Little later, at Alexander's office/laboratory.

Alexander opened the door and walked into his office, on his wrists and ankles green bracelets; his face strained.

Ocilia sat at her desk, studying, and was surprised as her master returned and looked like he went through another sparring session with the lord, "Is everything alright?"

He tried to walk as naturally as possible but had obvious problems, "No... I mean, yes. It looks like I will go through hell in the next years."

Ocilia tilted her head in confusion, "Hell? What is that?"

Before he could answer, the door behind him opened, and a small fairy came in with a sleepy expression on her face, yawning.

As she walked through the room and looked around curiously, she explained, "The circle doesn't have the concept of hell, it is a human thing, and I am amazed that someone so young is interested in deities."

She walked towards one of Alexander's notes and read it while she talked, "By the way, I am Green, your magic teacher, and it looks like you already are trying to learn science... hm, I approve."

Green turned around and looked at Alexander. Seeing the bracelets, she knew exactly what they were for but ignored them, not really interested in what madness this family was getting into.

Instead, she asked her new student, "So, you are Alexander. How about you show me what spells you know? With this, I can determine how good you are and where we need to work on."

Alexander fell in love with her. Straightforward and to the point, it was all that he wanted.

He nodded and conjured a small fireball over his palm, which he could barely lift, "How about this... hello?"

Green came nearer and looked closely at his fireball, clearly in her thoughts.

She stepped back and looked at Alexander, shaking her head, "This is not magic."

Ocilia and Alexander looked first at her and then at his small fireball.

Alexander was confused, blanking. He asked her, "I... what?"

Green held her finger in front of her and spoke a few words in a language he had never heard. A small flame ignited on her index finger, "Tell me the difference, besides the power, of my flame and yours."

He looked between them and couldn't find any difference except for the power. The fairy raised her eyebrow, looking annoyed, "You need to look at it like a mage would look at it."

Alexander understood that he needed to use [Mana Sense] and immediately understood the difference, "Yours is made of mana or at least has mana inside it, but my has none... what does it mean?"

She touched her flame, "What you do, is called alchemy, and while it would be funny to me..."

She smirked slightly and continued, "... you get burned by your own contraption. You shouldn't touch it like I do. Spells never injure the ones who conjure them; contraptions do."

The puppy stood there, baffled, and looked at his fireball, and he didn't know what to think. He didn't use magic but alchemy, and it looked like his spells were also called different: contraptions.

Ocilia was similarly confused. She watched this exchange and was fascinated by it. She, like her master, thought that alchemy had to do with potions, not with... conjuring up fireballs.

He could barely let out a sound, "Wha.... wai... but..."

Green let go of her spell, which dissipated into mana particles. Her voice, instead of disappointment, what Alexander expected, sounded very interested, as if her sleepiness was gone, "Huh, I kind of expected that you would know no magic, but I never expected that you actually were this good in alchemy... can you do more?"

Alexander wanted to ask thousands of things but let it go, she would probably tell him with time, so he conjured icicles, a little wind, and water balls, "I can do much more, but I don't want to thrash my office."

Green didn't know what to say. She had watched him conjure up a fireball before and wanted to call him a genius, but she steeled herself.

Now, he could conjure various contraptions, which only advanced alchemists could, 'How the hell should I react now?!'

She came here with the mindset of at least holding on to the power dynamic of teacher/student and didn't get bullied by a little puppy. Now, if she wanted to continue as efficiently as possible, she needed to get off her high boar. There was no way she could fake it for years.

She threw away her pride and told him honestly, "I... this will be a short time where I will teach you."

Alexander reacted out of panic, "Wait! Because these are only contraptions and not spells, this doesn't mean that I can't use spells. I am sure I can learn them, please giv..."

His panicked pleading was interrupted by her roaring laughter. She laughed so hard that tears came out, and she needed to hold her stomach.

Both youths were bewildered and especially Ocilia, never seeing her master this desperate for anything.

As she was done and wiped her tears away, she looked at her student, "Listen, I mean that I can't teach you a lot because you already have the skill set to even conjure up spells, which I could never do."

Green found it sad and funny, but she was a lousy magician. Yes, she was a student at a magic academy, but it was some third-class one, and even that would be overpraising it.

