After a few minutes of waiting the waitress stopped by and dropped off a menu for Arthur to look at and decide what he wanted. There were several soups available but Arthur quickly dismissed those, he had been having soup for several weeks straight at this point. Instead he ordered a ‘hungry man’s dinner’ which was a plate with some pork, beans, and a piece of bread. The meal cost Arthur four copper coins which he paid to the waitress who told him “It’ll just be a few minutes sir.”
A few minutes went by and the waitress returned with a plate full of pork and beans with a small loaf of bread that looked like it would make a very good ball to throw around. Each part of the meal was roughly one third of the entire plate and it was a very nice sized plate. Arthur thanked the waitress and gave her a small tip before he dug into his food. The first thing he tried out was the beans, it was the first time he had tried such a food and he found them to be quite different from most of what he had already eaten, it was a nice change.
Next Arthur conjured up a knife from earth and cut the bread he had in half and put around two thirds of the meat on his plate between the two pieces making a nice impromptu sandwich which he then ate. When he was done with his sandwich he moved onto the remaining pork and ate it with the conjured knife and a fork that was provided.
Arthur was quite happy with the meal and found that it was more than enough for him. ‘Very good, the beans were not exactly my favorite part but they were good enough. I should probably come here more often and try out a few of the other things on the menu.’ Arthur briefly considered looking at the menu again out of curiosity but put that out of his mind as he stood up and left the building and went back to his home.
Like on the way to the tavern he ate at, the roads were practically dead empty, only the occasional person could be seen walking the streets and even they looked worried about something. It was like the whole city knew something Arthur didn’t and he cursed himself for not asking the waitress about it while he was at the tavern. ‘I plan to have a few lessons with Henry again soon, if not tomorrow. I could ask him why the streets are like this tonight then, he's been a citizen here for quite some time now so he should know.’
Arthur was certain that someone or something was causing everyone in the city to start staying inside once it even gets a little dark out. For his own safety Arthur conjured a dagger and hid it up his sleeve, hopefully he wouldn’t need it but so far in his life hoping was never enough. Thankfully the way back was uneventful and he returned home without any problems.
Once he was inside Arthur quickly put a few longs in the woodstove and lit up a small fire for light and warmth, recently it had been getting a little cold at night and even though he could just conjure up fire it helped when there was a fire he didn’t need to constantly maintain.
*******
“What else do we know of him, Caius?” Lady Alkonost asked as she paced around her throne room. While her face was stone cold her wings gave away just how frustrated she really was.
“His now updated file from the mages guild tells us that he can cast tier two spells now. He is a growing threat if you are correct in who he actually is.” Caius Quintilius the younger brother of Saturio Quintilius said as he looked over the new copy of Arthur’s file. He was also very concerned as the rate of growth Arthur showed was dangerous enough on its own, if Lady Alkonost was right that this Arthur was actually the chosen of one of the gods then their entire plan might be in jeopardy.
“I know I am right about this, I almost always am. The only way to possibly confirm this would be for me to go in person and check him for any traces of divine magic.” Lady Alkonost said as she looked out the large window overlooking the empire. “You said he was a part of the mages guild right?”
“Yes my lady, that is correct.” Caius confirmed, wondering what she just realised.
“Then that makes it definitive who has chosen him. It was Xardas the dark magician, the only god to bless any of his chosen with arcane affinity rather than divine, and now we are seeing the fruits of such a blessing.” Lady Alkonost was now looking down at the city below, even from such a height she could still see the small little humans walking around without a care. She could only imagine how they would react if they knew of her presence and how she impacted their everyday lives.
After a moment of silence and waiting for an explanation Caius spoke up again and asked “Is there anything we can do? We have a few devotees who were assassins before they joined us that might be able to put an end to this choice of Xardas.”
“No, that won't work. I will need to take care of such a danger myself. How prepared are we to strike against the Rathen kingdom again? It might present the perfect opportunity to remove this danger once and for all.”
“We should have all our preparations done within a year, possibly several months earlier than that.” Caius responded, making Lady Alkonost smile for the first time in several days. She continued looking into the window but now was looking at the reflection of her loyal subordinates' reflection, her mind wondering how she would reward him for his loyalty and great service. ‘Normally I prefer physically powerful men, but it might be a nice change to have someone with a strong mind.’
********
Arthur awoke the very next morning with the feeling once again, but it wasn’t quite the same as the previous times. Before it was like a warning of impending danger whereas now it was more akin to a warning of something far off in the distance that was coming towards him. It was only a small little tingling down his spine that slowly disappeared after a few minutes leaving Arthur very confused and a little worried.
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Putting the worrying feeling off to the side for now Arthur quickly made himself some breakfast and awaited Gaelin to arrive with the crate full of ingredients. Soon Gaelin arrived and was given his six copper coins in exchange for the ingredients which Arthur quickly sorted through before putting them away.
