Arthur continued to watch over Gaelin as he created more potions and was even given another recipe that was a little more complex to test himself. This lasted for around another two hours ending at eleven o’clock when Arthur had Gaelin stop and move onto basic magic training. To start Arthur had Gaelin take a seat at the table in the kitchen/living room and wait. Arthur fetched a cup and collected water from the moisture in the air to fill it to around three quarters the way full before handing it to Gaelin.

Gaelin looked at the cup a little confused and even tried to refuse it saying he wasn’t thirsty. Arthur just chuckled a little bit and told him to hang onto it as it would be needed for the magic training he wanted. “Now before we begin with the training I need to ask what level you are? As that will determine how much mana you will have.”

Gaelin looked a little nervous at this but answered truthfully. “I am level 2 sir, and I have 2 units of mana.” Arthur took clear notice of just how nervous Gaelin was when talking about his level, but he didn’t pry as he likely wouldn’t get anything but annoyance and lies.

“Alright, not the best amount to start with but it could be worse. For now it will be enough to move a bit of water around like I did when I started out.” Arthur said as he took a seat across from Gaelin and conjured up a small amount of water that he kept in a spherical shape.

“Take one of your fingers and dip it into the water that is in the cup, when you do that you will need to clear your mind of any distractions and focus on the mana within yourself. You will need to let it flow towards where you want it to go, you should avoid forcing it, just gently guide the mana like digging a channel to direct flowing water.”

Following his instructions Gaelin closed his eyes and dipped his right index finger into the water, he took deep breaths and looked like he was calming himself to focus on his mana.

“Now keep in mind this might take a while to do, it took me a while to do it and I am something of a prodigy when it comes to magic.” Arthur said as he left the room to take a look at the alchemy room and all the used bottles. Once inside he quickly scooped as many up as possible and brought them to the table to clean them with his hydromancy.

He would do this by conjuring up enough water to fill around half of the bottle and slipping it inside before wiping the inside of the bottle to collect what remained of the potions, then he would revoke the water from the bottle along with whatever was still in there. For each tip Arthur did to his alchemy room he brought back around twenty bottles and each bottle took less than ten seconds to clean. He continued this until he had cleaned up all of his bottles and by then Gaelin still had not succeeded in controlling his mana at all, not that it was an unexpected result.

Arthur watched for around another hour as Gaelin tried and failed to connect to his mana, as this happened he progressively got more and more annoyed while it was clear as day to Arthur. “Hey, maybe we should take a small break for now eh. It's around noon right now, why don’t we have some lunch and you can continue right after.”

Gaelin just gave a small nod as he took a deep breath as Arthur stood up from his chair and walked over to the kitchen area. A few minutes later he returned with two bowls of warm soup in hand, placing one down in front of Gaelin and the other where he was sitting a few minutes prior. He had to quickly walk back for spoons so they could actually eat the soup and only then did Arthur sit down and eat with Gaelin.

While the two were eating Arthur tried to make some small talk by bringing up the weather and how it was getting colder outside by the day, but Gaelin didn’t appear to be listening all that much. Gaelin also wasn’t eating all that much of his soup, he appeared to be lost in his thoughts, and it didn’t look to be good thoughts either by the look on his face.

“Hey, Gaelin. Are you alright?” Arthur touched the young elf on the right shoulder with his own left hand startling him and making him look up. Gaelin’s eyes were a bit wide as he quickly looked up at Arthur and then back down to his soup. “Yeah, I’m alright.”

“Are you sure? Because we can do this another day if you aren't feeling up to the task.”

“No, it's alright. I just have a few things on my mind, I’m fine now though.”

Arthur could tell that Gaelin was hiding something, but given that he was already lying about what that was pushing for more details likely wouldn’t go well so he dropped it and finished up his soup and took his bowl outside to wash. When he returned inside Gaelin was quickly eating his own soup instead of just poking at it like before. Once he was also done ARthur took his bowl and washed it the same

Now that everyone was done eating the two quickly returned to the magic training that they were doing just minutes before, but now with full bellies and relaxed mind Gaelin was able to keep calmer as he tried to connect with his mana and interact with the water via hydromancy. For another hour Gaelin did this while Arthur did some house work to pass the time, cleaning dust and dirt from the floor and furniture and disposing of it via the back door.

Arthur peeked outside at the sun to see where it was at this time, realizing the time he quickly disturbed his student from his ‘meditation’ and stood him up. “Hey, sorry if this comes off as rude but I have a few things I need to do today and I need to go out for them. I need to sell some of my potions and make some more so I can actually earn money.”

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Gaelin hearing this looked a little saddened by this and nodded. “You can of course keep the potions you created today as well as the bottles. I honestly don’t really care what you do with them, you can use them yourself or sell them to someone else if you need the money, but for the time being I need you out. I will be here in the morning tomorrow if you want more alchemy and magic lessons though.”

