Chapter 2: Magic and Training

Rainer woke up the next day excited. He had fallen asleep staring at his status and thinking about all the things that he could with his skills, and all of the ways he could level them. Usually, he was woken a bit after dawn by the maids to get ready for the day and for breakfast, but today he had naturally woken up from excitement, and it was still dark outside. He probably had at least an hour before they came to wake him.

He had somehow held off on casting magic last night, but now, he couldn’t wait. Focusing on the magic spell he had learned Rainer felt the instinctual knowledge of how to cast it flow through him.

Raising one hand, he started making strange gestures while words he didn’t know flowed through his mouth.

“…Parve lux” he finished exactly 3 seconds later, and from his hand a small ball, a bit less than a foot in diameter, glowing with a weak yellow light shot out slowly. It moved towards where he had been pointing, until it came to a stop when it hit the ceiling of his room, sticking there and providing a small light to the room. Grinning, Rainer proceeded to cast the spell again and again, lighting up the room with a soft, yellow light. Feeling the familiar headache of low mana, Rainer glanced at his Status.

Mana: 22/72

As he had expected, reaching around 25 mana made his head start hurting. He could still cast more spells, and he was curious to see how mana depletion from spells differed from mana depletion from using Inspect.

Raising his hand, Rainer cast the spell again, adding another glowing ball to his growing collection.

“Ah!” This time the pain was much more pronounced. Gritting his teeth, Rainer cast another one.

Mana: 13/72

Now he had really done it. His head was pounding, his mouth felt dry and unresponsive, his thoughts sluggish. Slightly trembling, Rainer started to cast another spell. This time was different though, and midway through casting the spell the pain and sluggishness made him stumble on one of the words. Immediately, he felt the spell unravel, and a sharp pain lanced through his head, bringing him down to his knees with a shout.

Rainer lay on the floor, gasping and sweating, until after a couple of minutes the pain slowly started to recede, and he sat up. Rainer opened his Prompts, wondering what had happened.

You have Suffered a Minor Magical Backlash!

- 10 Health

- -50% Mana Regeneration for 10 minutes

- Cannot cast Light spells for 10 minutes

Seeing the prompt, Rainer chose to start meditating. Hopefully, gaining more mana quickly would help him. Rainer cleared his head, and felt the soothing flow of meditation kick in, the pain being slightly pushed to the background. It was still there, but a bit easier to ignore. Rainer considered the information he had read from the system, and the events leading to it. Backlashes were obviously dangerous. If such a thing had happened to him when trying to cast a spell in a fight, he would have probably been killed. Also, Rainer didn’t know what made this specific backlash minor. Was it the spell? It’s level? The amount of mana involved? If a minor backlash inflicted 10 damage, it was likely that a major backlash could kill him since he only had 67 Health.

However, although his knee-jerk reaction was to stay away from these backlashes considering how painful it was, when considered rationally, Rainer realized something. In a fight, if he wanted to cast magic and be self-sufficient, he would have to learn how to do it while running, swinging a sword, dodging… even while taking damage. He knew that the reason he had suffered this backlash was because he had lost concentration while casting because of the pain. If he could train himself to keep casting even in difficult situations, it would give him a large advantage in fights.

And so, gritting his teeth, Rainer settled down for a painful hour. While meditating, not including the penalty from his backlash, Rainer regenerated 44 Mana per hour. Whenever his mana reached 15, Rainer cast his spell, and then returned to meditating. Now that he knew of the dangers of backlashes, he focused his mind before casting, and had much more success with casting despite the pain. In the nearly an hour and a half before the maids came to call him, he had only suffered the backlash twice. The pain of it hadn’t lessened, and Rainer was feeling absolutely fatigued. It felt like he had been awake the whole night, banging his head against the wall. All this and the day had barely started.

However, as the maids led him to the bath, Rainer glanced at his status and grinned. It was worth it! His Meditation skill, which was already level 23 and had been barely progressing a couple of percentage a day, although he practiced it for many hours each day, had advanced by around 50% and was nearing level 24. Light magic had reached level 2 and was more than half way to level 3, and he had even received a prompt saying he had gained +1 to his mana pool from training, something that had rarely ever happened since he had reached the caps to attributes per level for this level.

