Arthur stood in his backyard as he kept The Grimoire of Lucius Gallio on a nearby table he created from nearby earth as he began casting the very first spell recorded within it. The spell was called Large Earth Spike and it would conjure a large spike of earth just like Arthur could do on his own but for a lot less mana and more power behind it.

Arthur had created a simple earth test dummy ten meters away from him to test out the spell. But as it turned out proper offensive tier two spells used more mana than the Earth Orb spell he practiced with and was also a lot harder to do. The spell would cost him ten points of mana each time he tried regardless of whether he succeeded or not, this resulted in Arthur running out of mana after just three casts of the spell.

This annoyed Arthur quite a bit as now instead of practicing he would need to wait for about an hour to fully recover enough mana to make any sizable progress. ‘This sucks.’ Arthur thought to himself and he sat down on a nearby chair that he created out of the nearby earth. ‘There must be some sort of potion that can bypass this, a mana potion or something that contains pure mana to be absorbed when drunk.’

But despite his wishful thinking he could not recall any mention of such a potion, if such a thing existed it would either be very hard to create or closely guarded by one or more of the powerful governments.

During this time that Arthur had to himself Arthur decided to read through the two books he brought with him properly. There were a large amount of spells within each despite the fact that each spell took up at least one whole page. The Grimoire of Lucius Gallio contained fifty or so offensive and defensive spells for a large variety of purposes. Some spells would bend around corners for surprise attacks, others would stun or restrain one or more targets and in multiple ways, one was by using the earth to grapple onto someone's legs.

But the second book, The Spellbound Encyclopedia Volume 2, also had just as many interesting and interesting spells for Arthur to try out. There was of course the levitation spell, but that was more for those preparing to become a proper evoker, there was a spell called Tiny Hut that could use the nearby earth to create a small little hut for an emergency situation. Another spell called Flexible earth would soften the earth the caster targeted to make it softer to help prevent injuries from falling, there was of course a limit to what it could do, but it was interesting and possibly useful until Arthur learns a flying spell. There were another twenty other utility spells within the second book that Arthur enjoyed reading over.

But reading those two books only took Arthur around forty minutes and he still had another twenty before he was going to start practicing again with a mostly full mana reserve. ‘I do have Brexius’s journal, I could take a look and see what else he wrote down in there.’ Slowly Arthur reached into his bag and pulled out the journal, its red cover just as pristine as when he first brought it with him.

Slowly Arthur opened the journal and flipped past the parts about the flesh golem. But what he found was something he did not expect, it appeared that after experimenting on rats Brexius moved onto creating proper albeit rather small flesh golems out of actual people. Using similar spells to the previous experiment Brexius managed to compress the bones of a single human into a smaller and denser shape. This process provided the strength and durability the previous ones had without creating anything too big. Arthur only briefly looked through this section but he was quite impressed by the skill and genius of Brexius.

The next section was dedicated to creating more humanoid sized flesh golems, with a similar set of spells Brexius combined three sets of human bones together to create a thicker skeleton for the flesh golem. The remaining parts were far too ahead of Arthur current capabilities without a proper analysis of the blueprints provided.

But Arthur didn’t exactly have time for that because by then the last twenty minutes had passed and most of his mana reserves had returned and this allowed him to continue with his tier two spell practicing.

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Arthur continued this late into the evening, he would use up a majority of his mana and then study the journal for an hour as he waited for his mana reserves to return. When they did he would go back to casting, and by the end of it all he managed to gain a decent grasp on the Large Earth Spike spell.

His understanding of what exactly a flesh golem was also improved through studying Brexius’s old works. Beforehand he did not actually know what he was doing, he was just copying what Brexius had done and hoped that his outcome would be somewhat decent. But that was the wrong way to go about things, what he needed to do was understand what each of the individual lines of ink meant. It was like a language he needed to decipher and when he did he could piece together his own.

But before he could do that he would need to study the book a lot more and receive some actual training, the best way to receive that is to become a evoker within the mages guild and attend the course specifically dedicated to teaching the basics. ‘But even Georgius thought I would need at least another half year to do that. Probably because of all the spell casting and practicing all these tier two spells. They are so much harder than the tier one spells.’

Arthur paused for a second upon recalling what happened to his former teacher, but he pushed those feelings aside for now as it was getting quite late and he needed to have something to eat before he went to sleep.

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First thing in the morning Arthur went outside and casted Large Earth Spike spell to be certain that he truly had a good grasp of the spell. The large singular spike appeared with little difficulty on Arthur’s side leaving him satisfied with the result. He quickly dispelled it and returned inside to have a decent breakfast before he would brew some more potions. He had been putting it off for a bit now, this resulted in his money slowly starting to dry up.

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‘Thank the gods that Gaelin brings me stuff everyday, if he didn’t I would be in a far worse situation by spending half the time I dedicate to alchemy just picking plants.’

Arthur started with a batch of warmth potions, since something called winter would be arriving in about a month or two based on what everyone was saying throughout the city, and those people talked about how cold it would get. Arthur suspected that any form of heat, even alchemical, would be very well appreciated even by those who disliked such things.

