Arthur was seated in his room on his bed with the possible entrances closed and locked with both the traditional locks but also the earth blockings. Arthur had just recently finished eating his dinner and was trying out the exercises for growing his mana manipulation capacity. He felt the mana residing within his body sort of just filling as much space within him as it could, it was very spaced out and a little hard to gather. Thankfully spells would help with that by drawing some of it together closer. The exercise everyone was given was intended to allow everyone to gather mama within themselves on their own to assist in the process of casting spells. As spells get to higher and higher tiers more and more of its power is directed towards the actual spell effect, this of course would still help with casting lower tiered spells as well be the same principle.

While it was possible to eventually do this on your own by just casting spells and feeling the flow that way, it was much much faster to directly focus on it this way. As Arthur started he could feel some of the knowledge he absorbed from the demon warlock's soul subconsciously become clearer, specifically the knowledge regarding mana manipulation.

‘I thought I had already learned everything I could have from the demon soul, has it just slowly boosted my actual learning speed with little bits of information being added here and there whenever I needed it.’ Arthur was quite close with his speculations, his skill for mana manipulation was listed as Level 22, but in practice it was more like Level 15. It looked like he would need to practice all the skills he learned from the demon soul if he wanted to reach their presented level.

After about an hour of manually manipulating his mana Arthur found that his current capacity was five points of mana and when he really tried he could bump that up to six. But it was just as draining as any other magic training despite the lack of mana expenditure and Arthur chose to experiment with his little flesh golem some more.

He had the golem repeat all of the same tests as it did every time with very little difference or improvement. ‘Dam. I've been testing this thing for over a week now and it hasn’t shown any sign of improvement. It looks like if I want to see any improvement I need to start over.’

Arthur contemplated creating another flesh golem right then and there but stopped himself, it was getting late and he would need his energy and focus to learn as much as he could during class. If he wanted to become a better mage he needed to learn to cast tier two spells, otherwise he would simply stagnate with a limited spell pool.

**********

The next day Arthur followed a very similar routine to the previous day, he woke up at around eight o’clock and ate a simple breakfast. Then he spent some time brewing potions and when Gaelin appeared he paid him and took the ingredients he gathered. But today Arthur noticed that Gaelin was looking quite a bit better than normal, he had a bit more muscle on him and he looked like he was eating better. His clothes also had a few patches where there used to be holes. Arthur didn’t say anything but he took note and gave him an extra copper coin for his work.

By ten o’clock Arthur was back at the guild and was selling off some of his potion stockpile to the alchemy club and received a small sum of silver coins. But with more than two hours left before his class Arthur wasn’t exactly sure what he should do. ‘I could look around for Calavia, but I think she is working today. I could go look at some of the magic items and see if there is anything interesting, but I probably don’t have enough money to buy anything I want.’

As Arthur thought about what to do he was sitting off in the corner of the alchemy club away from everyone else. He didn’t want to get in anyone else's way and he figured he was well out of it. But as he was deep in thought someone tapped him lightly on the shoulder.

“Excuse me, are you one of the instructors of the club?” A young woman with a distinct accent asked. Arthur looked up to see a roughly five and a half foot tall woman covered head to toe in guild robes, she even had her hood up. But she was noticeably not human or even an elf or dwarf, the grey fur that was only visible on her hands and part of her face gave that away.

“Sorry but I am not. But if you have any questions I might be able to help.” Arthur looked over at the young woman, she was clearly nervous about something since her hands were fidgeting as she stood.

“I- I need some help with brewing a warming potion, could you watch over me while I do it and make sure I do everything correctly?” Arthur nodded, it was a potion he was quite familiar with. When ingested it would help the drinker by warming them up, the most common use of the potion was during winter given just how cold it can get. There were of course several variations of the potion depending on the region and the plants available, that way as many people as possible could use it.

The young woman led Arthur over to a workstation with an assortment of ingredients and a piece of paper with one of the recipes for the potion. Quickly the woman got to work and started preparing the ingredients, she started by removing the excess leaves from the stem of a sunlight flower. She then started cutting the stem and flower into small pieces before she grounded them up in the mortar and pestle.

With the grounded up sunlight flower she added it to a small bowl of water and thoroughly mixed. She then placed it in the retort to distil the liquid into a bottle. As it was being distilled she picked up a nearby red root and grounded it up in the mortar and pestle, she then placed it in another bowl of water and put the bowl into the nearby calcinator and boiled it. Soon both the distilling and boiling were done and both liquids were added together before casting the final spell and finishing the potion.

Stolen novel; please report.

Once she was done Arthur stepped forward and inspected the potion. He did not see any problems with her process and when he looked over and even smelt the potion he found nothing wrong with it. She had quite the knack for alchemy as it turned out. “You did well, I see no problems with this potion and I expect you wouldn’t have that much trouble in selling it.” Arthur smiled and handed the potion back to the woman.