Gaelin smiled slightly upon hearing he could sell the potions and that he could come back tomorrow for more lessons on both magic and alchemy. “Thank you sir, I will be back at the same time tomorrow.” Gaelin gave a small bow before collecting the five potions that he made two at a time each. Two of the potions were drowsiness potions while the other two were nutrient potions, they weren't worth very much but he could still probably find a use.

Once Arthur was alone again he quickly returned to the alchemy room and began brewing up as many potions as he could with the ingredients he had on hand at the moment. But as he was around halfway through with what he had left he heard two loud knocks at his door, Arthur put everything down and rushed to the door to find a horse drawn wagon dropping off three crates full of the ingredients he ordered.

There was a thin human woman at the reins of the wagon while a strong human and dwarf offloaded the crates at Arthur’s door, when they saw him they each waved at him and he waved back. They also asked if he wanted them to carry the crates inside instead of outside like they were initially going to do, but Arthur declined and instead carried them inside himself in three trips, one for each crate.

Each crate was taken into his alchemy room towards the back end away from the door, once all three were inside he began to sort them out into their proper places. Thankfully Arthur had taken the time a while ago to create a set of shelves and baskets from the earth outside his home, while they weren't labelled like he would have liked it was more than enough as a basic organisation system for his ingredients.

Over the course of around twenty minutes Arthur managed to empty the three crates of their contents into the shelves and baskets, he then took the empty crates and placed them off in a corner along with the other two he kept around that Gaelin used to use when he collected herbs. He obviously didn’t need five empty crates for any reason so he would need to find something to do with them, at the moment he was thinking of firewood for his fireplace.

‘I’ll have time to think of that later, for now I need to finish up with my potions and sell them to Lydus over in the alchemy club under the mages guild. Now that I have the ingredients I could make some spark powder, given that it's supposed to start getting even colder as winter gets closer, starting a fire will become more and more important. I should have enough ingredients and time for a silver coin or two worth of spark powder.’

Spark powder is a flammable powder substance created by combining one part sulfur and three parts of several different types of plants after they are grounded down into a fine paste. To start you need to ground down those plants for around ten minutes for a pound of the spark powder, then if the sulfur is not already a powder you will need to do the same and measure out the correct amount which is twenty five percent of the end product. With that you will need to distil the paste in conjured water with an Alembic for a pure as possible end product, though this can be skipped for a lower quality outcome. Once that is done you will need to mix the two together in a bowl with the use of both a pestle and a spoon, the end product should be a pure light yellow powder that has an almost spicy smell to it.

45 grams of the powder should be able to burn for around ten minutes at roughly a wood fire temperature, it can be used for starting a fire as it is a very flammable substance or if in high enough concentrations and packed together enough create small explosions that are undetectable with magic detection and magic shields that don’t protect against physical attacks, something that is a common mistake amongst spell casters.

The process took Arthur around forty minutes to do and he was left with a full pound of spark powder that he filled ten bottles with. Arthur was both impressed with himself and the recipe and even tried out 45 grams of it in his own fireplace. The small flame roared to life and filled the room with a little bit of heat that Arthur didn’t really feel he needed at the moment, but might be useful for non mages when it gets colder.

‘I am quite surprised that this is not technically magical alchemy, though it does recommend that you use conjured water to distil the paste in, it is only a recommendation. Though the skill level is far beyond what any normal non magical practicing alchemist would be capable of, so I shouldn’t be all that surprised by its complexity.’

Arthur watched and recorded his findings with the 45 grams of spark powder, like the recipe said it burned for around ten minutes and the heat it gave off wasn’t unlike that of a small wood fire. Though unlike a wood fire it didn’t leave behind any embers or ashes when it was done burning, it appeared that everything burned away into heat and smoke. If he were an assassin or arsonist it might be a useful tool to start fires without leaving behind any trace.

But thankfully that wasn't what he was creating the spark powder for, instead it was to sell and he suspected that this one batch would sell for a very good amount let alone if he created another batch that he certainly has the ingredients for.

*********

Another forty some minutes later and Arthur was left with eighteen 45 gram bottles of spark powder, if his estimations were correct then each bottle should sell for at least three copper coins each for a grand total of 54 copper coins or two silver and fourteen copper coins. Something of an improvement from what he had been making recently, although his ingredients wouldn’t last quite as long as he was hoping with this product it was still definitely an improvement to his daily income.

********

Taking a trip to the mages guild in the western district was about the same as always, but when he arrived the outside lines were significantly smaller than beforehand. But in hindsight he should have expected it with the average temperature of the day steadily dropping. The inside of the guild was still packed like normal but the lines barely extended outside and the few that were willing to stand there looked unhappy with the weather changes.

Arthur of course passed by and entered the underground portion of the guild heading directly towards the alchemy club, inside was most barren aside from the few scattered young mages conducting their experiments off to the sides where they wouldn't bother anyone.

Lydus was sitting at his desk like normal, filling out the stack of paperwork one page at a time, no matter how many times Arthur has seen him do that it never seems to look any less worrying. It was almost like fighting a dragon would be an easier challenge because the dragon would actually die once you hit it enough times unlike the paperwork that would just keep on coming.