“He was getting ready to retire, he hasn’t been doing any experiments for quite some time. He gave me his notes on the last thing he was working on as a gift for completing my apprenticeship.” The elven investigator noted down what Arthur was saying and asked another question, this one about said gift.
“What exactly were these notes that he gifted you? Were they for any sort of explosive device or compound that could create this?” The elf pointed to the top of the building blown off by an explosion.
“No, it wasn’t. It was something else that required upkeep and maintenance, I don’t know of any explosives that need anything like that.” Arthur gave a brief and limited explanation, the elven investigator was definitely suspicious of that answer but he didn’t say anything.
“Were there any other apprentices that you know of that might not have been too happy with him for any reason or that left on bad terms with him?”
“Yes actually, Georgius had another apprentice when I joined named Aurelio. We both finished our respective apprenticeships at the same time and he declined the notes on the project Georgius was working on. Instead he received a minor mana stone, he had one for me just in case I didn’t want it either.” The investigator perked up a bit at that answer, Arthur noticed that his eyes widened slightly and that he started writing everything down a little faster.
“And do you know where this Aurelio might be or where he lives? If he has been Mr. Calvus’s apprentice longer than you then he might know something he never told you.”
‘A lie, he has made Aurelio a suspect to this possible murder. Then again I am also likely a suspect, just far less likely as I came forward and gave all the information I could. The worst part is that Aurelio does have a real motive to do it, and that worries me.’
“I am sorry, but I don’t know where he currently works or where he lives. We were at most colleges as opposed to friends.” Arthur could tell that despite lack of a location the investigator was quite happy with the information he received. He now had a real and possible lead with the case.
“Thank you Mr…”
“Arthur.”
“Thank you Mr. Arthur for your cooperation and information in the case, but I will need to ask you for your current residence and your place of work if you don’t mind. Just in case we need to contact you again in the future.” The investigator asked- no told Arthur. It was cleverly disguised as a question, but in truth it was a demand. A demand that Arthur complied with though as he had no wish to piss off someone that could be an ally.
With that all done Arthur was asked to leave and was escorted away by one of the guards. ‘Now what do I do? Georgius is most likely dead given the lack of medical personnel in the forms of traditional doctors of restoration mages. That leaves me without anyone to ask for advice regarding my little golem until I become an evoker in the guild, and Georgius still suspected that would take me at least half a year if I keep my current pace.’
Once Arthur was done with his train of thought he found himself near the entrance of the mages guild. He was a little surprised at first but soon stepped inside and began walking towards the library. ‘I must have walked over here out of pure habit. I could use something to take my mind off of what happened.’
Arthur walked over to the apprentice section of the library and began to read through just about every book he could find. He encountered several books regarding the four evocations and several exercises he could do to help him improve, but most were just simple variations of what he already knew. The spells he came across were also quite boring to him, he either knew most or could not find any realistic reason to use them. One spell in particular was called ‘Cook Rat Meat.’ The idea and theory behind it was interesting, but the idea of eating rat meat made Arthur feel a bit uneasy and think of his little flesh golem in his bag.
There were of course their two spells that looked quite interesting and even useful in several situations Arthur had been in the past, but since he didn’t know how to cast any of them they were useless to him at the moment. ‘I need to take a course on tier two spells soon, otherwise my skills as a mage will stagnate with a limited amount of spells.’ Arthur retrieved the book provided to all members of the guild that contains all the names, details, and prices of each of the courses that are available. Arthur quickly found the course on tier two spells called The Fundamentals of Second Tier Magic, the price of the course was a whole gold coin, an entire three silver coins more than the previous course.
Thankfully with his previous working spree Arthur easily had enough in his pockets to pay for it. So Arthur went to the administration office and signed up for the course, he paid the money upfront instead of paying it off later. As it turned out they now offered young mages the choice to pay part of the price now and the rest in instalments. ‘I've heard some worrying stories about that so I'll just pay upfront.’
With that out of the way Arthur was informed that the course would be starting in a week's time and it would be taking place in room twenty seven. Arthur of course received a receipt as evidence and placed it within his dimensional bag. With little else to do or experience in the guild Arthur returned home to continue brewing potions and creating other useful things with alchemy. Arthur also continued to experiment with his flesh golem by trying to have it bring him an ingredient when he needed it to limited success.
The rest of the day continued on in a similar fashion until night rolled around. Arthur heated up and ate some more of the soup he made the day before and spent the time he had before he went to sleep reading some more of the journal of Brexius Sanguine Bane. Past the first few pages that contained the information regarding the rat based flesh golem Brexius got more into his personal life.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
He detailed his family and his relationship with them and one another, and as it turned out he was actually a noble, not of a very powerful family but enough to afford basic alchemy equipment at the time and experiment. He also had a younger brother he called Arty that apparently begged him to teach him something about alchemy and magic because their parents refused to hire anyone to teach him until he was older.
