“How did you get my file?” Arthur was rather confused and a little worried by the fact that his new teacher had his file. He was also a little surprised by just how much information was within it, it even contained the number and types of potions he sold to the alchemy club.
“Whenever I take on a new student I am always certain that I know who they are. Also I am a very curious person, my mother always told me that I took that from her side of the family.” Henry noticed that Arthur wasn’t all too happy hearing that joke and went back to a more serious tone. “I wanted to be sure you didn’t have a history of criminality or causing problems for the kingdom. I’ve had to deal with a few young mages in the past who were exactly that and they were quite a handful. I am happy to say that you yourself do not fall into that category.”
Despite his assurances Arthur did not enjoy the idea of everything he did being written down into a file that he had no way to access. Henry gave Arthur the opportunity to read over his file and he found it very shocking, just about everything he had done in an official manner was recorded within from working for Captain Tasius as an independent mercenary mage to his apprenticeship with Georgius Calvus. Everything he did relating to magic was recorded within and it made him feel like he was being watched by some sort of all knowing or all seeing being.
Henry noticed the look of worry and disgust on his students face and quickly tried to help him relax. “Now don’t be so worried. Everyone within the mages guild and even many of the prominent mages not associated with it have their own file. It's a small price to pay for the kingdom's funding.” Arthur just gave him a look that said ‘That's supposed to make me feel better.’
Arthur was certainly double guessing his choice of joining the mages guild and wondered if it would have been a better choice to simply be independent of any organization. ‘No, without the guild I would never have had the opportunity to learn even the most basic of tier one spells at this point in time. It might have taken me years to convince anyone to share with me even the basics, the only other choice I would have had would have been stealing and I highly doubt I would have succeeded without proper magic training.’
Arthur just sat back in his chair with a feeling of defeat in his stomach as Henry went on to tell Arthur that he had nothing to worry about as long as he didn’t do anything illegal with his magic. Soon the topic shifted back to his performance with the small test he was given and how impressed Henry was.
“I am quite impressed with your performance though Arthur, you are a bit farther along than I expected you would be so I see no reason why I can’t teach you any more.” Henry proceeded to help Arthur by giving a few demonstrations of an exercise that would help Arthur improve his control over his aeromancy. The exercise started with creating two dense spheres of air from a few meters away from both the caster, which in this case was Arthur, and each other. Then the caster would need to have the sphere spin around them at a consistent rate, if it was too easy with just two spheres then the caster would need to add more until it became a struggle. Henry had Arthur do this in the open area while he watched and gave him critiques and several orders to change for testing him and to keep him on his feet.
“You can get used to the rhythm of rotating a few spheres of air around yourself, but when the conditions change, which they often do while performing magic, you will also need to. Spin them the other way.” Arthur slowly brought the five spheres he was controlling to a halt and made the start going in the opposite direction at roughly the same pace as before.
As Arthur was concentrating on this magic he could feel a few drops of sweat dripping down his forehead from the strain, it was just enough to keep him at this point of exertion without quickly exhausting him like most of his own methods of training did. Arthur did this for around an hour under Henry’s watch until he was close to reaching that point of exhaustion and almost collapsed while releasing the air he controlled.
Seeing this Henry handed Arthur a glass of water and gave him a moment to catch his breath and recover from the time he just spent training. Checking his watch Henry realized that around an hour had passed and he told Arthur before asking if he would like to continue or end the training for the day. Arthur managed to look up and say “One more hour.” before he laid back down on the wooden floor while breathing heavily.
After a few minutes of resting Arthur slowly stood back up and readied himself for the next part of the lesson he would be receiving under his new teacher. “Now this doesn’t exactly have anything to do with aeromancy specifically, but I see no reason why you would be unfit to learn this.” Henry said as he took a seat on the floor in front of Arthur and motioned for him to do the same.
“What I am about to teach you is a technique used to help mages recover their mana faster. Though I must inform you beforehand that this is a very difficult thing to do that doesn’t have a large impact at the very beginning, but if you keep on practicing this you will find some excellent long term effects. Now just follow my instructions.” Henry gave verbal instructions on how to slowly improve one's own mana recovery rate for a short time. It was a process not unlike meditation with focusing on the mana within your own body. “You need to feel the mana flowing through your whole being, once you have that feeling you need to follow it until you find the well in which it flows to.”
“The well?” Arthur asked, it wasn't what he would have called the almost spherical ball of mana that he could somewhat feel within his stomach with all the little streams of mana flowing in from everywhere like little rivers.
“It's just what I call the area where all one's mana is stored. Most people have their own term that they like to use. Tell me when you can feel it clearly so we can move on.” Arthur gave a small nod even though they both had their eyes closed and his gesture could not be seen. For another ten minutes he continued feeling until it became very clear to him, it felt so close that he could almost just reach out and touch it. He quickly told Henry who then moved onto the next step.
