《Journey》 Prologue- The unfortunate first step of the journey. Third Person POV Irritably tapping his finger on his school desk, severely annoying the girl next to me who surprisingly was earnestly trying to listen to the lesson on some war that was 100 something years ago, he waits for the hand of the tacky clock on the front wall of the classroom to tell him class was over. Once it reaches the desired point and the bell rings with his bag preemptively repacked he leaves as fast as he could and rush¡¯s to the car park get into his car and leave the school campus behind. He is rushing home especially fast today as the newest and potentially the most revolutionary game has released on the first fully immersive VR, the first of its kind. It boasts magic and fantasy warfare in ways never seen or even imagined before. Turning down the busy streets of a city full of people rushing to lunch was not a fast journey. Stuck at an intersection stop light he leans back in his seat and runs his hand through my overly greased hair, almost in cloud 9 anticipating what was surely and game changer in the world of gaming and for all the dreamer in the world. Unfortunately due to him being in cloud 9 and the fact his music was at a decently high volume he did not hear the sound that would have perhaps warned him to get out of his car and run. In the days to come this incident would be known as the ¡°rogue drone disaster¡±, A VI weather drone had somehow ignored the flight logs of the overhead planes, was sucked into the right engine of a plane and the plane fell causing the deaths of all passengers on board and one person who didn''t move from his car. When he finally did notice the plane coming it was to late, he turned his head just in time to see the bulkhead of the plane crash into his car and he managed to say one last phrase. ¡°What in the shi-¡± The phrase alas was never destined to finish as the person saying it was unfortunately made into an impromptu pancake. Fortunately for him however death turned out to not be the end. Waking up with a feeling that seemed like his body was on fire he screamed until he was slapped by a man whose appearance had more in common with a bear than a man. He had muscles that bulged in any and every way possible . His hair was everywhere, you could only see his skin on his hands and from what peeked out from his beard. He was dressed in tough dark blue denim jeans, a red and black plaid shirt and steel toed boots.The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. ¡°Shut up you little prick¡± He said in a voice that was a few tones away from being a simple grunt. ¡°Wha-where-what the shit!¡± Gaining his bearings he managed to complete the phrase he never did in life, albeit in a slightly squeakier voice. ¡°Alright shit streak, lets see what we have to play with¡± Pulling out a white leather bound book. Still stuttering he had no chance to ask another question before bear man spoke again. ¡°Teenager, nothing really accomplished in life, no girlfriend,boyfriend or anything of the like. Ah interesting an unhealthy obsession with fantasy and magic, perfect there''s a soul trade a tech genius for a heavenly sent qi talent, well wannabe mage is close enough¡± Saying all this to himself slightly giggling at his genius and stroking his beard or his chest hair that was coming out the front of his shirt it was really hard to tell. ¡°It''s your lucky day boy, you are being sent to a world full of magic and qi have fun, also you have died, good luck¡± he said addressing the newly titled shit streak and while giving his best toothy smile that revealed pure golden teeth. ¡°Huh¡± he only had time to let out a nasally grunt before something tugged him and he saw blackness. -------------------------------------------- POV ?????? As he was tugged into, well he didn''t know, all he knew at this point was the sudden pain assaulting his very essence. It felt like needles were being dragged and pierced into all that he was. he could hear screaming, his and someone or somethings else''s, everything was ringing in his mind the sound and the pain. His body was burned, frozen,electrocuted and beaten, somewhere along the line he realized he didn''t have a body only an round spherical light that represented him. He lost track of time and became numb to the noise and the pain. He didn''t really realize something had changed until it became plainly obvious as he felt something massive grab his body. Tuning back in and his numbness disappearing he once again heard screams, not the screams he was usual with however. There were voices mixed in with the screams. He managed to open his eyes briefly, yes eyes, no longer was he a shpereical light he had a body again and saw a small wooden room with candles everywhere. The screaming came from a woman with her legs splayed open and he was located in the arms of a dark haired and dark skinned maiden. Realizing what had happened, the fact he had been born again he did what seemed to be a now familiar reaction, he screamed yet now it was a scream of freedom not of pain and fear. After screaming he was put into the arms who he assumed was his mother, he could feel his consciousness slipping into sleep, something that seemed foreign at this point. He managed to stay awake long enough to hear his mother whisper something into his ears, his name. ¡°Cato¡± It was said in the warmest and most loving tone in recent memory, it ushered him into a warm and deep sleep. Chapter 1 - The first years and the first encounter Chapter 1 Waking up from that first deep sleep I had in recent memory was a difficult task. With my mind and body slowly waking up I stretched out my little baby hands and feet and yawn a little bit. This turned out to somehow be a mistake as I heard a squeal then I was picked up and my face stuffed into someone''s chest, which turned out to be a very difficult position to breathe from. After what seemed like hours I was finally released when the would be suffocator gasped and realised I couldn''t breath when I conveniently struck back with my mini fists. The perpetrator turned out to be the same dark haired maiden who was present at his birth. The time passed quickly from then, I learned the basic language,well the speech part, it seemed easier to learn than any other language i tried to learn before in my last life, probably because I was a baby, we are deceptively smart fuckers. Anyways my mother, whose name was Laura Fletcher, turns out to be an innkeeper, a very scary innkeeper. At one point I can remember a mercenary came in and became jokingly obsessed with my cuteness and threatened to steal me, of course I just giggled because I am a little bit of an attention whore. My mother however was not so entertained, that was the day I learned messing with my mother gets you ruthlessly beaten, it was both terrifying and oddly cool watching my mother toss around a seasoned fighter like a ragdoll. It was vaguely reminiscent of a movie scene where a green giant beat a certain god. Speaking of the guests that entered the inn they were all freaks, freaks as in superman freaks. They had huge strengths, enough to carry their bags which must have weighed a ton and the speed of cars when running, I know both of these things as when I was outside in the town at one point they flew past at insane speeds. The dark haired maiden I later learned was named Marissa, she being the barmaid and my mothers best friend was the only person apart from mother who could pick me up and look after me, much to my annoyance however she was a bit of a clumsy idiot when it came to handling small infant bodies. I have been dropped so many times, she also doesn''t have the best turning ability with me in her arms, i''ve lost count of how many times my head has hit a corner or the doorframe. My father however was no longer one of the living, he was a mercenary by trade and had died weeks before my birth, perhaps this is what prompted my mother to be a little over the top when it came to me. At the age of one and half , due to my annoyance of being carried by marissa I learned to walk walk, this surprisingly turned out to be both a good and bad decision. The good was I no longer getting constant brain damage from Marissa, the bad however made access to me and my cuteness available to all customers, once mother saw this she saw opportunities for profit. Not to be misunderstood she was still scary, disrespecting me was an instant death sentence, I made use of this many times to people I found annoying. Again from there the time passed quickly. I gained more duty at the inn serving food and drinks. Many interesting things came into the inn over the years, most were humans but some where not, many a fun night was watched which was strangely reminiscent of sitcoms. The event that would shape where my life went came when I was 5 just before the food services were ending for the night, a robed figure came in and wished to stay the night and have a meal, Marissa handled making up the room while I served him food. Walking over to the table I felt some sort of trepidation, as if the man before me was more of a force of nature than man. His hood was lowered, his face was aged about 35 years with short silver hair and slightly glowing green eyes. After giving the man his food, I stood and stared at him it was an unconscious reaction. I had never felt this sort of aura from any other guest that came in, it was the aura of something powerful. But his body seemed weak and feeble in comparison to the hulking warrior brutes and the lithe but dangerous hunters. ¡°Who are you mister¡± I ask, he was just so foreign I had to. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. ¡°Hmm, is it so interesting, a man in a robe¡± He responded while slurping mead from a crudely carved wooden mug, he had an expression of slight surprise. ¡°Because everyone else who comes in here looks like they can fight¡± I responded back with a little bit of snark in my voice. He chuckled at that. ¡°Why do you ask who I am child?¡± ¡°Because your old and look weak but you feel strong¡± I went with the blunt approach. He coughed a little when I said old and gave me a bit of a reproachful look while mutter how silver hair was in style. ¡°Young one I am a great magus¡± He said this like it was some grand position, I had no clue what that was. ¡°Wassat¡± I replied in my best clueless voice. Of course however I did indeed have a clue about what a magus was after all before dying I was obsessed with fantasy. But I harboured my blooming excitement beneath a mask of cluelessness and let the man speak. With a queer look at me he began to speak. ¡°A magus my dear boy is unlike any mercenary you have come across before, yes quite different from the meatheads¡± I mentally rose my eyebrow at the meathead comment ¡° We magus control magic, a great force that lies within everything, we bend the very world to our will¡± So this was real, there are in addition to superhumans mages, real bonnifide fucking mages. Opening my eyes wide I prepared my killer move, the little kid hopeful face. ¡°Can I be a magus¡± I asked in sickly sweet voice. Judging from the man¡¯s reaction,he was not used to his sort of behavior, the said expression was one of slight constipation. I understood of course, who could say no to an innocent child. Clearing his voice with a slighty dry cough he answered. ¡°Of course little one, but there are requirements you must first fill¡± He paused and looked at me, seeing my expectant little eyes he continued ¡°The first and most important requirement is the ability to sense mana, now I warn you child this is a rare gift¡± ¡°How do I sense mana¡± I asked directly after he finished speaking, I am not going to be patient when there is magic at stake. ¡°There is a test I could do, I will inject mana somewhere in your body, tell me where I do so and it will prove you can sense mana¡± After saying this he raised his index finger and pointed at me. Closing my eyes I tried to focus, to sense the wonder of magic. However I kept feeling an itch in my arm, I tried to banish that by scratching at it. When I did that I heard him inhale in surprise. ¡°What¡± I asked ¡°It''s an itch, i''ll definitely sense mana¡± ¡°Child you already have¡± he said with a slight chuckle ¡° that''s what foreign mana feels like, congratulations you have some potential¡± ¡°What, mana feels itchy¡± I ask with a deadpan face, in all the stories it apparently feels...good. ¡°No no, that''s what foreign mana feels like, personal mana feels much different.¡± He said reassuring me. ¡°Can you read¡± he asked after a moment of thought. ¡°No but my mother can¡± I responded, internally cursing my lack of education in this world. ¡°Good good, I can not teach you the basics as I cannot stay for long, I will leave a book for you with the basics and some basic spells, when you can read learn, Perhaps I will return someday and teach you some more¡± He finished his statement by pulling a small tan brown leather bound book with letters seared onto its front, probably the title. I took it and looked upon it with a revenant look. Looking between him and the book I say thank you before running back to my room to store the book, not point looking through it when I can''t read it. As I run up the stairs I feel his glowing green eyes watch me go. --------------------------------------------------------- The next day when I woke up the man was already gone, I forgot to get his name. However wasting no time I marched to my mother and demanded to be taught how to read, she looked at me strangely. ¡°Why do you want to learn how to read¡± She asked curious with my sudden fervent determination ¡°So I can use magic¡± I reply like its the most normal thing. ¡°Oh honey having the talent to be a magus is rare, are you sure you want to learn how to read when you might not be able to use magic¡± She said back with sympathetic voice. ¡°But the magus who came last night said I have talent¡± ¡°What, that old man was a magus?¡± She choked a little as she asked ¡° damn I could have swindled him for more¡± Ignoring the last part I stared at her with huge puppy eyes waiting for her to say yes to teaching me. ¡°Fine I will teach you letters, you can''t shirk of serving duty though I lose money that way¡± She finally said yes in an albeit grudging voice, I was so distracted by my excitement I missed her admitting she uses more get more money. Chapter 2 - The B*****d years Chapter 2 - The Bastard years Language the base of all civilized life in the known universe was a bastard. I mean I realise back in my old life I never learnt any other languages but fucking letters can''t be this hard, am I dumb? Possibly, my personal theory was that the speech portion was so easy it made up for it in the written part. However with the distant and wonderful light of magic in the distance I kept my determination. More time past and I noticed something was missing, friends or lack thereof. To be completely honest the whole childhood friend to become lover thing I had read in way to many stories that had shared the theme seemed boring. Going into those books as long as there was a childhood friend of the opposite gender, or same if it was that type of story, there was no mystery on who the MC would end up with. But the fact still remained that I was friendless. There was however good reasons for my lack of friends, there was neither opportunity nor real interest on my part. Lack of opportunity came from the fact I was either working (being exploited by) for my mother and learning the bastard of a written language. Lack of interest came from the fact that the only other children I knew where freaks of nature, They all had access to qi which annoyingly I did not which made playtime oh so much more painful, added to the fact they were real children and did not have the mental age of a teenager the were irritatingly dumb intellectually and socially I mean for fucks sake sending me through a wall, a non freak of nature, and then deeming that the appropriate next step is picking me up by the back of my neck was A humiliating and B painful. It took a full two years until I was fluent in the written language, those years will forevermore be known as the bastard years in remembrance of the bastard fucking language. Excitement coursed through my veins, the day had come, the time to learn magic. I tried to run to my room to start on my path but in my way stood my fiercest adversary, my mother. Standing in front of the stairwell with a sickly sweet smile, with my hair standing on end and cold sweat dripping down my back I faced the drag- I mean my mother. ¡°So honey this magic learning it won''t be interfering with your work will it¡± She smiled with her teeth, how this could be interpreted as anything but a threat is a mystery to me. ¡°Mother it- um- well you see¡± taking a breath I decide to just try it ¡° yes it will interfere¡± I finish my statement and look at her face only to see the flames of hell spewing from her eye, figuratively but no less terrifying so I use my most powerful countermeasure the pouting almost crying face. She doesnt last for more than 5 seconds. ¡°Fine, you can skirt your duties, but you still have to help sometimes¡± It was said, albeit it was slightly forced. Needing no more encouragement I darted past her and to my room, grabbed the book from my super secret hiding place (under my pillow) and went straight to work. The basics of forming your core and summoning. Since time immemorial taking the first step as a magus is in comparison much harder than taking the first step as a qi practitioner. This is not necessarily because the process is harder to accomplish yet the stigma attached. When one becomes a magus they forgo becoming a qi practitioner and vice versa. The stigma of course is forever being a weak body magus.