Arthur was quite tempted to just start right away with brewing potions to sell over at the mages guild but he stopped himself. He wanted to get another hour or two of lessons from Henry to help progress his aeromancy a bit more as he found his improvement rate skyrocketed while being coached by him. Henry just had a certain way of pushing him beyond his limits. ‘Just showing up might be considered rude though, it would be better to try and schedule those lessons for tomorrow to avoid interrupting him. He probably has some experiments that he is working on that he needs his full attention on.’
With that Arthur started brewing up some potions over the course of an hour, when they were done he packed everything he needed up and began walking towards the mages guild. He reached the mages guild building at around 10:30 in the morning and quickly slipped past the lines by the doorway and went downstairs to the alchemy club. One thing of note was there were more people at the guild both mages and civilians than the day before, even the alchemy guild had a few students trying things out with the club provided equipment. Lydus was at his table still filling out paperwork and one senior mage was walking around helping the students when they asked for it.
“Have you even moved from there since I last saw you? The pile doesn’t even look like it has moved an inch since I was here yesterday.” Arthur joked as he walked up to Lydus who was still nose deep into the paperwork.
“Good morning Arthur, despite what it looks like I do get a lot of work done everyday and this is not just for the alchemy club, it includes several other departments that I take part in running. But you probably don’t want to hear me list those off, now what can I do for you?” Arthur had to admit he was a little interested in what all those departments were but he forced himself to think about the potions he brewed this morning instead, quickly fetching them from his bag he placed them on the table to allow Lydus to inspect them before giving them a value. Taking out the strange device that resembled an eye glass, Lydus looked over each potion before counting out three silver coins for the whole bunch and placing them into a small pouch for Arthur’s convenience. “Three silver for all ten, take it or leave it.”
“”I’ll take it, thank you.” Arthur smiled as he opened up the pouch and quickly counted up his money. “I’ll have some more potions to sell you tomorrow, they'll be around the same quality and quantity.”
“That's fine Arthur, I always have the money to buy them off you. But before you go, if you could perhaps find a way to brew many more potions, I could offer you a better deal for them.” Lydus smiled and put down the piece of paper he was writing on as he continued. “If you can reach a certain threshold of output I can give you more money for each potion. We have a few other alchemists that are in similar contracts with us.”
“And just how many potions would I need to be making every day to be eligible for this contract.” Lydus had Arthur’s attention, but he was still skeptical as it sounded like he would need to be making a lot of potions.
“We would need at least 100 potions from you every day for such a contract to be possible, of course we would need some sort of proof beforehand that you will be able to supply such an amount on a daily basis but I see no reason why I shouldn’t let you know about this even if it won't be an option for some time.”
Arthur was silent, this would be an excellent opportunity for him to earn a lot of money to finance his future experiments and perhaps even hire some employees to help with the actual potion brewing. ‘Assuming I sell the potions for three copper coins each like I have been for some time now by selling one hundred a day I would be making thirty silver coins which when added up would be a gold coin and ten silver. With that much money coming every day I could easily hire several employees for both brewing and collecting herbs, if I really wanted to I could just start growing them myself and just hire a few people to farm them.’
“Thank you for the offer, but I will need some time to think about it and even more to actually set something up to allow for such production.” Arthur said instead of what he was thinking as he continued on his way.
“Of course, I understand. It is a very difficult decision to make and even harder to keep. Just let me know when you make your decision and I will gather the proper paperwork for you.” Lydus said as he waved to Arthur.
Arthur did not stay for much longer as he had business with the job board and wished to set up another hour or two of lessons with Henry and he needed to send a message through one of the communication orbs in there. Thankfully the job board wasn’t all that far from the alchemy club and the man at the desk didn’t seem to care that Arthur wanted to use one of the orbs anyways. Arthur quickly sent Henry a second message clarifying who he was and asking if tomorrow was a good time for some more lessons and what time would work out for him.
With little other reason to stay Arthur returned to his home to practice his aeromancy and the meditation technique for a while as he needed to keep up working on it bit by bit every day if he wanted to make any level of improvement. Arthur also decided to try something similar to the aeromancy exercise with geomancy instead, as he expected his control was far superior and he could control eleven spheres of condensed earth at around the same speed and control as he could with half as many spheres of air.
‘I guess this would make my specialization geomancy since it is the magic skill in which I have the most time using, though I expect the demon soul helped me quite a bit in that regard.’ Arthur looked down at his hands as he thought about the demon that was down in that cavern. It was truly a terrifying thing that even made the strongest members of the expedition that were there afraid of it. ‘I wonder just how much of my success and accomplishments are all because I absorbed that demon soul instead of Saturio Quintilius. If he did he probably would have tried to kill us all with the help of his teammates and left immediately leaving Lyra and those under her to find our bodies… I guess we got very lucky that I was brave or foolish enough to try and reach the obelisk thing they called a phylacterium that contained the demon's soul.’
Arthur remained seated as he thought about what could have happened if Saturio had magic learned from absorbing the demon soul like he did. He probably could have turned the tide of the battle just like Arthur did.