued to amass mistakes.
Khan couldn't reach a decent level before his headache started to affect his training. He felt forced to take a break at that point, and a mere glance at his phone even informed him that lunchtime had arrived.
An empty stomach and an intense headache didn't go well together, so Khan decided to stand up to reach the cube to eat something before taking a nap. Yet, he found a tray waiting for him right in front of his habitation's entrance. Someone had even drawn a heart and the letter "D" with a sauce on an empty spot.
'Delia is really enjoying this,' Khan thought as a smirk inevitably appeared on his face.
Khan picked up the tray and returned inside his habitation. He took mere minutes to eat everything, and drowsiness eventually arrived to warn him that he had to rest.
His habitation was empty, so Khan went for his bed. However, something felt off after spending a few minutes on the pillow. The sheets and blankets still carried Delia's faint scent, and his mind automatically recalled her warmth.
Everything would have still been fine if his mind had stopped there. Yet, Khan found himself imagining Liiza's coldness, creating a clash of memories that couldn't end as long as Delia's scent continued to flow inside his nostrils. The situation became so troublesome that he had to leave the bed and reach the couch, where he finally managed to fall asleep.
The alarm on his phone rang before his nightmare could even come close to reaching the map of the unknown solar system. Khan felt tired when he woke up, and a deep sigh escaped his mouth when he sensed that a faint trace of his headache had remained after that short nap.
Khan decided to spend some time inside his meditative state, which luckily solved his headache and brought him back to his peak mental condition. His exercises for the "enhanced reading" resumed right after that, and he happily found out that his short break had brought positive results.
The tedious and repetitive mental exercises still kept Khan busy for a few hours, but he eventually reached a decent level of mastery over the "enhanced reading". The headache had returned by then, but a short meditation solved it and allowed him to test how powerful his mental technique was.
Khan unlocked the phone and found the book containing advanced knowledge related to the mana. He still prioritized uncovering the reason behind the change in his energy, so he didn't hesitate to test the "enhanced reading" while looking for answers.
The initial tests led to failures. Moving relatively empty lumps of mana was easy compared to the actual use of the mental technique. Khan only needed to stare at the hologram of a page to acquire the information it contained, but bringing everything to his brain felt complicated and heavy. He could clearly sense that his energy was carrying something.
Nevertheless, through sheer resolve and multiple attempts, Khan managed to complete his first cycles and experience how good the actual memorization was. It felt unnatural for the human brain to gain so much knowledge instantly, but he still achieved incredible results. He couldn't recite the page word for word, but he understood its contents without needing to review it.
A cycle took less than a second. Khan could almost memorize the entire page of a book with only a pair of lumps of mana. In short, he only had to remain two seconds on each sheet before moving to the next one.
If Khan didn't commit any mistake during the "enhanced reading", he could read entire books in less than an hour and memorize their general contents. A second inspection would probably lead to a complete understanding of their topics. He had the chance to study knowledge that would have usually taken weeks to learn in mere days.
The excitement didn't let him ignore his failures and the headache that they caused. Khan felt about to reach his limits again while studying the book, but he pressed on since he wanted answers. He only allowed himself to spend a few minutes inside his meditations before resuming his read.
The process was far from healthy, but it allowed Khan to find something that seemed to match his condition on that very night.. The book called it "mana anomaly".
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