It had already been two hours since Veric received [Minor Mana Sense], yet he made no progress in getting any better at stopping the mana from being pulled out of him by the scroll. Within that time, he had used the scroll twelve times. Each time, he analysed the behaviour of the scroll and the sphere, yet he couldn’t come up with a reasonable hypothesis for the use of the nine lines in the spell formation. Theoretically, the spell should work without them. The only explanation he could come up with was that some steps required two lines. This explanation wasn’t satisfactory to him. The timing at which each line was activated would suggest that the nine lines acted independently of the other lines and worked in tandem with each other instead.
He stared at the scroll for hours, and his vision started to become blurry. The temperature in the room didn’t drop by much because Veric started to fire the freezing sphere out the window, hoping that the range of the sphere was limited and that he didn’t cause frozen fowl to fall from the sky. He didn’t want to be responsible for creating the eleventh plague of Egypt. "Though it would be funny if the superstitious type decided that it is an omen," he thought while rubbing his temples.
Thomas was a stubborn man; however, he knew how to pick his battles. “Sometimes, in order to advance, one needs to retreat,” he said to himself and waited with bated breath for a response from the system. “No wisdom plus one? Well, I can’t really complain about the lack of wisdom. But it is quite disappointing that I couldn’t crack the scroll or the [Mana Manipulation] skill.” Veric stood up, stretched his back, and lay down on the bed. He felt tired, especially mentally. However, the amount of walking he completed in the past two hours also exhausted his weak legs.
After a few exaggerated sighs, Veric got back on his legs and looked around the room. He felt bored. He was never an outgoing person, but being stuck in a room with nothing interesting to do other than stare at the scroll for hours in defeat made him want to leave the room and go for a walk around the town. The boy almost never left his bedroom unless he had to use the latrine. When he was younger, his father provided him with a teacher who taught him maths and how to read. They would conduct the lessons in a designated study. After learning those things, the trips outside of the bedroom became limited. Veric never appeared during any social events due to his innate weakness.
He walked up to a chair and, with quite a bit of effort, he dragged it to the window. He sat down on the chair and enjoyed the view. He lived in Castle Martel, granted to his father by the king. The name of the castle was, of course, different before Krado took over it.
The castle was situated near the southern stone wall of the town Yorel. Krado, of course, wanted to rename the city as well; however, he was persuaded that it might incur displeasure with the occupants of the city as well as cause quite a bit of problems for historians and civil law notaries of the country.
Yorel was a small town situated near the river Atna and, most importantly, a bridge. The bridge and the roads leading to Yorel made it quite a popular trading hub. To the south, there were mountain chains that were too short to be occupied by dwarfs, thus making them perfect for human mining. The mines were not controlled by Krado; however, a lot of trade related to the metals mined occurred in Yorel. To honour his own mother, he greatly reduced taxes for the blacksmiths. Thus, to the displeasure of other nobles, he caused a migration of blacksmiths into Yorel, earning it the unofficial name: City of Hammers.
Veric could see the market square from his window. There were many hundreds of people from the nearby farms and manors; in addition, travellers and long-distance merchants were going from market to market selling their wares. Colours were abounding: yellow, brown, green, and red were the most prominent. Blues and purples, even though rare, were present on some clothing and robes. Some men and women, most likely adventurers, were wearing all types of armour: plate, gambeson, chainmail, and even armour made out of monster parts, such as the carapace of a large crescent centipede. Veric could just barely hear the music coming from the streets: laughter, shouting, and banter. The alehouses and inns were overflowing with guests that came to visit the market. Horses were strutting with an arrogant gait, clearly displaying their supremacy over two-legged pedestrians.
"Once a week, this market square situated in the middle of a small town turns into the passionate heart of commerce in the otherwise mundane landscape of stone and wood," Veric thought in melancholy, which suited an older man rather than a twelve-year-old boy. This sight made him excited and yet sad. Excited for an adventure, the possibility of exploring a new world, and sad because he realised that his previous life was truly over. He didn’t have a family; his parents had died of old age, and he always joked that he was married to his work. The few friends that he had were not truly close. "They will most likely forget about me quite soon," he thought with tears in his eyes. "Why was I sent here? Will I be sent somewhere else after I die in this life? Is this a second chance? Was I judged on my performance in my previous life and sent here? Is it a punishment or a reward?" He thought, realising that he was repeating a pattern. He was keeping himself distracted with the scroll the same way he would in his previous life with research. “I only started to process all of the changes because I got stuck during research. If I want to have a happy second life, I need to find a healthy balance. Even though I got stuck, it doesn’t mean that I will give up, but it also doesn’t mean that my happiness should be dependent on just that one thing. I am no longer Thomas Smith; I am Veric Martel. I will learn from my previous life but not repeat it,” he said and felt the dryness in his throat one would feel after choking down tears for too long. He jumped off the chair and walked over to the jug of water that Dara brought a few hours ago. He poured himself a tall glass. The water was nice and cool, and the moment it hit his tongue he thought back to the water on the window turning into ice almost instantly.
