Like always, Kaylen woke up at night. With only 50 minutes of sleep, she left okay. She did some stretches and started cultivating. But before she started doing that, she checked what new skills she had unlocked. She had maxed dagger mastery and speed reading.

Dagger Mastery is now level 100. Advance Dagger Mastery was unlocked.

Advance Dagger Mastery is level 10.

Speed reading is now level 100. Extreme speed reading was unlocked.

Extreme speed reading is level 22.

She read the screen and went back to cultivating. Four hours into her cultivation, Kaylen heard her first ever thunderstrike. It was raining outside. But all the people inside the palace were sleeping, well, not moving much at least. Some of them had woken up and looked outside of the windows but went back to sleep. So Kaylen was able to understand that the sound that she heard wasn't something threatening, but only if she didn't touch it. Kaylen smiled and went back to her cultivation.

Three and a half hours later, a maid, like always, came to her room and told her that the breakfast was ready. She checked her level and saw that she was now level 29. And she used her stats point to luck once again. It was the best chose because it accelerated the natural improvement of the stats. Although, she didn't know by how much.

At the table, Virion, Renna, and Alica were there eating. When Kaylen joined them, Alica spoke to her. "So, what do you want to do today? Although it's raining outside, that doesn't mean we can't do something interesting. A walk around the city could have been a great idea, but it is raining. So, do you have anything interesting we should do?" She asked while pointing her fork to Kaylen.

"Give me a second to think." Said Kaylen, she took some bites from her food and said. "Does the city have a research facility for magic and spells?" She asked Alica. "Maybe that could be interesting, or for me at least."

Alica faced her father and said. "You now own me five gold coins!" She has a smile on her face, while her father was looking at Kaylen with a pleading look. Virion just wanted someone to speak about books, while Alica wanted to do something interesting. Renna was impassive. She just kept eating. "Now, to answer your question Kaylen. There is a research facility in the city. But to get in, we first have to get the approval of my father. We can't just go in there. We need an invitation from a higher up, and that is my father. He is the one who funds the facility. Most of the nobles say that is a waste of money, but my father believes otherwise. But in the end, there was a pay off to all of this. The farmers' production was skyrocketed, the facility had produced an orb array that could make the plants grow faster. The estimates the scientist have given was close to three times higher growth speed. But what we got was close to four times in growth speed. And that was twenty years ago. Although now, the research on this orb has slowed down, that doesn't mean there aren't any new break thoughts. The other breakthrough was with a mana weapon that the researchers had made. But that was made mostly for the people who didn't have resources to train their mana levels. The latest thing they work on was, from what my father had said, an accelerated thinking spell. But there are problems to overcome." She stopped at that, and looked at her father with a look that said, 'you know what I need.' While her father was like, 'you have my support,' and he gave her a thumbs up. Renna had a smile on her face but still said nothing.

"That's sound like a plan then." Said Kaylen. "Can we go after we finish eating? Or we have to wait or something?"

"Nah, we can go even now, but not all the scientists will be there. Most of them will be there in the afternoon. And there is a person that I want you to meet. She works at the magic research facility too. She will be here in an hour. She is my mother's childhood friend. And she will come here to fix the array my mother used yesterday."

"Okay, while we will wait for her to come, I will be training with Molonym. If that's alright of course." Renna gave her a nod but said nothing. Molonym came running from god knows where to the table where they were eating. "Did someone said training?!" His face was screaming with happiness. "Kaylen was that you who said that?" Kaylen was taken aback by what just happened. But she gave him a nod. "How much time do we have for training?" "An hour max." Said Kaylen. "Good, eat fast and come to the backyard, we will train in the rain." And with that, he left. Kaylen finished her crepes with the fruits and went to the backyard.

At the backyard, Molonym was waiting in the rain and with the wooden daggers. When he saw Kaylen and Alica, he spoke. "We will do the same as yesterday. You attack, and I will defend and attack when I see an opening." They did the same thing for about forty minutes, but they had to stop, the new person had come to fix the array. And Kaylen's Advance Dagger mastery was now level 13.

They went to the basement of the palace. Renna and another woman were there. The other woman was her back facing them. She had long black hair, blue eyes, she also had a beautiful face like all the elves, and she was as tall as Alica and Kaylen at 1 meter and 80 cm. She was making a new array while Renna was watching her. "The old array was worn out, that was why you weren't gaining anything from the array. It had been broken for a long time from what I saw, to tell the truth, you were lucky that you didn't die. Molonym did a great job by using his mana sporadically when you were using the array." The woman said and paused for a few seconds, then she added. "I will make you a new one, but this time it will be for what you wanted from the previous one plus what the previous one was supposed to do."