“Thank you. Is there any way I could improve though? I feel as if I have hit a wall with my progress and I don’t know how to bypass it.” Arthur noticed the young woman becoming a bit more relaxed as they continued their conversation.

“I found many of the recipes I use from the library, there are whole books in the novice section alone that are just full of potions to try out. The best part is all of the ones I found use ingredients that can be found locally, so you don’t need to spend money buying ingredients from far away.”

“Ok, I will go there when I am done here. And thank you Mr. for helping me.”

“You're welcome, and if you ever need help and I'm around, just ask and I'll do my best to help you.”

**********

Arthur managed to kill a bit of time by watching over the strange grey furred woman but he still had almost two whole hours to spend before the course would eventually start for the day. Normally he would go to the library and find something interesting to read there, but for a while there hasn’t been anything that he had the magical capabilities to learn.

Be Arthur found himself in the library anyways, not to read books but to find a nice quiet corner of the room to continue with the mana manipulation exercises as it was one of the few things that he could do that still gave him any noticeable progress at the moment. Surprisingly enough Arthur managed to spend a whole hour doing just that in a small corner, he could slowly but surely feel his grasp over the mana within his body improve. But after an hour of doing just that he had to stop for both energy and mental related reasons.

‘Gods be damned, I need a hobby or something. Or a job that I enjoy that isn’t just brewing potions day after day. Hey, I still have that recommendation to the mercenaries guild, that sounds like a half decent way to spend some time. I have experience working as a mercenary, so I should be able to get in.’

Arthur now had an idea of what to do in his free time, but that did not alleviate the wave of boredom he was currently feeling and would continue to feel for the next hour. When the course did start its second day Arthur had already been in there for almost twenty minutes. By the ten minute remaining mark other people slowly began to trickle in the room, the last person to arrive was the teacher Primus and he looked very sleep deprived.

“Good afternoon class. We will continue with the basics of casting tier two spells by giving each of you the chance to cast a few simple ones on your own. Now please line up in an orderly fashion while I hand out the papers with the spells in question I want you all to try out.” Primus handed everyone a piece of paper that contained three spells, they were Fire Orb, Water Orb, and Earth Orb. All relatively simple spells for tier two that allowed for the caster to focus more on the actual casting rather than the power or effect of the spell.

Each spell would conjure an orb with roughly a one meter diameter that could be made larger or smaller depending on the caster. Although Primus did not expect anyone in the course to successfully cast the spell on the first day he was letting them try it out and get some practical spells for their current skill level. As such the rest of the hour-long course consisted of everyone attempting to cast these spells as often as they could.

By the end of the hour everyone was exhausted from the mana drain and were more than happy to leave as fast as they could, Arthur was no exception. He was so tired that out of precaution he brought out his mage staff and used it to keep himself from tripping over his own feet. Slowly but surely Arthur made it back and unlocked his front door to step inside. He immediately locked it behind him and walked over to his bedroom to lay down, and when his head hit the pillow he was out.

*********

Two hours later Arthur awoke from his nap still holding his staff and his hair a mess. He felt as if he had just woken up for the first time that day, but the grumbling of his stomach told him that he needed to eat rather than think. So Arthur heated up the remaining soup he had with him and scarfed it down.

Now with something in his stomach he could think about what he learned in the course with Primus today. For starters casting a tier two spell and any other requires sufficient skill in manipulating the element it uses as well as the ability to manipulate the mana it uses all at once. The three spells given by Primus were simple enough that the elemental manipulation was not an issue, all they had to do was focus on the mana and collect enough at once.

Arthur also noticed a few students trying a few different things to bypass this large hurdle, notably by manipulating more than one ‘blob’ of mana at a time and using them both. The few students that were trying this proudly told Primus what they were doing and were promptly told that they were doing it wrong. The exact words were “Don’t do that, in the future you want to be able to cast spells without doing that. Now it might seem easier now but in the future it will become harder and more mana expensive. I would recommend doing it correctly now then trying to learn later.”

It was a little worrying for everyone to hear that there is a wrong way to do magic and no one after that tried to do anything quite that different.

The rest of the week and by extension the rest of the course went about as anyone would expect, it went quite smoothly with Arthur making significant progress in casting tier two spells. With only one more day of the course remaining Arthur had managed to successfully cast the Earth Orb spell with all of his effort. The orb was a little small compared to the one Primus made as an example, but for his purposes it was perfect.

It was quite mana expensive though requiring a whole eight points of mana to conjure in a moment. And to gather that much mana so quickly required just about all of Arthur’s will power at once and to keep it together. Thankfully Arthur was not the only one to get that far, four others had also managed to be at around his level who he spoke with for a bit. They exchanged a few tips and tricks to make things easier with each other but soon returned to practicing.

With the last day of the course just under twenty four hours away everyone was scrambling to perfect the casting of each of the three spells they were given as they were going to be used as the test. The speed and effectiveness of the spell as it was casted would determine your overall grade, and if you were unable to cast even one of the three you would fail.