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Chapter 14

Kaleb felt like a ghost. His skin was pale, very pale, and his breaths were coming in fast and heavy. He could feel his heart beating like a persistent drum. He stumbled toward Master Beris’s tent and barged inside.

The Clayton was seated on a cushion, reading House Ulvyr’s Collection. His head snapped up, a furious look on his face until he saw how Kaleb looked. “You’ve overdrawn yourself,” he said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Kaleb threw himself on a cushion, barely managing to keep himself seated upright. “What does it mean?”

“Magic has its costs,” Master Beris said. “Everything does, doesn’t it?”

Oh, yea? And why the hell didn’t you tell me this before? Kaleb grimaced as he felt his chest fluttering from weakness. He glared at the mage, waiting for clarification, and hopefully a way to improve his condition.

“Spells draw on your very lifeblood to manifest,” Master Beris continued. “When you overdraw yourself, your body is running out of that blood.” The Clayton put two fingers on his chin and hummed. “It’s quite odd. Even a novice would stop once they began feeling weakness while casting. I thought you’d stop when you begin feeling tired.”

Fuck you, Kaleb thought, gritting his teeth weakly. “What do I do now?”

“Rest,” the mage said. “Have a good night’s sleep. It’s getting dark anyway. On the morrow, don’t neglect meat, soup, and cider. The quartermaster has already been informed to keep you well-fed. You have to keep to this diet if you want to recoup the lost blood quickly and keep yourself healthy for more casting.”

“Fine,” Kaleb said, sighing involuntarily. He stayed in place for a while, still not having the strength to get up. After a minute, Master Beris had returned to reading his book, and Kaleb finally managed to get up and drag his feet to his tent, where he threw himself on the bed and slept till morning.

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Kaleb stood in a flat area with Master Beris and Yezdriel nearby. It had been two weeks since he’d started practicing Push-Haste on the company’s cattle. Thankfully, he’d only hurt two shai in total. After that, he’d become more adept at the process, but he’d continued training to make sure that he wouldn’t make any mistakes in the future. The practice had also made him faster in his casting, which had seemed like a multi-stage process when he’d first begun. He’d always imagined that a mage could just cast a spell at will, which had been disproven by the process with which he’d learned to cast his Haste spell. However, after becoming more adept at casting, he’d found that a spell could be cast very quickly with the appropriate amount of training.

He’d also been pacing and measuring himself when it came to his casting intensity in an effort to avoid overdrawing himself. He didn’t want to suffer that feeling ever again. He’d felt like his very soul had been trying to rip itself out of his body that day. He hadn’t forgotten that Master Beris had let him go in blind either, but there was nothing to do about it as it was. The Clayton only did the bare minimum for him whenever he could get away with it.

“Good luck, my friend,” Yez said, pulling Kaleb out of his thoughts.

Kaleb nodded to him.

“Get on with it then,” Master Beris said.

Kaleb sighed and summoned his book. The path in front of him was empty, while Yez and Master Beris stood to the side, out of his way. He pulled on the Attachment rune and tapped himself on the chest with his hand, casting the cantrip on himself. Immediately, the page turned to Moderate Force which he pulled and held before casting Directed Condensation and tapping himself on the chest again.

The spell took hold, and he felt goosebumps all over his body as if something was trying to touch him but was only held off by an inch of air.

He tried to take a step forward, and as soon as he pushed the ground, he felt an alien force pushing with him, kicking his foot off the ground higher than he’d expected. He put his foot down and gave himself a moment to adapt.

When he tried to move again, he prepared himself for the overpush that came from the spell. He pushed the ground and stopped his foot at the appropriate height, and when he willed his foot to stop, the force assisted him by reversing it into a stop. He began to walk forward carefully, and as he adapted to the push and pull of force, he sped up. Master Beris had been right. This spell’s Haste effect was difficult to control, but he could see how the heavily armored would benefit from it, since the weight of their equipment would balance the scales somewhat as the spell made moving easier for the over-encumbered combatant.

As Kaleb speed-walked in a straight line, he began feeling that it was coming more naturally to him, so he started into a jog. The force began pushing on his back and the back of his knees as if jetting him forward, and he found himself at a decent running speed with little effort. He slowed down with the help of the spell and tried to halt and turn to the right but ended up spinning in half a circle as the force assisted him by pushing the half of his body that was opposite of the turning direction. This caused him to face the direction he’d just come from. The moment of the spin had sped up his pulse from the unexpected speed and the momentary loss of control he’d suffered, but it’d also taught him that the spell assisted in every form of movement. That meant that anything, from jumping to diving would be assisted, and that demanded its own brand of caution.

