[A/N: 1st person POV will be in italics.] [A/N no.2: 'italics' means whispering.]

As hours pass, I hear the rattling of the carriage as I think of what I just read in the grimoire.

- Spells are the hands and legs of magi. They'll be as important, if not more, as your organs and limbs. The first spell any magi worth their salt should know is Lumina. To cast the spell, you must move the mana you have accumulated and push it outward while making three symbols with your hand in this order. Sol, Serf, Lumina. Sol, the symbol of the sun, needs your index finger stretched out while your other fingers including your thumb are arched at the same angle. Mind you, the angle doesn't matter as long as they are all the same. the next symbol is Serf, it needs your index finger close with your thumb over it, and your other fingers stretched out. The final symbol Lumina is the easiest, it just needs your hand to be fully stretched and pointed toward the direction in which you want to be illuminated. -

That was the only thing of importance on the next page; while the rest of the text was just an in-depth explanation of what mana is supposed to feel like which I already read the other day.

***

Merlin looked up at the starry night sky. 'Must have been in a daze for half a day at least.' He looked around and almost everyone was asleep in the carriage except Kell who was in the front handling the horse. He looked toward the forest and saw glistening eyes in the woods. The beasts kept their distance as the carriage went farther from each pair of eyes they came across. After the sun started to rise, Merlin saw the end of the forest. Both group members were still asleep while Kell started to hum a tune.

He felt a tingling feeling in his chest as he saw the giant city they were approaching. He asked when they would arrive which Kell answered "Probably three days at most." He started humming again right after.

Merlin decided to zone out the rest of the three days until they arrived. They arrived at the capital of the Greyserf Empire: Telok. He gained his senses shortly after when they stopped at the outer gate. Kell and Edith went to negotiate the price of the entrance toll while Fie stayed near the carriage; although Merlin was still mesmerized by the outer gate, it wasn't much compared to the small amount of memories he remembered of his homeworld.

'Still majestic though. I need to get back on track and test out the spell I read a while ago.' He wanted to test out the spell soon; scratch that he NEEDED to test out the spell soon. Ever since he got his hands on that grimoire, he had an unusual curiosity and desire for magic and spells. Merlin surprised himself with this unusual need to use magic.

'It's nothing too major right now, but later on, I might need to tone it down a bit before I do something I regret.' Merlin thought with a pang of a headache. With the desire to use the newly acquired spell and the group arriving at the city, he felt an overwhelming sense of curiosity.

A few hours later, they entered the city which was bustling even with the wide roads and had the constant chattering of noise which was a sharp contrast to the silence of the forest or the calm serenity of the greenside village. The town had cobbled-stone roads with buildings that usually had three or more stories. He felt a giddyish feeling come from his stomach, everything was new and exciting. The first thing he noticed was that there were only humans walking on the road. 'Either no sub-humans in this world or they might like isolating themselves from humans and other opposing races.' The second thing was that there were still slaves in this world which was a bit of a wake-up call for him. Later, he wondered what calendar they used and so many other things once he let his curiosity take the reigns and even ended up getting lost from his group. It wasn't that big of a problem since he had the grimoire and he had some Tirium coins which came with a fun fact of trivia, each coin had a depth-stone which made magic unable to be used on it, with the side note finished he set out to find the cheapest room for sale.

He found it right before midnight with almost all the bustling gone and only stragglers left on the road. "I heard this inn had the cheapest room for sale. Mind telling me the actual price sir."

With a tired expression, the innkeeper said "The room f'er one costs three Tirium coins f'er a night and with a meal in the morning four." With a weird pronunciation of the number three.

Merlin handed three coins and checked in. He sat on the floor preparing to cast the spell.

He felt the residual mana in his body with most of them being in between his belly and chest. 'Push the mana outward and form the symbols.' He closed his eyes. 'Sol: index finger stretched with the rest arched at the same angle. Serf: index and thumb closed with the rest stretched outward. Finally, Lumina needs a fully stretched-out hand towards the area that needs illuminating.' He pointed towards the underside of the bed. Nothing happened.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

He tried again. 'Push the mana out. Sol, Serf, and Lumina. Towards the underside of the bed.' Nothing happened again. He started to get annoyed and tried again and again until his seventh attempt.

'Push about ten percent of my mana out. Form the Sol, Serf, and Lumina symbols in the correct order and then point it.' He opened his eyes and saw the illuminated underside of the bed. "YES! FINALLY! I DID IT!"

