Chapter 9

The next day after a frank conversation with his relatives, Nick woke up in a good mood. He was glad to know that he did not have to deceive anyone and they really loved him like a son. Nick did not want to admit it to himself, but he considered them his family and loved them too.

Now Nick knew about the limitation of the number of skills, this limitation came from the strength of his soul. But he still didn't understand when to stop with obtaining more skills. He already had 8 skills, which should be a very large number for his age. So he decided to continue to take the skills that he found useful, before he was still hesitant about taking the skill Pain Resistance [Common], but now he definitely decided to take it since he already had a legendary title.

Congratulations, you have acquired the skill Pain Resistance [Common] Lv. 1

Deciding to go on to breakfast, Nick went to the bathroom and then made his way to the dining room, where all of his family members had already gathered. Sitting down at the table, his father addressed him.

"Dylan, your magic tutor will be coming to see us this afternoon. She is a young girl who has the class of Secret Mage [Rare] Lv. 200 and Magic Teacher [Uncommon] Lv. 173. I hope you will find a common language with her. Her name is Alice Verst. She was notified of our agreement with you, so until she arrives, you will be training with Benedict. Your new skills and alchemical mixtures will arrive soon."

"Thank you father, I can't wait for my magic practice to begin!"

After tomorrow, Nick went to train with Benedict. The new skill of pain resistance was very helpful against Benedict. Now, when he got a random blow, Nick could hardly stand it. While sparring with Benedict and defrosting the forms of the Phantom Sword art, Nick thought about how best to use tactics against the butler. Nick did not know the weaknesses of his instructor, and whether he had any, considering that he was of an unknown level. Nick knew that there were only two holders of the [Epic] class in the clan, they were his father and Artifact Master Rimel. Therefore, it would be logical to assume that Benedict had a special class, but what level was he? Realizing that there was no point in guessing, he concentrated on training. As it continued, Nick more and more noticed a certain rhythm in Benedict's attacks, he was sure that this was done on purpose, so he began to move according to this sequence. After every few quick blows, Benedict stopped for a second and then continued to strike. The more hits there were in quick succession, the longer he took.

"Benedict, why are you retreating after a series of blows?"

"Young Master, you've finally noticed. This is the main weakness of our sword art. At the highest levels, we can't attack continuously, it puts a lot of strain on our constitution and makes our stamina consumption much greater. So we regularly have to take short breaks between attacks. This is something we teach children from a young age so that they don't use our techniques without a break, otherwise they can easily die."

"Are there any other downsides to our sword technique?"

"Of course, young master, there is one more significant drawback, but you will not learn about it until you reach the Sword Elite."

"Benedict, please tell me about your level and class, if of course you want to do this?"

"Of course, you don't have to worry, young master. I don't have any secrets from you. I am [Phantom Sword Elite Lv. 335] [Special] with the [Phantom Sword Art Elite Lv. 623] [Special] Skill, my second class is [Great Butler Bodyguard Lv. 400] [Special]. Your father is a class one level higher than me [Supreme Elite Phantom Swordsman Lv. 400] [Epic]. His Phantom Sword Art allows him to hit intangible objects, like ghosts, spirits, mana constructs. I can only do this with my sword."

"I understand, but how does father do it?"

"As far as I understand, he concentrates his aura on the sword and thus can hurt everything spiritual. He also tries to develop his sword art to the level of Master, so he does not increase his class further. Master is the next level of sword art development, which is on par with Archmage. To develop this level, you need to be able to control your soul, which is not easy for anyone. We know that there are 5 Archmages from our four races and 10 Weapon Masters. There is also a Grandmaster of the sword in our kingdom. Very little is known about her, only that she is a [Mythical] class holder and has lived for over a thousand years."

"How many epic and legendary class owners are there?"

"Hmm, epic classes, I could be wrong, but there are no more than a thousand of them, it is unknown how many legendary classes, but definitely more than 20. And only two mythical ones are known. These are the chief elder of the elven domain and the grandmaster of the sword."

"What do you need to get an epic or legendary class?"

"It depends on what pit you are going for, to get an epic weapon mastery class, you just need to have one epic skill, the exact requirements are unfortunately unknown to us."

It was already approaching lunchtime and Nick decided to say goodbye to Benedict and hurry to his first magic lesson.

"Thank you for the lesson, I'll go learn magic."

"Of course, young master."

Rushing to take a shower and find his new teacher, Nick thought about their conversation.

So, it means that you need more than just one epic rank skill to get a stronger class, interesting. Maybe you need to somehow build your path exclusively from this skill, for example, my father is primarily a swordsman, but from Benedict's words, he has an epic class aura, which allows him to combine aura and sword art to achieve an epic rank in sword art, or he developed his main skill in another way. Maybe he has a couple more epic skills, but I won't know until I ask him about it. It turns out that in order to develop a class, you need to have a main skill higher than the class rarity. Or achievements and the path laid out for them can also play a role.