It seemed that the stress and pain made training more effective. While this scared him a bit, as now that Rainer knew of this effect, he knew that he would be putting himself through a lot of pain in his training. There was also a part of Rainer that was excited. He had always admired those characters in movies and books, who would train all day, putting themselves through a ton of hardships to reach their goals. He would always be suffused with a sense of purpose after reading these books and watching these movies, filled with the need to train and achieve something like those characters.

However, this would never last long. In his last life, he lacked the drive, the will, and the right goal. There had never been something truly burning in him, that he had been willing to work hard for. So, he always quickly gave up on these notions, and returned to living a mediocre life. Even in his time as a marine in the army, he had never been one of the soldiers who was always working. Always finding where they could help, training, practicing, cleaning their weapon, socializing with their squad. Even when he knew his life was on the line as a soldier, he hadn’t been able to be like them.

Of course, he hadn’t been a complete wastrel. He had done what was needed, never backed down from responsibility. He even knew that his squad mates appreciated and respected his drive and work ethic. But he had never pushed himself as hard as he could. Always, he would stop crawling a bit before some of the others, giving up when they still managed to push themselves forward. He would stop carrying the stretcher a bit before them, amazed at the way they could push themselves, and simultaneously disgusted with himself for not doing the same.

But now, that would change. He had a young body, endless opportunities, and he would mold himself into those same people he had always so admired and envied. He knew it wouldn’t be easy, but he was ready for the challenge. Magic, Power, and Adventure called him. Seeing the numbers slowly tick up in his Status beckoned him. He would make himself into something he could be proud of.

***

While bathing and then eating breakfast with his mother, Rainer had decided on a training plan for now. He definitely couldn’t keep himself with as little mana as he had in his training session for the whole day. Without meditation, he would be hard pressed to accomplish anything in such a state, definitely not the training that his father had told him he planned for Axes after breakfast. Instead, he had settled on 25 mana. Whenever his mana reached 25, he would either cast the Light Ball spell or use analyze on something. This ensured a constant, small headache, which would allow him to focus on other things while also training him to resist the pain, and also just general training for his magic and mana.

“The Count has asked me to guide you to your training when you are done, Young Lord”, Gloria, my personal maid, told me as I finished breakfast.

“Thank you, I am ready” I replied to her, as I got up to follow her, not forgetting to give a small bow to my mother when leaving the table as I had been taught. Gloria led me to a small clearing in the sparse woods behind our Manor.

The Argold estate was large, as befitted our status as counts, although I knew it wasn’t nearly as opulent and large as it could be. My grandfather was truly successful, and we were likely the wealthiest Counts in the whole kingdom, second in wealth only to the Ducal Families, and naturally the Royal Family. However, my grandfather preferred to keep this a secret. While it was known that he was successful, and his biggest and most impressive accomplishment, the Argold Trading Firm, was known throughout the whole kingdom, many of the other things he had done weren’t known. Small, but very lucrative trades with neighboring kingdoms, a large lumber company that was ruled by some baron as a proxy but was secretly his… my grandfather preferred to keep his cards close to the chest, something which I could appreciate, and I hoped would also make it easier to keep my own Abilities a secret once they inadvertently came to light.

As we came upon the clearing, we started hearing thudding sounds, of metal striking wood, and the steps and breaths of my father. As he came into view, we both stopped to watch him in awe. My father was effortlessly wielding his axe, slashing, twirling, twisting, dodging imaginary opponents. His axe was slicing into the trees he was hitting, leaving large scratches on the bark, his every hit making the two feet wide tree sway. He was moving so fast I had trouble seeing him. I once again tried to use Inspect on him, but the only thing that I got was that he was a Human. He was too high of a level for my skill, even though it was a Tier 3 skill. Although my skill couldn’t tell me what his attributes were, I could make a guess.

I knew he had reached Tier 2, which meant at least level 45. Humans got 4 attribute points per level, which meant at least 180 points. Assuming he used 80% percent of them on his physical attributes, and divided them evenly among those five, that meant he had placed around 28 points in each one. Adding at least the 10 points that the average level 1 human had in all attributes, that gave him around 40 in each physical attribute. Although I suspected he had much more than that, even that would make him 4 times faster and stronger than the average human I had known on earth. As we were watching, my father blurred forward, suddenly moving much faster than he had earlier, and his axe smacked into the tree, getting stuck more than half a foot deep in the dense wood. With a mighty pull he wrenched it out, and then turned to face us.