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it This book is about how to take your first step¡¯s as a magus. To begin with all people are born as a novice, how you choose to proceed in this stage determines your path as a magus or practitioner. There are 5 levels within the novice stage. The first stage is the ability to sense mana at all times, no matter the element. It is recommended to try and sense mana where large amounts of natural mana accumulates such as fires for fire mana, large bodies of water for water mana, mountain ranges for earth mana and open plains for air mana. Now no matter what mana you begin with it does not truly matter as in time a magus can use all elements, one of the key difference between practitioners and magus¡¯s, this is due to changes in the elementary stage however we will not go into that for now. The second stage is to see your own soul, by entering into the state of sensing mana one can observe inside themselves to discover their own soul. The soul of human tends to reside conveniently enough throughout their entire body, one must fully sense, grasp and be able to control certain aspects of their soul to progress to the next level. These certain aspects ultimately boil down to being able to grasp and process mana. The third stage is drawing in the natural mana from any element and running it through your own soul and developing spiritual force. Once one has filled their soul with their spiritual force they may purify their spiritual force and make it truly their own, making into one''s true spiritual force. The final stage is being able to take your true spiritual force and compressing it into a spiritual core. This core then allows you to take your first step into the realm of magic and becoming an elementary acolyte. To cast your first spell of the elemental variety one must create an elemental mana core. This is done by the same process of drawing in raw elemental mana but not purifying it and condensing a core from that mana. It is recommended to create these cores by only absorbing one source of elemental mana. The type and power of the elemental core is dependent of one''s understanding and feeling for the element, due to this fact many elemental cores of the same element can exist with differing characteristics. Summoning and the basic spell A magus¡¯s first magic is either a summoning of the most basic spell, the ball spell of which it is generous to call a spell. Summoning magic is usually the first magic as every magus summons a familiar. A familiar is the only summon that has a physical / organic body. A magus¡¯s familiar grows in power with the magus. There are differing types of familiars but they all generally all serve the same purpose, guarding the magus from physical threats, due to the magus being admittedly a very weak physical being. Note : if a familiar dies of physical wounds they can be recalled as they are connected with your own soul, however if they are exterminated soul and all they truly disappear, this is typically a crippling blow for a magus. note : the summoning spells are the only variety of spell that absolutely require vocal incantations. To use summoning spells imbue your voice with your own spiritual power. Summoning spell The ball spell Draw in mana doesn''t matter the type as it is filtered through your spiritual core becoming malleable into any element and then channel it through the elemental core, the mana will take on the properties of the elemental core. Take the energy from the core and release it from your body (can be released from any point as you channel the energy through your soul which is located in the entire body) and it will create a mass of that specific element that will immediately discharge away from your body, there is a supreme lack of control when using this spell, it is a point and shoot spell. It was a simple read yet it widened my horizon beyond reasonable belief. Grinng a cheshire grin I decided to start immediately and spirited down the stairs, and tripping on the first step and falling down the flight of stairs which was painful yet failed to deter me. Recovering from my fall I run to the massive fireplace and sit in front of it, ignoring the looks from the guests. I decided to try and sense fire mana first due to the simple reason that fire is in my mind the staple magic of a mage. Closing my eyes I focus and begin my journey of magic. Chapter 3 - I am a genius Chapter 3 - I am a genius I sit in front of the fire and focus, focus on what i don''t know but I was focused. As I sit in front of the fire I brace myself for the time ahead, because in every story magic is always difficult to learn- Why can I still see the fire? My eyes are closed...No it can''t be that easy. I try to turn my head and am discombobulated when my entire viewpoint moves. Reorientation myself I quickly realize that I have some sort of mana view, maybe it is due to the asshole beared guy. Exploring super mana vision is fun, once I got a hang of it it was actually better than regular vision. It was a 360 degree vision horizontally and vertically. Walls where no obstacle and I could focus my vision like a microscope. My eyes didn''t even need to be closed for the vision to work, the focusing part however did require eyes closed. Reaching the first level literally took no time at all, I probably had an easier time due to my lack of qi ability. Quickly again focusing I try to look towards myself, to my soul. This took some time but I figured out the trick, I looked down to my body and low and behold there it was. It was a strange sight, a mass of light that swirled with the colours black,silver and blue. Sensing the soul done, now to control it. As I was trying to do so my shoulder was hit and with the force behind it I flew and his the stone fireplace. My head was ringing as I shifted my attention to whoever hit me. It was a big man clean shaven dark black hair and purple eyes, the most eye catching feature however were the curling horns on the top of his head. ¡°He was trying to access the power of the shaman¡¯s, I could not allow it.¡± his tone was righteous yet so was the heavy iron pan in my mothers hand. ¡°This isn''t dremoin horned one¡± my mother almost growled to the man embedded in the wall. The man climbed from the wall glared at my mother and was about to attack, but the unique advantage of being an innkeeper came into play, the numerous other mercenaries who were in the building about 8 men and woman stood up with glares that seemed to scream ¡®try it¡¯. It was at the climax of this moment I passed out, hitting my head on stone tends to have such an effect. Slowly regaining consciousness I instantly noticed something off my eyes hurt. It wasn''t a piercing pain more of a throb. Opening my eyes told me something had indeed happened to my eyes, everything was clearer and my mana vision was already activated without me trying. I decide to look at my sould to make sure nothing happened when I got hit to the wall when trying to control my soul. To my delight and surprise something did happen, there was what I assume it spiritual energy in my soul. It was at this moment my mother came in with food and took a double take when she looked at me. ¡°Your eyes¡± She looked slightly alarmed. ¡°What?¡± I asked, by this point the throb had turned into more of warm feeling. ¡°They''re not green any more¡± She left the room after putting my food down and came back with a mirror. She handed it to me and I understood her confusion, my eyes no longer were green but instead shone with the colour of my soul. My pupils were black like usual but it seemed more like a matte black now absorbing any excess light, the iris had changed from green to a literal glowing blue my eyes were now glow in the dark, finally the sclera had turned into a shiny silver. All in all it looked very cool. It was almost otherworldly, it resembled the eyes the magus had perhaps a trademark of being a magus. This caused me to wonder how my mother missed the magus as she had so comment on not being able to get more money from him. When my mother finally let me out of bed later, after much convincing of course. After escaping the room I went back downstairs and entered the common room of the inn. What I saw both shocked me and made me giggle a little bit. Judging from the many person sized holes in the walls and the thick stone walls I discovered the man who pushed me wasn''t let go very easily. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. My mother descended the stairs muttering about having to pay repair costs. ¡°Hey mom¡± i asked ¡°Yeah?¡± ¡°Who was the horned guy, and why¡¯d he hit me¡± Genuine curiosity. ¡°Oh he was just a traveller who didn''t know where his cultural norms ended, nothing to worry about he was well educated about norms last night¡± ¡°Ah, ok then¡± Knowing I did not get a full answer I let it slide, I felt that pushing the matter would not help things. After my quick conversation with my mother I left the inn and the town limits and entered the forest. The forest in contrast to my expectations of a fantasy world forest did not contain any mega dangerous beasts, at most there was a few wolf packs. The town I was in was in a fairly secluded dukedom away from any dangerous beast zones. I had come to the forest for three reasons. One being I didn''t want to be disturbed like a I was the previous night, second I discovered the more I of one elemental mana I sensed the greater my sense for the mana became for example before sensing pure water mana I could not sense rain from outside the building nor it going in someone''s throat and into their belly, however after I observed some and absorbed it I could, the third and final reason was I wanted to perform the familiar spell and from the sound of the spell it was a spell with a fairly noticeable effect. After a few minute of being in the forest I discovered some changes. It seemed like I had already reached the 4th level, When sensing the mana I felt I could do more and just did, i pulled in both earth and water mana which was abundant in my current environment. There was a third type of mana but I couldn''t get a grasp of it. Moving on I realised I was in a pseudo stage between level 5 and becoming an elementary acolyte, I just needed to gather enough spiritual force and compress a core. Pausing for a moment I thought about the novel I had read about cultivation in my previous life, there was always a benefit in doing something different. In this case I was pondering whether or not to gather more spiritual force and then compress it. I decided to wait until I was at that point until trying something that may not be possible. Days past and I was in the forest more often than not, mostly due to the more abundant earth, water and some air mand in comparison to the hearth fire in the inn. I also discovered there was barley and scraps of mana left to devour in processed or converted goods such as walls and tools. The days I spent in the forest I felt reflected my current life and my last. In my past life I was lazy but my mind was always moving and pondering this shows when I would sit at the trunk of a tree, its branches or some groove in the forest and just sit and devour the mana. Other times I would prowl the forest in search of well anything. In this way I finally reached the peak saturation point of my soul and if I wanted to I could compress my core, It was a feeling that told me I could. After reaching this point any mana I absorbed was a moot point and didn''t convert into spiritual force. I couldn''t even halfway compress the core and absorb more, I knew that just from the feeling I got it was almost an instinct. Compressing the core was surprisingly a rather non eventful event, at most there was a slight feeling of accomplishment. Slightly disappointed of this revelation I decided to practice a new ability, imbuing my voice with spiritual force. ¡°Boom¡± I said the word at a normal volume but I felt the sound reached farther than any shout I could make, further more the mana around me fluctuated seemingly exploding outwards, it caused no physical effects anywhere however perhaps when I had more spiritual power I could influence the surrounding mana and world with my voice alone. With a bit more practice I made the volume return to normal while retaining the effect in fact when I returned home I had a full conversation with marissa with strange results. ¡° Hey marissa¡± I said as soon as I saw her. She stumbled as she heard my voice as well as shivering, Noticing that I realized I had unconsciously directed both air and water mana creating a shove of thought as well as lowering the temperature, interesting. ¡°Hi Cato, Sorry you surprised me¡± ¡°No problem, I going to my room see you later¡± I restrained in using force this time, I felt it more effects than I previously thought, even at this level. I only came back to my room at this point for the book on summoning, I wanted to try this right away. Grabbing the book I ran back to the forest and into a grove I frequented. I didn''t wait, standing with the book in one hand and my other hand stretched out I began. ¡°Hear my call from the realm of the real to the realm of the abstract¡± The mana in the air became agitated it began to spin and formed a storm. ¡°Heed my command to traverse the veil¡± The world in front of me split and instead there was a world of constantly changing colors, trees changing into seas and vice versa. ¡°Unshackle your bonds and become one with me¡± Wispy lines of energy came from the rift and attached to me, more specifically my soul, as they made contact they change color to either black, blue or silver. ¡°Form the physical form of life by sharing my life with yours, COME¡± The rift closed and the wispy lines stretched from my body and formed two cocoons of black,blue and silver. One cocoon was the size of a small ford truck and the other about the size of a harley motorcycle. I watched as they cracked and the pieces came off, excited to see what they held. Chapter 4 - Flynn & Lester Chapter 4 - Flynn & Lester The cocoons fell of and revealed two animals, both shared the colour scheme of my soul. One was a tiger, that was the one the size of the harley its base fur coat was matte black and its stripes silver the eyes were pure globes of glowing azure blue, the other was a tortoise the size of a pickup truck, It had the same base coat of matte black but had random lines and that curved all over its giant shell, legs and head it¡¯s eyes shared the same blue as the tiger. The tiger immediately changed at me, I felt momentary panic before I felt a large heavy tongue start licking my face which was painful due to a cat¡¯s barbed tongue. I tried to push it off but it was heavy and I was pitifully weak, physically. Eventually I got message through in an unconventional way. ¡°OFF¡± I screamed in both my voice and mind. ¡°Sorry¡± I hear a voice in my head say. The tiger gets off and pouts while looking at me. ¡°Did you just talk, in my head¡± ¡°Yes, Im flynn and the weird lizard thing is lester, sorry about the umm licking¡± I hear a voice ring again in my head. ¡°Flynn and lester, huh so umm you are my familiar yeah?¡± I ask speaking ¡°Yes we are, and thank you for taking your time midget¡± A different voice rung in my head, assumedly lester. ¡°Took my time, what do you mean¡± I asked the turtle ¡°Since you were born we have waited, that is how familiars of those born with the inability to use qi live, we wait conscious in the abstract, which is trying at the least and torment at the most¡± ¡°Ahh, well sorry, well that over now¡± I ended with a nervous chuckle. All lester did was bow his head. So it seemed that my familiars had intelligent thoughts and personalities, I had no problem with it it made life more interesting. Flynn on the other hand at this point was running in circles around the grove, probably revelling in the freedom he was a cat after all. After getting further acquainted with them I discovered they had something like innate spells, or more like innate skills. For example lester had some sort of energy barrier called the tortoise shell, It could be used on both him and I. Flynn had a sort of shadow walking ability letting him be able to blend into and shadow and move faster than normal, if in a closed environment he and by association I could do short distance shadow jumps. These were innate abilities I assume that only one magus could possess, unique ones if you will.This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Personally he could see many useful application of these abilities in the future if his theories on spell casting where true, where there was large ammount of cast time therefore leaving yourself open to attack, using these abilities he could shield himself or escape. I left the two in the forest as taking two giant animal that resemble magical beasts into town is asking for trouble. Before I leave lester kindly informs me that more innate abilities await as the two grow in strength. After giving me that tidbit of information they leave to cultivate as magical beasts do, lester manipulated the earth and sunk into it until his shell was the only thing showing was his shell leaving the illusion of a very exotic rock in a grove. Flynn left to hunt and do his own cultivating. As I get back to the inn I think about how to go about forming my first core, now I know that mages will have no limits on these cores but for me this will be a significant moment along with some reminiscence in the future. I feel like fire, due to its staple as a supreme magic in my old world, albeit in fictions but still pretty cool. Remembering what the book said about how the core forms based on the mana source and one''s own comprehension of the element. Thinking I want my fire core as something destructive, due to my supreme lack of offensive power at the moment I instantly throw out ideas of using a candle to form it, so i decide to again use the hearth downstairs however this time I don''t want to be disturbed so I make a quick plan with my mother. ¡°Hey mom, I need some help¡± ¡°With what sweetie¡± ¡°Well I need to use the hearth again and don''t want to be disturbed, have any idea¡¯s?