Time flew by for Lily, a testament to her unwavering dedication to her studies. Her relentless pursuit of knowledge made each day feel like a fleeting moment. She would blink, and suddenly, she'd be forcing herself to reluctantly go to bed, her mind still buzzing with the day's lessons.
After introducing glyphs, her job at the shop became far more enjoyable. While she never hated it, and sometimes the lessons were interesting, now she was actively looking forward to it. Her only regret was that she couldn't activate her work herself and was forced to wait for Camilla to use it.
Imagine a chef never being able to eat their own food!
Instead of teaching new crests, Arakil taught her more sigils for the ones she knew. Most notably the ones that controlled activation. It basically boiled down to storing a tiny amount of extra Mana into a sigil designed to trigger the glyph under a specific condition.
Lily now knew three types of activation: pressure, breaking, and toggle. Pressure was undoubtedly her favorite, as Arakil had alluded to, and Lily absolutely loved the idea of creating the "talisman" spells as he had described them.
After weeks of practice, she even successfully combined pressure and toggle to make herself a tiny lamp spell that she could activate by pressing down on the sigil combination as if it were a button, which would trigger the glyph. The joy of this achievement was palpable, a testament to her growing mastery of the craft.
It was probably her favorite creation. Since she had refined the spell to be extremely efficient, it meant that even the glyph ink, which Camilla deemed inferior, could handle it for extremely long periods.
Some of the limits on a glyph were absolutely fascinating and puzzling as to why they were considered a limit when they provided a beneficial effect. For example, her lamp spell had a limit of only projecting light in one direction rather than the default radial effect.
This was useful as it allowed her to direct the light away from her door and make her nighttime activities more subtle from any staff who might wonder why a light was coming from under her door. And yet, this useful feature saved Mana.
After weeks of seeing the various things Lily threw together with her ink, even Rose started showing some minor interest. Lily was happy to try to teach her big sister something, but to her dismay, the idea was short-lived as Rose claimed it "totally fried her brain" and that trying to remember her current lessons was filling it up too much.
Meanwhile, when Lily finally revealed a glyph with the toggle to Camilla at the shop, the woman nearly broke down into tears of joy; she was so pleased. While the glyphs with strict time limits were near-perfect, this allowed some much-needed leeway with some of the concoctions.
One example was a poison cleansing elixir that completely detoxed almost all harmful substances from a body and was a very expensive concoction. Brewing that potion took Camilla precisely 30 minutes, but there were moments when it needed to be paused to mix in the next batch of ingredients before resuming the boil.
Before introducing the toggle sigil, Camilla brewed it using three individual glyphs on different timers, and while it worked, it was tedious. Now, when she needed to add the next ingredient, she could pause the timer, and when resumed, it would continue as normal and never exceed 30 minutes.
Arakil had even suggested Lily could create a set of toggles and timers for the various steps of the brewing but then realized they both shouldn't reveal that much to Camilla. Lily had agreed, although she had started experimenting with something similar with a light spell that changed color at intervals.
However, the toggle improvement alone was enough for Camilla to reward Lily with what she had requested—a Mana potion.
This potion was a reward and a crucial tool for Lily's journey. It would provide Arakil with the necessary energy to find the solution to granting her Mana!
Lily had even watched Camilla brew it, using the glyphs she had produced. Honestly, she had expected the process to be much harder than it looked after seeing the poison-cleansing elixir, but in this case, the difficulty was the price of the ingredients.
Devil's Bitterweed, the primary ingredient used for the Mana potion, was a rare and potent herb known for its magical properties. According to Camilla, it was easily ten times the potency of Fairymoss, a far more common magical herb. Lily wished she could have asked for it to be made into glyph ink, but completing Arakil's search took priority.
The Mana potion, a glowing purplish-blue concoction, was beautiful. It shimmered with a magical glow that enchanted Lily. She recalled Arakil saying that one method that might have worked was overloading her body with Mana, but she knew the potential dangers of such an approach. The thought of chugging the brew only briefly crossed her mind.
Camilla warned her to be careful with it and keep it well hidden in her basket, as even in a city as safe as Ceedale, someone might be tempted to steal a potion as valuable as that. Luckily, Lily had the strongest draconic bodyguard to accompany her home, but she still kept it wrapped up and deep within the basket.
"Arakil! I finally got the Mana potion." Lily said, her voice filled with relief and joy.
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[Excellent. Be very careful and only administer it in small quantities as this is untested for us.]
Lily nodded and pulled out a pipette, which she had purchased at some point to improve the ink delivery to Arakil. No longer would she need to worry about meticulously cleaning one of her pens every time they simply conversed.
When the Mana potion struck the page, Arakil wanted to gasp. He had expected a decent amount, but this was like finding an oasis in a desert. He rapidly stored it away and waited to tell Lily the good news.
[It's outstanding! Assuming I haven't misjudged how much potion you have available, I should be able to finish my investigation!]
Lily silently cheered, joyous tears filling her eyes as she began to pour out more of the Mana potion onto the book.
To anyone else observing, it would have looked like Lily was vandalizing an ancient book and wasting a valuable potion, but the liquid vanished into the pages like a sponge.