“Enjoy the show?” He asked with a grin. “Thank you, Gloria, you can leave him here. Be back to pick him up before lunch.”

“Yes, my lord” Gloria bowed and left, still clearly awed by what she had seen. I stayed standing there, grinning at my father, all thoughts of magic vanished from my brain, and suddenly I was much more excited to learn how to use the axe.

“Rainer, my boy, come on into the clearing. We will be meeting here every morning after breakfast to train you with the axe. Although you are much younger than when I started to train, your grandfather and I both think that you are old enough. He suggested that we use this clearing, since it is out of the way, and no one will see us. He seems to think you aren’t done surprising us, and that it is better to be hidden when we train. I look forward to you proving him right. Now come, take this and let’s start.” My father went to the edge of the clearing and picked up a small axe which he then handed to me. It was made of coarse wood, without metal, and was appropriately sized for me. The haft was wrapped in leather to make a firmer grip. I hesitatingly held the axe, now feeling less sure of myself.

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“Here”, My father said, as he reached forward and corrected the way I had positioned my hands.

“And your legs like this. Bend them a little. And slightly raise the axe into a guard position. There, that’s better.” After he was happy with my stance he continued.

“As I told you yesterday, Rainer, I am an Adept of the Axe. Another one of the benefits of being high leveled in a skill is that those that train under you improve at a vastly increased rate. This is especially true for those that are two or more ranks under you. Now let’s start.”

And then, we started training. We started with simple footwork, how to stay in a guard position while moving, how to quickly return to a guard position after my father gently pushed me. We trained until my arms burned. Every couple of minutes, I would take a step back, hold the Axe with one hand, and cast a Light Ball with the other. My father was at first surprised, but when he realized I was training my magic I could tell he was proud. It warmed my heart, silly as it sounded, and made me want to be even better. Every half an hour we would take a small break. I would sit down to meditate for 10 minutes, while my father would train. At first, he would shadow fight like I had seen him do earlier, but at some point, Lyra silently arrived, and then when I would take a break he would switch to a fully wooden axe and spar with her. They were a blur of axe, claw, flesh, and fur, and it was breathtaking to watch them. My father continued to periodically display sudden bursts of physical abilities, suddenly accelerating and moving faster than he previously could for a short time. Lyra similarly had some kind of boosting ability which she used.

I wasn’t able to tell who was better, as it seemed they were both holding back for fear of hurting the other, but if Lyra was actually able to go toe to toe with my father, she must also be Tier 2, or at least close to it. It was breathtaking to watch them, and made it hard to focus on my meditation. After one of the breaks, when my father noticed I was sitting with my eyes closed, he asked me what I was doing. I decided to tell him. I trusted him, and hiding all my abilities would simply make it harder for me to properly raise and use them. I still didn’t intend to tell him about my Tier 5 Ability, and I knew I would have to find some kind of excuse as to why I had so many skills. In any case, he was very proud of me for having a self-taught Tier 2 skill and told me to practice using it as much as I could. I wondered how he would react if he discovered Inspect, a Tier 3 skill…

***

The hours blurred, and soon my father placed a hand on my shoulder as I was striking the tree, stopping me.

“Gloria is here” he said, “It is time for lunch”. I nodded wearily as I placed the axe on my shoulder. I really wanted to drop it on the ground, but I had learned my lesson. The first time we had taken a break and I tried to do that he had shouted at me. Never drop your weapon. I looked at him now, wondering what to do with it.

“You can lay it by the tree”, He said. “Once you grow up, we’ll get you a real weapon, and then I'll teach you how to care for it.”

I laid the axe on the tree and followed after Gloria and my father. The maids would bathe me, and then I would eat lunch with my father, after which he would leave the estate, likely to patrol the estate and our lands, while I would be left with my grandfather. As we walked, I opened my status while pondering on what I had learned. Towards the end of the training, although my stamina had kept regenerating at the same pace it always did, I had felt much more fatigued. It seemed like I lost my stamina faster, and that at the same amount of stamina, I felt much more tired and weary than I had only hours earlier. Clearly, the numbers were only part of the equation, and the more I exercised the more tired I would get, and the more time it would take to recuperate between bouts of action. Similar to how it worked on Earth, really.