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Kaleb jogged back toward his original spot and initiated the weakest jump he could. The result was an average jump with the aid of the spell. He rested his palm on his chest and pulled the spell back inside himself. From what he’d learned, the spell when cast on himself was actually attached to the ‘outside’ of his body. Now he was pulling it back in to turn into temporary fuel for the next spell instead of vaporizing his very blood for power. Master Beris had told him that the more practice he got with a spell, the less energy it would require. Kaleb had noticed an improvement in efficiency early on, but it had slowed down significantly by now.

“Good,” Master Beris said. “You’ve become proficient enough in it. Have you attempted Repel? It should be simple enough.”

Kaleb nodded. “I have. It is.” The Repel spell had been safer and easier to practice, since a mistake in the order of runes would result in nothing happening except a waste of his life’s blood. The spell took less out of him than Push-Haste though, and it made sense given that it required fewer runes than the latter.

He could reliably cast Push-Haste maybe six times before it got dangerous to cast more. More than that and he’d risk overdrawing himself, which would both ruin his day and make him vulnerable.

“Are there no other ways to improve my casting endurance, Master Beris?” Kaleb asked. “I doubt the captain expects me to hasten only six of his men.”

“He will have to do with your limitations.” Master Beris sniffed. “Though now that I think of it, since you have a magic-related node, you could also possess a Vitality node.”

Kaleb remembered the visceral-looking beating heart he’d seen on the second of his initial nodes and asked, “what does it look like?”

“It should resemble a bloodied heart or something of that sort,” the mage said.

“You don’t have it?” Kaleb asked.

The mage gave him a poisonous smile. “Not everybody is that fortunate. I assume you do have it?”

Kaleb nodded. “It’s one of my initial nodes. How does it work?”

“It’s simple,” Master Beris said. “It increases the amount of blood in your body, the speed at which your body recovers it, and also improves your health considerably. The only other way to improve your casting efficiency without practice is through an appropriately enchanted item, which I doubt you can afford.”

Kaleb nodded again and remembered his agreement with the mage. If he gained another star, he’d have to unlock the anchor node to inform Master Beris of its effects. That meant that his Vitality would have to wait, which made his current efficiency the one he’d have to live with for the foreseeable future.

Yez stepped forward. “Why don’t you cast Haste on me, Kaleb?”

“Are you certain?” Kaleb said.

“You will have to cast it on someone sooner or later, yes?”

“Yes,” Kaleb said. “Very well, stay still.” He extended his hand toward the oversized Quill, feeling a new form of anxiety as he prepared.

Surprisingly, the spell came out of him in practiced form, as if it was becoming second nature. The runes streamed fluidly in and out of him, attaching the spell to his friend.

The Quill wisely kept still at first, giving himself time to adapt. He began by moving a hand then a foot. He also proved his superiority by getting used to it faster than Kaleb and breaking into a jog in a short amount of time and then into a full sprint, which caused Kaleb a minor panic since he felt Yez wouldn’t be able to stop himself easily with the ridiculous pace he was going at. The size of the Quill had never hindered his speed to begin with. Add to that the assistance of the spell and the Quill was going as fast as a car.

Yez slowed down gradually and circled around, coming back toward them in a jog. From time to time, he would leap forward or jump up high, proving Kaleb’s earlier assumptions right. The spell did assist the Quill, causing him to jump higher and leap longer.

He stopped in front of Kaleb and grinned. “It’s a good spell. I’m certain those charging into a melee would appreciate it.” He hopped from side to side and executed some dodges and turnarounds. “It’s difficult to master in tight quarters,” he continued. “But it can still be of use after one is more practiced with it.”

“Thank you, Yez,” Kaleb said. He was now sure that he could be of use to the company, even if in a limited fashion. He hoped that he could improve his efficiency a bit more before they arrived at their destination. According to the Quartermaster, they weren’t that far off though.

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It took them twenty days from start to finish to arrive at their destination. Kaleb had thought the journey too long until Yez had explained to him that it would have taken nearly twice as long if the company hadn’t been made entirely out of awakened. Regardless, the time provided had been a boon for him, as it provided more time for training.

It’d been nearly a week since his spell test with Master Beris and Yez, which had reassured him significantly. Since then, he’d been trying to improve his casting speed and efficiency with repetitive training.

Kaleb realized that they’d made it when Miryodil poked his head out of the carriage’s window suddenly, his eyes fixed on something in the distance. “We’ve arrived,” he said.

Kaleb moved closer to the window to get a glimpse of what the apprentice was looking at. He saw the form of white-washed walls in the distance. A breeze came, and the smell of the sea came with it. He’d been told that Whitestone, the city they were headed toward, was a coastal city. He’d been eager to see a beach and the waves crashing on it once again. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a vacation, but perhaps someday, if all went well…

For now, he was more focused on the war camp sprouting around the city’s walls in the distance.

That was their real destination.