The next day, I headed to the magician's house, determined to offer my assistance in exchange for some money. When I arrived, I knocked on the door, and the magician answered. His long white beard and plain robes combined with how he’s living alone on the edge of this village gave off a typical mysterious old man vibe.

"You're that kid with Elric yesterday. What's your name, child?" The magician asked, his voice gentle.

"I'm Alythia." with my best polite and friendly-looking smile plastered on my face, I introduced myself and my purpose, "I was hoping to help you with your magic for some money."

"Oh, you know magic!”

The magician nodded and began exciting listing the tasks he needed help with.

“Let's see, you can help me with enhancing items? I’ve been having trouble trying to add a firestrike to this hammer.”

“Sorry.” I replied, shaking my head.

"Hmm, then can you transmute metals? I have some true silver here you can help me turn into mythril"

“Don’t think so.” my cheeks heating up ever so slightly.

“How about divination?”

“Never heard of it.”

"Potion brewing?"

“Nope.”

The magician let out a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose, looking slightly frustrated. "Unfortunately, I don’t think you can help." He tried to hide his frustration, but his voice wavered ever so slightly. Feeling slightly embarrassed, I looked around for a small stone so I could show him my super magical rock throwing skill. At that moment, three children arrived. It seems they were here for their magic lessons with the magician. He led the kids to the open field beside the house and decided to focus on teaching them, leaving me alone.

Scratching my nose, I decided to follow them as well. I stood off to the side, watching intently as the magician began his lesson. The three children sat facing wooden buckets, each filled with some water. Once they were all ready, the magician began his lesson

“Like last time, let’s learn to control our magic. Focus on your wand, use your magic and just gently lift some of the water up and down.”

Following that, I watched as the kids all faced toward their bucket, eyes closed, both hands tightly grasping their wands, and just… sat there. Nothing seemed to be happening. Occasionally I could see some light blue wisps of light appearing from the tip of their wand, only for it to quickly fade away. I copy them, but I don’t have a bucket of water, so grasping onto my wand, I turn towards a small branch before also closing my eyes.

That blue light thing, was that his magic? What are we doing? Completely confused, I also ended up just standing for a bit before giving up and looking toward the magician again. He looked at me briefly and just sighed.

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I think he got the ‘PLEASE HELP’ message sent from my eyes as he cleared his throat and spoke again “Let me demonstrate.” Pulling out a small wand from who knows where, he gently lifts it with one hand and points at one of the buckets. At the next moment, I noticed a faint flow of dark blue translucent light particles rushing from the magician's wand to the bucket. It wrapped around the water before slowly raising it up and back down again. The entire time, the link from the wand to the water never broke, it was like a controllable arm or claw had extended out and grabbed a hold of the water.

“So that’s magic!” I exclaimed.

With a newfound understanding, I decided to give it another try. Going back to my earlier posture, I closed my eyes and focused. Finding the sensation of mana in my body again, I directed it towards my hands into the wand, then out towards the branch. Opening my eyes, I could see the same faint translucent particles of light, but mine seemed closer in colour to purple or white. Having visual on the light, I slowly control more of the mana to continuously flow out, extending outwards, eventually surrounding the branch.

Once that was done, I tried moving the branch and it immediately responded to my will. This sensation of being able to stretch my mana outwards was intoxicating. What else could I do with this? Next, set my sights on a rock about the size of my head. Extending my magic towards that, I was able to easily dislodge it from its spot and wave it around.

Looking around to find something even larger, I notice the magician and three kids looking at me. The kids look shocked, like they had just gotten socks as a Birthday present. No wait, maybe that’s a normal gift in this world. The magician on the other hand is stroking his beard, looking greatly intrigued. Probably because he was impressed by my quick progress, the magician brought me a bucket of water too, and began to focus more of his attention on teaching me.

From proper technique for better controlling the water to transforming my mana into other elements like fire and water, the magician continued praising my learning abilities and pushing me to learn new things. We even got through a quick lesson on elementary combat magic, which mostly consisted of turning your magic into a physical element like fire, and just chucking that at the opponent. The children, on the other hand, continued to struggle and appeared to grow increasingly frustrated at being constantly annoyed.

Realizing that he neglected his original duty, he quickly gave me a set of instructions for potion making before tending to those kids again. I went inside and dedicated my time to the task, infusing each concoction with some mana and stirring it as instructed.

As the day went on, I became more proficient at determining how much mana I should be adding and my stirring skill went up. I even found out that I could be lazy and just use my magic to stir instead. At the end of the day, the magician returned to check on my progress. He examined potion mixtures I had prepared and seemed pleased with my work. He offered to pay me the money I needed if I would help him again the following day, to which I eagerly agreed.

…

The next day, I continued to assist the magician with his tasks as he gave me some general pointers on potion-making and magic in general. One specific thing he mentioned was that my mana capacity seemed really high and that I should look to get a better wand. Mana capacity appeared to be how much mana I had, so a higher mana capacity means I could use magic for longer. I’m sure about the specifics of the wand, he just said it was probably limiting my abilities.

By the end of the day, he was very happy with my work and presented me with the three silver coins I had requested. In addition, he gave me an extra 3 silver as well as a sealed roll of parchment to deliver to the Institute of Knowledge’s branch in Caeloria.