As I walked after my father, I realized that I had forgotten to ask him about his sudden bouts of strength and speed. Realizing that he wouldn’t appreciate me asking while Gloria could hear us, I cursed myself and determined to remember to ask next time we were alone. Bathing and eating were a quick, efficient affair. During lunch, my father talked a bit about ravens. How long they lived, what they ate, how much time an egg took to hatch, where they liked to make their nests. He truly had a wealth of information that he slowly started to teach me. After that, I found myself in my grandfather’s private study.

I had never been allowed inside before, and I took a moment to appreciate the room. The walls were covered with shelves, some of which held various items, and most of which held books. I could immediately tell that the most expensive and rare items and books were on the shelf behind him, various old tomes and glinting rings set with diamonds. I couldn’t wait to start using Inspect on everything in here, but sadly I had used Inspect on some piece of furniture just a couple of minutes ago. I would wait until I had 25 mana to use it, or else I wouldn’t be able to hide the effects of low mana from my grandfather.

“Rainer, come sit. Trent, you can leave us for now” he said. I frowned, not realizing who he was talking about, before suddenly a man seemed to materialize from the corner of the room, wearing leather armor and a cloak, before nodding at my grandfather, grinning at my shocked face, and leaving the room after closing the door behind him.

I turned my shocked face to my grandfather, waiting for him to explain what had happened. He chuckled at my confusion. I guessed seeing a two-year-old behaving like I did must be quite funny indeed.

“As you know Rainer, I am quite a rich and successful man, but I have no talent in combat. Apart from the normal guards of our estate, I employ various people to keep my business and me safe, and naturally that extends to you as well. Trent is quite skilled in stealth, which is why you didn’t notice him until he moved.”

“Now, I managed to talk with your father before he left, and he told me you persisted with casting your spell throughout your whole training with him. Very impressive, and I expect you to do the same here.” It seemed my plans of Inspecting all his items were over.

“Now, the best way to train Trading is by actually trading. While I do plan on taking you to the city with me to get you some hands-on experience, we won’t be doing that today. For the near future, you’ll be spending your time from lunch to dinner here with me, where I will be teaching you what I can of Trade and Negotiation. On days I can’t be here, of which there will be many, you will be learning Reading, writing, Etiquette, and general education from your mother.” I nodded my head, already planning to Negotiate with my grandfather to read books from his collection on days like that. The books my mother made me read were dreadfully boring.

“As you can tell Rainer, me and your father have decided to treat you seriously. You are much more mature than others your age, and we will treat and train you accordingly. You are receiving training from multiple adepts that few in the kingdom can receive, especially at your age. Treat it with the proper respect.” After seeing me seriously nod, my grandfather slightly smiled, likely at the contrast of a seriously nodding two-year-old.

“Good. In the Klayton kingdom, and really in most other kingdoms and empires, the most common denomination of a coin is the copper coin. 10 copper coins make a large bronze, and 100 coins are equal to a silver coin. 10 silver coins make a large silver, and 100 silver make a gold. Ten gold are a large gold, and while there are platinum coins, those are very rare and rarely used. Now, in an ordinary city, a meal…”. My grandfather and I talked for hours. At first, he just lectured me about a ton of things. Coinage, prices of food, housing, clothing in different villages and cities. How much a fisherman makes, how much a farmer makes, how much a soldier in the army, a guard, the average Knight, the average Baron, the average Count…. He taught me many things, many of which I would sadly not remember. He assured me that eventually I would know all of this.

Then, we started an exercise. My grandfather invented a city in our kingdom, told me about it, what it imported and exported, what villages surrounded it… then he metaphorically gave me 20 gold and told me to make money. I said I wanted to buy a shop. Then I had to choose where. Somewhere with a lot of travel, but costly, or more out of the way? How much was I willing to pay. He then Acted as someone who was willing to sell me a shop, but only for 30 gold. I tried to convince him to lower it, but nothing I did worked. I tried “searching” the city for other opportunities to buy the shop, and after half an hour of no success grandfather told me night was falling and asked where I wanted to sleep. An inn? What kind? How much was I willing to pay? What about food? And so, it went on and on and on… after about two hours and a metaphorical week I was out of money and had succeeded in doing nothing. Then, we started again. This time I had a stall in the market and had to choose what I was selling. Then, my grandfather would Act out customers and I would have to try to sell to them.