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"And what was suppose to do the previous one?" Asked Alica. The woman looked for a second at Alica, and she turned back to her work. "It was only supposed to make the stamina recovery faster. But your mother tried to make it do other things too. But as you could expect, this wasn't going to work. You can't just make an array do other things from what it suppose to do. Renna, what other things did you want the array to do?"

"Hmm, If I remember correctly. I had asked Molonym to make the array fix the wounds too. To simply put, I wanted to heal me too." "That was why the array got destroyed. You tried to make the array do something that wasn't able to do." "So, Elora. What array are you going to make for me then?" "I will make it able to heal you faster and regain your stamina faster too. If you want something, you better say it now, before I write the runes on the stone." "Give me a few minutes, in the meantime, you can speak with my daughter and her new friend." "You know damn well that I can't just speak with new people. I always make them feel awkward." "And you know damn well why they feel awkward when you speak with new people. Your knowledge is vast, and you tend to speak about topics that they don't know anything about it." "And you that I can't control it. I like to speak about different things every time I speak to someone." "Anyway. Just do something else while I think about what else I want from the array. Molonym, I want your input on this too."

Elora moved closer to Alica and Kaylen, and she stayed there awkwardly, with her hands in her pant's pockets and looking at the floor. Alica said to break the ice by introducing Kaylen to Elora. "Elora, this is Kaylen. Kaylen this is Elora Dorsalor, the head researcher of the facility that we will go in the afternoon. She was the one who did the most research in the plant growth orb. Although she says otherwise, most of the other researchers that work there say that she was the highest contributor. She also did a great deal of work for the mana weapon for the people with low mana. She was the one who made the runes work. She also has a vast knowledge of mostly everything. She is truly the best of the best." Alica kept bragging about Elora's achievements to Kaylen. While Elora heard everything, a smile formed on her lips, but she tried to hide it.

"You know Alica that I wasn't the only one who did everything, other researchers did help too," Elora said. She wasn't a shy person or an introvert, but she didn't like when she made people uncomfortable.

"Yea, yea, you didn't do everything yourself, and that is true, but you did most of the researches, or at least took apart to most of them. Give me a paper which doesn't have your name in it and then tell me that you didn't help. Everyone likes you, but your brain always wants to learn something new. Why do I even speak to you like that, you already know everything about yourself, and you have double my age. By the way, Kaylen, whenever she says that she didn't help with something or didn't do much, don't believe it. She probably gave the best ideas to the people she helped. She always tries to downplay her achievements by saying that she didn't do much or something like that. Something else I want to say, Elora do you remember the book about how to make magic items?" Elora gave her a nod, and Alica spoke again. "Kaylen read it all of it in two fucking days. While for my father it took close to a month. They even had a deep conversation about the book too. Imagine my father being all happy, with smiles everywhere. He was like when you had read it too, with smiles. And to conclude all of this, I believe that you and Kaylen will make the best duo, and that is because both of you love new things. Although I would prefer Kaylen staying with me more, I can't stop her."

Elora looked at Kaylen and asked her. "Do you know any runes?" She asked Kaylen, and Kaylen gave her nod. "Do you know how to read and write runes?" Kaylen again gave her a nod. "Then can you show me the basic runes?" "I can't show you because I have low mana levels, but I can write them down with a pen and a paper." Elora fumbled around a bit, and she retrieved a pen and a paper from somewhere. "Here, here. Write them down for me please!" Elora said enthusiastically. She truly wanted Kaylen to know the runes. Kaylen wrote down the 82 runes, and then she wrote the calligraphic forms of the said runes.

"You even know the calligraphic forms of the basic runes. Why would you even want to know that? Nevermind that, you truly know all of them. That is insane for a normal person. Have you made a spell with those runes? And if yes, can you show me?"

"Yes, I have made three spells with the runes. A flamethrower, a firebolt and an exchange of stamina to mana."

"Then show me!"

"You can't do that in here. Go the backyard." Renna said, and when back to facing Molonym.

They went to the backyard, and Kaylen showed them the spells she had made. Elora and Alica were able to see the two attack spells. As for the third spell, she showed it with the help of the flamethrower.

And that was the start of a new friendship between all of them.

Spoiler: Stats gained and levels.

-------------------------------(Current values)

+0.02 Strength   (13,69)

+0.02 Vitality    (9,37)

+0.03 Endurance   (11,23)

+0.01 Intelligence (2,11)

+0.01 Mana     (6,45)

+0.01 Wisdom    (2,25)

+0.00 Luck     (5,09)

+0.00 Talent     (15750)

+0.00 Charm    (25,46)

1 level in firebolt spell and 2 in flamethrower. And also 1 level to Mantra of Colossal Stamina +3 and Enchanted Stamina regeneration, 5 in Sleep efficiency, and 13 on Double Helix Muscle Fibers skill (it's now at level 81, I forgot to update it on the previous chapter.). (Note: I didn't put the Advance Dagger Mastery and Extreme speed reading because I already showed the levels.)