Although Tifa could sense magical elements, she was starting late and had no idea how to accumulate mana. Tyrone decided she needed proper guidance.
After spending the night sketching a diagram of the 720 acupoints in the human body, he tossed it to Tifa for memorization.
If the Dragon-Tiger Sect's cultivation techniques could be used to train mana, then Tifa could learn them too.
But first, she had to understand the body's structure and meridians.
---
The moment Tyrone pushed open the classroom door the next morning, a dark blur came flying at him. Instinctively, he dodged—only to hear Eric let out a yelp as he slammed face-first into the doorframe, a lump already swelling on his forehead.
"Bro Tyrone…" Eric whimpered, looking up at him with teary, accusing eyes.
"Damn, it's you? I thought someone was ambushing me!"
"Who'd ambush *you*?" Cici's voice rang out from the side. Her face was lit with excitement, her tone buoyant—clearly in high spirits.
"Our hero has arrived!" Mentor Maria teased.
Cici slapped a stack of papers onto the table in front of Tyrone. "You've got some nerve skipping the award ceremony yesterday. If Mentor Maria hadn't smoothed things over, you might've lost your prize!"
Tyrone squinted—then his eyes widened. *Gold certificates.* He snatched them up, counting eagerly.
"All this is mine?" He could practically feel his grin stretching ear to ear.
"All yours," Maria confirmed, stepping down from the podium. "First place in the individual tournament—1,000 gold. First place in the team tournament—2,000 gold, split three ways, so you get 600."
"That's unfair!" Tyrone protested.
"Oh? You got a problem with us siblings taking a bigger cut?" Cici shot back. "You're already rolling in money anyway!"
"You placed third in the individual tournament—didn't you get a reward too?"
"A measly 200 gold! The headmaster's so stingy!" Cici huffed, shaking her wrist so the bracelet Tyrone had bought for her jingled.
The other top-three winners had received their rewards too. Second place in the individual tournament went to Frank for 500 gold.
Second place in the team tournament got 1,500 gold, and third place got 1,000. Just the prize payouts alone proved the headmaster wasn't being cheap.
And the three members of the championship team had all been granted a title by the city lord—*Baron.*
No tangible benefits came with it, but noble titles weren't easy to come by, so Eric and Cici were thrilled.
"Wait, wasn't I supposed to get a spatial pouch as a reward too?" Tyrone suddenly remembered—he *had* won first place individually.
"The headmaster said you lacked respect, so he canceled that reward," Maria said with a pitying look.
"*What?*" Tyrone felt like his soul had left his body. Just like that? If he'd known, he *never* would've left early yesterday.
"Just kidding." Maria flipped her hand, revealing a small pouch. Tyrone lunged forward and snatched it, examining it with reverence.
Outwardly, the spatial pouch looked unremarkable—just a well-made bag. But the moment he touched it, he sensed an odd fluctuation of elemental energy.
"Mentor, your jokes are too cruel," Tyrone grumbled, still inspecting the pouch.
Maria stuck out her tongue—a strangely girlish gesture from the usually dignified mentor.
"How does this thing work?" Tyrone was fascinated. Back in the Dragon-Tiger Sect, he'd heard legends of *dimensional rings* that could store anything, but no one had ever seen one. Now, he held a treasure with the same miraculous function.
"Use your mental energy to control it," Maria instructed.
Sure enough, when Tyrone focused his mind, he sensed a space of several cubic meters inside. Not huge, but enough to store plenty of useful items.
He glanced around, grabbed a stool, and tried stashing it away. With a thought, the stool vanished—now safely tucked inside the pouch.
"Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!" Tyrone was overjoyed.
"What's so great about that?" Cici muttered, though her envy was obvious.
"Bro Tyrone," Eric sidled up with a shameless grin, "let me borrow that for a few days?"
"Get lost!" Tyrone immediately tucked the pouch into his robes, patting his chest protectively.
The siblings fired off a mix of envy-laced taunts, but Maria soon steered the conversation to yesterday's final match.
"Tyrone, was that spell you cast yesterday *Palmar Lightning*?"
"Yeah," Tyrone nodded.
"But how was it *that* powerful?" Cici frowned. "Your spell didn't just break through the opponent's barrier—that fire mage was still twitching from leftover electricity by nighttime!"
"I think Mentor Maria understands," Tyrone said, glancing at her. "The same beginner-level spell cast by a novice mage and an intermediate mage will have different effects."
Maria nodded.
"My mana reserves… well, they're at an intermediate mage's level. That's why the spell was so strong."
*Is that really it?* Maria studied Tyrone skeptically. She'd been too far from the arena yesterday to gauge the spell's true power, but she suspected even *her* *Palmar Lightning* wouldn't have matched its force.
"How did you suddenly learn to cast spells?" Cici complained. All that worry for nothing!
Tyrone spun a tale about a sudden epiphany—a mysterious impulse to try magic, and *bam*, *Palmar Lightning* had appeared.
"Then… with an intermediate mage's mana, shouldn't you be able to cast intermediate spells now?" Cici asked, though her tone carried a hint of melancholy.
"Nope." Tyrone shook his head. "Even casting *Paralyzing Net* is a struggle for me now."
"Still just a useless rich boy at heart," Cici sighed—yet somehow, she seemed inexplicably pleased.
**Will Tyrone's newfound abilities bring more trouble than triumph?**