Supreme Magus Novel Chapter 8 Unrelenting Practice

In the following weeks, Lith’s days consisted of a strict routine.

During the day, when he was all wrapped up, he would only focus on practicing the breathing technique and learning as much as he could about his family and their language.

At night he would practice magic until exhaustion made him fall asleep. Then as soon as he woke up, he would start again until Elina would get up for the day.

More than once he tried taking a break, but it would never last long. Living as a baby was not easy, on the contrary, was very stressful.

He could not speak, even the words he had already understood to not scare his family. He could not move, he could do nothing but watch, sleep, eat and relieve his bowels.

He was not used to be so helpless and dependant on soone else for every little thing. Too much free ti would bring him to the verge of insanity.

So, he would practice and practice, trying to adjust to his new reality without overthinking about how absurd and irrational was his situation.

As Lith’s powers increased, so did his control, and after a few weeks he felt confident enough to try earth magic and water magic.

He would always be careful, never conjuring more than a few droplets of water or manipulating a handful of dirt. He discovered that it was possible to make the elents float in mid-air, changing their shape and size by continuously spending mana.

After that, he shifted his night training on focus and control rather than power. His mana was very limited and he much preferred doing few elaborate tricks perfectly rather than a lot of stuff at the risk of blowing his cover.

No matter how common magic was, Lith doubted that a baby practicing it would be any less than shocking, or even terrifying.

Lith was afraid of being abandoned by his family, or even worse killed.

He was once again scared of death, since now he had too much to lose. What where the odds to find another world where magic existed, to be born as a baby in a loving family?

Zero, none, nada, squat.

He had to play his cards well, and play them as close to the vest as possible. Before revealing even a hint of his talent, he needed to know what the standards of that world where.

How much talent was considered good, how much divided being considered a genius from being labeled as a monster?

His mind was constantly filled with worries and only training would alleviate his anxiety.

After three months, he had beco good enough at silent magic to try fire magic on the fireplace.

The fire was already lit, and when everyone was busy talking and eating during breakfast, he tried making the flas dance at will. It ended up in failure, since the flas were too strong and the distance too big for his mana to have any effect.

Yet he kept trying, since he could still sense the flow of magic going from himself to the fireplace, hence making it a good training to expand his mana sense and range.

The only downside of all that training was that Lith would get hungry faster. Luckily, he was not Elina’s first glutton and she had no shortage of milk.

Another month passed, and Elina started weaning him.

This event was aningful for two reasons. The first was Lith noticing that food wasn’t abundant in his household, so even if he still had not a rich vocabulary, he could still read his parents worried expressions every ti he needed to be fed.

Despite still being a cold hearted, cynical misanthrope at his core, Lith could not help but feel guilty about it.

They loved him like a child, while he would consider them nothing more than hosts, like a parasite. The only exceptions were Elina and Eliza, his big sister, the only one that along with his mother would take care of him.

With their constant love, affection and care had managed to crack his emotional defensive wall. The more ti he spent with them, the more he would consider them part of his real family, not just people that he was leading by the nose.

So, he started limiting his training to not exceed the amount of food they could afford.

Even that required quite a few tries to find the right amount, since too little would cause even more worry than too much.

The second reason were world changing discoveries.

Being forced to stop training magic as much as possible, Lith now had free ti that he used to dedicate that ti by practicing the breathing technique, that he christened "Accumulation".

That way, his inner energy, that he had long dubbed as "mana core