Aleister woke up and felt like garbage. He debated sleeping in a little bit more, but decided against it and rolled out of bed before heading out to run. Myra hadn’t come back yet, so he routed his course to where he would end his third hour at Castle Kaynmur. However, as he entered the Throne Room, he noticed that no one was there and so headed down to Crystal Lake. Where he also found nothing. He asked a couple of the servants around the castle and learned that she was moved to a personal infirmary.

“You know, I can feel all of this running really melting away all the extra weight on my body,” Aleister said as he entered the castle dining hall.

“How have you managed to fail my diet every day?” Syn complained.

After picking up a fruity looking pastry, he said, “Actually, I did complete it the one day Myra cooked that food for me.”

“You’re lucky that I can’t stop you from eating right now.”

“And is there a reason you can’t just grab this from me?”

Syn looked at the dishes wistfully. “No, there isn’t, but I’m not going to always be there to stop you from indulging in whatever bad behavior you exhibit.”

Aleister shrugged and put the pastry back down.

“So you’re just going to touch the food with your dirty hands and then put it back down for someone else to eat?”

After the click of his tongue, he picked up the pastry and shoved it into his mouth. Although temporarily satisfied by the sickly sweetness, he understood that it wouldn’t give him enough energy in the long term and consumed more nutritional food before heading back out to run.

Another day passed by and turned into weeks. The last day of the month approached.

With Syn’s help, he sorted and identified every last herb and cleaned a majority of them. There were still several that required special tools and solutions not available to him at the current moment and thus left them for later. The final evaluation revealed that while not massive, his gains were still substantial. In total, the cleaned herbs were worth around one hundred gold coins. This didn’t even account for all the herbs he ruined, or those that were not yet clean.

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All of his running started to show results, as he regained most of his old physique. Unfortunately, due to the lack of other physical training, not all the weight he lost was just fat. Some of it was muscle, too. Syn expected this to happen and adjusted his training schedule for the following month. Now, he would only run for three hours, work out for another three hours, and then practice weapon techniques and fighting for the next three.

“Huh, now that I think about it,” Aleister said, staring at his ceiling from bed, “I haven’t actually held a weapon in a long time.”

“Which is why you need to practice again.”

“Problem is that I need to buy a weapon, but I still have no money.”

“I’ll replace your weapon practice with alchemy for now,” Syn said.

“But then I’m doing alchemy, followed by an entire day of alchemy!”

Syn dismissed his complaints. “Too bad, that’s the way yours schedule is aligned.”

He shook his head and rolled out of bed. It was the first day of the week, so he wandered over to Crystal Lake and collected some more Anima Caligo for Master, and some more water for himself. Upon his return, he put the jars next to his previously collected ones and had amassed around thirty in total. He decided to not collect anymore for two reasons. He wasn’t going to use any of this water for a while in the first place and because he didn’t want to risk anyone in the kitchen finding out why they were missing all of their jars.

At his desk was his cauldron. He wore some blacksmith gloves and heated it up using some spark stones, and poured in some normal water, letting it come to a boil. As he waited, he ground up multiple leaves of fluxroot using his mortal and pestle at a ratio of one fluxroot leaf per two cups of water.

Fluxroot was one of the most common herbs and was used as the base for basic potion creation. His cauldron was on the more beginner side, as it only had two vents, but the material used to create it was not cheap at all, even if the design was basic. The very thick cast iron was expertly melded and contained white flecks throughout due to the addition of a moonstone salt. It helped absorb some of the heat, making it easier to control the temperature. A soft hiss erupted from his cauldron, letting him know that it was time to continue.

Slowly, he took off the lid and mixed in the fluxroot flakes. The water absorbed the herb and turned into a murky green—many shades darker and less vibrant than the fluxroot itself. Once the leaves no longer floated to the top of the mixture, he covered the cauldron and doused the fire underneath it. Now he just needed to let it simmer for an hour.

Lounging down into his chair, Aleister looked over at Syn, who was lying down on his bed. “I still don’t understand how I’m supposed to become a Weaver from this.”

“Once you do understand how, that’s when you will become a Weaver. If you knew how to become one right now, you already would be one.”

“So, its just going to come as a sudden enlightenment or something?” he questioned.

“It might be sudden in the moment,” Syn said. “But once you are enlightened to it, you will become one and understand everything that led up to it.”

“Why does this have to be so damn vague?” Aleister complained.

“Thus is the life of one who studies the arcane.”

Without any warning, the door to his room opened.