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AN: I will use [ ] for telepathic communication.

I spent my first few weeks back home doing whatever Charlotte, Emma, and Otto wanted before they had to head back to their respective campuses. During that time, I was either out with Charlotte and/or Emma in town or in nearby villages that had their own specialty products, or I was with Otto as he showed off what he learned during his time at the Ironspire Academy to Dad’s knights and me. As he excitedly swung his sword around while talking, Dad’s knights looked at him with satisfied smiles on their faces that only a proud father or uncle could have.

When the academic break was coming to an end, I realized that my house was going to become a lot quieter because not only were Emma, Charlotte, and Otto going back to their respective academies, but my youngest sibling, Cedric, was also going to start his first year at the Royal Academy, and so was Emma’s younger sister, Heidi, who made the cut and would also be attending the Royal Academy.

So that left me as the only child in the house, and the mothers were not taking it well. At least Emma’s mother, Anna, did not. “All my babies will be gone for a year!” she sobbed into her husband’s chest.

As for my mum, she was lightly sobbing while holding my arm hostage as she waved the carriage carrying Emma, her siblings, and also my siblings, escorted by half of Dad’s knights and a platoon of men-at-arms.

For the rest of the day, Mum did not let go of me as I reassured her that Charlotte and Cedric would be fine.

***

It had been a week after the rest of the kids went back to school, and here I was, lying in bed with nothing to do, no one to bother me, and no reports of big beasties that the local militias could not handle.

But somehow, I feel restless. Now that the rest of the kids had left for school, there was nobody to play with while the adults were adulting, and after four years of keeping busy with studies, just lazing around for the sake of catching up with sleep from four years of night class just felt wrong.

As I was thinking of what to do, I looked at the nightstand drawer and reached over to open it. Inside the drawer was the scale Professor Sageira passed to me so I could contact her when I was ready to continue the life-threatening training of fusing aura with mana infusion.

I was tempted to put it off until tomorrow, but I knew that procrastinating would only lead to more procrastinating, so I reached in and injected some mana into the scale and said, “Emm… Can you hear me?”

After a second, I heard Professor Sageira’s voice, but it sounded… internal? [Took you long enough. What took you so long? The end-of-year holidays are almost over, and I will be busy with a new batch of students in a few weeks.]

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Sorry about that. I was spending family time with my siblings before they had to go back to the royal academy.” I said defensively because I knew I was being lazy.

No matter, I will see you tonight. I have some administrative tasks to get done first.] she said before I felt the presence of the voice disappear from my mind.

Not expecting that I would have the rest of the morning and afternoon free for myself, I slumped back on the bed while thinking of what I could do to burn time for the rest of the day. That's when I remembered the workshop Dad had set up for me behind the house, but I had little time to use due to spending all my holiday free time with family and friends when I came back home. So, I decided to go take a look and keep my smithing skills sharp.

When I arrived at the abandoned house where my dad’s men used to store broken equipment, which was now turned into my workshop, I could see the dust everywhere. It was clear that it had not been used for quite some time, which was mainly my fault. I did not even come to use the workshop last year when I came home for the end-of-year break.

When I entered and looked around, I noticed that my dad’s men had started using the place for broken equipment once again. But I was not angry. In fact, they did me a favor by delivering material for me to practice with.

But before I get anything done, I have to do some cleaning. I opened the door and all the windows, cast a very weak Air Bomb spell in the middle of the room, and stepped into cover while casting a ball of air around my head. When the Air Bomb spell went off, plumes of dust blew out the door and windows, making the whole area dusty, but with a gesture of my hand, a gust of wind blew the dust away from the workshop.

When I once again entered the workshop, the big clumps of dust were gone, but with a simple swipe of my finger on any surface, I could tell that a layer of fine dust was still stuck to the surface.

So now that I was alone in the back of the estate, I could finally practice my Instinctive Magic without the risk of prying eyes, and even if one of the servants saw me, I doubt they would know better and think I was using magic the way mages everywhere did.

I channeled my inner dehumidifier and started pulling air toward myself, and as the air came toward me, I cooled an area above my palm, condensing and pulling moisture out of the air. Soon, I had a beachball-sized ball of water that spread out over every surface of the workshop. When I was done, I had a mud-brown beachball-sized ball of water that I threw outside.

When I was satisfied with the cleanliness of my workspace, I turned my attention to the pile of broken equipment and started dismantling and separating it by metal type.

***

When dinner time came around, and a servant came to fetch me, I had a few steel bars of varying quality and smaller bars of other metals. None of them were magical.

After spending dinner time with my family, I spent the rest of my time reading while practicing my Instinctive Magic with a free hand. Eventually, as I was lying on my bed, I heard Professor Sageira's voice in my head and snuck outside, where a dragon swooped down and snatched me away from the estate without anyone the wiser.

After a ten-minute flight just below the speed of sound, we were in the middle of a forest clearing like the one I went berserk in and almost killed myself.

“I hope you rested well, because we have a lot of tests to do to iron out this fusion and not much time before I need to return. Let's get started.” Professor Sageira said as she morphed back into her human form.

From the mad scientist look on her face, I sure wish she had told me to rest when I first contacted her.