Every ten minutes, he would roll a die on the table. At first, I didn’t understand what he was doing, until after 4 throws he rolled a six, and then he told me a street urchin had stolen 50 silvers worth of goods from my stalls. Then I had to try to hire a guard without leaving the stall… I still had the stall, and managed not to lose too much money, when the time for dinner came. I had learned the skill Bartering, which was a subskill of Trade, and I suspected I would also have learned Acting if I didn’t already have it.

During dinner, my grandfather went over everything I did, and told me where I had gone wrong. What customers I could have pushed for more, what tells some customers had that would have told me that I was pushing for too much before they left. What I should have chosen to do with the money, where I should have bought produce to resell in my stall. It was exhausting, and I was frankly amazed by how much he had managed to teach me without us exchanging even one copper. He also told me that he himself was a Journeyman Barterer and Apprentice Actor, which is why he had taught me those skills now but hadn’t awakened them for me yesterday.

After dinner, I excused myself from the table and went to my room. I closed the door and all of the blinds. I was planning on practicing my magic, but first I sat down on my bed and meditated, letting my mana recharge back to full. While the practice I had done in the morning had been very effective, before I got back to that I had some ideas I wanted to try. It took more than an hour until my mana was full, and I used this time to calm my mind and body. It had been a very difficult day, and the thought of this now becoming my new norm was frankly terrifying. Remembering my conviction from the morning, I firmed my heart, and once my mana was full I was ready to start.

Taking a deep breath, I held both hands aloft, and focused on the spell. I had cast it many times today, and knowledge of how to do it felt much clearer than in the morning. I already knew that casting the spell with my left hand, which was my off-hand, was identical to casting it with the right. Now, I would check what happened when I tried casting with both hands.

I started casting the spell, but this time focused and used both hands, each hand doing the necessary movements, mirroring the other. As I finished the spell, I felt a larger than anticipated amount of mana leave me, and the light ball that shot forth from my hand was larger and brighter than those from the morning. A prompt flashed in the corner of my vision, and I opened it, eager to see what had happened.

Congratulations!

You have learned the skill Double Cast(Tier 3)

Double Cast is now Level 1!

+201% to effect of spell.

+299% to cost of spell

You have become a Novice.

You are limited to Double Casting Novice spells.

A Tier 3 Skill Rainer grinned. Although right now it wasn’t cost efficient to use it, since it cost three times as much and only had twice the effect, Rainer naturally had 100% affinity to the skill, which meant he would eventually become a master. At that point, he could cast a spell for twice the cost and thrice the effect. Absolutely Incredible! Rainer suspected that learning a Tier 3 skill so effortlessly was very, very out of the norm. If he didn’t have such a high affinity for the skill, he would have likely needed to work on it a long time, with someone helping to guide him, before he unlocked the skill.

Glancing at his mana, Rainer saw that he had indeed lost 15 mana to cast the spell. He couldn’t wait to start leveling this new skill, but first Rainer had more ideas he wanted to try. One of them was to cast two different spells at once, which would require him to have another spell and therefore wasn’t feasible right now. The other was to try to shorten the casting time for the spell. This one was something he could work on now. Also, such a thing would probably grow more complicated the harder the spell he was trying to shorten was to cast. Such a simple spell like Light Ball was therefore perfect to use in order to learn it.

Rainer started by once again meditating until his mana was full. Then, he first cast the spell normally, trying to focus on the words and gestures he was making. After he finished this, he once again tried to cast the spell, this time trying to speak and move faster than his instincts told him to. Immediately, a sharp lance of pain shot through his head as the spell unraveled. Checking his prompts, Rainer saw he had suffered another minor magical backlash. He absently noticed that suffering a backlash when your mana was nearly full wasn’t nearly as painful as when you had almost no mana. Still very painful though, and Rainer sat down to meditate until the 10 minutes were over.

After that started a very painful hour for Rainer. He tried everything he could think of, speaking and moving faster, mentally trying to move his mana faster, mentally pushing against the construct of the spell to try and cast faster. Everything resulted in a backlash, although he did feel like he was getting closer. He also noticed that the pain of the backlash was getting slightly easier to ignore.

Eventually, he was stopped by a knock on the door.

“Rainer?”

“Yes Father”

“Me and your grandfather are waiting for you in his private study. Tidy yourself up and then come down to meet with us, we would like to talk”. Suddenly very nervous, Rainer took a couple more minutes to meditate before he started walking downstairs. Clearly, he had been too exceptional today, and now he would have to have “the talk” with his father and grandfather. He only hoped that the plan he had come up with would work.