I spent the rest of the day working on healing potions, with Kene supervising me for a while until I got the process down, and then they left me so that they could tend to the store more closely.

By the time dinner rolled around, I’d managed to make four additional healing potions, all of which were second gate.

“Did you want to practice converting one of them down?” Kene asked.

“It’s probably wise,” I said, taking the mason jar they handed me, and pouring one of the potions into it.

“It’s pretty simple. Flow your second gate mana through it, then start to make it more… Diffuse,” they instructed. “It’s like you’re concentrating it to overcharge a spell, but in total reverse.”

It took me a few tries to reverse the process, but when it finally did, the liquid in the mason jar expanded until it was roughly double its size. There was more mana too, and I tried to liquify it, but it just steamed away in a vibrant red gas.

“Fifty percent conversion isn't bad for your first attempt,” Kene said with a nod. “Now, the first gate stuff is good for instantly healing some scrapes, scratches, bruises and that sort of thing. Second gate can handle cuts, sprains, maybe a thin crack in your bones or a mild concussion.”

“Noted,” I said as I put the vials and mason jar on a shelf.

Kene and I had a nice dinner of a quick chicken curry, and I spent the night on the couch before I said my goodbyes.

“Come back and see me soon,” Kene said, and I nodded enthusiastically. They looked a bit awkward for a moment, then leaned forwards and gave me a gentle peck on the cheek. I turned bright red, kissed their cheek as well, then waved and flew off.

As I flew, I noticed that my broom was beginning to make a strange jittering when I turned. That probably wasn't good, but I ignored it for now, since there wasn't anything I could do about it.

When I got home, I broke out the marbles that Ikki had given me to practice with.

Each marble was similar, giving me the impression of a design and color, and it was easy to pick up on the color. The design, on the other hand, was a lot more complicated.

Each one was a fairly complex design, almost like a spell array, and trying to get each of them drawn out took me a long time, most of the two days that I had left of free time.

Whenever I needed a break between the castings of Lesser Psychometry, I’d practice sketching my full gate spells and Transport Item, as well as the second layer of the Depths of Starry Night technique.

That was interesting. I wasn’t exactly sure, but I felt like I could feel the technique branching into different paths, but I wasn’t anywhere near mastery, and I couldn’t get a good grasp on what exactly each of the paths was. The water dragon librarian had said something about picking the chaotic stars, orderly constellations, or empty void…

But while that was awfully poetic and pretty, it told me nothing at all about how it was going to affect me or my magic.

When Solsday came rolling by, Meadow and I spent a while working with Blademoss. My reinforced connection to Dusk made it easier for me to open a small portal to call the Blademoss from, but Meadow was certain that I should be able to cast the Enhance Plant Life spell through Dusk, then use our connection to conjure the temporary moss directly, no portal necessary.

I agreed with her in theory, but theory was different from practice. After several tries, Dusk and I were able to connect the spell and grow temporary Blademoss, but we were still reliant on using portals to let that temporary moss escape out and be used for attacks.

The Blademoss’ cutting aura was strong, though. Stronger than a direct hit from a Briarthread was, at the very least, which did make sense. Briarthread was a combination of offense and defense, so it was only natural that it wasn’t as offensively powerful.

After my mana was dry, Meadow inspected the potions I’d made, as well as confirmed the Fungal Folk's gift mushrooms were safe.

“They’re not quite up to the standard of what I’d sell in a professional alchemist’s shop, if I owned one,” Meadow said. “But they’d be more than enough to pass the healing potion test for my first year herbalism course.”

“You teach a class on that?” I asked.

“Oh yes,” she said, nodding. “The University of Lledrith has a solid mana budget. Its headmaster is an occultist, and almost all of his mana is expended every day on maintaining the university. There are also several teachers who are arcanists, or who have even used tools to ascend to seventh gate. All in all, they’ve more than enough power to keep several simulacra of various people around campus as teachers.”

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She waved a hand to stop me from asking my next question.

“Now, none of these simulacra are as powerful as the originals – my construct is only fifth gate, for example – but they’re still excellent to help people teach.”

“Huh,” I said, nodding. “How about other places, like Mossford University?”

“They tend to expend less of their mana on maintaining simulacra, but they’ve got many arcanists working there. I believe their head dean is seventh gate mage as well.”

Hadn’t Liz made a comment about Orykson being the most respected of the Occultists in Mossford? The head dean must be another one. That was interesting, but it wasn’t really relevant, so I just filed it away for later.

Meadow then sighed and tapped her walking stick against the ground.

“Well, there is something I should bring up. It’s not my intent to embarrass you, but as my apprentice, I do feel like it’s necessary.”

My stomach twisted, and I bit my lip.

“What?” I asked.

