For seven days, Leo practiced 'The Kill Strike,' yet he made no progress whatsoever.
Each morning brought a fresh wave of determination, but by dusk, frustration and fatigue clouded his spirits.
He followed Ben's instructions to the letter, attempting to channel and compress his mana into a focused point before releasing it into the heart of the steel targets, however, despite his best efforts, the results were disheartening; his attacks barely left scratches on the surface of the steel achieving nothing close to the devastating impact Ben had demonstrated.
[ System Notification - You have completely depleted your mana reserves, you cannot use mana for 2 hours now ]
[ System Notification - Mana deficiency is affecting the hormonal balance of your body, you will feel aggravated bouts of anger for next 60 minutes ]
"Why can't I understand this? Why is this so hard?" Leo cursed out loud, as he kicked the steel dummy hard and dropped the dagger because he could not train anymore.
"What am I missing? Why can't I do it when it seems so simple for Ben?" The questions plagued him, swirling in his mind like a relentless storm.
Everyday he depleted his mana to 0 in just under an hour, yet he made no progress as once his mana was depleted beyond a certain point, he began feeling agitated and angry for no reason as his body underwent hormonal instability.
"It's okay, take a break for now" Ben would shout, whenever he noticed Leo acting out, as being a veteran he knew exactly what he was going through and the challenges that came with learning the kill strike.
Everyday as he saw Leo sitting by himself, questioning his own competence, he was reminded of himself during the same training phase, as he suffered even worse mood swings when he trained under his dad, having to face the same questions as Leo did.
"Am I just not cut out for this? Is all my effort worth nothing?" These thoughts were common for Ben as a student, often overshadowing his initial enthusiasm and determination for training.
Nonetheless, Leo was much better than him in this department as unlike him who would fight with his father daily, Leo at least kept his frustrations to himself and did not fight or disrespect him.
*********
Two hours later, as Leo recovered mana and his debuff was removed, he trained again, however, in just half an hour, his mana reached the rock bottom once again, as he expended it all at an exaggerated pace, but without any tangible success.
[ System Notification - You have completely depleted your mana reserves, you cannot use mana for 2 hours now ]
[ System Notification - Mana deficiency is affecting the hormonal balance of your body, you will feel aggravated bouts of anger for next 60 minutes ]
Once again slapped with debuffs, by the end of day7 his frustrations reached their peak as his control over the dagger in his hand slipped and it went flying out towards a tree in this distance.
"UGHHHHH WHY IS THIS SO HARD" He cursed, letting out a roar of annoyance as he tried to release weeks of pent-up frustration and disappointment, but did not feel any better after doing so, rather feeling like a whiny kid who couldn't hold his horses.
Ben, who had been observing from a distance, felt a twinge of sympathy for Leo.
The boy's dedication was clear, but so was his anguish over the lack of progress.
He truly wished that he could help Leo by giving him mana potions which would improve the pace of his learning.
However, constantly depleting and refilling his mana reserves was the best way to naturally improve them, while dealing with the hormonal imbalance was important to temper the mind which was why despite Leo suffering, Ben let him suffer anguish daily, as he knew it was for his own good.
However, everything changed on day 8.
On day 8, as Leo's mana capacity improved slightly through repeated cycles of depletion and replenishment, he attained a minor success in denting the target, which appeared to have a very slight but visible dent upon his impact.
"Ho….. it really worked!" He said excitedly as he could not believe that the frustrated workaround that he had decided to try at the spur of the moment, would allow him to see a glimmer of success for the first time ever.
This dent was not the result of mastering the technique that Ben had demonstrated, but rather a workaround that Leo had inadvertently discovered.
He realized that he could compensate for his current inability to compress the mana effectively by imbuing the dagger with more mana than what was strictly necessary for the technique.
This realization came after countless attempts that had ended in failure, prompting Leo to experiment with the variables under his control.
While this approach was less efficient and more taxing on his mana reserves, the result was a tangible improvement over his previous attempts as Leo realized the area where he needed to improve the most to learn kill strike was mana control.
The significance of this success did not lie in the technique's perfect execution but in the understanding that there were multiple paths to achieving a desired outcome.
For Leo, this small dent resulted in him gaining a critical insight into the nature of mana as he realized that a lack of control over mana could be compensated by using larger quantities.
Instead of using 1/10th of his mana and trying to compress it for more attempts, Leo realized that using half his mana reserve at once was more beneficial as at least then he could compress it to an acceptable degree that could create an ever so small dent.
Although this would limit his practise to just two moves per two hours, he still felt it was better than having 10 failed attempts.
As a result of this breakthrough, although the quantity of his practice decreased, the quality improved as by day 10 he was successful in penetrating to about 4 inches into the steel plate.