"The same mistake...?"
Haru asked cautiously as she looked at the certain Yohan.
Yohan looked at her, smiled brightly, and answered.
"The truth is, I am rather careless."
Haru could not know what was truly inside Yohan, but she could tell that he was showing an obsession with strength.
Mi-yeong, who had been sitting in the stands far away and listening to Haru and Yohan's conversation, rose from her seat.
Then she approached Yohan's side.
"So, this means I can become stronger if I do it this way, right?"
"What are you doing now...."
Mi-yeong did not even listen to Yohan's words to the end and closed her eyes.
Then mana began swirling around her.
Like Yohan, Mi-yeong was also trying to create a mana heart in the right side of her chest.
‘She is going to imitate it after seeing it only once? Let us see whether that is possible.’
Yohan looked at Mi-yeong with interest.
She began concentrating.
Creating a mana heart in the right side of her chest without Yohan's help was no different from suicide.
Mana began gathering from the ends of her entire body and started flowing toward one place.
Then it settled inside the right side of her chest and began forming a core.
‘Not bad.’
The mana in the atmosphere had flowed into Mi-yeong's body, and the size of the core gradually grew.
The massive amount of mana flowing in from her whole body settled in the right side of Mi-yeong's chest.
"Hoo."
After forming the mana heart, Mi-yeong slowly opened her eyes.
‘To think she succeeded at this. Is this what it means to be a genius?’
Seeing that she had created a mana heart in the right side of her chest, Yohan grinned.
If the right-side mana heart was forced to grow too large, one would fall into mana poisoning and die.
The only one who knew a stable method to grow that mana heart was Yohan.
‘Now you cannot escape from my hands.’
Yohan approached Mi-yeong and checked her fingertips.
Seeing that they had not turned blue, it seemed she had not fallen into mana poisoning.
There was a reason Yohan was inwardly impressed like this.
A mana heart was, by nature, an act of creating one more body part inside the body.
Because of that, the safe and orthodox method was to overlap it with the heart, which operated in the same way.
However, creating a mana heart in the right side of the chest meant creating one more organ inside the body.
That meant creating another organ between the organs already settled in place.
It was an act that placed a burden on the body, and if it settled in the wrong place, mana could flow through the body and cause poisoning.
"Give me your hand."
When Mi-yeong looked at Yohan as if asking whether something was wrong, Yohan snatched her hand.
Then Yohan checked her pulse.
‘The flow of mana is stable. With just a brief look, she identified the location in one attempt and created it well there.’
Not only had Mi-yeong gathered a massive amount of mana without the help of an Ego Weapon, she had copied him exactly after only a glance.
‘A monster of a bastard. This is why I hate geniuses.’
Even if she had done it without knowing, it was an act that could have killed her with one wrong move.
No, surely, from the conversation with Instructor Haru, she would have understood the danger well enough.
Yet she copied it and succeeded?
This was true madness for strength.
The more he understood her genius, the more he wanted her, but it was not time yet.
The more of a genius she was, the more deeply he had to carve into her mind that she was beneath him.
"Is there some kind of problem?"
Unlike Mi-yeong, who asked innocently, Yohan hid his inner thoughts and answered.
"There was no problem. Just be careful not to be consumed by your mana."
"Okay. I will keep that in mind."
"Ah, I am the only one who knows how to operate the mana heart on the right side. You understand what that means, right?"
Mi-yeong quickly understood the meaning of Yohan's words.
What Yohan was trying to say.
In other words, if you want to become stronger through this mana heart, come to me.
Without even knowing she had placed Yohan's shackles on herself, Mi-yeong looked at Yohan with thoughts of becoming even stronger.
"I understand what you mean."
Yohan released the hand he was holding.
Mi-yeong rubbed the wrist Yohan had held with a dazed expression.
"By the way...."
"Do you have something to say?"
"Are we sparring now? You have rested enough, and you are not in pain."
"Yeah, not yet."
Leaving Mi-yeong behind, Yohan looked at the Class F students.
Following Instructor Haru's instructions, they were summoning their Ego Weapons and sensing the mana in the atmosphere.
One student seemed to have sensed mana and called Instructor Haru.
"Instructor, I can feel mana!"
"Good. Concentrate like that and contain the mana inside your body."
"May I create a mana heart in the right side of my chest too?"
"Pardon?"
Instructor Haru was dumbfounded by the student's absurd question.
Creating a mana heart in the right side of the chest alone would make one a research subject for the academic world.
And yet they were asking as if it were only natural.
Before Instructor Haru could speak, Yohan spoke to them first.
"Don't even try it. She could do it because she really is a genius. If you people try, you will actually die."
"Even so...."
"Even so, what? You want to become stronger too?"
Jung-han answered that question.
"I want to become stronger!"
At Jung-han's answer, Yohan raised one corner of his mouth and spoke.
"Jung-han, who was the first in the class to sense mana. And...."
Yohan pointed at one student with his finger.
"Han-na, come here."
"Me too? Why me...."
"The reward from the Image Training Room. I will give it to you now."
Haru looked at Yohan with a stunned expression.