She also had not the mana skills to actually learn spells. Even lesser-mid-range difficulty constructs, like a fireball, needed too long for her to conjure.

The one she needed to teach already had skills much higher than hers since an alchemist who could conjure up contraptions that easily would see spell-craft as extremely easy, to a certain level at least.

Alexander sighed in relief and was fine with it, 'As long as I can have the fundamentals, I can work it somehow out!'

The fairy walked over to the blackboard, "Can I erase it?"

Alexander didn't say anything but just conjured up water, which washed away some physics he taught to Ocilia someday and dried it up with hot air which blew around it.

Green watched it with fascination, "Well, I would say that you will learn everything in a couple of weeks... damn, Kairo was right."

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Alexander overheard his father's name, "Oh right, you are the acquaintance of dad. Do you know him from the temple?"

He knew he was a druid, an essential religious person in their religion, the circle that had the world in itself as their deity. The circle was the main religion for beast-kin, nature-dwellers, and night-elves, so his father was even more important than a low-level noble like a viscount.

Of course, it was all relative since druids also had ranks, friends, and influence depending on their power, connection, and charisma.

He also heard something about how his parents met and what happened then with his grandparents, but nothing specific, as his mother didn't tell him about it, which made sense. You don't tell a child how your father wanted to gut your grandpa. At least Alexander hoped it wasn't like this.

Green sighed, "Yes, and he sang praises about you, but... I am honest. You are more incredible than he told me. He probably didn't know... wait... do you have problems coming close to your father?"

Alexander nodded, "Yeah, but I worked through and got some skills where I can reduce the effect of his mana fear skills."

The fairy raised an eyebrow, "Seriously? Well, I also show you a spell on how to counteract it since most warriors have it, but now..."

She turned toward the now clean blackboard, "...we start with spell-craft, and I guess, but you probably already have skills at a sufficient level like [Mana Manipulation], [Mana Emission], and [Mana Sense]?"

Alexander nodded towards her, which she reciprocated and started writing on the blackboard, "Spell-craft is made out of two things, language and constructs."

She wrote down sentence after sentence full of logically followed sentences. The writing was so dry that Alexander thought he had read an instruction manual to a toaster.

"I will now show you the ignite construct and that mana constructs respond to what we say. If you want to know more about it, I recommend researching mana theory at the cathedral or one of the magic universities in the free cities because I don't know why..."

She turned around to her student and shrugged, "Sorry."

The fairy thought that having her here was a waste of time since he would probably be done in two weeks to a month, depending on how certain other skills were.

Also, Alexander thought of something when Green couldn't teach him anymore. He would ask her if she could get him the literature from her academy, but right now, he concentrated only on her magic teachings.

Green turned again to the blackboard and kept writing but now wrote three symbols, "This is a magic language, specially created to cast spells. These three words mean the same as these fifty ones in spoken language, and, honestly, I didn't know you to have such advanced skills. Otherwise, I would have brought my notes with me for more in-depth teaching, but I will at least teach you one spell today."

She started writing down the construct, "Speak after me these words..."

Three barely identifiable words came out of her mouth, and Alexander tried to repeat them but halfway had problems as it sounded like a mix of Arabic, French, Vietnamese, and Klingon.

Green suddenly stopped as her student repeated after her, but only for a moment, and then kept drawing the construct, 'A genius is a genius in the end... I needed a month to get it right, and he has it already halfway right.'

It was frustrating for the fairy but also really exciting, 'I can use him, later on, to help me out. If he gets famous and mighty, everything else won't make sense with such a talent... so let's be nice!'

On the side, Ocilia also tried it, and Green had no problem with it. She already knew that the crazy puppy somehow made it happen that she received [Mana Sense], and sometimes glancing at her thread she played with all the time, there was mana in there and made it also move differently in a skillful way, 'Maybe he will take me as a student, too hehe.'

Only her linguistic skills were terrible, even worse than Green's, which made her happy since being with Alexander crushed her self-esteem.

After another twenty or so tries, Alexander could pronounce it at least as well as Green, but she let him repeat it another fifty times more, so he could better remember it.

Green turned around, pointing at the construct she drew, "This is the ignition construct which conjured a small flame. Now, what is a spell-craft construct?"

She inhaled strongly, "A spell-craft construct is an amalgamation of mana which has a specific density of mana in specific regions. The lines are the connections between nodes..."

