Billy divided his actions into steps. He couldn't use Acceleration Manipulation, and learning it would take a while, and it will consume a lot of mana. So, he decided to use Blood Manipulation. That one had been a lot easier to learn. Billy just had to put some mana in some parts of his heart, and then it would make the blood move faster… it also would make his heart beat faster, but one can't have their cake and eat it at the same time.
After that, it was time for the second step. Improving Billy's brain capacity with mana and blood. Billy managed to think a lot and discover the tricks behind techniques like elemental creation. Still, his goal was to regain his innate skill, which has been a bit harder… Still, he couldn't rush it. He had to keep his progress steady and slowly increase its speed. That way, the chances of failure will decrease... or so he had assumed.
"The power of Order is to influence, change, and create things with mana. I just have to think it like that," Billy thought. "Making mana become the elements is easy… the real problem is changing something that already exists and changing it efficiently…"
With just a single thought, Billy created an earth spear that had a pretty sharp tip, but the durability was low. That was more or less the basis of his power, and he just had to keep improving it without the need for the system's window.
Billy realized that he could use the mana stored in his cells to level up and become stronger. However, the energy was held in an active way. To turn the mana into experience, he would need to learn the passive way… which was probably the key to his innate skill. Once again, Billy focused on the question and made his brain think about the answer to that question… he didn't find it even after a while.
"Remember how natural it felt for you to use your mana to gain experience, you dumbass!" Billy thought. "The mana was just absorbed by my… soul? Was that the case?"
If that was the case, the soul determines the power of a body, but Billy lost all of his power when he changed bodies. That didn't make much sense… it was more accurate to say that his soul got stronger at some moments to enhance his magic and his body at others to enhance his physical powers.
The reason why he didn't have his magical powers was either: Uvish made sure that he wouldn't leave any mana behind while also preventing Billy's soul from taking some with him, or the theory was flawed. He was inclined to believe that Uvish had plotted that since he was also the one who created and added Soul Absorption to the system, it wouldn't be weird if he could do something like sealing someone's powers or preventing them from using it, even more so when they had his system.
Regardless, controlling his soul was new territory for Billy, so he had to be careful… once he learned how to do anything with it. After doing some tests, Billy found a clue. When he tried to level up his skills, he felt his body getting stronger, even more so when the skill leveled up several times. However, when he leveled up himself, he didn't notice anything until he tested his parameters. With that in mind, he controlled all the mana in his body and made it move inside and tried to make it become a part of him instead of something that he could control to affect the things around him.
At first, Billy didn't notice any changes. It felt like his mana had to become something else before it could truly become a part of his soul. Ultimately, Billy only got a result when he moved all his mana, and then a thin layer that covered his whole body under his first skin layer suddenly disappeared. Billy didn't notice any changes, but then he noticed that his body looked a lot healthier than before. When he clenched his fists, Billy felt a new source of strength, it was barely noticeable, but he got stronger.
"I suppose my whole body is an extension of my soul, and to make it stronger, I have to make my soul as a whole absorb mana," Billy thought. "I guess the innate skill was easier to use because my soul had access to the system, and the skill had been refined to its limits…"
It was hard to say if it was an efficient process, but Billy managed to do that several more times. Also, Billy recalled the logic behind the support spells… if he could make the mana that reinforced those parts of his body being absorbed by those parts…
"I guess it wasn't that simple…" Billy thought when he failed once.
Still, Billy succeeded when he made all the muscles on his body absorb some mana. He felt his strength increasing this time… when he tried to reinforce his skin in a passive way, the mana was absorbed, and his skin got tougher as well.
"This is it for strength and endurance, for magic should be my brain," Billy thought. "For dexterity… my articulations, perhaps? Tendons for speed? Or it was supposed to be my blood vessels?"
Billy had to make some adjustments, but he managed to increase those parameters rather easily, probably because he was too weak now, and small amounts of mana could improve his body tremendously.… that was one of the things he was trying to learn about the system before he fought against the rulers.
While it was a simple method, it was hard to pull off because one needs to be experienced and skilled enough to control mana at several parts of his body while they aren't connected. That was why Billy failed at learning that until now… Regardless, it was time to take the next step.