He heard a loud bang on the wall which came from the room to his left. "Sorry." With the spell finally completed, Merlin felt exhausted from focusing on successfully casting the spell which was added on to the mana cost. All of that culminated in making a very tired Merlin and an increasingly desirable bed and pillow.

***

I woke up to whispers. There wasn't anyone in my room though.

'What was that? Did the spell have side effects?' Merlin went to check the grimoire for any added information about the spell. There wasn't anything though.

"Am I going insane?" He dismissed his thoughts when he heard the familiar bang from last night, except, this time it came from his door. "Ye'r meal is ready. If you don't get out I'll need to charge extra." The innkeeper said on the other side of the door. Merlin left the room and followed the innkeeper until he heard something.

'Open. Open.'

'The door. Quickly. Tired.'

"Did you whisper something?" Merlin asked the innkeeper. "No? What'd you hear?"

"Thought you whispered something, but I guess you didn't."

'That was weird. It might be these weird side effects again?' Merlin thought as he sat at the table with a readied meal. He ate his meal and left the establishment with another goal to figure out what was wrong with him.

'I heard yesterday some rumors about a shop that crafts and sells artifacts. They might have some idea about the side effects of mana usage.' He walked down the once-again bustling road where his group lost sight of him. As he went around to figure out the location of the shop, his thoughts drifted toward his newfound desire to learn artifacts. He didn't know why, but he had a feeling that another reason he was going to the shop was to learn more.

With his curiosity growing even stronger, he forgot about his confusion and his thoughts about his group.

With that, he focused even more on finding this shop. He walked and walked asking people for directions to the shop which turned out to be unsuccessful until he heard a name from a librarian talking with her colleague.

"Elerian's Compendium of Artifacts"

He finally found it. With a name in his hands, he asked around got the location, and arrived at the location.

"Finally, I've arrived after two days," Merlin said haggardly. His pale skin was even paler than usual which was probably due to the dehydrated and malnourished state he was in, and his brown hair was messy with no care in its appearance, but his pale green eyes were brighter than they'd ever been. He entered the door in stride and saw a... dwarf. It was a dwarf. A dwarf. 'Sub-humans do exist in this world then.'

With the shock out of the way and a question silently answered, he asked the young dwarf some questions; of course, after greeting him. "Do you have any idea what caused this side effect? Also on a side note, I've never seen sub-humans and other dwarves around here. You know why that is?"

"first of all, I'm not a fuckin' dwarf. I'M A GNOME!" that went off to a great start.

"Secondly, I have not even a rabbit ass of an idea of what caused these -whisperings- you've been hearing. I haven't even heard of something like that being caused by magic and the like." With his questions answered. Merlin needed to figure out a way for the gnome to accept him as an apprentice or even work with him.

"With those questions out of the way, I might need help with something I've been working on, but I don't have that much experience and was hoping you'd work with me on this project." He came up with the plan of imitating steam machinery to get the gnome's interest.

He drew up some stuff he heard back in the old world. The gnome was, indeed, interested; although he did ask why he couldn't use mana to power the small -toy- was what he called it. "I don't have much experience with mana and don't even know the basics so I hoped steam would act as a good alternative to mana machinery. I wouldn't turn down some pointers though in the basics."

With the questions out of the way, they held an agreement and the gnome could quench his curiosity about the steam machinery; while Merlin quenched his greater curiosity about mana machinery and artifacts.

***

before they decided to work on the project, the gnome wanted to show the basics to him. In the workshop in the back, Merlin watched Elerian tinker with a random machine and listened as he explained. "The basics of the basics is, as simple as possible, mana doesn't work well with machinery. To make artifacts and the like you'll need to coax the mana to stay inside the machine or just force it to stay. Either of them work and they both do their job well, so it's your choice. Mind you, Forcing the mana to stay makes it last less time inside the machine than coaxing it to stay. It is easier to force it though."

"I'll first teach you how to coax it since it's harder and if you can coax the mana it'll be much easier to force it since you know how it works. To coax mana, you'll need to be able to sense mana. You know how to do that, right?"

"Yes, I know how to sense mana but I'm still a beginner."

"It's good enough, I guess. I'll give you five tasks and until you can complete all of them, you won't be able to even help me in this -idea- of yours. Your first task is to move the mana inside this device and study it to see how it stays inside, and after that cause the mana to exit and re-enter the device." As Elerian said that, he handed me a rectangular device that was covered with metal but had a hole on both sides that you could look inside. There was a crystal with a blueish hue in the center and there were lines etched around it on the metal walls.

Merlin started to work on the task as he heard whispers throughout the whole night.