“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.”

Albert Einstein

After visiting the oldest four uncles, Aaron, Karl, Cephas and Romeo, the next uncle we were due to visit was Uncle Barric the father of six. However, we were not allowed to do so for the week. Lady Acacia insisted that we excel in our magical studies, martial training, arts and governance before we entertained the idea of picking up any more of our cousins’ common skills. This decision was backed up by our parents after it was mentioned at dinner and we had to concentrate on the four noble areas proscribed by her first and foremost.

For our magical studies, we had started building our own grimoires. We were welcome to use Lady Acacia’s library to do so but she believed in us building our own. I was being a little ambitious in my efforts at writing a Grimoire choosing a single effect and trying to write down every magical method to create it.

For example, the first spell she taught us, was how to create light. Light Creation received its own page then I detailed all of the methods I knew how to create it. First the spellcraft Phos. Second the spellsong B, A, A, and E I used western notation to write the melody down. Including rhythm as well as pitch. Third were the glyphs. Fourth were the Runes. Fifth the Enchantments. Sixth were the Sigils. Each magical method had been written in the language of the race that used it predominantly. So the explanation for Spellcraft was written in Bussola the compound language of the Compass Kingdoms. The explanation of the Spellsong was written in Elvish, the glyphs were written and explained in the language of the Giants, runes were detailed in Dwarf, the enchantments in Pixish, the Sigils in the main tongue of the Beastkin.

It was a scholarly exercise as much as a magical one and the constant cross-references and checking with Lady Acacia that I had the translations as much as the explanations correct meant that it was doing wonders for all of the connected skills. Calligraphy, Elvish, Giant, Dwarf, Pixish, Gnomish, Koboldogo, Beastkin, Halfling, Memorisation, Spellcraft, Spellsong and Polyglot as it levelled off the new languages I practised.

Unfortunately, the fact that I had drawn the glyphs, runes, enchantments and sigils rather than carved, etched, sewn and tattooed them meant firstly they were not magical despite being written as accurately as possible and secondly that I had yet to gain the skills for them despite beginning to build up an understanding of what they looked like. Hopefully, my work with my extended family would give me the skills to put the variety of my magical knowledge into practice. Although I was unsure where I would get the appropriate instruments and magical materials to do so.

Not only had I included the compass kingdoms’ multiple methods for creating light through their magical systems but I had also included my homemade methods for achieving the same through mana manipulation and gaining the system skills as well as the biological mana motes we had discovered that worked very efficiently at transforming mana into light.

However, I hadn’t stopped there though. This might be my magical grimoire but science was a form of magic in its own right. After all, magic is just another science we don’t understand yet. I had not added this knowledge to the physical form of my grimoire but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there in my mind.

As a potential security risk, I didn’t want to write down all of my former world’s knowledge or as much of it that I could remember, so I recreated my growing grimoire in my mind fortress but I had also included in my grimoire my understanding of light through physics as well as how to create it through engineering. These explanations though were written in English it was not just a method to encode it in a way no one else would be able to decipher even if they ever were able to penetrate my mind fortress. It was simply the fact that I did not have the words in the other language to describe the processes as I understood them. Sure in time I would hopefully have the vocabulary but it was equally possible that it did not exist in the language yet not having been invented. On the other hand, I had been caught out by soul sight and I didn’t want to be caught out again so using former world languages to do so was not a bad idea in itself. The fact that Lady Acacia could perceive the size of my soul encouraged me to renew and renovate my mind fortress.

I might not be able to see my soul yet, but I imagined my false status as being what the world could see if they ever looked at me. Then I imagined that I had buried the rest of my mind fortress out of sight in the soil of my soul. I might not be able to see my soul but that did not mean that I couldn’t affect it. When I asked Lady Acacia if my soul looked any different after my renovations she said that instead of a large impenetrable oak in the centre of my soul I now had a clearing with a stone slab at its centre she called it my soul stone.

This conversation and the very fact that she was able to see my status or soulstone as she called it meant that I was finally able to ask something I had been fearing from before I had even entered this world.