¡± ¡°Oh I think I can come up with something¡± She said with a smile that could send shivers down the spines of devils. Soon later I was again in front of the hearth but this time there was 6 behemoth sized guards in charge of making sure noone fucked with me. I like the feeling it was a strange sense of power, knowing I was pretty much untouchable the next step of course was reaching this feeling with my own power. I delve into my mana vision and start to absorb the fire mana and without purifying it I start to concentrate it in a space near to my spiritual core. In the real world the fire rapidly dimmed, more and more logs were put on to sustain it. At some point the fire physically started moving towards me and wrapped around my body like a scarf, becoming a rather interesting spectacle for the surrounding guests. The fire mana eventually became condensed enough in that one area for me to form the core, like I had done before with my spiritual core I condensed the core but this time it was different. I was surrounded by fire. I thought immediately this is where I gained the comprehension part of the core, so I became a temporary philosopher. Looking into the fire I seek to understand it, I see the vision of the hearth fire itself and try to find a source of destructive fire. What I saw was enlightening to say the least, I saw sources of fire and was surprised at all the source one hearth fire could produce. There was the heat that it produces, the streams of pure fire that coiled along the log and the logs of fire that broke down to feed the hunger of the fire. I chose the streams of pure fire, they seemed like the best offensive ability. As soon as I chose that the core formed and my body felt like it had went through a baptism. Standing up abruptly I found out that if I focused on the core the air around me became heated and my hair started acting like fire, moving in unpredictable ways. From this I deduced that this was a side effect of using the core for anything elicited effects in the surrounding environment that related to the cores properties. It looked cool though. Smiling I stood up and thanked the people who guarded me and went to sleep. Waking up the next day I returned to the forest to talk with my familiars and try the ball spell. I went to the grove where lester was talked to him for a bit, he was focused on cultivating so there wasn''t much of a conversation, I could feel my connection to flynn and it seemed he was busying hunting so I decided not to bother him. Finding a pond I decided to aim for that considering the otherwise very flammable environment. Sucking mana from the world around me I channeled the purified mana into the flame core. The flame core began to glow and I could feel the power it held, so I raised my hand and pushed the power from the core and through and out of my hand which was pointed at the lake. The power gathered beneath my palm without release, well until all the power gathered was in my palm. With a final bit of effort I ejected the power and a baseball sized ball of fire shot from my palm and into the water with promptly exploded in a geyser of water. ¡°HEHEHE, that was COOL¡± I said with a grin. Chapter 5 - The start of the journey Chapter 5 - The start of the journey Years passed until I was 9. Through these years I discovered why the ball spell was barely a spell, it was little more than a point and shoot. It could be shot from anywhere on my body and at one point I did ¡°fart fire¡± much to the chagrin of my mother. I was getting impatient to cast actual spells so I kept thinking of the words of the magus who gave me the first book that he may come back in the coming years. In other news both Flynn and Lester were getting more powerful, lester could now influenced the earth around him so when he moved the earth moved with him which made his slow pace a very small issue. Flynn had grown larger nearly the size of lester and could now make shadowy tendrils that could assist him. Naturally I gained none of these powers. I formed 3 other cores of the basic elements such as earth, water and air. The ball spells for each respectively were a rock bullet a super soaker like water ball and what could be a gentle push of air to compressed air bullets. Due to the lackluster progress on anything magic like I was again helping out in the inn, however now as a cook which was surprisingly fun. I could now understand all those stories about the magis chefs and whatnot. On one of the days I was serving the food I had cooked I saw the man who gave me the book, surrounded by what looked to be an average mercenary party. An archer, tank, a DoD and of course the wizard. Setting down the food I stared at him, due to him not noticing me. The tank, bless his soul noticed me first. ¡°What you want little man, in awe of my majesty, ehhe¡± The only sound I can relate to his speech is the sound that a cow makes. ¡°Im looking at the magus¡± I said in response. ¡°How do you know that i''m a- Oh shit is this the inn I lost my book in¡± The magus spoke up.Stolen story; please report. ¡°You gave it to me¡± I said in response. ¡°I did, damn I must''ve been drunk can I have it back, the old bastards back at the school have been riding my ass for it¡± He said with a toothy smile. ¡°Well sure, I''m done with it¡± ¡°Wonderful- what do you mean done with it¡± ¡°Well I became a elementary acolyte so that''s all good, and I used the familiar spell¡± He stared at me for a few seconds with an open mouthed expression. ¡°You actually, well then that changes things, umm what kind of familiar do you have out of curiosity¡± ¡°Well for one it¡¯s familiars, there''s two, and ones a tiger and the other a tortoise¡± ¡°Wait two, are you sure, and magical beast types at that¡± After that we had a decently long conversation about how he left his book here, apparently he was drunk at the time and gave me the book for reasons that neither he nor I could think of. Also by his words I was a magical freak, usually it took about ten years to reach the elementary stage, I hadn''t even lived that long, mounting that on the fact I summoned two families which was supposed to be impossible. Eventually It became too late and we all retired to our beds. The next morning the rest of his party left but he stayed behind, he wanted to meet my familiars and he stayed for some other reason of which he hadn''t told me. When we reached the grove where lester was I apparently shocked the man again, whose name I had just learned to be Charon. When Lester raised himself out of the ground Charon''s eyes went wide. ¡°Umm how''d you get him this big kid¡± ¡°He came like this¡± ¡°Wonderful that''s just wonderful¡± He said while scratching his head ¡°And where''s the other one, or were you just bragging¡± I pointed behind him and he came face to face with a very large cat. He made what could be considered a very high pitched squeals and fell on his ass. ¡°Hey umm kid they wouldn''t be intelligent are they, if so kindly tell the pretty cat NOT TO EAT ME¡± ¡°You''ll be fine he¡¯s just playing¡± ¡°Wonderful, okay then one to the next piece of business¡± Still keeping his eyes on flynn he continues ¡° What would you say if I offered you an opportunity to go to a school to learn more, my reason being you are a talent and if I bring you in I get ugh some credit¡± ¡°Id say yes, and if you get benefits I want some too¡± I say with a cheshire grin. His smile faltered a little then he responded. ¡°Talents usually get good treatment, of course to get the best treatment you''ll need to learn a few more spells before you get there¡± He regained his smile. ¡°Well let''s start then, i''m not a patient person¡± Flynn growled to support my statement. Chapter 6 - Leaving home and magic beams Chapter 6 - Leaving home and magic beams Me and Charon went back to the inn, as well as Lester and Flynn. I needed my mother''s permission to go to the school, personally I was scared and leading a clueless man to what could be his doom. I had Flynn and Lester as back up yet I felt even they might be ineffective in this situation. We walked in and for some reason Charon decided he should be the one to convince her, very bad idea, In seconds after uttering the words I will be taking your son away he flew into a wall and 8 men and woman held my mother back, barely. It took me about 2 hours after that to explain the situation to her properly, albeit with some exaggerations about monetary gain I could get she changed her tune pretty quickly after that. It even seemed like she was eager for me to go out the door, the old saying money can change anyone is true especially in my mother''s case apparently. We rested for the night after a heavy night of celebratory drinking due to my travel plans, I also discovered the Lester is a raging alcoholic and a fun drunk. Leaving in the morning was a little bittersweet, I could tell my mother would miss me but her words of parting were a bit off key. ¡°BRING ME MONEY SON¡± As you can see it was a bittersweet moment. Charon and I left after that, he on a horse and me on a tortoise that was much faster that it reasonably should be. I influence the earth around its feet to move with him, increasing his speed. Although riding on Flynn would be faster it wouldn''t as smooth as a ride, plus riding Flynn would be too fast for Charon to keep up on hos regular horse. Speaking of familiars Charon''s turned out to be an emerald snake, made of actual emeralds. Charon told me we were heading to an academy for nobles, as it was one of the only ones with magus in it. It was primarily an academy that focused on qi users but magi were given what was close to free reign to pursue their studies due to the fact for magi to grow we did not need life and death experiences. My tuition would be covered by a scholarship provided by the school, due to the fact I had two familiars and I was so young. It was also on this journey that he taught me an actual spell.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. ¡°So I think by now you have realised the limitations of the ball spell, the lack of power, lack of control and the lack of variety. Well you see to use spells one must first use the spiritual force after gathering mana. The first spell I shall teach you is often used for learning control. It is called the spout spell and it is much like the name says, it makes an outlet for your magic, of course now unlike with the ball spell you can control the output, be it more or less¡± He showed me the spell diagram, It was two circles, one inside the other, apparently you make the spell formation with your spiritual force in the air in front of you and imbue the outer circle with the mana, then the inner circle spews out the corresponding element. It took me a few hours to get the formation correct, after that I began to use the spell wantonly. I spewed fire, water and mini hurricanes using earth didn''t work so well. I then tried to experiment with the spell and do something that I had tried to do before with the ball spell to no avail, mixing the elements. It took a few tries but I finally accomplished my goal with very powerful consequences. It seemed that with a 60-40 ratio of fire and wind mana respectively creates and beam of fire, increasing the purity of the fire mana nearly makes it a beam of plasma, however that''s when i discovered that like in the story''s power was limitless, My head started to hurt and my spell cut out, turns out I ran out of spiritual force, Mana points if you will. Meanwhile charon was shocked I had this must control over the spell as I did, to mix mana was apparently a very rare skill. Well all the praise goes to one place in the end, my ego. Although he did have a laugh at me due to my little mistake of using up to much spiritual force. According to him for us magi to have any use in combat we had to at least reach the apprentice stage, which he said I would learn about when I reached the academy. Another thing about the academy, it was self taught in the magus case, they opened the library to us and said do your shit. I rather liked this feature, I would learn my magic and if I needed help with stuff I could ask a more experienced magus. Charon also mentioned a runic language that made up most if not all of the advanced spells accompanied with the circles. In other words another written language I had to learn, If it was anything like the bastard language¡­ Well there would be lots of fire involved. While thinking this about learning a new language I absentmindedly started to cackle, slightly worrying charon, but oh well. Over the time the journey to the academy took I kept using the fount spell and my own mixed mana beam spell. Charon said the more I use my spiritual force up until depletion the faster I will reach the next level, there are apparently more books that detail the change between levels in the elementary stage. We saw the academy as well as the city that surrounds it before we reached it, long before we reached it. It was huge, the size was probably comparable to some cities back in my other life the medieval vibe here wasn''t as strong either as from what I could see the buildings had the same type of look some modern might have. We reached the city a full day later, it was encircled by a 10 metre tall wall which was very impressive. Using charon''s identity to pass through the gates and my city life began. Chapter 7 - The Academy and its Occupents Chapter 7 - The academy and it occupants After entering the city we immediately went to the academy, which was an awe inspiring sight. It was a huge castle with numerous courtyards, spires and various buildings littered across its area. It even had a small forest near the back end of it, presumably for a safe training environment. As we enter the campus I notice a distinct lack of people, Charon tells me it''s due to all the student being on break which after is fairly obvious following the conventional summertime weather. I found it only slightly surprising that this world shared the same convention regarding breaks, perhaps others had reincarnated previously and introduced these concepts, however this was not easily found out due to the situations characteristics so I elected to forget about it. He did however inform me that the teachers were still around, of which he would gather the few who pertained to special administration and they would admit him and decide a teaching plan. It took a few hours, I practice my spout spell a few times by making water for me to drink I even used combination mana to make a boiling water spout that towards an unsuspecting victim would be quite painful. Finally charon took me to a random building and in front of me where 5 old men, 6 including charon. ¡°Brothers, I have found a magus who has talent, yet is also under the age of ten which I will remind you is a record¡± Charon introduced me, what is this an audition. ¡°Yes yes charon, he might be a good sensor but is he worth the effort of making a magus, after all you''re standing at the moment isn''t the best after the book incident¡± Said one of the wannabe gandalf. ¡°Speaking of the incident, he is the reason I lost it, I may have been intoxicated and gifted it to him leading to this fortuitous day¡± Charon replied smoothly, a point I only laughed at a little earning a glare from one of the old dudes. ¡°Be that as it may, we would need proof of true talent before admitting as you wish, with a full scholarship¡± One of the more silent ones spoke up. Charon nodded to me, I used the spout spell at first with only fire mana. Doing so raised eyebrows I wanted more than raised eyebrows. Deciding to something stupid I lined three spell formations, two facing forward and one facing backwards, in a line they were pure air, a mix or fire and air and earth. It created a stopper effect with the fire beam building up power behind the stopper of the earth element fount spell. ¡°Ha a stalled spell, true talent charon¡± The gandalf wannabe spoke up, He became the target. Maneuvering the spell line up towards him, well over his shoulder I released the earth spell and the compressed fire beam which was boosted by the pure wind spout behind it was unleashed. It shot passed his shoulder and deep into the stone wall behind him, leaving only the man with a now slightly singed beard and a head sized smoking hole in the wall. There was silence for a moment and then the man I shot at spoke up.This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. ¡°That was reasonable response, I would have done the same¡± He spoke sagely, apparently he was the type to solve situations with a sarcastic remark or a sarcastic attack. His sentence elicited a chuckle from those around him and full out laughter from charon. Following that they released their judgemental council aura and resumed with what appeared to be their everyday behavior, that of lazy old men, they then started joking with each other about bets that they had made beforehand. I realised that the tough cynical old men appearance was for interviews only while in reality they were what you would call a chill teacher. After the interview a few things about the academy were made clear to me. Like the qi users who had to complete missions in order to gain credit I as a magus student had to do the same thing however unlike qi students it would be very rare for me to leave the school, at least while in the elementary stage. I would mostly be doing repair work, after gaining the necessary mana cores and studying magic itself. I would also get a private villa instead of a dorm room due to the fact that including myself there were 8 magi on the campus, a revered occupation it seems. I was guided to my villa by Charon and then was left alone, before he left however he told me that the next day is when the rest of the school arrives. At the opening ceremony the fact that the school now has another magus will be announced, I find it slightly strange it''s such a big deal after all people in the inn knew I was trying to become one, was their lightheartedness stemming from a belief that I could not succeed? I explored my villa and discovered a study, a library, a small kitchen and pantry, 3 guest rooms, a great room and the master suite which was a very nice room to be honest. The entire villa was made of stone, like a renaissance italian home, the interior felt warm with a mix of stonework and wood. The villa was lit up by what I assumed to either be light emitting stones or some sort of spell. I see the sun sink below the horizon and I decide to read a book from the library before going to bed, well at least start a book. I see a book called elementary acolyte being a new elementary acolyte I was intrigued. The book had a lot of interesting anecdotes and various stories about the different ways people had progressed through this