"What if the spell is not a general freezing spell but an ice spell specifically? Ice is made of water! Yes! It all makes sense now! The nine lines that I couldn’t figure out correspond to water. A water molecule is non-linear and composed of two atoms of hydrogen and one oxygen. It has nine degrees of freedom when it comes to its motion: three translational, three rotational, and three vibrational. The spell is accounting for the behaviour of water. When raw mana is being converted by the scroll, it feels cold and slow, but cold and slow are technically synonymous. Temperature is a measure of the average kinetic energy of the particles in an object, so making the water molecules become extremely slow almost stops, causing the water to freeze!" he exclaimed in his head. He was close to continuing practising with the scroll. He wanted to use the momentum from this discovery in order to gain the [Mana Manipulation] skill so that he could cast the spell without the scroll, but he stopped himself.
"Old habits die hard indeed," he thought and finished the glass of water. He needed rest, and he knew it. Tears of Nessari were effective; however, he still didn’t feel fully well. As a child, he should feel lively and energetic; however, that wasn’t the case. His fifty-year-old body from the previous life felt a lot more zippy. He sat down on the bed and rubbed his belly. "I am getting hungry. I wonder when Dara will bring lunch."
Not two breaths later, Veric heard a knock on the door. "Speak of the devil. Or the angel; that woman is a saint," he thought and called out with excitement for her to come in.
“Come in.”
Instead of a kind-looking middle-aged woman carrying a tray of food, Veric saw his older brother Rigon. Thomas recognised him instantly from Veric’s memories. Rigon was a tall fifteen-year-old boy. He inherited all of the defining features of the Martel family. His hair was blonde and his eyes blue. Even though he was just fifteen, he was over six feet tall, his shoulders were broad, and so was his chest. The smile on his face could only be described as “unwelcome.”
“Elora told me that you are doing better today. Unfortunately, I made a bet with my buddies that tonight will be your last,” Rigon said in a contemptuous tone.
“Good to see you too,” Veric replied, hoping that it was just a distasteful joke on Rigon’s part.
Rigon ignored him and walked over unnecessarily close to Veric and started looking at him as one would at a horse or a cow before buying it. Once he realised that Veric was fine, he started to look at the room. He walked over to the table, picked up the scroll, and turned to Veric. “Did you draw this?”
“Could you put it down, please? It’s important.”
“Important, is it?” he asked and started to rip it to shreds.
“It’s really shit. Whatever it was. You should fix your handwriting.”
Veric wanted to jump and stop him, but it was too late.
"Absolute idiot, casting pearls before swine." He was enraged but didn’t act on it. He knew that it would have no point. Veric was as small as a child and probably weaker than most children. If he started a fight against Rigon, he would most likely end up in a critical condition.
“Look at your face, red all over. You look so pathetic,” Rigon said and walked over to Veric, hoping that Veric would swing at him. After a moment of beyond uncomfortable silence, Rigon continued to look around the room until he saw the glass bottle on Veric’s nightstand. To Rigon, it looked too expensive and out of place to be in his room.
“What is it? Potion? Medicine?” Rigon asked and picked up the bottle containing purple liquid.
“No, it’s nothing. Please don’t drink it,” Veric replied, hoping that Rigon would drink it. "An idiot like him will most likely end up with negative intelligence and wisdom."
Rigon got a thoughtful look on his face, considering drinking it right in front of Veric, but then he remembered the words of the healer that administered medicine to Rigon when he asked for extra medicine to get better sooner. “It’s the dose that makes the poison,” the healer had said.
“How could I? I care about you, and I want you to get better as soon as possible. Especially because you will join the military school in three days,” he said and walked over to Veric. He pinned him down to the bed and opened the bottle with his teeth.
“Stop it,” Veric yelped, but Rigon used that opportunity to violently shove the neck of the bottle into Veric’s mouth, almost knocking out his teeth. Once the thick liquid emptied itself into Veric’s mouth, Rigon covered Veric’s mouth and nose, stopping him from breathing.
“Swallow it!” Rigon snapped at Veric, placing more pressure onto his face, painfully pressing the back of his head against the wooden headboard. Veric swallowed the thick liquid, straining his throat.
He could instantly feel the painful effects of the potion. He already felt a slight headache from taking six drops before. Inside the bottle, there were around seven or eight drops. The pain in his head became so agonising it was almost unbearable.
“Good. Now get some rest, brother,” Rigon said and left the room. But Veric didn’t hear him. The pounding headache was overstimulating, too much for him to focus on anything else. In addition to a headache, he could feel something stirring in his chest. He grasped his head and started screaming. After a few seconds of agony, he lost consciousness.