"Do we finally have enough?" Lily asked when the last drop had disappeared; she was absolutely brimming with hope.
[Yes! Lily, this is spectacular. I may even have some surplus for whatever ritual or preparations we require.]
"Finally…" Lily mumbled happily. "How long will it take?"
[I'm unsure; while I could likely blow through all of this Mana in a hasty search, that would be shortsighted. I would estimate somewhere around a week if I balance urgency and frugality.]
Lily shook her head, ears flopping from side to side. "Don't waste it. I'm not sure how easily I can get another potion. Camilla made it sound like she did me a big favor when she made it by not taking the full payment."
[Excellent. Then, let me give you some more work to practice. While you can contact me in an emergency, I would like to put all my energy into research. I hope you don't mind doing some self-learning for a week?]
"No, it's fine. I got a lot to do anyway…" Lily mumbled.
[Once again, I'm glad to have such a diligent student. However, some of the sigils I will be teaching you now have dangerous applications, so you must promise me not to use them with glyph ink without my supervision.]
"I promise!" Lily declared without any uncertainty.
[Wonderful. Now let's start with the projectile sigil and how it can be optimized with range limits…]
***
Rose grumbled. She hated her lessons; they were so boring.
I bet if I could talk to the book, he would be able to teach me in a snap. I really hope that the Regarth teachers are better than this.
"Miss Rose, if you are so confident that you can ignore my lessons, then why don't you demonstrate the proper Mana control?" The teacher snapped.
Rose suppressed a growl. She got up and formed a perfect sphere of flame with barely a snap of her fingers; it had been getting easier and easier for her every passing day.
"Happy?" Rose asked, dripping with sarcasm.
"That's remarkably impressive. But I'd like to see you do the same with air," the teacher responded.
Rose felt her eye twitch. She loathed working with anything other than fire. Fire came as naturally as breathing, but everything else required her to follow the proper procedure.
She hated the proper procedure.
Rose sighed before taking a deep breath as she tried to feel the Mana flowing through her veins. This internal self-reflection was basically required for any spellcasting that wasn't handled through innate ability.
As she tried to recall the correct chant, the Mana in her blood stirred as she clarified her intent. She held out her hand.
"Ventus colliget in manu mea," Rose muttered.
A wind stream rushed to gather into her outstretched palm, scattering papers and stationery. Hair and clothes were blowing wildly.
"Happy?" Rose repeated, with a confident smirk before dismissing the ball of wind, causing further scattered items throughout the room when it burst.
"Aeris!" The teacher said with a scowl. "Not Ventus!"
"Who cares? I did it, didn't I?" Rose snapped back. "And Ventus is just the better version of Aeris."
"Who cares?" The teacher looked furious. "The words matter, girl. Right down to even the correct pronunciation. Which you'd know if you paid attention!"
Rose snapped. A feral growl burned in her throat as she slammed a fist into her desk. The wood cracked and splintered from the loud impact.
"Maybe I'd pay attention if your lessons were worth a damn!" She screamed back.
The teacher was clearly fed up, his face red like a tomato. "I'm sorry my lessons aren't up to your standard, you spoiled brat! They are meant to be introductory. You were supposed to have started at Regarth already. You were the one who wanted to stay behind!"
"I'm looking after my sister!" Rose snarled.
"Bah!" The teacher scoffed. "Lily would be better off without such a hotheaded sister. She's well-behaved and has a bright future despite her circumstances. But I suppose that might be ruined if she continues associating with such a hoodlum!"
Red. Rose saw red. How dare he! Before she knew it, she had basically leaped across the classroom. Her tightly clenched fist struck the teacher's face, sending him sprawling backward into his desk.
The other kids gasped in either shock or horror. Some pointed or cheered, while others fled screaming.
While Rose was certainly strong for her age, thanks to her heritage and the encounter, it still wasn't enough to completely overpower the teacher—at least not in a singular blow.
He may not have been the cream of the crop, but he had still graduated from one of the magic schools and even did a short tour of duty before finally deciding his passion lay in teaching the children. The years may have dulled him, but he still had some of those instincts engraved into his bones.
Leaping back up with surprising agility, he performed a shortened chant, creating a protective windscreen surrounding Rose. While he was angry, she was still a kid, and he had a duty to protect the other children in case she got out of control.
Rose snarled as if her instincts demanded she fight back against the teacher's flared Mana. She punched the windy barrier with a fist, but it hurtled ineffectually backward.
She punched again, but her fist was wreathed in flame this time. Again, however, it failed to penetrate the barrier. She began assailing the wall of wind repeatedly, flames licking up from her limbs, but it was a crude and imprecise method of attack where she should have been resorting to finesse and precision.
Capitalizing on her lack of experience, the teacher continued reinforcing the wall with a more thorough chant. Rose had impressive talent but was still unrefined, like throwing around a blunt instrument.
While she was distracted by punching the barrier, he began expelling the air from her prison—not enough to kill her, but enough to cause her to pass out and dampen the magical flames she was creating.
Rose was beginning to feel frantic as the world darkened around her. She tried to flare more flame, but it felt weaker for some reason. For some reason, the wood and paper around her even failed to catch fire. She couldn't understand any of it.
Her vision of red soon became replaced with one of black.