I woke up with a slight pain in my head, one that faded as I sat up in a luxurious bed and stretched with a massive yawn. My mind turned to the dream I had had, and I firmly grabbed it by the chin and turned it to the coming day. There would be time to think of that later I assured myself. I got out of the bed and threw the curtains open, the sun hadn’t even risen yet. Ghiraldi said the day would start early, sunrise was a safe assumption. I glanced over to the bed, red hair was spilled over the white pillows; looking like a ropy pool of blood. The owner of the hair was completely buried in the soft sheets and a duvet. Might as well let her sleep, after all; if she was asleep then she couldn’t object to me taking a bath first. I stepped into the shower and marveled at its function once more.

This time, when I was done, there were no clothes helpfully laid out for me. It wasn’t a big problem, I could just grab my clothes from the actual bedroom. THere was, however, an ever helpful towel. Seemingly having been replaced last night. I dried off and hucked it into a basket that was probably for dirty clothes. Even if it wasn't, I had already put my dirty clothes into it. I stepped into the bedroom and opened the wardrobe. It seemed that the wind spirits had taken the liberty to store our clothes and luggage for us. I grabbed a simple shirt and rough cotton drawstring pants. There seemed to be more clothes than I had brought. I chalked it up to Ghiraldi being generous I guess. Before I could think more on the mystery clothes, I heard a loud yawn from the bed.

“Are you going in the shower?” Sylvie asked while rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. I turned to face her, pulling on my pants.

“Just got out,” I replied, tying the pants off.

“Good,” she said, getting off the bed and stumbling towards the washroom. Clearly her legs were still asleep. She stretched her legs with a small squeal, likely inadvertent. “I’ve been wanting to study the enchantment since I saw it. Maybe I can make some sort of heads or tails of it if I glare at it hard enough.”

“Best of luck to you, honey,” I said, trying to find the head hole in the shirt. I summoned my spell book to my hand, I still couldn't tell you how, and sat on the bed. Once more, trying to figure out what the runes the spells were written in meant. If I could write my own spells, or more realistically alter existing ones through writing rather than intuition, I wouldn’t need to rely on Khaos to bring him down.

As the first rays of dawn filled our room, a breeze brushed up besides me,

“The master is ready for you two now,” came a whispery voice.

“All right, will we be having breakfast first?” I responded.

“No,” was the only response. I was surprised of course, but curious at the same time. What benefit could there possibly be to not eating before the lesson? Almost perfectly on cue, Sylvie stepped out of the washroom drying her hair with a towel.

“It seems like Ghiraldi is ready for us,” I called out to her as she opened the doors to the wardrobe and pulled out some clothes.

“No breakfast?”

“Apparently not,” I said.

“This is really going to suck,” she sighed, tying her boots.

“What do you mean?” I asked, throwing on a thin coat. She seemingly ignored me, walking out of the room. “Sylvie? What do you mean this is going to suck!?” I called after her, hurrying to catch up. Zefyr, or was it Fery, was leading us. I couldn’t tell which and I didn’t ask, my mind was too busy trying to figure out my wife’s cryptic wording.

We followed the wind spirit out the back door onto a large frost kissed lawn. Interestingly there was a large inset stone stage at least eighty paces long and about forty wide. Standing in the middle was Ghiraldi, staff in hand he was dressed resplendently in what could only be traditional wizard garb. A bloodred ankle length cloak, matched with a silken black shirt and bright white pants that seemed to be made of similar material, the boots were a dark polished brown leather, and the staff was magnificent. Red, gold, and black twisted up its glasslike shaft and terminated at a large white gem. He also wore black leather gloves tipped with gold, and even from here I could tell that all of his clothes were woven with enchantments. There must have been a rejuvenation spell mixed in with how the white hairs had seemed to have receded. Not to mention he stood tall and strong, ironically enough, no longer wizened. His eyes were sharp before, but now they looked like a hawks, a hawk which had just spotted a juicy morsel far far beneath it.

“Come!” he called out, waving us over. His voice was strong, carrying easily over the distance. The two of us made our way to him.

“Our first task in your… retraining, will be to improve your mana circulation,” he said. As he did, two cushions floated by and landed at our feet. “Sit,” he commanded. And we sat. mana circulation was the most basic thing you’d learn before casting a spell. I was able to circulate mana well enough to cast spells, of course, but I had learned from a book. Having a teacher in person would be a completely different experience. I quickly learned just how right I was. I sat on the cushion, cross legged. This earned me a sharp smack on the shoulder from the old man.

“On your knees,” he growled at me, gesturing to how Sylvie was sitting. I corrected my posture, sitting up straight on my knees. I closed my eyes and pictured my lungs and heart, I breathed in and out. Imagining the air flowing into my lungs, the oxygen and mana being stripped from it then being sent to my heart. From there I pictured the mana traveling with the oxygen in my bloodstream. I felt the mana get caught up in multiple places; the middle of the small of my back, my abdomen, the point where my head and neck met. I willed my mana to move along arteries and veins in the areas. And slowly, my mana broke up the blockages and I felt my muscles relax as well.

