She followed with, “My name is Elena and there is a crystal black card in the bag with the gold. Just put any element into it and I can contact you through it. I gave double the coin and if you need a favor just call me with the card since the deal favored me too much. Anephis has shops with a decent number of spells for the element you may have so make sure to pay them a visit. Now good day and grow to be a better human than those of this wretched holy empire.”

James was stunned but did not show it on his face. He believed it to be rude if he checked the bag in front of her because it could show that he did not in fact trust her. He bowed and headed towards the door making his way back to the inn.

After entering and walking up the stairs of the inn James stopped in front of his room to look through the bag Elena gave him. He pulled out a box with thirty gold which the dark elf had indeed doubled from fifteen like she said. There was the black crystal card with a picture of completely white eyes and a piece of paper folded behind it. As he opened the paper, he noticed a drawn-out spell construct labeled shadow clone at the bottom which got him excited. The dark elf must have believed in his words and included it into the trade. James sent Elena a silent thanks then threw everything into the bag which held the monster core tying it to his belt as he made his way to his family, planning to take it easy for the night.

The night went by smoothly considering James had a bed to finally sleep in. Susy managed to talk in her sleep even kicking him multiple times but even that couldn’t keep the exhausted James from falling into dream land.

James and his family woke up at sunrise with enough time to eat a quick meal and prepare to meet the group. As they finished packing up James pulled Emily outside the room with his little bag in hand.

“This is for finding a new place and any expenses you and dad will need. There is fifteen for you to pay rent for a place to live and any expenses that are needed. This is another five gold that is for Susy, but I will let you hold onto it for now. You can give as much as you feel necessary to her to make sure she is ready for school,” he said as he handed her twenty-gold from the box in his bag.

“James this is a lot of money. Your father and I only have five gold as our savings that we are bringing to the city. I hope you didn’t do anything illegal to get it,” Emily face lit up but turned serious as she reprimanded her son.

“No, I sold off the monster cores to make sure our family is going to be ok. Keep it and we should finish getting ready to meet up for the exciting train ride,” with a smile James managed to shift the focus before heading back to the room. Emily could be heard sighing before she gave up arguing with him.

Eventually Angelina, the apprentices, and the full group were gathered in front of the inn. Angelina led them towards the train station which was located on the opposite side of the city entrance they came in from.

James felt happy seeing a better lifestyle the people had living in the city compare to his old town. There were of course homeless people, but they were a very few. The difference being the lower class of people had nicer clothes and everyone seemed to be getting by easier here. The roads and buildings were nicer while also had a larger variety in shops. James even happened to see a couple of other races on the roads such as faeries and gnomes. It was only one or two of each race, but it really opened his eyes to how much the empire has changed.

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The train station was huge and even from the ticket booth James noticed multiple different tracks heading in different directions. Angelina talked to the train station employee and lead the group to their specific track just as the train pulled up.

The train was shaped as a single long white rectangle down the track with a long windows that reached about halfway down and a handful of entrances along the train. The bottom of the train shined blue while it hovered above the tracks. Angelina led everyone into one of the trains entrances which brought them into a long hallway that was one fourth the size of the train. There were doors going along each side which they were told were their rooms for the trip. Angelina explained that each door had an opening in the middle that could be lifted from the hallway for employees to provide food without distracting the guests. The rooms were assigned the same way as the inn and everyone quickly split off. James noticed that the door had on the rooms side of the door a wooden block to probably have the food sit on. Everything was new to James and Susy, so they were analyzing everything.

James quickly realized the trip involved being stuck in the room with looking outside the window and talking with his family being the only sources of entertainment. Over the next two days the family relaxed together and discussed their plans for the city. James and Susy were given two days before orientation for the school and another two days after before classes. Of course, they could go to the school during those days to get any school materials they may want to buy as well as get assigned their dorm and classes.

James discussed the wood element with Susy and guided her on training her spell. She made lots of progress that James picked up on when the same branch she still carried was altered to become different shapes he was happy for her. She had a difficult time with it though and ran out of mana quickly, but James still encouraged her.

When everyone was sleeping James would try to create the shadow element while sitting on floor to not wake up Susy. The shadow element was difficult for him because Elena was the first person to introduce it too him and it was something he rarely saw used. The basic elements like water, fire, nature, and wind he had plenty of experience with from his past life. He had seen many sub elements being used and dark elements from enemies but never the shadow element.

Also, the shadow element being a subclass of dark element is more easily accessed by the races that lived in the demon empire. Being human and from the holy empire has made attuning to the shadow element difficult.

All he could do for now was remember how it felt to be surrounded by darkness and Elena's clone while trying to recreate the feeling he had at the time through his manaweaving skill. He experienced fear that brought back traumatic memories at the alchemy shop and focused on recreating it while getting into that mindset of being the one to produce it. Even with a couple nights of training he still made no progress, but James already figured it would be a while before he managed to gain the shadow clone spell.

It was exciting thinking about having an extra copy of himself in fights. While the clones damage would be half of his it would still be effective for confusing and overwhelming enemies. He caught himself daydreaming about sending his clone to school while relaxing in bed. Of course, he would never do something like that, but he found it fun to think about anyways.

James did worry about how much mana it would cost to cast and keep going. When Elena recalled her clone, he was able to feel an exorbitant amount of shadow element dispersing from her copy. The positive side was that if he managed to have the spell recognized by the system, he should have the mana reserves to cast it.

James was so caught up with his thoughts, talking with Susy, and relaxing he did not realize how quickly the two-day trip went by. It was finally time to start both dangerous and fruitful journey at Xavier academy.