About 30 minutes later, Tyler checked his watch. “Hey, it’s 6 pm we should probably head back now,” Tyler says.

“Ya, I kinda forgot about that. Thanks, man,” I say to him as we start to trace our steps back out.

About an hour later we exit our local tower. As we walk towards the parking lot I feel extremely happy that Tyler drove me here as I don’t think I remember how to drive.

“We should stop by the exchange to trade our mana gems,” Tyler says with a happy grin on his face. We were both about to make about 1,000 dollars. Which is a lot of money for two 18-year-olds to make in 6 hours.

I already have some ideas of what to do with that money. The first thing I need was a skill to increase my mana but if I remember correctly those cost about 80,000 a pop and were quite rare. One of the big downsides of my class what the lack of mana boosting skills.

There was one free solution, one of the downsides being the speed of growth is about one percent increase per month. The other downside what that it was a mana circulation technique. Mana circulation techniques can amp just about any type of spell if you had the right one, hell it could even decrease casting times.

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To throw away that kinda power for a minor increase in mana overtime was just stupid unless you happened to be a hex/curse-based class as there is no known circulation technique for those types of spells. As much as I am ashamed to emit it, I don’t know it either.

So after exchanging our mana gems for cash we hopped into Tyler’s car and started driving to my house, during the said drive I started a mana technique called mana absorption, which an improved mana increasing technique which has the aforementioned one percent per month growth rate.

As we pull up to my house Tyler stops and looks at me. “You didn’t tell them did you,” Tyler says with disappointment. “They deserve to know what you’re doing Zain. You can’t risk your life without at least letting them know.”

“Ya, you’re right, I was just so frustrated with how things were going and the tower was the one way I could see that would help me. I was scared that they would try and stop me.” I say as honestly as I can.

Tyler puts a hand on my shoulder, “Hey, I’m with you there the tower is our way up. Pun intended, but they need to know. Want me to be there with you as backup,” Tyler says while looking me in the eyes.

Ah, there was why he was my best friend. He was always there for me and called me out on my bullshit. “As much as that offer means to me to Tyler, I can’t get you involved in this. This is between me and my parents.”

Tyler nods as I get out of the car “Same time tomorrow?” Tyler asks. “Same time,” I say back.

As Tyler’s car pulls out into the road I feel, for the first time in a long time, a sense of dread. It was time to see my parents.