“Can you see my status then?” I asked curious but no longer fearful of her after the months she had spent with our family working to make us the best we can be.

“No, Kai. I cannot see your status.” She answered.

“Even though you can see my soulstone?” I asked using her terminology to describe where she saw her status written.

“From the outside, I cannot. I can see it is there but not read it. If I invaded your soul I would be able to do so but from the outside, I cannot.” She explained in more detail.

“From within my soul?”

“Yes, but I will teach you and your sister mental defence long before you ever leave this island. Even then it isn’t a common ability or easy to do to anyone even if they did have the skill except for a few social situations.”

“Social situations does that mean certain people read your status with or without your permission?” I asked. “Who can do that and what social situations?”

“For example, a General can see the general stats of their soldiers to direct them appropriately to the places where they are needed the most. A captain can likewise see their sailor's stats to assign them the appropriate roles. Any social situation where there is a strict formal hierarchy will allow the reading of a man’s stats by their superior. This doesn’t apply to an apprentice and their master as no oaths of allegiance or promise to follow orders has been taken.” She outlined the social situations and the theory behind the ability to read another’s stats.

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

“Can you hide your stats from your superior?” I asked thinking about the false status I had spent so long making and even now covered my soul stone in the centre of my unseen soul.

“Most soldiers or sailors would not have the mental stats to be able to do that.” She answered succinctly.

“But it’s not impossible?” I queried for clarification.

“No it’s not impossible but you would have to have a skill for deception at a tier higher than whichever tier skill they would be using to read you. A deception skill that would work on your very soul not the surface of your vessel. Something that would be an added impossibility for the soldiers and sailors on top of the high mental stats that most would not have.” She outlined the difficulties of what I was asking but I was asking for myself not them.

“Is there anyone on this island who can do that?” I asked wondering if I had already been read by someone outside our growing family of trust.

“This island is a pioneering island you had no official mayor other than your Grandpa’s unofficial position. There is no standing army or navy other than your as-needed unofficial militia so there is no one who can read another’s status. None on this island other than you.” She added a little surprise to her

“Me? How me?” I asked surprised.

“As the Lord of the Silversea family, you can call on your Adals to show you their status.” She said.

“I can?” I exclaimed. I had not noticed anything new when I looked at any of my family.

“You will have to develop the skill but it’s possible. With the right skills and training to look beyond the surface of their vessels, to see their status and if you are talented enough see their very soul.” She teased me with future possibilities if I studied her lessons properly.

It sounded fantastic but there was a fly in the ointment. If I could read my Adal’s stats did that mean that the king would be able to read mine? “What about the King? Can he read his nobles' stats because they are beholden to him?”

“Yes, Kai. When you pledge allegiance to him on your twentieth birthday he will be able to read your stats. But enough of this when you have mastered your magic we can start looking at your soul.” She ended the conversation and moved us back to what we were supposed to be practising.

But as we cycled through the spellcraft and spellsong of the effects we had learnt so far, light, water, growth, fire, heat, ice, mana shield, . . . . . . . . to practice our control, efficiency and speed of casting. I thought to myself, ‘Unless I have higher mental stats than him and can get a higher tier deception skill that can deceive at the very level of my soul. Something to aim for that’s for sure once I had completed Lady Acacia’s course, ‘How to be a Lord: 101’.

. . .

That was just our magical studies, the rest of our basic course of nobility had continued equally rapidly. Lady Acacia had decided that working in tandem with Grandfather would be more efficient, two teachers for two students. So, he had been brought off the sidelines where he had been watching our lessons to team teach our weapons training lessons with her. Lady Acacia would coach Aleera while Grandfather would coach me. I was initially a little apprehensive that I might see a resurgence of former training due to the competition with Lady Acacia, but it seemed her presence alone was enough to moderate his more extreme ideas. Not that stopped him from bringing up examples of his past training and sayings along the lines of, “In my day this is how we did it.” From being able to compare some of his ideas to hers it was easy to see that he came from a poorer more brutal school than the noble training we were being taken through. A school that seemed to make them or break them and luckily enough for us it had made him rather than breaking him.

