“I want you to think of the previous set of exercises as a sort of endurance training for your magic, this on the other hand is more akin to strength training.” Henry said as Arthur was struggling to keep a ball of air compressed. Henry walked around Arthur in a circle as he did this and gave simple gestures that appeared to be causing Arthur even more stress as he held the ball steady.

“This exercise should help you with controlling large amounts of air to do as you wish, by doing something very similar to the weightlifters of old with magic you should be able to effectively grow that metaphorical mussel that determines magic output.” Henry gave another gesture and Arthur grunted out loud from the strain of controlling the fluctuation.

“How are your mana reserves Arthur? I suspect they should be around halfway depleted.”

“They are. Should I stop now?” The strain was clear in his voice as his face was red like a tomato, a tomato being a strange fruit that doesn’t look like one at all.

“Yes, please do. You look as if you are about to explode.” Henry chuckled as took a seat in his chair. Arthur on the other hand collapsed onto the floor while breathing heavily.

For around five minutes the two just stayed where they were as the sound of Arthur’s breathing slowly left the room quiet until Arthur spoke up. “Can I ask you a question sir?”

“I see no reason why not. Ask away.” Henry said as he fetched two apples out from his desk, he tossed one over to Arthur who didn’t see it until it struck him in the head. He quickly sat up to see Henry chuckling to himself as he was chewing. Arthur took a bit out of his own apple and once he had taken a few bites out of it he asked.

“Why does that golem of your talk the way it does? It sounds like it just took a bunch of predetermined sentences and assembled them when it needs to.” To a bit of the surprise of Arthur Henry did not smile or laugh at him like he was half expecting after the apple was thrown at him, instead he looked a little more disappointed than anything.”

“Oh, that. Well to be honest that is exactly what they do when they need to communicate. It was an old design from when I was younger that I never really felt the need to change since it works so well as it is. But I probably should do something about it, update it or something. But then I would need to recreate all of the golems that currently use the system, oh it would be a huge hassle at the moment especially with the current big project I am working on at the moment.”

“What kind of project are you working on? It sounds very important given how you are talking about it.” Arthur asked, truly curious about what this might be, it was the first time he had heard of a mage doing something that wasn’t just casting spells of some sort.

“Oh it's just some complex enchanting, I found an old artifact in the basement and I want to see if I can get it working. Of course half of the thing is missing so I need to fill in the missing pieces and figure out the enchantments that were used. Then I would like to see if I can make the thing more efficient and use less mana in the process.”

“Wow, that sounds really cool. What type of artifact is this?” Arthur asked, hoping for a more direct answer than what he just received. But unfortunately for him Henry just waved off the question with a smile.

“I am sorry Arthur, but unless you are able and willing to help me with the task I doubt that I will be sharing such information with you. Anyways we should probably move back to the exercise and continue for the other hour you paid for, unless you have some more questions you would like to ask me.” Henry stood up and tossed the apple core he had in his hands into the nearby bin as he finished speaking. Arthur, who was also done with his apple, tossed his apple core into the bin as he stood up. “Alright then, I've received a good portion of my mana. Do your worst and push me to my limits.”

“Eh, I don’t think you are able to withstand my worst Arthur. But because I respect you I will still ‘push you to your limits’ as you say.” Henry chuckled as he said the last bit and Arthur responded by quickly shaping and compressing a large ball of air into a sphere around a third of its normal size.

**********

Arthur rubbed his eyes as he exited the northern district. It was getting quite late and the sun was starting to set despite how early it was. His stomach started the growl in annoyance as the apple he ate an hour ago was not quite enough to fill him up.

Arthur of course had food at home, but his stomach was hungry right now and there were several taverns and other establishments that sold food that he could make a quick stop at on his way home. So when he found a decently priced tavern Arthur took a quick stop inside and had himself a nice soup that was being sold, the soup in question was made from a bit of fish and an assortment of vegetables including carrots and peas. Arthur quickly gobbled up the soup and left two copper coins for the meal and left the waiter two more as a tip. As he did so the waiter thanked Arthur and even gave a small bow as he did so.

Arthur rushed home after that, almost running back as the outside started getting dark rapidly, Arthur of course had no knowledge of why this was happening so he made a mental note to ask Calavia about it when they meet again, whenever that might be.

Reaching his front door just as the sun was dipping below the horizon Arthur quickly unlocked it with his key and stepped inside and locked it behind himself. Walking into the kitchen/dining area Arthur quickly placed a few small pieces of firewood inside the fireplace and ignited it with his pyromancy skill. The dry wood quickly ignited and slowly began filling the room with its warmth as Arthur moved to other things.

He quickly put his overcoat on the coat rack that he bought a few days back while wandering through the market. It was a bit old and worn down from its use but it worked just as advertised by the bored looking teen that sold it to him for ten copper coins.

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Another interesting thing he recently bought was a proper wardrobe for his bedroom in which he had been keeping all the clothes that he wasn’t wearing at the time. It was very basic compared to some of the other more expensive ones he saw in the store, but unlike the cheapest one there it was sanded down and smooth and was given a coating. That wardrobe ended up costing him two silver coins, but it looked nice and was good enough.