Apparently I had many more blockages and thin spots than I realized. At some point I felt Ghiraldi’s hand on my chest and felt his mana mix with mine, spots I didn't notice anything was wrong with, he took extreme offense with. Everytime he smoothed out an area, or forced my mana to fill in, the pain in that part of my body would make me gasp and break my concentration. Which would only reward me with a sharp rap on the head from the wizard's staff. These breaks in concentration would end with me finding all of the blockages back where they were, as if I had never worked on them. I grit my teeth and got back to working on them. Everytime my concentration broke and I started over, I could feel the spots Ghiraldi had pointed out to me. And some that he had either left for me to discover on my own, or less likely, he himself had missed. I started from my chest. There was an unevenness in my left upper pectoral, I kept moving up to find a blockage at the base of my skull. From there I carefully moved down, slowly and carefully I evened and cleared out irregularities in my mana flow. As I reached my calves, I realized Ghiraldi had not interfered, even though I could feel his hand on my back. That must’ve meant I had improved enough to where he didn’t see any problem with my procedure.

I finished up my feet, and felt my entire body truly relax in weeks, if not months. I cracked my eyes open with a sigh. I must have been very fast, as the sun still hadn’t fully risen. Only half of it peeked over the horizon. I turned to tell Sylvie, only to see she was gone. In fact, even Ghiraldi was gone. I felt a sharp pang, a stab of pain, in my stomach. I was starving!

“I wonder if I can eat breakfast yet,” I wondered aloud.

“The Master is inside, do you want me to lead you to him?” the wind whispered in my ear. I nodded in confirmation and followed the barely materialized wind spirit inside. I felt light, and strong. No doubt an added benefit of properly performing mana circulation for the first time. Rather than the subpar way I had done it before. And to think I’d improved so much in barely an hour. I opened the room to the dining room and stepped in. There sat Ghiraldi and Sylvie, the old wizard seemed to be explaining the specifics of some sort of water spell. He looked over to me as I entered and cut himself off,

“Liam, it’s good of you to finally join us. You should eat,” he said, gesturing to where I had sat last night. A covered dish sat in front of the seat, untouched. In fact, there were three of them.

“The speed at which you improved was remarkable,” Ghiraldi commented. “Normally it’d take a new wizard months to get to your level.”

I opened the first dish to see eggs, toast, and cheese with some grapes. The eggs were still warm and the toast was still crispy. I hurriedly ate, sopping up the warm runny yolk with the toast. The grapes were a little sour, pleasantly so.

“I am surprised as well, who would’ve known I could improve so much in barely an hour,” I replied around a mouthful of bread and egg.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“An hour?” asked Sylvie, pursing her lips, “Amore, it’s sunset. You didn’t move all day from your spot.”

“Then how are the eggs warm?! And the toast, how is it still crispy?” I asked, gesturing to the empty plate.

“The dishes have a simple enchantment which keeps the food in the same state as before the lid was placed on them,” replied Ghiraldi, quirking an eyebrow. I pulled the lids off of the other two dishes, one had a disk of ground beef and flat bread with some sort of sauce and cheese. The other had a hearty looking stew with what was possibly mashed potatoes and thick bread with a dessert of the same creamy, cheesy, nutty thing we’d had the night before. It was all still steaming, as if fresh off the stove. I guess that explained why I was so hungry.

“How long did it take you?” I asked Sylvie while digging into what would have been my lunch, I was really hungry.

“A few hours, he didn’t let me rest until I got it down perfectly. After which Messere Ghiraldi introduced the theory behind some simple spells,” she replied, sliding over a glass of water. The sight of the cold water with condensation forming on the glass made me realize I was very thirsty. I gratefully accepted the proffered glass and downed it in a few drinks. The wind spirits refilled it as soon as I put it down. It only made sense I was this thirsty. Even though it had been a chilly day, the sun had probably been out in full force today if the current cloud cover was any indication.

Since I’d been practicing mana circulation all day, literally, I felt fresh and alert. I slowed down as I was eating, enjoying the dinner. I listened as Ghiraldi described a spell which conjured a ball of fresh water. The explanation of how mana interacted with the elements was always interesting to me. And Ghiraldi explained it a bit differently than the textbooks I had stolen a look at. The textbooks focused on manipulating mana as it was leaving the body, or even after it had left. Ghiraldi was explaining it as though the mana should be changing before it left the body.

“There are risks,” he explained “say you convert your neutral mana into fire mana. Now you have literal burning mana flowing in your veins. It’ll make the spell effect stronger, but you must cast some spell with the mana, or else you’ll just end up harming yourself. I know, or rather knew, some mages who did so on purpose. They used it to strengthen their bodies temporarily.” I couldn’t help but interject. I downed my fresh glass of water and cleared my throat,

“Doesn’t circulating neutral mana strengthen your body?”

“It does,” he said, turning his attention to me, “but these…spellswords as they called themselves, imbued their bodies with a broad range of abilities using various types of mana. For example, fire. They would convert upwards of thirty percent of their neutral mana into fire mana. That would give them explosive strength and speed. But for them it was always balancing the costs to the benefits. It would give them explosive strength and speed, but they’d also suffer severe internal burns,” he said, shaking his head.

