Chapter 8

I rubbed my stomach and walked slowly, arriving at an empty lot.

Behind our inn, "Yasuragi-tei," there’s an empty lot along the town’s outer wall, which is no more than a five-minute walk.

It seems that there used to be a general store on this empty lot, but the building had deteriorated, so they moved the store elsewhere and cleared the land. This land is apparently left untouched for now.

By the way, even though it’s an empty lot, there are no pipes, no bully who cleans up only the long corridor, and no thunder father who gets angry when a window is broken. Thinking back, thunder father was a scary uncle back then, but now that I think about it, it’s kind of strange that he doesn’t get angry when a window is broken.

This empty lot, which could become a place for neighborhood children to hang out, is now completely empty, with not a single person in sight.

Well, I only came here for the first time after hearing about this empty lot recently. Is this how it is? Children are important workers, so they might be helping their parents. I’m only five, so I shouldn’t have to help, right...?

As I was thinking about this, I started to feel a bit guilty for just standing there doing nothing in the empty lot.

R-right, that’s it. Since I’m here, I might as well try the mana vessel expansion training that Nicola taught me! I’ll recall what Nicola said.

"Basically, he said to use mana until it’s depleted..."

I’m not new to using magic. In this fantasy world, people without talent can only use mana to handle magical tools, but fortunately, I was able to use magic smoothly.

I’ll try to activate earth magic for now. I extend my hand forward and focus on casting the spell.

Perhaps because Nicola is an earth angel, my dominant attribute seems to be earth. This was immediately apparent when I first tried using magic, as Nicola assessed it.

When I think of earth attributes, I imagine the weakest of the Four Heavenly Kings or someone who likes curry, but since I don’t aim to be a top-tier adventurer, I think it’s great to have a dominant attribute, even if it’s not as obviously offensive as fire or wind.

I close my eyes and imagine sand flowing from my palm. I feel mana being drawn from within me, and sand materializes from my palm. When I open my eyes, sand is trickling from my palm.

I maintain this state for a while, but I don’t feel my mana depleting. If I suddenly pour a lot of mana into my palm, I might lose consciousness, so I sit down and continue to release sand from my palm.

*Whoosh*

Suddenly, a gust of wind blew, and sand hit my face.

"Whoa! *Cough* *Cough*!"

I spit out the sand that got in my mouth and wipe my face with my jacket. I wonder how mana sand compares to regular sand. Is it harmful?

Thankfully, it didn’t get in my eyes. I decided to use my item box to deal with sudden gusts of wind.

I focus on activating the item box, and a dull space opens in front of me. Although I’ve only used it as a trash can so far, it’s the item I use the most, so it’s second nature to me. I immediately start storing the sand flowing from my palm directly into the item box.

After about thirty minutes of continuously releasing sand, my vision started to blur and my head felt fuzzy. This is probably a symptom of mana depletion. I’m definitely not getting sleepy. I stop releasing sand and take out all the sand I stored in the item box. A pile of sand about thirty centimeters high has formed.

"Hmm, if I keep doing this every day, will it help expand my mana vessel?"

For now, I’ll come here every day to make this my secret training ground.

---

It’s been a week since I started my mana expansion training. The amount of sand I can release has increased slightly.

I can confirm this visually because I’ve been making a row of sand piles, starting from the corner and moving to the next spot each day. To prevent them from collapsing easily, I use water magic to wet them before leaving. I think this is a great invention! The sand pile that was initially thirty centimeters high is now about sixty centimeters high.

"Brother, your mana seems to be increasing steadily. In the future, you might want to consider training in other attributes alongside this."

Nicola is also watching my training today. It’s nice to have someone to talk to, as it’s mentally tough to keep releasing sand in silence.

"Other attributes, huh? I use water to solidify the sand piles, but fire is dangerous, so I’ll pass on that for now."

I don’t want to cause a fire during magic practice and end up with a family breakup due to compensation.

"Right. Keep fire to a minimum, and focus on the other four major attributes: earth, wind, and water. Since you’re already using earth, how about trying wind and water?"

"Good point. Wind is hard to visualize, so I’ll probably focus on training with water a bit more—"

As we were chatting idly,

"Hey! Are you the ones causing mischief on my land?!"

Take that back. It seems that even in this different world, there are thunder fathers.