She pointed towards the nodes as she slightly flew in the air, "Nodes need to have the same density and volume as other nodes, at least in this construct, and the lines can vary, but the more similar they are, the more stable your spell will be."

His teacher held her palm out, "Now watch the mana. You build your construct however you want. Ultimately, it needs to be like what I have drawn."

She slowly built the construct in her hand, so slowly that Alexander and Ocilia, who stood much closer, could watch it, "See how I built it from the inside. Luckily, this construct is 2D, so it is not so hard. If it is built, say the specific words, and your spell..."

Green was interrupted by Alexander slowly saying his words, and she wanted to chuckle that he was so impatient, but her words were caught in her throat.

He cast a solid ignition spell and played around with it while touching it. Green hated people like him, especially since he was actually not from a magic-inclined race but from one with physical prowess and even better scout abilities, 'I thought he would motivate me to learn magic, but right now, I only want some tea with cookies... damn it...'

Ocilia was watching him, shrugging her shoulders, and kept on trying since she didn't expect anything less from her master.

On the other hand, Alexander had other thoughts, 'This is annoying that I have to say the incantation... I need to find out how to cut it out fully.'

Since he was in this world, magic lost its... magic and became a part of his world like drinking water. On the other hand, research became something magical to him, and he couldn't wait to have more spell constructs, spell... words?

He turned towards Green, "Ehm, how do you call the words or sentences or whatever?"

Green looked at him while slowly landing on a desk and sitting in the lotus position, "This magic language is one of many and probably not worth much since you already need three words for such an easy spell... however, my university used it, which makes it not much better, and it is called Luminous I."

Alexander thought that it was a weird name, "Luminous I? What about II?"

She touched her chin with the index finger while trying to explain the intricacies as easily as possible, "Well, depending on how complicated a spell is, it needs different languages so it can be more efficient."

"It depends on how many lines, nodes, and overhangs, which we will learn later, the spell will have."

Alexander suddenly thought about something and cut off his spell, trying to activate it multiple times, and every time the time he needed became shorter and shorter. At the same time, he also began to speak much faster.

In his thoughts, something nagged him, and he knew what, 'I can use the algorithm skill to build the construct much faster and use less mana with it!'

He could build it as quickly as possible by manipulating mana from all sides and from the inside to build it, but it costs much more. If he made it just from one side, it would cut the costs to a third, but the time he needed to build it would also be increased by five.

Every time he manipulated mana, he needed to use mana and stamina to move mana. This also meant that the faster he did something, the more mana he used since he needed to push mana much quicker into the position he wanted.

It also killed his precision since the slower he was, the more precise and less mana/stamina was wasted, but brute-forcing costs more mana since there will be a lot of waste.

The algorithm skill helped him build it up efficiently, as quickly as possible, with as little waste.

After twenty tries, Green looked at him and shrugged her shoulders, saying out loud what she only thought, "Well, kind of expected it from somebody who learned his first spell with six years after forty-five minutes."

Alexander blushed after hearing it, and Ocilia started to feel proud of having him as a master, even more so than usual.

Green smiled slightly and jumped off the desk, flying towards the door, "This is all for today. I will come in two days and bring everything I have at home..."

She suddenly stood still in the air, thinking and stroking her chin, "I guess I can contact some old friends from my university days and ask them for as much material as possible... so stay curious, Alex."

He was elated as he wanted to do exactly what she did by herself. Asked if she could contact people, he could gain a solid foundation in the years to come with a little luck.

As she flew out, Alexander bowed towards her, "Till later, teach."

She landed, opened the door, and almost ran into Lorient, "Hey, Green! How are you? Can Alex at least cast a meteor?"

Green chuckled and nodded towards her, "Hello, Lorient, and no, but he needs at least a week or two."

She squeezed beside her and waved at them goodbye as they chuckled.

Alexander was not really surprised to see Lorient. They either spared or cuddled, a weird dichotomy, but it was nonetheless nice.

She was a person who loved the wildness and a huntress in her heart, but now, mom closed her up in the estate till she got her demon energy under better control. She could not risk it to let her out, knowing the danger that she could attack innocent subjects.

She crossed her arms over her chest, "Well, first, let us eat something but then..." a wicked smile showed on her face, "...I will train you a bit."