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“Good, now follow the small little pathways to the very end. When you do that you will need to focus on relaxing the entry spots and allow a little extra amount of mana to flow along with the normal amount. You see all living things have a natural mana resistance to all outside mana, but we can temporarily reduce it and allow a little extra in ourselves for assimilation. Though we will need to almost manually assimilate it rather than allow it to happen naturally once we reach a certain amount, we still have quite a bit of time and room before we need to worry about that though.”
Henry helped Arthur through the process the whole way by giving him instructions and telling him what he should be feeling or doing. Eventually Arthur began to feel a little extra mana flowing into his little spherical reserve, it wasn’t all that much, not even one percent more than normal, but it was just ever so slightly noticeable and for a first attempt that was more than enough.
“Excellent work Arthur, just be certain that you practice everything I have taught you in your own free time and let me know if you want any more lessons.” Henry was also quite happy with his progress, though just before Arthur left through the front double doors Henry stopped him to tell him something important. “Oh one moment before you leave Arthur.”
Arthur stopped as he was opening the right door and turned around to see what his teacher wanted to say. “Don’t try the mana recovering technique while your mana reserves are full, you might end up hurting yourself if you do that, and believe me it isn’t very pretty. Also when you start recovering roughly another 5 percent or so with the technique, come back to me, I will teach you how to manually assimilate the mana you recover past that point as it can be very dangerous for someone untrained.”
Arthur gave a nod of understanding and quickly left through the front door. His first priority was to return home and to start brewing potions to later sell, these two hours of lesson did end up costing him four silver coins after all, and since he intended to return regularly he would need to keep his balance above zero. While he did have several gold coins in his bank account he didn’t want to rely on those so early into his magical career.
Thankfully Gaelin arrived earlier in the day and dropped off a crate full of ingredients he could use, even more fortunate was that Arthur took the time earlier in the day to sort them to their designated place. This allowed Arthur to know exactly what he had on hand and what he needed to buy from one of the stores.
With the ingredients he had with him he easily had enough to make around three silver coins worth of potions. Though that wasn’t quite the four silver coins he wanted to spend on lessons everyday, or at least most days. ‘Something is going to need to change. Either I buy more ingredients so I can brew more potions, or I hire someone else to act as my personal ingredient collector. I managed to get lucky with Gaelin needing a job, though I doubt that I will get so lucky again as being able to read is a big help when it comes to this job as that allows you to read books and learn what ingredients are valuable. Most people that would be in need of the money probably wouldn’t be able to read and anyone that can read likely has a better paying job doing paperwork or something for one of the guilds.’
That left the only realistic possible choice for finding a large amount of ingredients on short notice as buying them from one of the alchemy stores that actually sold them. Though Arthur intended on asking Lydus about where the alchemy club sources its ingredients from, if it was an actual supplier then it would be a good idea to work something out with them for a good price on the ingredients as most of the store tended to overcharge.
But asking such questions could wait until Arthur was done with the potions he intended to make, which was a batch of energy recovery potions. The potions would allow the drinker to recover their energy faster by helping them use up body fat and turn it straight into useable energy, though the batch that Arthur was brewing were intended for longer term use lasting up to a few minutes and stretching the effect over a longer time than what was normally on the market.
The ten potions were in total worth around three silver coins or roughly three copper coins each. This was mostly because the potion wasn’t very hard to make for someone with even a basic understanding of restoration magic like Arthur does. Though Arthur suspected that the stretched effect might bring more customers then the other potions would.
Once the potions were done Arthur packed them up in his bag and began on his way towards the mages guild. On his way he noticed that most of the gang members that he would often see strolling around were gone, clearly wherever gang war was going on within the former unified group was requiring all hands on deck and keeping them off the streets. ‘To think that all was required to do this was killing a few hardened criminals and burning down a warehouse. I should have done this sooner, I can only imagine how fractured the gang would be if I killed their leaders when I first had that opportunity.’
When Arthur arrived at the mages guild everything was about as he expected, several lines were leading outside as people waited to finish their business with the guild while leaving just enough room for Arthur to pass by and walk into the underground section. But as he passed by one of the other mages he noticed a look of worry on her face, something either happened or was going to and it wasn’t good. Arthur passed by a few more mages on his way to the alchemy club and even a few of them look equally as worried.
The alchemy club was also noticeably empty of any students with the only person inside being Lydus who was still filling out paperwork at his table. Arthur walked up to him with the batch of potions in hand with a good price in mind. “Good morning Lydus, I have some more potions to sell today.” Arthur quickly placed the labelled potions on the table for Lydus to look over.
“Oh, good morning Arthur. I wasn’t expecting you to come in today.” Lydus said as he picked up the potions and started inspecting them.
“You weren't? Why not? I almost always drop by to sell a few potions.” Arthur crossed his arms as he watched Lydus perform his inspection. Clearly something was up with the guild and he was hoping that Lydus would tell him what that was.
“I take it you haven’t heard the news then, a collection of influential nobility have begun opposing the mages guilds involvement within the legal system and are willing to take the situation to the courts to have an official ruling.”