stage. Elementary Acolytes The elementary stages are divided into 9 basic levels. To progress into the next level one must shatter then reform it by condensing it further. Of course to achieve the highest possible effect it is recommended that one fully exploits the highest natural growth of each level before shattering then reforming as the more energy contained within your core at the 9th level which will heavily influence your entrance into the apprentice level. Note: To grow your core at a faster natural rate it is recommended to constantly use spells and reach the mental limit of casting spells when training. Living in an environment with high amounts of natural energy, doesn''t matter if it is qi or mana. Qi puts pressure upon your spiritual control, using magic while in the presence of cultivators increases your growth if you actively resist the pressure. To cast spells while in the elementary stage one must use spell formations and the deus-en script. Different ways of using spell lines/ circles increase and control the power of spells as does the usage of the deus-en script. Note: this is how one will typically cast powerful spells even after the highest stages. Story of Ronald ¡°The Speedy¡± Corron. The story of Ronald is one of teaching a mgus not to rush through the elementary stage, of which he did in two short days. Shattering his core and reforming it 9 times in a row did indeed allow him to progress to the apprentice stage however as he reached it his permanent spell limit (the exhaustion limit) was exactly the same as a elementary lvl 2. A quote from him was ¡°apparently power really doesn''t come quickly¡± after this quote he made the mistake of trying to become an alchemist and promptly blew himself up. Never forget the story of Ronald ¡°The Speedy¡± Corron. Finishing the very interesting read and chuckling over the story of Ronald the Speedy I looked forward to the years and months ahead, I look forward to learning more about spell lines and this deus-en script in the future, however now I sleep. Chapter 8 - The Deus-en Script and Academy life Chapter 8 - The Deus-en script and academy life I woke the next morning to the sound of movement. Deliriously getting up I washed myself and ate breakfast then going out on a balcony I failed to notice the night before I decided to enjoy the early morning sun whilst eating a loaf of bread, mentally noting to get a wider variety of food. The sound I had heard earlier turned out to be carriages running down the road close to my villa. The night before both Lester and Flynn made themselves comfortable in two of the guest rooms. They both requested that if I could later make the rooms more comfortable for each of them. I planned to learn a few area of effect spells for that. After retreating back inside I found some coffee grinds, or at least the closest thing there was in the world and made a cup of the classic morning beverage then returned to the balcony to enjoy the obnoxious carriages. They were not terribly loud but their designs were obnoxious. All golden and silver and with what I could only assume were precious gems on the sides is what primarily formed my opinion on the carriages. A few even based their designs on what I could only assume to be house crests. There was one with a deer made out of what resembled ivory and was lined with gold and antlers that were made of a green crystal, another with a black western style dragon that had silver and red highlights that laid on top of a carriage and finally a blood red raven that looked like its wings were hanging over the sides of the carriage. Eventually I spotted riding over in a carriage with no top inside was Charon, looks like he came to retrieve me for the yearly opening ceremony. I went down and met him at the front door, ,my theory being correct we immediately left to the opening ceremony. I would be seated with the highest class ,socially, students due to my new status of a magus. Even though I was still confused on the reason for a magus¡¯s social status I would accept it with gusto. Eventually we reached the main castle, a sprawling mass of a building with numerous nooks and crannys. Presumably both the dorm spaces and classes, no doubt there were probably hidden passages and room here as well. We walked into a huge room, I would assume it doubles as a dining hall when not used for gatherings, and I was deposited in the first row. I got quite a few curious looks, most likely because I was the only one with a normal fucking hair colour. I was surrounded in a sea of colors purple, pink, red,green, blonde and goodman vibrant blue. Meanwhile here I was with a nearly ponytail length chestnut hair. The ceremony started with the usual bullshit that one would assume, looking back at previous years, welcoming the newcomers and looking forward to the future. However when they reached the announcement about me they weirdly upped the ante, like tony stark level presentation. Fire exploded from behind the stage, the wind howled. The man who I assumed to be the headmaster at this point ¡°One final announcement, We the Oaks Academy would like to welcome a new magus¡± He paused and watched the student bodies reaction, which as he finished his sentence they uncharastically didn''t clap, it was dead silent. ¡°He is the youngest we have seen in centuries, we welcome him with open arms¡± He finished his statement, at this point there was smattering applause, but what worried me where the people who were looking around with almost ravenous looks in their eyes. ¡°On a side note in case you wish to meet him, he is the student with brown hair and blue eyes at the front, classes start tomorrow and today the rooms and schedules are sorted out, have a wonderful year¡± With his closing statement of pointing me out he turned into a beam of light and disappeared. It took a few seconds until I realized all those hungered looks from before were now locked on me. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. ¡°Hey buudy, we should talk¡± The blonde haired kid beside me smiled, I shivered. Thankfully Charon showed up almost instantaneously and we left, they eyes that followed up bored into my back, again I shivered. ------------------- ¡°Charon what was that¡± I hissed at him ¡°Ahh I suppose you''re still curious about the role us magus play then¡± ¡°You fucking think¡± I was not having questions for answers at this point, I''m still getting cold sweat from those stares. ¡°Well you see us magi have the unique ability of finely controlling the world''s power, mana, by using this we can forge extraordinarily powerful weapons, armours and medicines all of which are heavily used by cultivators. However making these take time, so if there is a new magus what do you think happens¡± He calmly explained. ¡°One more magus to create new things for them...making them stronger¡± ¡°Yes and that my friend is why we are valued about equally as high noble families¡± he said with a smile, I can see he was a man who made constant use of this status. ¡°I see¡± A grin crept over my face, I could have some fun with this. ¡°Now, Cato, shall we discuss your study plan as well as my suggestions for said plan¡± I nod ¡° Well first of make yourself more utility cores nature and perhaps a physical core would be nice to start with. Nature to do odd jobs that we all do such as repairing broken landscapes and forests cultivators make a mess of and physical is a rudimentary healing element, it can also have other uses. Ahh also a personal note from me, never try to improve your body like a cultivator, it has painful and detrimental effects, I speak from personal experience.¡± He said that last part with a reminiscent wince. ¡°Ok, where would I get the physical core from then, I can guess nature, forests¡± ¡°Hire a cultivator, promise weapon or something when you can make them, there likes dogs to a bone with those things¡± ¡°Good to know¡± He hand me a book. ¡°This is the deus-en script, the most important tool of a magus, it is script that no magus has ever mastered, there are letter that the universe itself has created, us magi spend years developing new spells with these letters, there are a few spells within for you to study, good luck¡± As he finished speaking we arrived back at my villa and he left me with the book. Looking at it I grinned, my path to actual powerful magic had now blown wide open. It was a thin book, that looked new, most likely it was made for me by the older magi, I was touched. I wiped away an imaginary tear before entering the villa. I decided to get some food food before reading. Grabbing a fruit that resembles an apple, expert it tasted a little more smoky I once again return to my balcony and begin reading. I read the introduction and the various uses of the script, how you vocalised the script as a spoken language while forming spell lines with your spiritual force which guided the spell. It was when I reached the script itself that I paused in confusion. The script was goddamn fucking english. I shit you not real bonni- wait no scratch that, I could read it like it was english and when I tried to speak in english while using mana my words changed. I pause and think, my face was demonstrating the expression of satisfaction. Was this my cheat ability, if so the prospect seemed pretty endless, I mean I could create spells comparatively easier and I could create new enchantment and the like. I decided to try something with the spout spell, going from the premise of the book I made the spell circle resembling the spout spell then I spoke ¡°Let the fire take flight as the three legged crow of the sun¡± I was intentionally being weird and kind of poetic with my wording. Afterall it is magic. With a massive drain of my spiritual power I managed to get enough man the spell was demanding, however it drained my spiritual power well dry. The results however were definitely worth the effort. From the tiny spell circle a huge blast of fire came out and then formed itself into a strikingly realistic three legged crow, with the last vestiges of will I directed the spell into to air, to which it soared for I assume to be at least a hundred meters before bursting into a huge ball of flame. It was beautiful as it was paired with the noon day sun, it almost resembled another sun being born in the sky for a brief period. Feeling exhausted overcome me I stumble back inside to my bed and collapse into a deep sleep. Chapter 9 - Playing with spells and learning lines Chapter 9 - Playing with spells and learning lines When I woke up I thought I had slept for about an hour seeing the sun still high in the sk, however when I went to talk to lester he said I had been asleep since yesterday afternoon. That spell took a lot out of me, still worth it though it was amazing. Flynn later told me that Charon had visited and asked what the actual fuck the bird red exploding bird was about, apparently he thought it was another familiar to which he freaked out even more at the thought of me having three familiars. I had to make an effort to speak to him today, if not for reminding his thought process than to find out more about the spell lines I read about in the elementary book. I left the house on Flynn''s back for two reasons, one I didn''t want to be caught by an interested buyer of stuff I can''t even make yet and two riding on a giant tiger was exceptionally cool. However I quickly discovered a flaw in my plan, I had no clue about where Charon was. Frowning for a moment Flynn and I stop moving, unfortunately catching the attention of a few passerbys. ¡°Honored Magus hello¡± I hear a voice call to me from the right, judging from how it sounds its a girl. I try to ignore her, for no reasons other than remembering the stairs I had gotten. That idea proved to be one that failed to work as seconds later my foot was being poked. ¡°Dont ignore me I just want to talk¡± The voice was a mix of pouting and danger, danger I learned from the years of nearly pissing my mother off. I turned my head and relented. Ther person in question was a girl most likely around my age, her hair was a mix of red and white which was an interesting combination and her eyes were golden, However unlike mine they didn''t glow which led me to believe genetics regarding eye color in this world was extensive. She was wearing what I assumed to be a school uniform, it was a black coloured army style uniform with a skirt. I will not describe other physical features due to the fact she was a 9 year old like me, her face however was one you would expect to grow into a beautiful woman''s face one day. ¡°Apologies I was in deep thought¡± I said with a smile ¡°Of course¡± she replied, her tone implying she didn''t believe me, I gave a nervous chuckle to that. ¡°Do you need something¡± I asked ¡°Well I was wondering if I could get a ride to the keep¡± She wanted to ride on lester, sensing he had no problem with it for all the wrong reasons, I called him a creep mentally and then responded to the girl. ¡°I mean sure I guess, but you have to do something for me¡± ¡°What do I need to do¡± Her eyes showed suspicion ¡°Where would I find Charon¡± ¡°Elder Charon? The tower of techniques, That''s where i''m heading, hehe I like coincidences¡± With that she hoped on Flynn and we were off, considering the size of Flynn our bodies never touched throughout the journey, of which was surprisingly short. Throughout the journey what I didn''t notice was the face of victory she was making at the passing students. As we arrived at the admittingly awe inspiring tower I see charon at the front. When he sees me he goes on a full on sprint, slightly ruining the calm scholarly vibe he was rocking for the new students previously. Arriving at my side panting I can see he obviously very curious about the fire crow earlier. ¡°Mind explaining the event earlier Cato¡± Obviously irritated ¡°Ah well, maybe privately?¡± I said glancing at my passenger ¡°Yes, yes, and who might this be¡± He said glancing at her ¡°Honored magus my name is Courtney Odinkin from the grand Odin house¡± ¡°Ah a high lord house daughter, wonderful to meet you, If you would allow I wish to speak to this boy privately, I will privately show you a few techniques that would be suitable for one of your house later¡± He said with a smile She nodded and with a bright smile she jumped off Flynn and went into the tower Meanwhile Charon took me inside another building and glared. ¡°I''m pretty sure that kind of spell is nowhere in a hundred kilometer radius, so please could you explain how you made a massive fire bird¡± His eye was twitching. ¡°Have you ever heard of people having special abilities, well magi having them¡± ¡°Yes, they tend to have the disability to use qi and the world pays them back bu- of course you have an ability that''s how you''re so young and a magus¡± he answered his own question. ¡°Yes¡± I confirm he train of thought and discover why I have this ability, a win win situation. ¡°Well what is it, inherent fire spell abilities¡¯ ¡°No I can understand the Deus-en script like it''s the common language¡± He at first nodded like it was expected then his head paused partway through a nod his eyes bulged and he made noises like he was being strangled. ¡°Yo-yo- you can do WHAT¡± His voice was high pitched ¡°Yeah, um sorry?¡± I replied ¡°No-no not sorry, this is wonderful, however also a secret you must keep if others found out about this well¡­¡± He left the sentence with a hanging end. We finished the conversation with him explaining about spell lines and the various other professions a magus takes up to improve their own power and their power of the monetary kind. The spell lines of a spell are interesting, to use different spells you have to structure them in different ways with the lines, the way you structure them can influence their power increasing them or decreasing them. There were also improved structure for the differing varieties of spell, shooting spelling, materialization and environment influencing spells. Furthermore enchanting was engraving spells that could be turned on with qi, those were rare apparently, I would fix that. The same was done with armour. MAterial alchemy and medicine making was much more different and complicated and could only be done at the master stage, I elected to listen to that piece of advice. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. I went back to my villa, before leaving Charon gave me some solid metal pieces to make some practice enchantments on, after all if I needed cultivator help I needed to pay them. I decide not to immediately try enchanting but instead learn something that I probably should know by now, the power structure of the continent and probably find something about the world itself. I found a few books about the world and my current continent and was floored by the information. The one that immediately jumped out at me was the scale, going by pure land mass this plant would be closer to the size of of jupiter. Furthermore there was 7 continents and much to my delight more than one species. Adreen Our world. A summary of the gods and their accomplishments These gods are of course not the only ones, the rest are known as the secondary gods. These gods are often found in service of the origin gods in their respective pantheons. The Continents Azaran - The fractured continent - called the fractured continent not due to the landscape but rather the political structure that has been prevalent in the continent since its founding. Due to being a continent that was founded on the runways of the birth continents and as a continent originally under the rule of Wilda. The system fundamentally revolves around the 7 high houses, of which participate in a ruling council while there are 20 low houses that encompass the rest of the territory. 