After taking a shower, Nick went to the room for his magic lessons. He managed to arrive before his new teacher. After waiting for 10 minutes, the door opened and a young girl of 20 years old came in. She quickly walked to the table and began to lay out her books.

"Hi Dylan, I'm Alice Verst and I'm going to teach you magic."

"Hello."

After her quick arrival, she briefly examined him and decided something for herself. Nick thought that she decided that he was a small, arrogant brat who thought that magic was fun and easy. He also looked at her more closely. Alice looked like a young woman, 170 cm tall, with neat features, black hair and green eyes.

"Let's not waste time, what do you know about magic?"

"Nothing?"

Apparently Alice did not expect such an answer at all and it was very obvious from her, considering that she froze while laying out the books.

"What do you mean nothing at all?"

"Yes"

Sitting down on the chair in front of Nick, she lost her temples in anticipation of a headache from Nick's training.

"Okay, let's look at everything briefly to begin with. The world consists of conditional components that together form our world. There are three varieties: material, energetic and spiritual."

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"Yes, it's simple."

"Okay, a human being is made up of a material body, various energies, and a soul. A human being has vitality, stamina, and mental energy. These are things that every human being has, but to become a mage, one must have a mana core. Some people are already born with their own mana core, and thus discover magical characteristics. Do you have a mana core?"

"Yes."

"Okay, this makes things a little easier, you don't have to forge a mana core. To start preparing for the Apprentice Mage class, you need to have the skills: mana sense, mana manipulation, and meditation. Having these skills, after some time you will be able to develop the skill: spell casting. And only then will you have the opportunity to choose the Apprentice Mage [Uncommon] class. Therefore, we will begin teaching you these skills."

"I already have the skill of mana sense, mana manipulation and meditation."

Alice looked surprised, because it was very rare for a five-year-old child to unlock all these skills.

"Okay, what level are they?"

"Hmm, skill Meditation [Uncommon] Lvl 144, Lesser Mana sense [Common] Lvl 55 и Minor Manipulation of Mana [Common] Lvl 61."

Alice tried to hide her shock, but she failed, when she chose the class of Secret Mage Apprentice, she had 7 skills of unusual rank and was considered almost the top of the magic academy. But in order to develop all these skills, she had to train tirelessly and drink an unrealistic amount of mana potions. She could not imagine how being a 5-year-old child could get an unusual skill.

"Now I understand why I had to sign a soul contract to get a job here. Well, that's very high and I'm sure you know it Dylan, why didn't you develop your spell casting skill?"

"I couldn't find the spell books in the library."

"Okay, okay! We'll get started on this today!"

"Ahem, I don't have any mana."

"It's okay, I have mana potions, what's your mana reserve?"

"190 MP."

"It's certainly not much, but for your age, it's very good. I think you can restore your mana reserves twice without getting hurt. Let's go outside and I'll show you a couple of simple spells."

After a short walk to Nick's favorite tree, Alice pulled out a glass vial with a blue liquid inside. Measuring it out with a pipette, she gave Nick what she decided was the right amount to drink.

"Mana should be restored within five minutes, here is the spell book. Today we will start with the first level spells of the wind element. To perform the first level spell gust of wind, you must first convert pure mana into aspected wind mana and then perform the spell. To do this, you must weave these constructs in the textbook from your magic. Spells can consist of different components, mainly this is a mana conversion construct, a spell form and various additional constructs that can perform different functions, for example a form that allows you to remotely control the spell. Each spell is a mixture of forms responsible for a specific action of the spell."

Nick looked at the textbook while Alice explained what the spell consisted of. He already understood all of this, various novels covered this topic well on the Internet. The textbook showed a simple spell design, but in order to perform it, he needed to create a mana transformation structure, which was much more complex. This form looked like an air ball of threads of different thicknesses, the fact that in the textbook this form of magic transformation was shown from three angles on 10 pages did not please him at all.

"You might get very confused seeing spells for the first time, but that's what I'm here for. I'll create a spell, and you try to get a good look at it with your mana sense."

"Fine."

Nick concentrated on his mana sense and began to look between Alice's outstretched hands. In her hands, the shape of the spell was not quite clear and understandable to him. It was more like a transparent haze of light blue color. Nick could not see anything between her hands.

"Sorry, I thought your mana sense would be able to see it, I'll do it better now."

Light blue threads became visible in the air, which roughly formed this structure, each thread was visible to the naked eye, which greatly surprised him. Seeing this, Alice decided to explain it to him.

