Arthur looked at the notebook the mage held up, while he was telling part of the truth given that the book did look like it did end up in the puddle, Arthur had a feeling that wasn’t the whole truth. That along with the reaction was completely unwarranted, unless…

“What is your rank within the guild?” Arthur asked.

“I am an apprentice master wizard, why do you ask?” The mage looked a bit confused by that question, but Arthur was starting to get a clearer picture now.

“Have you been going to the library to study recently?”

“Yes I have, my notes were actually on what I learned from the books I have been reading.” The “mage” beamed as he answered that question, as if he was hoping to impress the higher ranked mage before him.

‘This is a little off topic, but anything is worth getting a fucking wizard on my side.’

“Have you read the book Sounds in the Elements by Caria Leon? It is a book on the four evocations.” Arthur asked the “mage” hoping for him to say yes.

“Why yes I have, it is quite a wonderful read isn’t it.” The “mage” smiled thinking that the master wizard before him was smiling because he was happy with his progress.

“I assume you know how to perform all the exercises that are within the book then given your dedication.”

“Oh yes I have, I am quite happy to say that I know how to do each and every one.” Arthur smiled at that response, the supposed mage is about to out himself as a fraud.

“Really? Then why don’t you display the water extraction exercise from page seven with your wet notebook. Simply extract the water from the paper and dry it in the process.” The fake mage paused and his eyes widened in surprise, he knew he screwed up.

“Why of course, just give me a moment and I shall do so just for you.” Arthur had to give him credit for not losing his composer when his lie was about to be exposed.

The fake mage quickly threw a smoke bomb at Arthur’s feet and turned to run while using the smoke as cover. But as he took his first step he felt his left leg get caught in a string grip, the grip seemingly wrapped around his whole foot like he imagined a snake would but with the strength of an ox behind it.

Quickly the smoke dispersed revealing a tendril of earth grappling the fake mages leg to prevent hip from running. With a small gesture Arthur conjured a second tendril that grappled the other leg to prevent him from escaping. “Now that we have that out of the way you can tell me what really happened, Lar.”

The fake mage froze like a statue at those words. He already knew the guards he was facing against, and he was being played the whole time. The fake mage gritted his teeth in frustration and contemplated shouting at the real mage before putting that idea to the side. ‘If I piss him off any more he might apply more restraints, for now I just need him to get close enough to attack him and make him lose focus on the spell.’

*********

Lar gave a brief and shortened explanation of what happened involving the fake mage who threatened to get the mages guild involved if they didn’t reimburse him for the notebook they supposedly destroyed. Then Arthur turned to the fake mage and wondered what to do with him.

‘I could just kill him, but with Lar and his co-workers watching that wouldn’t be a good idea. I could leave him to Lar and his co-workers to deal with, but this guy is slippery like a snake. That leaves taking him to the guild myself to have them imprison him for impersonating a guild member.’ Arthur smiled as he wondered just how terrible the interrogation would be, he knew that there were a few spells that would basically turn the target's brain into mush and allow any decent mage easy access to said target's mind. Odds were he would become a training dummy for teaching some young mages illusion magic.

‘I should consider attending an illusion course, it would make stopping idiots like this much easier than it is now. When I get a chance I will look at the available courses and the price.’

“Could you three help me escort this impersonator to the mages guild?” Arthur turned and asked Lar and the other two guards as he conjured a pair of shackled for the fake mages hands.

The trio nodded and two kept one of their hands on his shoulder as they walked back to the mages guild. Since they had a prisoner with them Arthur was able to skip a significant portion of the line and talk to one of the clerks immediately. Arthur briefly explained the situation to the woman who then called down a small security force of battle mages that escorted the imposter mage underground.

Arthur wasted no time after that and bid Lar and his coworker goodbye before he returned to the library hoping to find his book where he left them. Unfortunately when he was gone one of the librarians must have walked by and returned the three books to their place. ‘Look on the bright side, I know where to find the books so I won't spend all that much time looking again.’

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Arthur quickly recovered all his books and began to read through them in a small corner. By the time he had finished the first book on the evocation exercises it was already far past lunchtime and getting quite close to dinner. ‘This book along with the other two are far more in depth than I initially expected. The books within the novice section were only half as complex.’

Upon making a mental note of the other two books Arthur returned to his home just as the farmer, woodsmen, and hunters were returning to the city from their jobs. Arthur knew this because he passed by some of them as he was walking down the roads in the area of his home.

“Today has been a sucky day, we’ve had clouds all day long. If we don’t start getting more sun then the plants will start taking longer to grow.”

“I can’t last forever though, eventually the clouds will blow by and we will have our sunlight back.”

“I hope so.”