6 of the high houses have their territory in the interior of the continent, the seventh high house zepros. House Odin - Made up of member that primarily focus their techniques of fire and light, rumored to have the blessing of a divine beast that has a shape of a white raven, due to their insignia and ultimate techniques sharing the image of a white raven. House Albanus - A house that is confirmed to be a branch of the Lumen holy empire, Has royale techniques of the white holy dragon as well as the Ray Deer, their insignia is the Ray Deer. House Baal - Confirmed descendants of three species namely elves, demons and humans. They posses the techniques of a abyss dragon thus there crest is the same. House Phoebus - The highest eleven power on the continent, Owners of typical elven techniques, those of the forest and nature. Their crest is that of a panther. House Priscus - A house of dwarfs, possessing what is undisputedly best crafting techniques on Azaran their power stems from their craft as well as the earth techniques they practice. Their crest is a plain hammer. House Quintus - A beastman house that stems from the original inhabitants of the continents, although the species in this house is now limited to the lion beast type it is their crest. House Zepros - The house of trade and under the blessing of a dragon of the sea, their techniques are water based. Their crest is one of a Flood Dragon. The lower houses in reality hold power only over their own lands yet are still under the thumb of the 7 high houses. Note: the author of this book does not have the current knowledge of the political structure of the following continents. Eboran - The home of the elves, all elemental varieties. Known to be a traditionally rigid people. Although created as one of the freer species there are the one with the highest amount of followers of the gods. Lumen - The original home of mankind, Heavy follower of the goddess lumini. The continent is under the rule of four kingdoms. All the kingdoms are under the authority of the church of lumini. Know to be at constant war with their neighboring continent dredmoin. Dredmoin - The demon homeland, all types of nightmarish species spawn from the constantly evolving demons, finding a demon compendium that can tell you of all the demonic species would be almost impossible unless made by the god Dreddmor himself. Last known to have a high council of demons as a ruling power, not much else is known. Ellwein - One of the last continents under the control of Wilda. A continent of adventure, as one of the largest continents to ever be discovered it houses the majority of all beast life. The continent itself has never been fully explored. Each continent has a small coastal town on this continent. This continent is where adventurers go to gain fame, power and prestige. Mosan - Home of the Giants gnomes and dwarfs, The smallest continent is home to the most united single kingdom in history. The giants, gnomes and dwarfs all encompass one kingdom in harmony. Vocan - A land of perpetual fire, near to nothing is known about this continent apart from the fact that nothing has survived more than 10 kilometres into the continent due to its extreme heat. Closing the book I thought about the potential excitement that could be had, discovering new things about a world full of undiscovered marvels and wonders. I grinned but first I thought I had I had to grow in power first. It also seemed that this world was relatively new, noting the lack of any mentionings of any ruins of previous civilizations I would say that this was what can be considered to be the first age of this world, r perhaps there were older civilizations that were located on undiscovered continents, considering the potential size of the planet. I decide to play with my new knowledge of lines and enchantments. A tid bit I learned about enchantments is that it is the form of experimentation magi use when trying new spells as they can decide to cut off the power if it needs more than the magi can provide. I decide to try to recreate my fire crow spell, one that was optimised and could be activated with qi. Of course to test it I would need someone who could use qi but I already had an idea who to ask for help from. I grabbed a metal piece a began to experiment. I spent hours trying and failing, I knew I failed due to the happy coincidence that if I failed a spell the engraved design on the metal would instantly deform. However one thing about enchanting was that it was exhausting. I spent the most of three hours initially planning on paper and perhaps and another three hours total engraving the formations. Like this I spent days trying and failing, turns out it was a wonderful way to train my spiritual core and my magical stamina was increasing day by day. My main problem with the formation was the activation from qi. I eventually made a successful improvement to to exploding fire crow spell, making it rain fire where it passed and then exploding in sphere after a 10 second flight. I made the successful enchantment on one peice of metal and had to charge the fire mana overtime, another benefit of enchanting is that I can create powerful spells in advance and use less power when sending minimal amounts of spiritual force in the enchantment to activate it. However creating a permanent and reusable enchantment proved to be way out of my league for the time being. The improved formation closely resembled the original, it was a large square with a circle inside, there were lines from the four corners that attached to the inner circle, The deus-en script was located on the outside square on all edges. It read ¡° Let this fire take form of the three legged sun crow, let it fly straight and true for 10 moments and end its journey by becoming the very sun itself for a brief and shining moment¡± Writing it like this made its strength based upon the power that was predetermined by the mana charge. Therefore even if the mana charge is weak, the power will be weaker yet still fly straight for 10 seconds and explode in a fiery mass of death. The maximum power I could put in the enchantment made the crow about a metre tall and three meters wide with its wings extended. My only problem now was making the enchantment cultivator friendly. My eventual solution after a 3 day intense think period of which I only ate bread, kicking myself for not having other foods, was another formation which was difficult to think of. Using the knowledge that only a small amount of spiritual force was needed I created two other formations to complete the enchantment. One was a sort of vault type, it held a sliver of spiritual force that could be unlocked and sent to the fire crow spell by the other formation I made. The storage formation was a small circle on the top of the piece of metal that had two lines coming from it. Its inscription read ¡°Hold this sliver of will until the breath of strength comes, then use the power to unleash the crown of fire¡± Interestingly enough I found out that when it comes to activation spells and storage spells you had to specify the activation energy and where the energy to release would go to. If no command was given the spell would do nothing. The qi activation signal was comparatively easier. It was a triangle that held a solid circle in the middle. The sphere connected to the three points of the triangle and on line extended to the storage spell. It¡¯s inscription read ¡° Take the breath of strength given by will, and make it a key to unlock the great will¡± I had to specify that the qi had to given by will or the enchantment would gather qi by itself, this gave me idea¡¯s for a potentially highly lucrative enchantment however I put that to the back of my mind for now. With the finally finished enhancement for qi users I now only had to test it. I planned to find the same white haired girl from before and get her help in exchange for a few fire crow enchantment of her own. Two hours of relaxation passed before either fate or coincidence played its hand as Flynn came to notify me that the same girl from a few days ago was in front of the main door arguing with a unknown person. It seemed my chance to test out my enchantment came sooner than I thought. Chapter 10 - Starting a business of exclusive clientele Chapter 10 - Starting a business of exclusive clientele I heard the arguing Flynn mentioned as I headed to the door, they were quite loud. I definitely recognized the white haired girl''s voice but the other one was a mystery, it sounded male. I paused to listen to their conversation before opening the door. ¡°Adrius, shut up and trust me we can see the magus¡± ¡°Courtney what the hell no, you can''t just show up to their places, I I I know someone who did that once and lost and arm¡± ¡°Oh shut up, it''s probably because he didn''t knock¡± After which she proceeded to knock. ¡°No no what are you do-¡± at the moment I opened the door. ¡°Hello¡± I intentionally go for a confused tone ¡°Hi cato, remember me¡± She gave a smile, and dear god how are teeth that white. ¡°I''m so sorry my lord magus to be disturbing you, I was just trying to stop her¡± The male voice chimed in. The male in question looked to be the same age and both Courtney and I. He had a mix of color in his hair it was red, golden and black, his eyes shared the same golden color as Courtney but with hints of red. He was also a fairly intimidating person with the numerous muscles that could be seen, however the shaking and timid vibe he had going on at the moment off set that vibe by a large margin. I was fairly certain that Magi were not considered terrifying here, I''m going to assume for now that he is probably from somewhere where magi are feared. ¡°Its fine, ive met her already, I was actually was going to try and find her soon anyways¡± I said with a bright smile trying to calm him down. ¡°Oh thats gr-¡± he let out a breath of relief a few seconds before the now overly suspicious courtney interjected. ¡°Find me? What for?¡± Her eyes were narrowed dangerously. ¡°Oh nothing big I just need someone to test a enchantment and in exc-¡± I managed to finish the first part before she was already nodding in acceptance, overly enthusiastic mind you. After nodding she immediately ran past my side and into my villa, and promptly ran face first into Lester''s shell. Lester had become interested in the event going on and became interested and had come to the door. Unfortunately this resulted in Courtney gaining a rather unseemly bump on her forehead, however contrary to my expectations she was only impatient to see the enchantment that I had made. After the male came in whose name I now know is Adrius, he also appeared to be interested as well. Sighing I took two tablets and brought them back outside to test them. Sighing while remembering how hard it was to create them I thought about how I had them, Charon had given me an enchanting chisel, which was a metal chisel made of a material that could channel spiritual energy. I handed one enchanted metal piece to each of them. Courtney was the first to try, she nearly shot it towards her own face however adrius stopped her and redirected her shot. She channeled he qi into and all the runes and lines lit up. With a piercing crow call the fire bird soared for exactly ten seconds whilst raining fire that burnt the ground below and after its journey exploded in a huge ball of flame. I took this time to analyse the spell itself and see how the incantation had changed due to being activated by qi. Adrius decided to try one too and apparently liked what he saw as he asked if he could buy some, Courtney was hot on his tail asking for some to. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. With their offers I decided to plan ahead, knowing I most likely needed allies and someone from one of the most powerful places in the continent is a good place to start, I also learned adrius was from the Baal family, well two is usually better than one. I decide to trade a few for some gold and future services to be provided in future spell experiments. Both agreed on the terms that there wouldn''t be intentional injury, they were fine with accidental if it was...paid back. After making some tea and talking about, well it was courtney who talked she wanted to know if I could make enchanted clothes. It was a good idea and I said I would think about it, working with enchantments I learned that for permanent or long lasting enchantments I would need stronger materials. Eventually Courtney realized she was missing a training session with a drill sergeant like instructure and all but turned into a blur running away to try and not be any later than she already was. Adrius Stayed due to me wanting to try and condense the physicality core. We went to the last free spare room and where I now planned to create my spell lab where I would test my theories and ideas. Sitting across from each other I spread my spiritual sense and had him locked into my sights. Adrisu was an interesting individual he emanated a few different sources of mana. By this point I hypothesized mana was a byproduct of qi, however further thought and study would be needed to fully understand it. Adrius had 3 different types of mana emanating from him, namely fire, shadow and what I assumed to be gold. Noticing two types of mana I did not have I was eager to form the cores of the respective elements. Noticing a distinct lack of this physicality mana I deducted some mana was harder to sense than others. Like how when I was in the forest back home I could feel earth and water mana and some third type that I could not fully grasp. Deciding to try and form the cores out of the two elements first then try to find the physicality element afterwards I proceeded. The reason I did not previously gain the shadow core from Flynn was due to the fact Flynn was technically a part of me and yet not, I could make something new from myself after all. I had also not formed a shadow core out literal shadows due to the severe lack of mana regular shade created. I seemed that for some elements one had to find special sources that produced them. Anyways back to condensing the core. Understanding shadow was naturally mystical as in my previous world shadow was merely the lack of light, however here it seemed to be so much more. It was a realm unto its own, almost a mirror of reality itself, letting one move through and also move through reality, to hide in it and become shadow yourself. It formed with these thoughts, in my mind it was a very nice core, little to no attack potential but had potential for versatile movement and reconnaissance. The gold mana was weird, I expected it to be just a representation of metal but it also had something more to it. It was a metal but it was also the representation of enhancement, if you applied it to something, another action or spell that spell in turn would become stronger. It was an element of support, one that could strengthen what it came in contact with. Even though in my old world gold was a very malleable material in this one it turned out to be nearly the opposite. Forming the core it shined was a nice and golden luster, I later plan to add some of this mana to the fire crow spell, as the sun was a golden fire, it would be interesting to see the results. Planning to use this mana with the old incantations and a new one that specifically added gold mana to the spell. Pleased with my two new cores and already making plans to play with them later I once again delved into Adrius body with my spiritual sense to discover what else I could find. After half an hour of me literally sitting still, figuratively, and waiting for any sense of anything I finally grasped onto two different sources. I immediately latche onto the one that I now saw permeated his entire body which I assumed to be physicality. It was deceptively simple regarding its concept, it was the strength of the different parts of a physical vessel. His speed and strength all factored into a whole and the whole split into his aspects of speed and strength. Forming the core I succeeded. Moving on to the second source I became excited, by the looks of where it was located, which was the head, I assumed it to be mental energy or mental mana. This could be fun to use, however I didn''t know how it would be limited or where it would excel at. The concept of the mental mana was essentially that of emotions and rudimentary thought, at the current moment I didn''t dare try and delve further because as I tried I received a burning pain in my temple for my efforts. So I form the core on the concept of emotions and rudimentary thought patterns, extensive testing would be needed to discover this mana¡¯s limits. Exiting from the mana sensing state I told Adrius I was finished and when I had the time I would make him some fire crow enchantments, possibly with the gold added in. He left and I was again left to my own devices, while I was tempted to make a few new spells I didn''t due to the fact that it took a surprisingly long amount of time to create them and I was running out of bread, I needed to go shopping. I called Flynn and went to the tower of techniques to to find Charon and find where food was sold. I arrived and he told me to just go to the big dining hall and request a delivery and they would handle it from there. After two hours I finally returned, due to the fact I was chased by some crazy dude who came out of nowhere demanding I make him a weapon. Thank the gods Flynn was there, the large cat was a great deterrent and escape tool. Due to the long escape my food had already arrived when I got back to the villa along with a note from the rest of the magus. Apparently they wanted me to start doing odd jobs around the campus, mostly repair work and or improvements. At this point they were all aware of my talent of understanding the deus-en script and had classified it as a top level secret. Sighing because I saw long amounts of work in front of me and also slightly excited about how I would need to create a few new spells for odd jobs in the coming days I went into a deep and peaceful sleep. Chapter 11 - Nature and endless repairwork Chapter 11 - nature and endless repair work The next day Charon had sent a student to guide me to the forest the form a nature core. Lester decided to accompany me for reasons unknown to me. He had grown in size again or perhaps more accurately he could shift his size, going from the size of a pickup truck to the size of a bit over half of a semi truck. This proved to be a delight to the student guiding me, due to the fact he got to ride and direct Lester. The student in question appeared to be from a low house or at least one of the branches and was delightfully dumb, well gave off a feeling of dumbness. He was huge, obviously