We would each practice individually with them before engaging in a mock spar with our sibling. Each day it would be a different weapon although Grandfather still favoured knives over all others. We even had whole family mock engagements where Mother, Father, Aleera and I had to defend ourselves against the combined might of Grandfather and Lady Acacia. Father favoured a trident and net of all things resembling a Roman Gladiator without his armour but they were his best weapons. He was highly levelled in them from fishing every day as Trident, Spear and Nets were the skills with which he killed so many fish. Mother unsurprisingly with Grandfather as a father as much as her teacher was skilled in knives and could hold her own. Unfortunately, we were soundly trounced by Lady Acacia and Grandfather when they worked together. We did better if they attacked one at a time but also got picked off one at a time until we were all dead. They were not killing us but their weapons were sheathed and covered in paint. We were allowed a minor mark in paint provided it was a non-fatal area and acted appropriately disabled if it was a limb. Any paint on a fatal point of the body meant you were dead and out of the game.

The most equal exercise was when it was Grandfather and me against Lady Acacia and Aleera. They showed us what truly skilled opponents were capable of when they engaged one another. While we fended off one another. I was getting faster and faster as I continued to grow with the help of the Elvish elixir of growth. My vessel was finally getting strong enough to display the stats I had. Keeping my HUD fully activated during our bouts meant that I could flee while preparing to attack aware of exactly where everyone was despite it looking like I couldn’t see them. I had managed to catch out my sister several times this way.

I was looking forward to mixing in the magic with the martial. However, that was not to be today.

. . .

Our impromptu school had also been coopted by Lady Acacia. The tasks we required before teaching were what helped us to level our governance skills. Our cousins would arrive early in the morning and Aleera and I would give them the task for the morning. There were even rumours that other children jealous of the exotic fruit are cousins were getting to eat were also now interested in ditching their Luminary lessons for ours instead.

My skills in Order and Command levelled up faster when I was ordering two dozen people what to do rather than just Des, Sinis and Wanda what to do.

“This morning you will be picking the grapes. Des will show you where you will each be working.”

. . .

“This morning you will be picking the dates. Sinis will show you where you need to get started.”

. . .

“This morning you will be picking olives. Wanda will show you where you need to go.”

. . .

“This morning you will be picking figs.” (And so on.)

. . .

Our food processing was very weak so far but in the future I hoped to get wine, olive oil, and raisins. We were just testing the methods at the moment with small batches. Once we had the basic processes down then we could attempt to scale them up a little bit.

After ordering our cousins a little bit for the levels in command and order it was time to teach them something. We had looked at the lessons we had learned from Alicia and picked the best ones to teach. Obviously, that was going to be magic. Unfortunately, we only had two students for that so far. My magic was increasing rapidly along with the new spellcraft, spellsong and all the practice I had building my grimoire. But we had yet to unlock anyone else’s magic and everyone else was hardly going to sit around and watch.

So we taught the same lessons that we had learned from Lady Acacia, etiquette and how to affect a more noble bearing. We didn’t enforce it as strongly as we had to adhere to it ourselves under her critical eye. But enough that they could begin to affect it themselves. We acted out the manners for feasts in our hidden garden. Practised our pirouettes, and just generally played at being knights and ladies of a Silversea court. For some of them it was simply getting them to eat with their mouth closed, for others, it was the correct use of silverware always starting at the outside and working in.

Our cousins picked up enough new skills from our playful teaching that we even gained the skill.

Ding! Teaching (Lv 1)

The Silversea Court continued with gardening, feasts and dances. It was more a club than a class but I was left wondering what else we could include, our own private language courtesy of my former world, modern-day mathematics, the sciences and sports. There was so much it was tempting to teach. The question was what knowledge would harm or help them as well as what knowledge would harm or help me if I taught it and it spread beyond our isle.

Either way, it was a joy to teach, the system awarded levels merely the icing on the cake.