The men listened in absolute silence. It was like a separate organ entirely. They had never been taught the secrets of magic before.

"Mages use their circle to pump mana outside of their bodies like a second heart," Claire said. "But knights are different. We cannot expel mana to cast spells because we do not have mana veins and since we do not have mana veins, we do not have a mana heart. This is what the mages call the place where their mana circles are formed."

She tapped her metal chest plate.

"The knight arts teach you to store mana directly inside your body, with most of it concentrated in the blood. We pump that mana infused blood with the heart and distribute the mana to the rest of the body. That is how a knight is born. We use mana infused blood to increase our raw physical strength, our explosiveness, and our defense."

She paced back and forth like a stern professor her voice loud and clear enough for everyone to hear her.

"You can increase your speed. You can increase your perception. You can increase your reaction speed." she said, stressing every single word so they remember it, "There are a lot of things you can do to get better. But to do any of this, you need a healthy heart."

She looked at the men in the third and fourth groups.

"The healthier and more powerful your hearts are, the more you can grasp the mana technique. You also need strong lungs to draw that mana in through the breathing techniques. If any of you have a habit of smoking, you will quit immediately. Am I understood?"

"Yes, ma’am!" the men shouted back.

Claire looked at the three chubby men in group three. They were out of shape, but their hearts and lungs were clearly strong enough to fuel their bodies and force them to stand. They just needed to lose the extra weight.

"Your morning training is over," Claire announced. "Lord Adrian has provided breakfast for you all."

Servants from the mansion carried out large wooden crates filled with fresh bread and warm gruel.

"You can eat and go home to rest," Claire told them. "Or you can stay right here and practice the breathing method until lunch. Lunch will include a heavy meat stew."

Not a single man left the field.

The men took their bread and gruel, dropping right back into the dirt to eat. Once they finished, it was straight back to the breathing exercises.

A few hours passed. Even the skinniest guys in the fourth group finally managed to get up. It took some serious effort, but their legs could hold their weight again.

Lunch came out right on schedule. Servants hauled massive pots of meat stew onto the field, making sure everybody got a huge chunk of meat.

"Toss me that bread," a skinny kid muttered.

The chubby guy next to him threw over a loaf. "My legs won’t stop shaking. Honestly, I thought I was gonna die out there."

"You stood up though," an older adventurer said from across the circle. "That means your heart works fine. Just keep breathing the way that knight taught us." 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

The guys dug into their meals, joking around and complaining about the soreness. It was a fast way to break the ice since they’d be working together from here on out.

When lunch wrapped up, Claire finally dismissed the group. The mansion wasn’t giving out free dinner anyway, so everyone just headed back home to crash.

A couple hours later, Aria walked through the front door.

Adrian glanced up from his sketches. He was in the middle of redrawing the copper coils for the fridge.

A weird smell hit him right away. It was like a mix of mint and heavy medicine.

He looked down. Aria’s legs were completely covered in some kind of green muck from her thighs down to her knees.

Adrian dropped his charcoal pencil.

"What in the world happened to you?" he asked, walking over to check on her.

"I ran, papa! You know... knight training."

She just walked right past him, climbed onto a chair, and grabbed a cup of water.

Adrian followed her and knelt down to get a better look at the green stuff.

"You went running and ended up looking like a swamp monster?"

"I ran until... my legs stopped working," she corrected him with a cute yet dumb grin.

Adrian just stared at the kid.

Honestly, he didn’t even know what to say. Part of him wanted to go outside and yell at Claire for letting a five year old collapse from exhaustion.

But just as he was about to act on his thoughts, Aria stopped him with a single sentence.

"Big Sis Claire didn’t tell me to run... I ran on my own and she helped put this on me. She is nice..."

Aria took a sip of water and looked down at him while Adrian just sighed in response. Maybe he was being too protective.

"Papa, I have a question." she asked as she thought for a while.

"Shoot," Adrian said as he pulled up a chair next to her.

"I tried using mana to recover my stamina while I was running," she explained. "But nothing happened at all."

"Well, yeah. Obviously."

"But why?" Aria asked. "The knights do it. Their training helps them recover stamina and run faster. Why doesn’t a mage’s mana breathing work the same way?"

Adrian leaned back and crossed his arms.

This was basic magic theory from the academy.

"It basically comes down to anatomy. I mean, our bodies basically." Adrian jabbed a thumb at his own chest.

"A mage’s mana heart and mana veins operate like a totally separate system."

Aria stayed quiet, letting him explain.

"Picture it like a second skeleton. Your mana veins don’t touch your actual flesh at all. Zero interaction with your blood or your muscles."

He slapped his hand flat on the table.

"They just pull in ambient mana, hold it in your circles, and dump it out when you cast a spell. That’s basically it. The magic network is completely isolated from your physical body."