Watching Daniel work with the first few exercises I had come up with to help him with his Earth Magic was quite fascinating. He had been able to figure out some Fire and Water Magic on his own, and I kept working with him on those elements, but his instinctive reaction to reach for Earth Magic was what made me push him in this direction. And, from what I could tell, it looked as if the idea was correct, he was getting the point of the exercises fairly quickly and advancing through them at a satisfactory pace. Not as quickly as somebody with similar attributes and an affinity for Earth Magic would have but far quicker than I would have expected for somebody without the affinity.

Curiously, when I decided to have him try and apply the lessons he should have learned from the exercises to other elements, it took him less time than expected, making me think that the lack of affinity helped him in a way. He wasn’t just learning a specific element of magic, he seemed to instinctively draw on some lessons I had only learned thanks to Rune Magic. Maybe that meant he would be incredibly good at Rune Magic, or it might mean he would be an abject failure at it, I would have to test him and see where he went. The question was whether he was subconsciously drawing on the power of the Runes due to his brief submersion in the Astral River or if his affinity to magic was strong enough to allow him to wield it with such ease. If I had to guess, I would think the second possibility was the correct one, but more investigation was needed.

And so, more investigation was performed. Showing him a few Earth Runes and having him feel the effect as I activated them was an obvious test and one that immediately showed us that he didn’t have some insane affinity for Runes, as he couldn’t make heads or tails of the symbols I showed him. He also wasn’t able to understand the Runes’ meaning and even after I explained it to him, he continued to have trouble wrapping his head around it. It seemed that, to him, magic was dictated by direct effects guided by his will, not the more scientific mental processes needed for Rune Magic and enchanting. A shame but maybe that was the trade-off for his impressive affinity to more artistic forms of magic he excelled in.

Those forms were exactly what I decided to focus on, as should be obvious. Sensing the different elements was the first step, followed by simple manipulations and working our way up from there. It would take some time, depending on his talent and, more importantly, the dedication he had to the craft and the amount of time he could invest but I had a feeling he would get there fairly fast. It would be interesting to see just how far he could come over the winter. And, maybe more importantly, how much EXP I would get for the teaching, I had already noticed a faint but constant trickle slowly filling that invisible bar until I’d reach level hundred-one. Which was quite impressive at my level, it made me realise why I hadn’t received a trait or title for being the one to first breach the second divide, somebody else had beaten me to it. Most likely, somebody who was constantly teaching a large number of people, if the EXP I received from teaching Daniel, and some of my former pupils, were any indication. But, while the EXP gained from teaching was excellent, gaining skills that way was a lot harder unless the skill was actively used to teach like my Mind Magic was. So I might not be the highest level on the Arcane Path, or I might be, depending on how many people had breached the second divide before me, but I was fairly confident that I was the one with the highest and most diverse set of magical skills. Which I considered good enough, I would have loved to get the trait for being the first to breach the second divide, but that just didn’t come to pass with our lifestyle of constant travels.

But it wasn’t all teaching Daniel and watching him get better with his magic. Out of curiosity, I decided to occasionally look in on Lia and her progress with Samantha, mainly because I wanted to see if I could manage to pick up some of the lessons and get a better understanding of Alchemy. It was utterly vexing, I was confident that I should be intelligent enough, both in terms of native understanding and attributes from the system, to understand the discipline but every time I had tried so far, I wasn’t getting far. Not beyond a basic understanding and essentially limited to the mundane aspects of the discipline, mixing the right ingredients together in a bizarre approximation of cooking or chemistry.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

But beyond that, where things got actually interesting and the bizarre things I had seen from Alex and Lia started to happen? There, I simply started to get a headache, one that rapidly intensified if I ever tried to compare and contrast the way the alchemical process worked with my understanding of magic. My current hypothesis, at least in that regard, was that Alchemy and my type of magic simply didn’t mix, which was why I had so big problems with it. Still, I wanted to learn and what better way than to listen in on Lia when she was teaching Sam?

As it turned out, any way would probably be better than eavesdropping on them. Or maybe I simply underestimated just how interested in Samantha my dear daughter actually was, because their lessons were… something. If any teacher in any school I had ever heard of had acted towards their students like Lia was acting towards Samantha, the teacher would have been fired post-haste. Though, to be fair, I was fairly confident that if any student had acted towards their teacher as Samantha did with Lia, they would have been expelled just as quickly, or at least have received a stern talking to.

Lia was the aggressor, no question about it, but Samantha eagerly accepted her advances, at least when it was only the two of them. As soon as others were in earshot, or rather, when Samantha noticed that others were in earshot, she turned back to a fairly proper lady, filled with embarrassment at Lia’s eager flirting and acting somewhat skittish. I had a feeling it was all a game between the two of them, so I mostly left them to their games, hoping that they wouldn’t traumatise poor Luna. And poor me, I was not all that enthused about watching Lia suck on Samantha’s neck, drinking deeply from her blood, while Samantha moaned in clear pleasure. Lia was my daughter and there were things I just didn’t want to see.

Luckily, I didn’t have to see them when I didn’t want to. By now, I was quite capable of sticking a scrying construct into the area they were using for their lessons and tune out what the construct was observing when I didn’t want to know. In that case, I’d simply focus on my physical environment or sink my mind into some complicated magical problem, letting the Astral River wash away the information I was getting from the construct. Sure, I would have to glimpse through it to see if they had stopped, but I wasn’t seeing too much, at least most of the time.

It would be interesting to see how the relationship between the two would develop in the future, as it seemed to me that, at least at the moment, it was largely physical. A way for two people to make each other feel good might be a good way to release stress but would it work as a foundation for a long-term relationship, especially given that I was planning to move on come spring? Hopefully, Lia would continue with Luna, Silva and me but what if she didn’t want to come? That question was one I hadn’t been able to answer to my own satisfaction, was I willing to push Lia, try to make her come with me? How far would I be willing to go, and what would the consequences of my actions be?

There was no easy answer, maybe there wasn’t any answer in the first place, so I was happy to see yet another group of people move towards the tower. From what I could see with the Oculus and my scrying constructs, it wasn’t a group out to make trouble for us but it also wasn’t a group out on a hunt. Too big for the second, not well-equipped enough fro the first. Maybe people who wanted to have a better living and recognised that somebody able to create a tower like mine could help them to get better conditions, we would have to see. Either way, more people likely meant more annoyances but it also meant more opportunities and ways to distract myself from the coming troubles. The good with the bad, I’d have to see which was more prevalent.