“Your combat skills are sub-par,” she said. “You’re not horrible, but you’re not where you need to be. I don’t expect you to be able to match someone like Ikki, who’s dedicated his life to the art of mage combat. Even Ed has much more physical conditioning than you.”

I groaned and ran a hand through my hair.

“You’re going to make me run laps and practice kicking, aren’t you?”

“Hardly, child,” Meadow said with a snort. “There are some, like Ikki, who cleave to the idea that magical and physical must both be tempered. I’m not saying it’s a wise idea to do nothing to the point of muscle atrophication, but physical fitness is not the only factor in mage combat.”

“What is?” I asked. In response, she reached out and tapped my forehead.

“Your mind,” she said. “For example, during your fight with the Abyssal Shambler, you used Burn Future. Why?”

“I needed power immediately, and I was out.”

“You have your Temporal Basin, and it’s integrated into the staff now,” Meadow pointed out. “You could have drained power from that, and converted it. It’s inefficient, but it would likely have been enough to help pay off the debt, if nothing else. Even you realized that in your initial fight you made a mistake by not drawing out your staff.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it again.

What was there to say?

She was right.

I might not be terrible in the fight when it comes to directing my mana flows to the right spells for the effects I wanted, but…

Abruptly, I realized that was what Orykson was trying to teach me with Pinpoint Boneshard. Learning to control a bunch of shards at once wasn’t just to get the maximum benefit out of the spell, but also to get me to split my focus, and look after several factors at once.

“It’s a problem that will only increase as you grow in power,” Meadow said. “At the moment, you’ve seventeen spells to juggle, for your first gate only. Include your second gate, and you’ve more than twenty.”

“That’s a pretty average amount,” I pointed out. “I mean, Ed knows about that many, as does Liz.”

“It is, and it’s the standard path for a reason. Rare or unique doesn’t always mean useful, and common doesn’t mean bad. But it requires you to split your focus, and focus on your mana to a greater extent than most people ever really think about.”

“So, what do I need to do?” I asked.

As it turned out, the answer was drills. Lots and lots of drills, of all different sorts. Meadow posed hypothetical situations, and forced me to flex my mana in the right way, or to say where I’d be drawing power from, or a dozen other things.

She added her own magic into it as well, using invisibility potions to ambush me, or tossing spells that I needed to react to. It was all low powered stinging spells and the like, but that didn’t make getting hit by them fun.

"This doesn't seem like perfect practice," I pointed out to Meadow. “I mean, I’m improving, but what about a real fight?”

"Of course it isn't perfect," she said, shaking her head. "Even if I got a dream mage to simulate perfect combat for you, it still wouldn’t be perfect. Sparring with Ikki or your brother or me or anyone else is good, but still not perfect.”

“Then… What is?” I asked. “Just raw experience?”

“Precisely,” Meadow said, nodding. “Time, experience, and practice. But these small things, they’re helpful for you. They allow you to take small steps. Is using flash cards or blocking a stinging spell from me going to revolutionize your combat power? No. But it will help. And if you’re able to think half a second faster when facing a threat, then that may be the half a second between life and death.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to train my man…”

I paused. Training how fast I could move mana would be good for a normal mage, but if I completed Beast Mage’s Soul, then my mana would move through me at the speed of my thought and will, since it’d always be primed inside of me.

“Exactly,” Meadow said, picking up on what I’d been about to say.

We continued our mixture of playing games, sparring, and straining my brain to its limits before we headed in to make dinner. Liz had come over, and while she was terrible in the kitchen, she did make for some good company. After dinner, she, Ed, and I all sparred together.

The following morning, Ikki arrived, and we spent a while talking about the impression I got from Lesser Psychometry.

“Not bad,” Ikki said, nodding. “Getting impressions from objects with a real history is harder.”

“I used it on a wardstone, and yeah, I had a way harder time working on it,” I said. “I got a general impression, but no scenes.”

Ikki eyed me for a second with an expression I couldn’t read, and then nodded.

“Yes. Since you have passed that, you should begin on these.”

He handed me five brooches, all of which looked pretty similar.

“All of these were used in a violent event. It will be your job to identify what that event was, and if the brooch was on the person who inflicted the violence or the person who was hit with it.”

I frowned, wondering where he’d gotten these, but not willing to really ask. I just swept them into my bag and nodded, then asked a different question that was bothering me.

“The way Meadow and others talk about you, as well as the way you talk… You seem like a pure combat mage to me. Why are you training me in psychometric spells?”

“Because you’re not a pure combat mage,” Ikki said. “Nor do I think you should be. Even your… Lightwatch. They are not pure combat mages. Your combat guilds? They are not what I would have called a combat guild when I was your age. They are more like an auxiliary branch of the government.”

Ikki pulled the chair out across from me and sat, looking at me seriously.

“I do not think you are asking because you were really questioning my teaching, though. Why not tell me what this is really about?"