Arthur took a seat in one of his chairs at the table and brought out the bottle of black blood along with his notes on the subject. He recorded how the blood flowed and smelt as he filled the bottle with it, unlike normal blood this stuff flowed at around half the speed it should have, Arthur could easily imagine just how bad that would be for anyone suffering from the disease. Another thing he noted was the smell of the blood, it smelt just like the blood that he smelt in the temple with all the several day old bodies, for comparison normal blood has a sort of coppery or metallic smell.

Arthur held the bottle in his off hand and was messing around with it by tilting it to one side before tilting it to the other and watching its slowly flowing and dripping. It was both entertaining and truly disturbing at the same time, on one hand it was quite interesting to look at and theorize why it might be reacting that way, on the other it was disturbing because something was just so inherently wrong about it that Arthur could not pinpoint.

That along with the words of the high ranking ant person that didn’t say anything until the group lunch was done did not help him relax, trying to take the disturbing implications out of his mind Arthur put the bottle and the notes he took regarding it back into his dimensional bag and instead looked at the nice fire he had going.

Arthur had stacked the bottom pieces of wood parallel to each other and about ten centimeters apart, he did the same thing with the second and top two pieces except he placed them so they were opposite of the bottom two. This gave both more than enough air to burn without Arthur’s constant input. Arthur had started to put on fires such as this one far more often recently due to the decreaseing temperature as the days went on, he could only imagine how cold it was going to get. Thankfully it wasn’t quite cold enough that he needed it going all day, but Arthur suspected that might not be the case for much longer.

As he was sitting there watching the fire he decided to pull up his HUD to take a look at his progress and the extra ten points he had been keeping around unsure of what to do.

/- - - - - -\

Level 14

Exp : 14200

Next Level at : 15600

Mana : 10/42

Class : The All Knowing

Strength 30

Dexterity 30

Vitality 30

Constitution 30

Intellect 30

Perception 20

Charisma 10

Arcane 30

Faith 10 (Locked)

Devotion 10 (Locked)

Available points : 10

\- - - - - -/

As much as he enjoyed being both strong and durable he wasn’t really using those things when he was fighting, having more mana or being more flexible and having more dexterity would be more beneficial for avoiding blows even with the yellow plate armor he had as it wasn’t that heavy. This left Arthur with five of the initial eight options to improve. ‘I've already been putting this off for so long, even a bad choice would be better than no choice at this point.’

Charisma was immediately off the table as not once had Arthur even been in a situation where he needed or wished he was able to convince someone of something as most of the people head so far interacted with were quite reasonable and logical. The next possible and cheapest choice was perception as being able to see things clearly is very helpful when casting ranged spells, and since it was only at twenty when all the other useful attributes were at thirty made that choice far more appealing.

Both intellect and arcane would be great additions for his spell casting capabilities as intellect would increase his mana capacity exponentially and arcane would strengthen his spells like how strength empowers physical strikes.

After several minutes of thinking on the topic Arthur eventually decided to go with putting those ten points into his perception as with greater perception also improves his accuracy when he casts ranged spells and allows him to better perceive other things like smells and sounds. While that might not be all that useful in Antium it might be if he were to find himself stranded somewhere that he was unfamiliar with.

/- - - - - -\

Perception 30

\- - - - - -/

As Arthur finalized the decision he could feel his surroundings becoming clearer slowly as he felt his mind begin to process more and more of what his body was picking up. The quiet individual cracklings of the fire suddenly became far more distinguishable as his ears were able to pick the noise. Arthur also was able to notice that the fire was not all one color, small tinges of the flames were slightly orange. He wasn’t exactly sure why that was the case as all the fire he had ever conjured up was always red like most of the fire he had seen.

By this time Arthur took a look outside the window and saw that the sun was just about below the horizon and several of the undamaged lantern poles were lighting in the higher traffic areas to accommodate the night owls that would be walking around at this time. Arthur gave a small sigh at this as he always went to sleep around the time the sun started to set and if he were to suddenly change that it would mess with his sleep schedule.

So Arthur quickly changed into more comfortable clothing that he bought specifically to sleep in and barricaded all the doors and windows and made sure the fire would burn out before going to sleep.

Arthur awoke later the next morning, as he looked outside he could see the sun starting to peek about the horizon indicating it was early in the morning. Taking a look at the cheap clock mounted to his bedroom wall he bought recently told him it was 7:06 in the morning when normally he would wake at around eight o’clock. Quickly slowly sat up and stretched his legs before standing up and walking towards the kitchen/living area to have something to eat. Rooting through his dimensional bag he found a large bowl full of cold soup which he quickly poured a bit of into a small bowl and began warming with a conjured flame, soon the soup was of a sufficient temperature and Arthur began to eat it with a spoon within a few minutes. After he was done with his simple breakfast he just sat at the table and started at the bowl a little bored. He still had around an hour before Gaelin was supposed to show up.

‘Oh shit, I forgot about Gaelin!’ Arthur suddenly remembered that he forgot to tell Gaelin about where he would be yesterday, or more accurately the thought didn’t cross his mind as he was investigating a murder scene and put his mind towards that instead of his potions.