"Mages can compress mana, and so it becomes visible to the naked eye. I am unable to compress the mana further in this structure, so I will hurry up and take a closer look."

Realizing this Nick focused more closely on the structure and seeing it in its entirety, thanks to this he began to better understand how it was depicted in the textbook. It was indeed a bundle of threads of varying thickness in the shape of a cloud. Looking at it carefully, he tried to create this shape between his hands. Slowly his magic began to separate into threads and make this shape, when he was able to make it a third, he did not have enough control to hold it together. Alice dispelled her spell and began a new lecture.

"Now I understand your skill level, it was not bad. I admit honestly, it is not the best starting spell because of the difficulty of creating the air mana transformation form. And you did it incorrectly, your mana sense was not enough to see that the construction in the form of the spell is sometimes hollow. The spell is not only made of threads, but also of hollow tubes. Now you will begin to build a simple first-level spell, a force strike. It is made entirely of un-aspected mana, so you should be able to handle it."

Alice took out another book and opened it to the first page, with the simplest form. It looked like a ball that in section consisted of straight threads inside the structure. Nick was a little angry why she did not give him the simplest spell right away, but he almost understood that she needed it to compare the speed of his growth. Alice silently created this spell between her hands and waited for him to do the same. Nick concentrated his mana sense and was able to perfectly see the whole spell, after five minutes he was able to repeat it exactly.

"That's good, well done, it was very fast. Now the only thing you need to do is activate the spell with your will, some mages when casting spells pronounce it to better pour their will into the spell. But basically it doesn't matter, since mages can't manipulate and feel their will to the level of a [Great Mage]."

"Why can't we see our will?"

"It's simple, we just can't, some advanced magicians can sense someone else's will as well as their own, but will is more like a state of mind or soul, as each one prefers to understand it."

Alice squeezed the spell tighter and cast it. "Power Arrow." The spell transformed into blue light that hit the tree and made a small dent in it, about 10 cm in size. Nick decided that he needed to explain something to Alice.

"Miss Alice, please don't break my favorite tree."

"Okay, okay, get started already."

Nick focused even more on the spell and willed it to be used. "Power Arrow." His spell glowed brightly with mana and flew towards the ground. It managed to touch the ground and only slightly pressed the grass. Nick was almost upset, but in the corner of his vision he saw a new notification.

"Well done, it'll do for the first time. Your spell had such a bright light because it was imperfect, done correctly the spell remains completely invisible to normal vision. Now take the spell casting skill and drink a new mana potion. You still have a lot of training ahead of you if you want to do something significant with these 50 mana."

Congratulations, you have unlocked the new skill Casting Minor Spells [Common].

Congratulations, you have acquired a new skill Casting Minor Spells [Common] Lv. 1

Finally , now I could unlock the Mage Apprentice class, how hard would it be to unlock the Mage class at 15? And what's wrong with these spell forms anyway, why are they so clunky?

"Miss Alice, are there other forms of magic?"

"Of course there is, there is Rune magic, Circle magic, word magic and many other types of magic. But in our kingdom we mainly use three types of magic, the magic that I showed you has no name, but for convenience we call it form magic. The second magic is Rune magic, many blacksmiths and rune mages use it to enchant various objects, or simply create spells just like us. And the last magic is holy magic, it is used by priests, paladins and so on. It is very similar to form magic, but it has many differences, which is why it was elevated to a separate type of magic. Although personally I believe that this was done by the church in order to have a monopoly on it."

Nick wasn't surprised at all that the church ruled over its holy magic, most likely holy magic is also divided into shapes, runes and circles like the rest. It's just that the church decided that it was too special to use "other" magic except its own. After drinking another bottle of mana potion, Nick looked more closely at the form of the power arrow spell and noticed where he had made a mistake in the past. When Alice showed him again how to create this spell correctly and shot it at the ground. The ground flew in all directions, as if something very heavy had fallen there. His second cast of the spell was more successful, but there was still too much light. His spell sank the ground by 2 cm. Which in his eyes seemed like a success. Nick put about 70 MP into this spell, which left him with enough for two more of the same weak spells. The second and third attempts went the same way and Nick began to feel morally drowned, as after a long time of collecting mana and meditating. He had a slight headache and Alice decided to end today's magic lesson.

"You're doing great, after a few months of training you'll even be able to use elemental spells. But I want to tell you not to count on becoming a full-fledged mage right after you join the class. You still have to decide what kind of mage you want to be. I could have become a mage at 15, but I chose the path of a secret mage's apprentice, it was also [Uncommon] level. But it gave a class multiplier for other schools of magic. Anyway, we'll talk about this later, you can go rest, see you tomorrow!"

"See you tomorrow, Miss Alice."