By the time that Gaelin arrived with the batch of ingredients Arthur had already finished two batches of the potion that were bottled and ready to be sold. Gaelin was of course paid his six copper coins and sent on his way as Arthur collected and sorted his new ingredients to where he needed them to be. Once he had finished up a few more batches Arthur cleaned up his workstation and placed the potions on a set of nearby shelves for safe keeping.

With several new batches of potions finished Arthur could now focus on practicing a few more spells that he thought would be useful additions to his tool kit. One such example was the spell called Earth Grips, this spell was the official and far more efficient version of the spell he used against the vampire assassin to trap his foot and keep him from moving. But Earth Grips was a bit more different than just that, the spell also targets more than one thing at a time and can be adjusted to one to ten individual targets depending what you need it for.

This versatility built into the spell made it a very appealing choice for Arthur, and he immediately set outside in his backyard to try it. He quickly created a simple earth test dummy from the nearby earth to test it out on. “Praecipio terrae ut scuta mea capiant et immobilia reddant, Praecipio terrae ut scuta mea capiant et immobilia reddant.”

Arthur began chanting and performing the correct hand signs as was described and shown in the book in the form of diagrams. This was the major reason why each spell took up at least one page. Unsurprisingly the first attempt yielded no results, but this did not dissuade Arthur, it took him quite a long time to learn how to cast the Large Earth Spike spell so there was no reason that this one would not be the same.

***********

When noon rolled around Arthur felt he was about halfway to casting the spell successfully, but he needed a break to rest his mind, and what would make for a better break than to take the time and sell off the batch of potions he brewed just this morning. Arthur felt it was a good way to spend a break, he would be able to sell some of his potions and get some money to spend on the basic necessities.

While he was there Arthur looked around for Calavia but was disappointed when he didn’t find her in any of their usual spots. So he returned home a little disappointed but with enough money to easily keep himself well fed and retain his stable lifestyle.

Arthur continued with his practicing all throughout the week, he used any opportunity he could get to continue doing so. He only took a day long break in the very middle of the week which he used to brew a few potions in the morning and in the afternoon he had lunch with Calavia where they spoke about everything that had been happening in one another's lives. Arthur spoke about his progress in learning tier two spells and Calavia talked about how the amount of wounded people had begun to slow, likely a result of whatever gang war was slowing and soon to end.

By the end of the week Arthur learned a total of six tier two spells, the first two were the Large Earth Spike and Earth Grips spells from his first two days. Then on his third day he learned the Air Barrier spell, when casted it would conjure a circular sphere of air that would block physical and gas based attacks at the same time. It did this by preventing air from flowing through it unlike the force shield and force wall that he could conjure from his mage staff. On the fourth and middle day of the week Arthur simply brewed some potions and spent his time with Calavia.

On the fifth day Arthur managed to learn the Outward Flame spell, the spell would conjure a large amount of flames and almost throw them outward starting from the target, the idea was that if you were surrounded you could cast this spell and at least give yourself some room to breathe and plan your next move. But one important detail to note was that the flames would only extend out to at most two and a half meters from the caster.

On the sixth day Arthur learned the Conjure Earth Weapon spell, the spell was the proper way to conjure up a weapon from earth. The resulting weapon was stronger, more durable, and far more deadly than anything that Arthur could conjure up on the fly, it could also conjure up shields as well making it quite versatile. Anything created by the spell would last for about an hour before the mana within would deplete and make the weapon crumble.

On the seventh and final day of the week Arthur learned the Propulsion spell. The Propulsion spell was created in mind to be used with the levitation spell to create a rudimentary flying spell. But Arthur found that if you managed to lower the output you could manage to use it to give yourself without any levitation effect a significant boost whenever and wherever you wish. Since it was manually controlled by the caster the output could be changed at will, that way you could use it to rapidly push you forward with some practice. Arthur managed to do something quite similar when he was fighting against the vampires within their lair.

With a decent amount of combat related spells within his repertoire Arthur was now quite confident in his offensive abilities. But there was one thing he noticed about the spells he learned. ‘Half of the spells that I learned over the last week were earth spells, two were air spells and the last was a fire spell with no water spells. I guess this shows just how much I relly on earth spells and how much I like and prefer them over other types.’

Now it was time to practice and learn some of the more utility spells that were within The Spellbound Encyclopedia Volume 2. There were a few that were of interest to Arthur, the first was the Earth Stairway spell that would create a stairway out of targeted earth that would remain until it was destroyed.

The second spell was the levitation spell because it looked to be quite interesting and a useful tool to know, and just because he had his mage staff to cast it for him now doesn’t mean he might not lose it or break it in some way. It would be a smart idea to know how to properly cast the spell on his own because just about anything could happen that might require him to know how to do it.

There were a few other less impressive spells that interested Arthur but for the time being the first two were his priority. The Earth Stairway because it could be used to easily pass steep hills that would normally require going around, and the Levitation spell because it had many applications.