And sprinkled here and there were some interesting spells and techniques that while outdated were quite useful. ‘This could be useful for teaching Marcus, I'll keep it in mind and try it out when I meet with him again.’ It was a simple teaching technique that involves giving the one learning a small portion of something they like, for example you might give a child something sweet or tasty, or if they really wanted something like a magic potion.
**********
Arthur continued with his simple schedule with brewing potions and creating the occasional bottle of alchemist embers. On those last two days of the week he spent with Marcus and as a reward for making such progress Arthur gifted him with a simple healing potion. Marcus was of course super excited by the fact that he had a real magic potion and ran over to show his mother.
When the day of the course eventually did roll around Arthur was prepared. He had everything he might have needed in his bag with him when he arrived in the class. He arrived at the classroom at 12:20, ten minutes earlier than the class started. That meant he was the first one to arrive and he quickly chose one of the seats in the front row so he could have a good view of the teacher when he or she arrived.
Soon the others slowly filtered into the classroom most of which were human like last time but with a few more elves this time. Then came the teacher who was a human man that looked to be in his early thirties. He had brown hair and eyes with light olive skin and a cleanly shaved beard and he wore a grey robe that symbolized him as Warden within the guild.
“Good afternoon class, I would like to welcome you all to The Basics of Tier Two Spell Casting.” The teacher exclaimed as he turned to face the class. For a second everyone was a little confused by what he said, they all thought the course was called The Fundamentals of Second Tier Magic. One was brave enough to raise their hand.
“You there in the back row, do you have a question?” The teacher smiled as he pointed to a young human woman that looked to be in her early twenties sitting in the back row. She stood up and said “I don’t mean to be rude sir, but the course is called The Fundamentals of Second Tier Magic.”
The teacher stood there for a moment completely confused, before he loudly said “It appears those morons have changed their minds again on the name of all the related courses without telling the people who teach them.” The teacher's right eye began to twitch slightly as he said that and once he took a deep breath it stopped. “My name is Primus and I will be teaching you how to cast tier two spells. Now first things first, this is going to be harder than learning tier one spells and I expect at least a quarter of you to fail this course by the end of the week.” Everyone watching froze at that statement. A quarter of them were likely to fail this class?! That was a lot of people and more importantly a lot of wasted money, now even those that were only half listening were giving Primus their full attention.
“We shall start with explaining the difference between tier one and tier two spells.” Primus walked over to the nearby chalk board and began writing something down. When he was done he stepped away and allowed his students to read. “The biggest difference between the two tiers is the amount of time it takes to cast their respective spells by default, for a tier one spell the average is about four to six seconds with all the words and hand signs, but a tier two is double that at ten to twelve seconds.”
Nearly everyone in the room was scrambling to write everything down as Primus spoke, a small handful of people including Arthur did not feel the need to. Arthur has a photographic memory and thus does not need to write things down, the others were a bit more of a mystery. One of them was a wood elf resembling pine tree bark and the other were native plainsmen humans. ‘Interesting. I’ll need to keep any eye out on them.’
“As I am sure you all know you are required to perform the hand signs and speak the arcane words for the entire casting or else the spell will fail. But thankfully if you are skilled enough and have practiced casting a spell enough times you can either skip the hand signs or arcane words or reduce the time it takes depending on what you want.”
The only sound coming from the students was the sound of quills on paper as they wrote down what they heard. Primus smiled as his plan was working, only a few stragglers not following, but they usually have their reasons.
*******
About halfway through the class Primus decided it was enough explaining how tier two spells worked and was time for a small demonstration to encourage and show them what they have to look forward to. Taking a standing position Primus performed the whole casting of each of the spells he showed. He started with the simple yet effective Fire Ray spell that conjured a ray of fire in a straight line from wherever the caster pointed with whatever appendage of their choice, though the most common choice was the extended palm.
The second spell he showed was called Ice Sheet and it would conjure a small sheet of ice within a eight meter circle of the caster that they could see. The sheet of ice had a radius of about three meters, but according to Primus both those things would change as the caster gets more familiar with the spell. He did specify that the caster would need to know how to conjure ice and not just water.
The third and final spell Primus showed his class was the spell called Hail. Hail would conjure a series of small chunks of earth that would be propelled towards the ground at an angle in whatever direction the caster could see in. The starting height and amount of chunks would be dependent upon the skill and proficiency of the caster.
By then class was about over, but before everyone left Primus gave everyone a bit of reading and exercises to do when they had some free time. It wasn’t required but would help their chances of passing the course. Everyone was given this reading and exercises in the form of a few pages of paper that gave a more in depth explanation and a few exercises to help with casting.
As it turned out the hardest part about casting higher tier spells was collecting the necessary amount of mana to fuel it. These exercises were designed to help with that by gradually growing the amount someone could manually manipulate. When Arthur returned home at 2 o’clock the first thing he did was try it out. While he didn’t feel any changes he did now have a baseline for tomorrow when he would try it again.