Arthur listened to the conversations between the farmers as he walked by a large gathering of them. The one thing that gave them all away as farmers was the straw hats and the thick pants with two straps that went over their shoulders. Overall they appeared happy to be done with their work for the day.

As Arthur got closer to his home he noticed a few more people out and about than normal. Mostly it was just a few people sitting in chairs close to their doors, keeping their eyes on the road to watch for any strange figures sulking around. There was also a gathering of children in an empty plot playing some sort of game involving throwing a leather ball and reaching a large stick that resembled a y.

When Arthur eventually returned home he quickly made up a sandwich with some of the ingredients he kept in a cellar he recently dug out just a week prior to keep his mind off the impending danger, not that it helped all that much. But it was still useful for keeping food safe, cold, and out of the way.

The sandwich he made consisted of two slices of bread, some grounded up and cooked beef, a few leaves of cabbage, and some fish sauce. Arthur brough his delicious looking sandwich over to the nearby table and eagerly took a bit out of it. ‘Dam, That's good! Although I bet it would be even better if I added some cheese to it. Yeah, next time I'm doing that.’

Arthur quickly ate his sandwich and contemplated making and eating another, but he reluctantly forced himself to focus on the more pressing matter, the mage staff and how to actually operate it. Taking the instructions out of his bag Arthur was happy to find that it wasn’t very long, just a two sided piece of paper.

But unfortunately said piece of two sided paper had very small writing, easily half the size of what anyone would normally write. But the instructions were very helpful, it started with all the spells tha staff could cast on its own with just a bit of control and will power on the users side.

‘Force bolts, force shield, force barrier, force armor. I am sensing a pattern here, Claudius must have asked around when he had the staff made for me. Most of these spells here are either highly offensive or defensive, only these muffle, mute, and levitate spells have any utility uses outside of direct combat. But I do suppose that I am a combat oriented mage, so this should be all that surprising. I would like to learn more about these force spells though, what type of magic are they?’

Since the description of the spells on the paper was limited in order to save space for other important details regarding the staff, such as the section on safely operating the staff which Arthur quickly glossed over, to understand more about those spells he would need to actually cast them with the staff and inspect them.

Walking outside through the back door into the small backyard Arthur collected a small amount of earth and formed a simple humanoid shape that he placed a few meters away to act as a test dummy. Arthur then took a combat stance with the staff in both his hands and began to follow the instructions on how to cast the force bolt spell. He connected his mana to the mana residing within the staff and had it trigger the inbuilt spell, three small shimmering bolts resembling very clear glass appeared and flew towards the earth dummy with excel speed and control. Upon impact the bolts left large circular holes the size of grapes that penetrated through the dummy with what would be the exit wound being half the size of the entry.

‘Fascinating, these almost have the same amount of force as one of my large earth spikes, and the mana cost is about half. No wonder these things are status symbols, and there are still another six spells that this thing can cast on its own.’

Arthur eagerly readied himself like a child about to receive candy before he casted force shield. With another quick trigger a shimmering sphere like the force bolts appeared around Arthur centering on the staff. Upon sticking the bottom end in the earth and trying to walk away Arthur learned that he needed to keep control of the mana or the spells would simply shut off automatically. Arthur wanted to continue his tests by testing the durability and strength of the shields and barriers the staff could cast, but on his own that wasn’t an easy thing to do.

‘When I get a chance I should have Calavai come over and help me test it. Or we can meet up somewhere else and do that. Preferably an open and relatively isolated area with minimal sentient traffic. That cave the Rusted Daggers were using might work too, I should look into that.’

With two possible locations to try out the defensive portion of his staves inbuilt spells Arthur turned his attention to the remaining force armor spell and muffle, mute, and levitation.

Force armor was a lot like the previous force spells in which it conjured something that shimmered like clean glass, but this time the spell covered him in it like armor, specifically like the earth armor spell Arthur improvised during the attack on the southern district.

Although this time the ‘force’ that made up the conjured armor was more visible with a very slight green hue. Arthur chocked it up to it being denser and thicker than the shield and barriers since they both needed to cover more area. That would allow for the armor to be thicker and thus provide more protection on an individual than the other two.

The muffle spell was very basic as it simply reduced the amount of sound in a given area whether it was coming in or out. For example if you were shouting inside it would reduce the amount of noise you made coming out, but it would also reduce the amount of sound coming in from whoever you might be shouting at.

The mute spell would simply prevent a target from creating any noise within a certain radius of themselves, the main purpose would be to prevent a target from shouting for help if they were attacked.

And the most impressive of them all was the levitate spell, levitate would create a series of updrafts that would keep a target floating off the ground. It would apply to both organic and inorganic things including people.