from a higher aged class. He was around 7 feet in height and their was barely an ounce of body fat on the man while muscles rippled around the entire scope of his body, I even suspected he had muscles on his forehead. He had short cropped blue hair. It took about 10 minutes to arrive on leste. The Forest itself was gargantuan, most likely due to the fact it stored all of the resident training beasts. Before lester could shrink down and much to my chagrin the student guide grabebd me and jumped down, it wasn''t uncomfortable but it hurt my ego. I glared at him before I sat down to find some nature mana. With my mana sense outwards I began. I began to sift through all the nature and water mana and try an locate some nature mana. I decided to try with looking in trees first. As I look it immediately appears before my sight, surprising me at the supposed ease of this. Delving deeper into this mana I realize this mana core would let control the tree¡¯s with my spells. However in my mind that wasn''t what nature mana should be, in my mind it was world altering terraforming and had domain over plants and life itself after all the goddess of nature wasn''t just nature there was also life. The mana seemed to react to my thoughts and for a brief moment I saw the true nature mana exactly as I envisioned it, and as a reaction the tree I was looking at came alive and began to attack me. Before the student who was watching could do anything I had already been solidly back handed by a bracing with the thickness of my goddamn torso. I went flying till my flight was cut short by heavily hitting another tree. Fortunately for me the tree that hit me had no chance to do so again as the might of the student was unleashed as he ripped the metre round tree from the ground split it in half with his forehead and threw the now two pieces in opposite directions. The situation however wasn''t over. Due to the fact I had been hit pretty hard my lungs or at least something inside of me was filling with blood, this was evident due to the intense pain and the blood coming out of my mouth. Realizing the dire situation, especially with the panicked guide at my side mostly due to the fact healers were rare and while there were a few in the school getting there in time would be next to impossible. Making a plan in my mind I told my guide to focus and be extra vigilant for angry trees. I then immediately dived back into my mana sense. My only hope lied in the fact that the true nature mana I found influenced plants and life, life being the key word. Hoping to be able to create a healing spell before I died I forcibly forced open the veil of the hidden nature mana and began to comprehend. While I was doing this numerous plants came to life and my guide friend was having a hell of time trying to protect me while simultaneously trying not to die. I let all the the aspects of nature flow into me, the life that it held and nature''s cruelty of the strong devouring the weak which was apparently also a factor in plant life as well. A bright green resplendent core formed and immediately afterwards I felt something shift its attention towards me, something big. However due to something, most likely my low power level it¡¯s sight somehow skipped over me. Of course this was only something I sensed due to the fact that I caused this event. I planned to find out later what the hell had just happened but at the current moment I needed to focus on not dying. Exiting mana sense I immediately create the fount spell formation spell lines and speak ¡°I command the power of nature and life, heal my wounds and rescue me from the clutches of death¡± with a huge drain on my spiritual sea I again feel faint but now it is not due to injury. With my sensing over the plants stopped attacking, my guide immediately fell to the ground panting and I questioned about where Lester was and why he didn''t help. We found him sleeping barely a minute away. I got ym guide to throw him in the air, I was pissed he didn''t help. For something that can control the earth like it''s putty it would have been real helpful against plants...that live in the ground. When landing it was really surprising how graceful a tortoise could land, then again he let out a shockwave of the earth probably to offshoot the down force. I landed on my ass and from that and Lester felt even. After these events I went to see Charon and ask what kind of spells I should make that would work best, when I asked he somewhat staged and muttered what I could have sworn was ¡°fucking cheater¡±. I elected to ignore his last comment and after a moment of thought he became interested in having a hand in making new spells. I asked how new spells are typically made and he told me that it was usually trial and error with the script but there''s was very in depth research about spell lines and how to make drawing them faster. Which noted at the moment was slow as at the current way of doing so was creating what could be called a spell pen and drawing the lines in the air and for more complex patterns this took a long time and had a larger margin of error due to the complexity. Back on track we began discussing the usual damage one could see throughout the academy. There were a few constant damages one could find littered around the academy. Structural which was easily solved with earth magic, woods damage which which was solved with nature and earth magic, people damage which again with nature magic a quick fix. Interestingly enough the healing magic that was practiced by the magi here was a mixture of gold and light and or holy mana. There was the rare case of something called elemental impact, it was when some qi user used a weird technique or just fucked up massively somehow and created a natural self sustaining phenomenon that tends to end badly. This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. We decide to start with the structural damage repair spell that according to Charon happens way more than it should and something to do with stupid egos and stupid people. Any ways we decided that the spell formation should be like my improved crow spell, a square with a circle inside. It apparently had better channeling abilities that would help in this case. The script was ¡°Let that once built by man now fallen be restored to it¡¯s former glory¡±. To test it Charon used some sort of exploding spell on the wall and told me to test it. It apparently had a dependent spiritual force cost, as we found out after charon made multiple size holes in the wall. Interestingly enough the spell created a new section of the wall instead of restoring it. Charon however didn''t mind as the other repair spell they had for this insanely complex with a nastily high mana cost. I was worried about the degree but Charon said the groundskeeping force would take care of it. We went back to the forest to make and test the earth/ nature magic repair spell. Luckily for us there were two people walking out of the forest and from the general direction they came from was a alarming amount of smoke. Charon just smiled and went towards the smoke. On the way we decided that for this spell that had to combine elements we should have a square for the script and a circle with a triangle inside for the release of two of the elements, while itt could be done without the two different shapes one could adjust the ratio easier with two different shapes. We debated on the script and what it should say, I got to say much to Charon''s delight, and eventually decided on ¡° Let the earth that has split restore and the plants that once thrived and the trees that stood regrow¡±. They got the opportunity to test the spell as they reached what could only be called a crater, the smoke in it was weird as well and Charon said he would take care of that part. We used the spell or well I tried to, the spell emptied my spiritual reserves and only recovered a few metres of soil and one weed. Charon being the kind person he is elected to try the new spell and within a 30 second period the space that was once a smoking crater looked like it was a regular part of the forest. Seeing this I looked forward to the days when I had that much power to spare. Finally we went to the Infirmary, of which there was always an abundance of injured muscle heads. We decided to use the same line formation as well did for the forestry repair spell due to how the needed to combine two elements. Since Charon used the gold and light mana while I would use nature and gold, due to this we made the script more ambiguous so as one could use whatever healing elements one had. ¡° Let this energy combine and set forth on a path of healing, restore this being to health¡± While I realized I could probably make a better spell that was designed and optimised for my current elements I decided to keep it as it was for now so that Charon and the other magi had a spell to use that may be better than their current one. With this healing spell the effects turned out to be essentially a regeneration spell, With the gold and nature attribute it increased the body''s natural healing rate without using the injured person''s energy. Apparently the old spell had made new flesh and various other body parts with the gold and holy energies which took a whole lot more power than one might think. With the final damage that usually appeared not showing its face at the moment, namely the permanent landscape effects we called it a day. Weeks later I had wanted to start studying more into spell lines and researching the effects some word had on spells but apparently other students now thought that since another magus could now repair things they had more leeway to blow stuff up. And so began the endless repair work of the school, forest and people. After everyday I was exhausted mentally and physically due to the spell work and walking. I didn''t have Lester or Flynn with me as they wanted to cultivate in meditation, in other words they slept a lot, making a mental note to figure out what role familiars actually played in a magis life after they refused to help. One of the biggest issues apart from the students where the few students that I knew, namely Courtney and Adrius. They seemed to know think due to the fact I had welcomed them in once they were welcome at all times. On more than one occasion I had walked in from a long day of repairing shit and there they were, eating my food, reading my books and courtney had somehow bribed Flynn into being a makeshift pillow. Gradually I got used to it for no other reason apart than the fact I realized I needed friends and they fit the bill. Besides I needed test subjects for my various experiments to see how well they affected certain things, or I will need subjects when I actually had some semblance of free time. However due to an incident that happened while I was experimenting when I was actually free I had found what I thought could be a solution. I was experimenting with mental magic spells and testing them on adrius. I made three in total one I knew could be considered cruel and unusual punishment while the other two could be considered utility spells. The first spell was one that if properly applied made someone very suggestible. This spell was different that all of my other spell, it was formed with two circles however when used one circle would be above the targets head while the other was under their feet. ¡°Let the one inside the circles of the mind comply with the task the caster whatever it may be¡±. The spell essentially put someone into a dazed state in which one could input a command into their subconscious mind, of course if they resisted it wouldn''t work but to resist they had to have a higher power level than the spell. The second spell acted similarly however its effect was for the target to not notice me, like I was invisible. It had the same form as a spout spell as it was short term effect spell, I had tried using the spell line formation from the influence spell but when I tried the spell just collapsed, maybe it was due to the changes I was trying to input into the mind. Using the spout formation and the script ¡°The caster to your eyes is naught but a specter¡± the spell was complete. The final spell is something that I believe I can safely call a curse spell. It was as spells go weird. It was shaped with two circles directly over one another with the script in between the lines. What made the spell weird was that it functioned like an enchantment. You created the spell but until it was used it continued to draw power. To use it all I had to do was take the spell in my hand and throw it at a target, after that wherever it would hit it would stick and the script came into effect ¡°Let the one who has been stuck with this circlet be beholden to the pain of the flames of hell, the pain of their flesh being flayed from their body¡± Wherever it it hit it would affect the entirety of that certain segment of the body. It was a curse through and through and currently my most effective spell. All my other spells either needed time to be drawn or took to much mental strain to be used effectively. So from then on I made sure that I had at minimum 5 circlets of pains charging and ready to use. It also put good strain on my core with some constant depletion. The only other news happened after about a month of straight work, I felt my core cracking. The time to step into the next level had come. Chapter 12 - Years and Events Chapter 12 - Years and events When I felt my core crack I at first felt scared then remembered to reach the next level I have to shatter then reform my core. I calmly excused myself from the current situation which was again more repair work, a student tried to stop me from leaving assuring me of infinite benefits if I agreed, sparing him no thought I removed him from my path by giving him a new crown, one of pain. After that the students gave me a wide girth while watching another student screaming in pain and slamming him head against the ground and wall hard enough to cause cracks in both. With this being the first public use of that spell I was feeling quite giddy causing a maniac grin to surface on my face this cleared my path even more. I quickly returned to my villa and into my experiment room. I sat down in a meditative pose and focused on my core. From the information I had gathered one had to make their core shatter be it by smashing it, making it explode and simply willing it to deform. I chose to make it explode and then mimic the actions of sun expanding then contracting. With my plan in my head I proceeded. Like a supernova my core exploded and I felt energy in droves. I felt all the pure mana that was around me, the wind mana from the air and the spare mana from some of the fire crow enchantments that were lying around. I started to subconsciously absorbed the mana from the environment around me while consciously I was focused on the reformation of my core. Looking at my now shattered core was an interesting sight. There were floating crystals and a gaseous nebula of spiritually force of which was increasing in size by the second due to my subconscious absorption. Eventually my spiritual force stopped growing and with tremendous effort I compressed my core, which was still the same size yet it had double the capacity in comparison to before. After that event the amount I could do daily increased more repairs and more dealing with people. However even with my increased power I still did not have enough time to study and make more spells, I had tried to skirt my duties and just ignored repair work one day and from that free food privileges were revoked and since I couldn''t make long lasting or particularly powerful enchantments I had no money so I quickly went back to the monotony. Having a few conversations with Charon about my lack of experimentation and development he gives me a surprising rebuttal. He says that I am at my current level ineffective at researching and development due to my lack of base power due to this time spent doing anything magical research and enchantment wise is utterly wasteful as it does not produce useful goods. I tried to argue they were plenty powerful, the enchantments. He then took a junior student and made him stand in the epicentre of the explosion, his shirt was burnt off but that was it. After seeing my power truly laid bare to me Charon explained something to me that I should have by now figured out, before the apprentice stage learning the basics and constantly doing small tasks is what you should be doing. Although I had made some spells they were relatively low level and low effect well for me at the least, comparing me using the same spell as Charon see the difference is obvious. After realizing this I relented to the fact I wouldn''t be able to throw myself into spell making or anything of the like, magi training it is then. Making it to the apprentice level shouldn''t take too long, the time between the stages are relatively the same so each stage should be around 2 and half months. So to progress through the next eight stages should take around 1 year and a half, in the grand scheme of things not to long. So time passed a full year and six months of monotonous training and I broke through the stages. Increasing my spiritual base force by repeatedly exhausting myself and reading books. Two books stood out to me during this time Spells and their lines and A familiaris purpose. A familiars purpose explained what uses a mage could gather from their familiar. Of course their was a innate spell/ ability that was sued by using the familiars qi. However there were further stages of uses. One the immediate uses is the defense factor, due to a magus long casting time he or she would usually need protectors to guard them ergo the familiar. At later stages a magus could actually enchant the familiars themselves therefore increasing the familiars power. Apparently in both later stages for the familiars and the magus it is possible to merge the bodys of the familiar and the magus giving a temporary boost in power. All this information was interesting but most of the applications were far into the future. The other book Spells and their lines was a much more interesting read.Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. -Straight lines, the connection lines. When the script is written the lines guide the power or the effect to the next stage of the spell. These lines can be drawn in any fashion as long as it doesn''t cross of over its own line or other parts of the spell. Circle, squares and triangles. These are the lines upon which a spell is written and released however not one and the same. For example if one were to write a spell upon a circle then they must connect lines to another shape to release the spell. While it is possible to release two elemental effect through the same shape it is better and more effective to make two shapes in the same general area and connect them through the same lines, the spell will intuitively separate the elemental effects into respective shapes for release. All shapes can store energy, be it qi,mana or spiritual force. Dotted connections. These are an advanced method of connecting specific effects of spells to another without physically connecting. Drawn like a straight line with one end attached to a spell script and the other end ending in a dotted line. To connect two of these together requires experienced usage of one''s spiritual force. Imbuing the two sections of dotted lines with resonating spiritual mana connects the two. There is no limit between sending and receiving signals therefore leading to an impressive amount of effects that can be achieved. Solid dot. This is known as the input line. Generally used on enchantments for qi users to inject their qi and rarely on advanced types of spells. Script patterns on lines. Stationary vs mobile. An advanced method of using spells making them stationary or mobile, single cast or continuous. Stationary magic is a spell that is unleashed with a set of predetermined commands, this is a basic spell in most situations. Mobile spells are spells in which the spell script moves along its line in a constant manner, this leads to, if the spell has such capabilities, to receive additional commands or control the spell beyond pointing and shooting. I had also experienced one full kidnappings and 5 more attempted ones, each one by a low house hoping to grow in power by having a magus under their thumb. I was saved the first time by Courtney surprisingly. To be honest it was coincidence we passed by her in a carriage that had my scream emanating from it, and yes I screamed like a little bitch. After the first attempt at kidnapping Flynn realized the attitude he had before, of which he was never near me, would not do and now it was hard for me to get 10 metres away at any point I even got a new bed to accommodate his size. Lester hadn''t changed much, he had gotten fatter but that was it, I looked forward to bring more use from him in the future, much more use then he would like. During this time I also started to have parties at my villa, purely for a release from the monotony and due to both Courtneys and Adrius encouragement. A few got out of control like most parties do, especially in this case as all the party goers were super huaman. Lester and Flynn had to end most of the parties with brute force, but even that didn''t damage the reputation I got from the party nor the fun of which most enjoyed. Now a short year and a half later I continue doing work with the 9th level of the elementary stage achieved. I can now nearly achieve the same effects with the forestry repair spell as Chron did when we first created it, albeit I would be extensively exhausted afterwards unlike he who treated it like a passing breeze. Thinking upon that I still did not know the further stages of the magus nor the stages others were at. Bringing myself back to reality one of which was again filled with repair work I was at an impasse. Courtney was the cause of this particular incident and had a very adament opinion on whether or not I should heal her victim. The victim in question was from a lower house who had the bright idea of trying to acost the silver headed child, however she ripped his hand off resulting in the current situation. I could heal his hand, only if the hand was in one peice, growing limbs from scratch is a bit out my range for now. Sighing as I now had to resort to bribery to get the hand of the poor sobbing dude who was caressing his stump on the end of his arm. ¡°Courtney,¡± I give a sharp expulsion of air¡± can I please have the hand, Flynn will play with you tonight¡± I give her my car saleman grin. Her eyes narrow suspiciously. ¡°More¡± My lips twisted into a grimace she wasn''t gonna make this easy. This time I whisper to her. ¡°A free enchantment when I can make good quality ones, hows that¡± ¡°Pleasure doing buisness with you¡± She hands me the...hand and skips away,the little blackmailer. I promptly heal the victim and he goes on his way muttering something about revenge and surpassing the highest peak, dumbass. Adrius comes up from behind me and drops his hand on my shoulder and whispers that he would like to talk soon about some sort of plan, I nod and tell him we can talk in a few days as I have a fairly busy schedule ahead. I could feel something different coming, different compared to my previous breakthroughs at least. I could feel my soul throbbing and at the same time my core was throbbing, both in sync with each other. This was the prime reason I delayed the talk Adrius wanted. I wander back to my house and the throbbing grows in power and frequency, whatever was happening was happening fast apparently. The throbbing had started a few days ago yet it was now increasing like there was no tomorrow. I returned to my villa in anticipation, this could be the next breakthrough, the breakthrough to the apprentice stage. I prepped myself in my spare room and closed my eyes to begin. Chapter 13 - The Apprentice Regalia Chapter 13 - The Apprentice Regalia The change in my core was different then my breakthroughs before now, the core expanded and stretched but showed no signs of cracking. Instead it seemed the core was changing shape. Again the core subconsciously devoured all forms of natural mana and used it to fuel the change, this looked to be a qualitative change in the core. In hindsight I should have probably researched this progress seeing as it was a huge leap in power. I concentrate on the changes the core is exhibiting as I said before it seemed to be changing form into, well at this point I couldn''t tell. I felt the core merging closer to my soul, forming a connection between me and it and at this point I did something probably stupid in hindsight, I moved my spiritual sea from where it was previously located, in my gut, to my head. Bad idea from a pain perspective as immediately I started to scream like a banshee possible good idea from what I may gain¡­ I will come back to that as I have no idea if there is any benefit. My core started to change shape faster and then split in two. The now two cores morphed into entirely different forms. One formed what looked to be a huge circlet looking crown, if in the real world it would probably have a radius of half a foot, it was completely silver and had so many characters of the deus-en script on it that it gave one a headache from looking at it. The other core changed into an honest to god wizard staff, it looked to be made of ebony and somewhat blue metal. It was a simple metre and a half metal staff with a small metal circle at one end of the staff. The two new cores orbited each other and all the elemental cores in turn orbited the spiritual cores, or the now spiritual objects. I started playing around with the new cores and found out a few very interesting things. One my base power and stamina has increased tremendously, somewhere along the lines of multiplied by 40. Strange thing about my cores, I could only channel magic through the staff and could only form the spells by using the crown. It also seemed that all spells that I had complete were somehow stored in the crown, sort of a spell memory. I loosely named the crown ¡°the crown of magic¡±. The staff acted as sort of a highly sensitive magic controler. Using multiple element at the same time and in specific amounts and ratios was now a breeze. Essentially one functioned as a spell archive and formed templates for the spell in my mind, and a staff that gave better control over magic itself. Smiling from my recent discoveries and power ups I decided to embark on a project that would give me more spare time. The idea was to make a golem of some sort to do my job, unfortunately the idea fell flat on its face when I inscribed a continuous spell on the rudimentary golem I made with earth magic crumbled into pieces. I then realised something, I probably needed some sort of fantasy magic retaining material to make most of my ideas work. I sighed in slight defeat then went to find Charon to relay I had broken through to the apprentice stage and to find out more about said stage and future stages. ¡°You broke through to the apprentice stage, good for you boy¡± I had found charon pondering over a martial arts book, reasons unknown. ¡°Thanks, I was wondering what you could tell me about the stages, this one and others¡± We had largely began talking like equals, not like a preteen and 50 year old usually would. ¡°I take it you have formed your regalia then? The new form of your core¡± ¡°Yes, two of them¡± ¡°Not unheard of but also very rare good for you boy, at this level they don''t have much of a function only when you reach the high magnus stages, speaking of the next few stages is master and magus. You will find out more later. The difference between a master and an apprentice are their regalia spells.¡± ¡°Regalia spell¡± I asked the implied question.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. ¡°Spells that you engrave upon your regalia, to use them immediately with no cast time nor spoken word, instant spells if you will¡± I like the sound of that. ¡°Be careful, once you engrave a spell it is there forever, do not waste the space upon your regalias, put thought into it¡± I nodded and accepted the information. It made sense, to put quality spells on the regalia, however wasn''t my crown already covered in script? I would need to to do some researching and experimentation. ¡°Before I go Charon, materials for enchanting am I right in assuming that they need to be special?¡± ¡°Yes, however you must find a way to get them yourself, yet another reason why our services are so demanded is that to harvest certain materials you need to be a magus¡± Nodding I gave my thanks for the information and left. I was planning on immediately dive into research but on my way back to my residence it was akin to a path of destruction, left and right things were destroyed and people were broken so I begrudgingly started on my task whilst simultaneously walking home. The ordeal didn''t tire me like it usually would so my mood did not become grumpy and or sadistic. By the time I had reached my house I had done more repair work in a single hour than I would usually do in a week and I still did not feel tired the spells were even on a grander scale, I was very pleased with my new reserves. In other news the reason for destruction was a martial skill practiced by a female cultivator called ¡°aphrodisiac lure¡± needless to say the day was eventful afterwards. When I finally reached my house I found Adruis passed out in an armchair with a loaf of bread in his mouth. I decided to enlist Flynns help in waking him up, a huge scratching cat tongue in the face later Adrius was awake and trying to wipe of cat saliva. He gave me a reproachful glare and then I reminded him he was eating my bread, he failed to see any correlation. Turns out he was here to talk about a trip he was taking, well more of mission, and he needed my assistance. He told me they were going to clear out a horde of beasts that had gathered over a twilight metal deposit, twilight metal apparently being a useful material for enchanting, this made me intrigued. The real selling point was the length of which was about half a year back and forth and my duties of fixer man being suspended. In other words on this trip I could make, test and practice spells however I wanted. So I jumped at the opportunity. We were scheduled to leave a week later, courtney was apparently coming along with two other students and Adrius himself was bringing a friend of his. With a few parting remarks and me making him give me some money for the bread he took our conversation ended. I decided to consolidate my new power base by practicing my spells and what better and unfortunate way than to repair everything in sight. I used repair spells for hours upon hours which in difference to before in which I could use one or two spells then take a break, a marked improvement. Going over my repertoire of spells I realized something, I didn''t have basic low cost attack and defence spells. I had no mana shield nor earth wall neither fire bolt nor rock bullet. This needed to be remedied. While he did have the fire crow spell it seems it was a spell that no matter what took huge amounts of power, possibly due to its nature and form? I planned to make at least basic attack and one basic shield spell before it came time to leave. Starting with the attack spell I decided on a fire spell. I made it as basic as possible but also variable. It had three circles of formation with the script reading on the outer line, each circle was connected by a single line. The script read ¡°The power of fire may it charge in circle second waiting for release, when given its freedom let the fire fly forth bringing the power of fire and the impact of wind¡± It had taken me awhile to input the wind part, before I added it was just a fireball that flew to the target and then went out. Adding the wind however made it a fire bolt in the way that with impact it created a small explosion. The part about charging in the circle second was a way to control and increase the power output for the spell while keeping it as a point and shoot spell and not an active one. Speaking of active spells that is the spell that I made next. I was originally thinking to make the classic rock wall spell but I felt that going against cultivators or anything else that could smash apart castle walls with ease, wall that i''m pretty sure that are strengthened somehow it would be a good idea. So I decided to make an active defence spell based with nature mana and earth mana. It would focus on diverting the attacks away from me while still being able to consolidate into a single wall like point in case of an urgent need for protection, essentially it was a vine/root wall spell. I know that classically this kind of spell would have some attack properties but the first rounds of tests with that implemented drained me heavily at a constant rate due to its active nature. The spell formation positioned itself behind my back and was made from a single square for the script and it had dotted connections that connected to a single output spell circle that was beneath my feet. The script was a bit complicated due to me wanting a low cost active spell ¡°May the roots of nature beneath my feet be blessed with the power of earth and come to my aid, protecting me from the attacks of my enemies, may they deflect harmful attacks to keep me safe from harm¡± Setting the script spinning caused a constant drain on mana but 5 roots appeared around me and when I moved they retreated under the earth but I could still feel them and in case of attack they would appear. I deactivated the spell and I had finished just in time to pack clothes and such a day before we were set to head out. I had decided to take Flynn with me, lester had elected to stay behind as the home protector in other words he was lazy. He also made some excuse about an upcoming breakthrough. The next day came and with my preparations finished I went to meet my compatriots for the journey. Chapter 14 - We Ride Chapter 14 - WE RIDE Adrius and Courtney''s friends were colorful to say the least both figuratively and literally, no one had the same goddamn hair color or at least the same combination. There were three in total, there were two girls and one guy. The guy,whose name was Simon, seemed relaxed, almost a permanent state of relaxation. He had shoulder length green hair that was tied in a messy ponytail. I had some doubt about his combat potential until he said he found a fly annoying and a fly was impaled by a needle 10 metres away. The two girls appeared to be exact opposites. One had long blue hair and the other had short orange hair. The one with short orange hair, her name was Jennifer, seemed discipled and carried a broadsword that looked comical when she held it, however I had the feeling not to laugh in front of her...I wasn''t scared. The one with blue hair ,Alissa, was someone I would admit to be scared of, she liked knives to a point of fanaticism. She had two foot long knives as her main weapons but I was sure she had many many others hidden away, I even saw her securely store a knife on Courtney without her noticing. There reactions to me were a nice surprise, it was lackluster. Usually a student tried to butter me up in hopes of receiving my favor and I have to say while it is nice to be respected it gets somewhat old. I had a feeling this trip would be a fun one. Courtney and Adrius both had a carriage each, guys in one and girls in the other I had initially planned to ride on Flynn but when I saw the interior of the suspiciously lackluster carriage I decided to stay in the carriage. Some sort of magic had been worked as the interior was nearly double the size of the exterior. I could see some of the magic formations and made a mental note to study them during the trip, perhaps I could gain another elemental core from my efforts. To top it off there were couches and beds and multitudes of other comforts again another aspect that tipped me in favour of riding in the carriage opposed to Fynns rather uncomfortable back, in the long term at least. The cat in question actually loaded himself into the carriage as well to enjoy the comforts, lazy ass cat. Setting off I got some greater detail about where we were going. We were heading towards one of the large untamed forests that held a huge natural bounty for those who could survive. We were scheduled to pass through a fairly large city and then delve into the forest, the time it would take to get to the forest was half a month and seeing it was a 6 month journey total we had 5 months in the forest. We were going to make a quick stop in the city to buy some supplies and I was fairly interested in what stores in the city sold being the country bumpkin that I am. We had been traveling for a few days and throughout that time I had continuously been trying to decipher the spell formations on the side of the carriages. However it was proving more difficult than I had previously thought. Somehow the spell script was blurred, it seemed to be someone''s spiritual force actively resisting my attempts at understanding the spell formation. Needless to say it was very annoying. On the fourth day something straight out of a fantasy novel we were besieged by bandits, however according to the alarm on my compatriots faces I realized something I hadn''t considered before. Due to their age it turns out they had only done practice battles and had no real experience killing anything, while saying that I realize the same could be said about me excluding crazy plants of course. However with the scary number of bandits outside it seemed to flip some sort of switch in Adrius who was, out of all of us, the most powerful. He decided apparently to go berserker style and flew out of the carriage and began to attack, Simon sighed and followed after him and began fighting with scary efficiency, I began to doubt my previous thought about lack of fighting experience for him specifically. Jennifer and Alissa excited their carriage and began fighting as well, and then I saw Courtney enter the fray and was suitably terrified after finally seeing her fighting style. Her fighting style of which she wantonly swung a metal club the size of Lester around.Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. Breathing in and out I also exit the carriage, I also needed experience in battle. As I exited the carriage I manifested my defence spell loosely termed ¡°entangling roots¡± 5 roots half foot thick roots appeared around me. I also formed 8 fire bolt spells in a horseshoe around the front half of my body, I initially felt like making a circle around me but how could I aim my spells behind me. The roots did their job efficiently, whipping into bandits that charged towards me making them retreat, I found with a large sum of spiritual force I could forcefully take over a root for more fine control meaning I could grab and throw bandits with one root, unfortunately that also meant forgoing the fire bolt spells otherwise there was too much of a drain on me. I elected to keep throwing fire due to the fact it was awesome and fun. The fire bolts when hitting a bandit made a very satisfying impact, often blowing them off their feet and flying back a metre or two. Of course it wasn''t all sunshine and rainbows due to the now apparent bloody cavity in their chests. Of course I wasn''t the only force to be reckoned with on the battlefield. There was Jennifer flying around with her huge sword neatly cutting her enemies to pieces. While it seemed it was her first time in a battle like this, life or death she seemed prepared for it in some strange way. Aliisa on the other hand was straight up sadistic, almost dancing through bodies and laughing all the way, the scariest part was where the blood landed. Any blood that hit her slowly but surely was absorbed into her body and behind her formed a blurry red phantom with an undefined form. Simon had bodies around him on the ground twitching and moaning in pain with needles sticking from certain body parts. The most eye catching performances however were by my long time friends Courtney and Adrius. Starting with Adrius who now looked to be covered in scales, had claws, hair waving in the hair lifted by some force and his eyes turned reptilian. He was ripping enemies apart with brute strength, his house crest of a dragon made more sense now. Courtney had some sort of white aura around her forming the blurry figure of a white raven on her shoulder with red eyes. It had its beak open and every time an enemy fell something flew into its mouth. The battle honestly was anticlimactic. Most likely the fear we held before was the expectation that the bandits would have some power. While they were cultivators capable of dominating mortals they were facing a rare magus and 5 royal blooded special technique holders. After the battle both Aliisa and Courtney had to meditate to consolidate something, it had something to do with their techniques. This blossomed an interest in me to look at some martial techniques in the future, for academic purposes. I myself sat down after the battle and let the adrenaline fade away. I realized I had just killed multiple people but for some reason I didn''t feel affected. It wasn''t as if I was emotionless it was more off a feeling knowing it had to be done therefore why dwell over it. That day passed and again we set off to wards the city before the forest, of which it was called Almor city, and the forest itself was the Almor forest. Two days later we reached the city. Chapter 15 -City days Chapter 15 - City days The city itself was one you would think you would find in a fantasy world. That is to say huge walls and buildings made of strange materials. At the gates which to be honest looked almost comically small in comparison to the rest of the wall we passed through the checkpoint relatively easily due to their identities. Apparently this city was a free city which was not under the direct control of a house but that didn''t mean a high house didn''t hold some sway within. I find out that we are going to be renting a place in the eastern half of the city, close to the forest. When we reach the rented place I discover that it more resembles a mansion than something you would classically rent in a fantasy world. We each received our own rooms however I insisted to have three after all I needed a room for the giant cat, tests and actual sleeping. After a few hours of settling in I decided to roam around the city, Flynn insisted to accompany me I agreed only due to the fact he could now apparently melt into the shadows therefor not calling the attention he and I other wise would. I made my goal for that day to reach a clothing store. Throughout my new life I had been wearing plain clothes and while at the school the quality of the materials went up the plainness stayed the same. So my task for the day was to get some custom clothing with money I had ¡°Borrowed¡± from my group members...they were rich enough they wouldn''t notice. Find a store was hard, i had already walked into 3 houses thinking they were stores and 2 brothels of which took a large amount of willpower to exit from. I eventually reached the central district of the city, the district which happened to have all the stores, which is something I would have appreciated knowing beforehand. After I reached the district I quickly found two stores which would suit my tastes. One was a huge place with frilly noble clothes and the other was simply called outfitters. I of course chose to take my business to outfitters, purely for the reason that in the other store not a single piece of clothing could be seen without lace. When I entered I quickly figured out this was a store for those who wished to explore the forest as it had both normal clothes, light armour and camping supplies. As I was looking around at the selection, which didn''t exactly have my current taste in clothes which were robes. Fortunately a store sales man came up to me. ¡°Hello sir, how may I assist you today?¡± ¡°Hi, uh, do you have custom clothing option I don''t see any clothes that...match my style¡± I gesture down to my robes. The man nods sagely. ¡°Yes,yes, come this way we have a tailor¡± I follow him into a back room which held numerous stripes of fabric and a slightly raised platform. After we enter he bows and tells me the tailor will be here shortly and then exits the room. After about a minute the tailor came in. His appearance wasnt striking he had silver hair and a feeble frame but what gained my attention was his eyes of which were glowing green, a tell tale sign of a magus. Noticing my eyes as well he paused then gave a light chuckle. He looked me up and down before speaking. ¡°You a system mage huh, good to meet ya me name is ben¡± ¡°Uh hi, yes hi my name is Cato...System mage?¡± I was still muddle headed but I caught his little statement about the type of mage I was which was new to me. His eyes widened slightly then he nodded while mumbling something. ¡°Yes yes more than one type of mage young one, shall we talk about that later perhaps or do you not wish for some robes?¡± ¡°Ah yes, I would indeed enjoy some new clothes as well as the opportunity to speak to a fellow magus¡± I nodded taking the subtle cue to discuss that subject later. He began measurements and selecting colours for the robes. ¡°Do you want the higher quality material used?¡± He suddenly questions ¡®Whats the benifit, better protection?¡± I inquire ¡°Depends on how well you can enchant¡± he replies looking up at me. ¡°You have materials I can enchant?¡± I had tried to enchant my clothing before, it ended poorly. The clothing either burned, ate itself like acid was poured on it or grew plants. ¡°Yes of course, what do think that neighboring forest is full of boy¡± he grinned at me, most likely enjoying my naivety. We eventually concluded the measurements and me deciding on taking the higher quality materials. He was kind enough to include strips of cloth for me to experiment with enchantments. I got three outfits. All of them shared the color scheme of blue, black and silver same as my soul colours. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. The first outfit was a three piece outfit. It had black jogger like pants which were very comfortable, a silver and black dress shirt with dark blue buttons and a black overcoat with silver highlights with a hood. This was the outfit I wore out of the building leaving the grey monstrosity behind. The second outfit was low key outfit one for possibly sneaking purposes. It was almost entirely black with some small dark blue highlights. It had many many pockets on it. The third and final outfit was what I would call the battle outfit. It was made of some types of leather. It held the same colour scheme of the first outfit. Black leather pants and silver black chestplate. The overcoat was made of a cloth but had enchantable metal plates attached to it. I also had black,blue silver vambraces which again were enchantable they had gloves that attached to the vambrace. I left only after getting the tailors guarantee that we would meet later to discuss his comment on what type of mage I was, this was the first I had heard about the types of mages. As I walked back from the clothing store I realized something, if I was to be able to make enchanted armaments for anyone I would first need to be able to make the base weapon. I could always commission a blacksmith or a tailor but I felt I could make superior goods if I made the base weapon myself. As I was pondering about my future and things I would have to do I heard Flynn growl very loudly and a high pitched female squeal. Stopping in my tracks I looked behind me to see Flynn over a young woman. On a second glance I saw my money sack in her hand. My eyes narrowed and I walked up to her. Now even though I am still very young Flynn was a good intimidation factor, I saw no thoughts of defiance in her eyes. ¡°I am very sorry my lord please forgive me¡± To her credit she wasn''t crying even with the huge tiger above her. ¡°Hmm, are you a thief¡± I asked a redundant question. ¡°Yes my lord¡± She looked ashamed but somehow I felt she wasn''t. Frowning I reached out to grab my coin purse, she tried make a move but then again huge tiger resisted her efforts. ¡°I don''t mind releasing you, if you give me something in return¡± I say with a sudden thought appearing in my mind. Her eyes narrow in suspicion, rightly so in fact. I suddenly gained the thought of becoming a crime lord, what an easy way to get money. However to discuss the terms of this a more private venue was in order so Flynn picked her up and we returned to the mansion. Flynn dumped her on the ground in my experiment room and I casted entangling roots and tied her feet and hands, she was fully mortal with only slight strength enhancement so my spell could do so without wasting much of my energy. ¡°I have a few questions and then perhaps a proposition¡± I smiled while talking to her. ¡°Sure short shit ask away¡± She had a cocky look on her face and I will admit the short shit comment made my eyebrow twitch. ¡°First your name?¡± I ask. ¡°Claire¡± ¡°Pleasure to meet you Claire, my name is Cato. My second question please enlighten me on the workings of crime in this city, any organized guild or such?¡± She frowned slightly at my question. ¡°No only the big cities have guilds, all we have are a few large gangs and some taverns, why.¡± She answered, I knew it wasn''t a good idea to trust her word but this wasn''t the usual circumstance so i elected to believe her. ¡°Well that throws my further question down the drain, so my proposition. The lack of crime guilds in this city shows opportunity knocking I would like to grasp this opportunity however I need the right connections, do you grasp my meaning¡± Her eyes slightly widen then she chuckles. ¡°As if the city lords would let that happen, anyone who has tried before has been crushed¡± I take her comment in stride. ¡°And why is that, by facing strong cultivators? I can destroy them¡± At this current moment I could not...but in the future. ¡°Besides we would start low key and consolidate our power so worry not¡± I end with a smile. ¡°I..I am not sure¡± She stammered out after a moment of thought. I frowned slightly then I commanded the vines to release her, but I still kept them powered. ¡°You can go for now, come back within 5 days if you change your mind, if not I will find another to help me¡± She nodded and left the mansion, even if she spread a rumor about me wanting to start a crime syndicate who would believe her. I realized that I had developed a strange attachment to the idea of a crime syndicate but I felt it would be fun and beneficial for me as a magus. Sighing I look towards my new outfits, I decide to try and come up with some basic clothing enchantments. I take the thick stack of cloth and start to think of ideas. I immediately think of a basic spell that should be on every piece of clothing. It didn''t take long to make a working spell model. I made a two small spell circles with straight line connections. This was to be primarily a earth magic enchantment with a small amount of wind. The Script read ¡°Let the material of which this spell rest become as hard as stone yet as light as air¡±. I tested it by calling jennifer to help me with testing an enchantment, she was wary as admittedly we barely conversed on the journey to the city, that being said I should probably interact more with the group. We tested the cloth by laying it on the floor and her hitting it as hard as possible with her sword. The cloth held up but because of the test, of which shattered the floor, I realised the second basic spell that I needed to address, a shock absorbing or deflector spell. Thanking jennifer and saying we should talk some more sometime she left. I discovered that this enchantment somehow took power from it surroundings and not me personally, a phenomenon I would look into at a later date. I placed the enchantments on each of my clothing pieces. On the coat I left the enchantment on my left lapel and on the shirt it was right over my heart. The pants I put the enchantment on the right pocket. I thought about the pros and cons of either a shock absorbing spell or a deflecting one. I eventually settled on an absorbing one making it a two step spell in the process. After some testing and finalization this became my most complicated spell yet. It had multiple spell formations and utilised dotted connections. I began by placing numerous shock absorbing formations made from two circles. The script on the inside circle with straight lines connecting to the outer and the outer having 4 dotted line connections. Each enchantment had three types of mana fire, earth and air. Earth as the grounding and absorption factor, air for the cushioning effect as there may be some of the attack the spell coulnt absorb and finally fire to emulate the force factor. The script read ¡°May the energy of the enemy''s attack be taken and stored¡±. I had these spells on various locations on my clothes as to best absorb any attack. The area of effect was about a foot radius from the spell itself. I spread these spells to various places on each set of clothing. I also made sure the connections were only to the second part of the enchantment for each set of clothing. The second part of the enchantment was a pseudo attack spell, a close range one. It was a two part spell, energy storage and release. All of the energy sent into the absorption spell was sent to the storage part of the spell. The storage spell was designed as a semi circle that held all the dotted line connections which connected to a circle through two straight lines. The script on the circle read ¡°Let the energy be stored within to be released upon the caster''s command¡± This way of writing the enchantment led to me being able to control the output level of the spell. The circle connected to the release spell with two straight lines which was made as a circle then split to four lines which in turn led to four small circles, I intended to have this part of the enchantment on the gloves. The script on the circle read ¡°Let the energy that has come forth be released with wanton wrath and fury¡±. That finished the spell of which I tested with Courtney. I asked her to punch me in the chest. The spells worked and as her fist hit my chest there was no power with the impact and I felt the storage spell fill up evenly across both vambraces. I then released the power with a simple tap against the wall of which crack as if courtney hit the wall herself. I would have continued but Adrius walked in saying we had guests, and they wanted to talk to all of us.