Yohan was now trying to create right-side mana hearts not only for himself, but for others as well.
‘This student is going to realize something that has never been practically applicable until now?’
If Yohan took charge and succeeded, and the other students came to possess mana hearts in the right side of their chests, the research sample size would increase.
However, the possibility of the students falling into danger would also be just as great.
Yohan approached Haru, who was anxiously pacing in her mind.
"I will take full responsibility for this. The students will absolutely not be placed in danger."
At Yohan's sweet whisper, Haru, in the end, lost her mind as a researcher to the samples she would obtain.
Having made her decision, Haru spoke to Yohan.
"Proceed."
At her words, Yohan clenched his fist and looked at the students.
"You two, come here and sit."
"Okay!"
Following Yohan's instruction, Jung-han and Han-na folded their legs and sat cross-legged where they were.
"Now, from this point on, close both eyes and sense the flow of mana. Anyone who senses it, raise your hand quietly."
The students quietly closed their eyes.
Then Jung-han, who had sensed mana just now, slowly raised his hand.
Yohan went in front of Jung-han and sat cross-legged in the same way.
Then he took his hand.
"Let mana flow inside your body. Slowly from the ends of your whole body."
"Okay."
Following Yohan's words, Jung-han began injecting mana into his body.
At the fact that it was smoother than expected, Jung-han thought,
‘Was it always this easy?’
By contrast, Yohan was suffering.
He was personally sending out mana from his own core while controlling Jung-han's mana through their joined hands.
Holding the target's hand and forcibly creating it by sending one's own mana through them.
It was a method Yohan had devised after he rose to the position of leader in the Shadow Unit.
After realizing that the previous method of pouring mana straight in was inefficient, he had created it by deciding to step in personally.
The advantage of this method was that it could safely form a mana heart, but its drawbacks were that it consumed a large amount of the caster's mana and required tremendous concentration.
Because Yohan could solve both of those drawbacks, it was a mana heart creation method only he could use.
‘It has to settle between the ribs and the lung.’
Yohan focused and slowly breathed mana into that place.
Then he spoke to Jung-han.
"Seize the mana. Now!"
At the moment Yohan spoke, Jung-han began forming the mana core.
Before long, the core formed.
"Good. One done."
Fascinated by the newly created mana heart, Jung-han moved his body.
Before long, Han-na raised her hand from where she sat.
Yohan approached her, sat cross-legged just as he had with Jung-han, and took her hand.
Haru was watching the scene as if fascinated.
Until now, there had never been a method of forming mana hearts like this.
‘How did a child that young come up with a method like that?’
In her mind, she judged Yohan's actions.
What principle it worked by, and what effects followed from it.
As a result, she quickly grasped the advantages and disadvantages of what Yohan was doing.
‘There should be no mana left in his body....’
To sense mana, Haru took out her Ego Weapon, the Staff of the Sage.
At that, she could sense that the mana in the atmosphere was flowing not into the student Yohan was holding, but into Yohan himself.
‘That is! It is no different from Student Yohan becoming the medium instead of the Ego Weapon and inserting mana from the atmosphere!’
His concentration in accepting mana into his body and his attention in precisely delivering mana into another person's body were exceptional.
‘Is this something a human can do?’
Haru looked at Yohan, who was displaying power beyond human, and the strength drained from her shoulders.
Only after creating mana hearts for two students did Yohan rise from his seat.
He was panting, as if out of breath, and sweat was flowing from his entire body.
His stamina had been completely exhausted, and he wanted to collapse at any moment, but he absolutely could not show weakness in front of the Class F students and Mi-yeong.
Yohan placed both hands on his waist, let out a sigh for a moment, then looked at the Class F students.
"Now, with this, you have mana hearts. How do you feel?"
Jung-han and Han-na checked their bodies.
"My body feels lighter."
"How strange.... It feels as if my body is not mine...."
Yohan looked at them as if proud and spoke.
"Yes. That is the reason mana hearts exist. However, the mana hearts we created can grow infinitely."
"Infinitely?"
"Do not be happy about that. In exchange, you could fall into mana poisoning and die."
The two students swallowed at Yohan's words.
Yohan continued explaining to the students.
"If you do not want your body to be consumed by mana, there is only training. We will continue training, and as you train, your mana hearts will grow stably."
At those words, Jung-han and Han-na looked at each other and swallowed hard.
"So! Now, if you truly do not want to die, you had better follow the training. Understood?!"
"Yes!"
Dragging his exhausted body, Yohan approached Instructor Haru.
"Instructor, mana heart creation is complete."
"Good work, Student Yohan...."
Haru felt proud as she looked at Yohan, who had actually formed mana hearts in the right side of two students' chests.
With this, there were now as many as four research samples.
‘I will have to keep checking their growth.’
Haru smiled gently.
"All of you formed mana hearts through a method different from the standard process. Therefore, you must periodically go to Medical Instructor Kim Chun-sik for checkups."
"Understood!"
"Good. Then, in the remaining time, I will explain the school schedule."
Then she began explaining things other than the class where they had created mana hearts.
"I will explain the very next event, the exam."