“Those burns could be healed through?” asked Sylvie, hesitant.

“Theoretically? Of course. But you’d need to convert almost all of your mana into healing mana then circulate it for a good long time. It’s definitely not a quick healing art.”

“It sounds self destructive,” I mused as I chewed on a piece of meat from the stew. Of course, considering my own behaviour over the past few days, I wasn't in the position to criticize. I couldn’t help but wonder what it felt like, the technique would probably be very useful if I could add it in my arsenal, provided I could heal whatever damage I took.

“That woman I told you about might have a powerful healing spell. Just food for thought,” Khaos whispered in my mind. I frowned, hiding it as fast as I could. I knew he was likely trying to manipulate me, but if what he said was true… I shook my head slightly to clear it, what was I thinking? I almost fell for his manipulation. No, I’d find another way. Likely I wouldn't use the spellblade toolset, unless I had to. During my musings the other two had moved on, so for now, I focused on Ghiraldi’s instruction on how to cast a water ball spell; it could be used as a source of drinking water and launched at high enough speeds to smash a tree in half. A useful spell if we were to be traveling. And it seemed to be simple enough for both of us to learn, I intended to leave the truly complex spells to Sylvie. The concept was the same as the fireball spell, simply substituting fire mana with water mana.

I watched Sylvie with a critical eye as she focused hard on palm. Slowly a tiny orb of water, hardly even an inch across, formed above her palm. It began to grow and grow, until it was the size of a large grapefruit. Sylvie carefully brought her lips to the ball of water, and gently sipped at it. The ball wobbled, she took another sip; it wobbled once more. Her lips touched it for a third time, and it burst all over her face; soaking her shirt and hair. She spluttered and spit the water out.

“So,” she said after collecting herself, “we can definitely drink it, we just need to be careful.”

“We can test its combat abilities tomorrow,” said Ghiraldi, patting her on the shoulder reassuringly. “Good job getting it on the first cast.” She practically lit up, like the sun. On the topic of the sun, it had clearly set. The scene outside of the large windows in the dining hall was cloaked in the shadows of twilight and darkness of the night proper.

“What’s the plan for tomorrow,” I asked Ghiraldi as I stood from my seat. He glanced at me and stroked his beard.

“Mana circulating,” he said. I paused, halfway up.

“Didn’t we do that today?” I asked accusingly. He sighed, his shoulders sagging in disappointment.

“When you’re training, you always start with mana circulation. It’s like stretching your muscles before exercising.” That made me genuinely frown,

“But if it takes me all day to finish my mana circulation…” I trailed off. The old man smiled at me,

“You’ve found another reason to hurry up and get better. After all, mana circulation is the most basic skill. It helps with mana recovery, as well as muscle fatigue. Not to mention it strengthens your body, making it resistant to mana. Among other things.” I couldn’t help but be annoyed. But at the end of the day, there was nothing I could do but make incremental progress day by day. After all, the capital, Proelein, wasn’t built in a day. No, it was built up one bloody conquest after another.

“Liam,” said Sylvie, drawing my attention towards her with a small wave of her hand, “for an apprentice to become a true wizard they need to be able to circulate mana even when unconscious. Let alone when actually casting spells and moving around. It’s a very important skill, I still can’t do it while under a lot of stress or while casting, let alone when I’m unconscious.” I nodded sagely, I guess it was an important skill then. Well then, I’d work on it until I slept. Then again in the morning, until I could at least do it at Sylvie’s level.

Eventually we made our way back to our room, and unlike myself Sylvie had been practicing various spells all day and was actually tired. I let her bathe first, and she fell asleep almost as soon as she laid down. I sat in the bed and began circulating my mana once more. I don’t know when, but I eventually fell asleep. As I regained consciousness, I forced myself to begin circulating mana again. However, I couldn’t move in this state. So I layed there, with my eyes closed until I heard Sylvie stirring next to me. I opened my eyes, trying hard to keep the mana circulating. But even the small movement of my eyes opening was enough to break me. I sat up and looked around. The sun was coming up, which meant we’d be training soon. I stretched and got ready for the day. By the time I got out of the washroom, Sylvie was already up and stretching in bed. We went about our morning routines in a comfortable silence before making our way outside. Again, Ghiraldi was there in his garb. And wordlessly we both knelt on the cushions and began circulating our mana. It was much easier this time around, Since I had been circulating mana in the morning and as I fell asleep, there were almost no blockages.

Ghiraldi didn’t even have to help me to feel out the blockages, although he still kept track of me. When I was done, I cracked open my eyes to see it was already midday. Sylvie was casting the waterball spell over and over at a stone wall which shuddered after each strike. I rose to my feet. Ghiraldi looked over, noticing I was done,

“Very good! You’ve improved remarkably in less than twenty four hours. At this rate you’ll be able to call yourself a wizard by the time Sylvie will!” I blushed slightly at his praise.

“Should I try casting that?” I asked; gesturing to Sylvie, who was still very concentrated on the spell. Forming then shooting, forming then shooting.

“It’s harder than it looks, but sure. Go ahead,” he said, tilting a head to the small wall Sylphie was shooting at.

I held out a hand and, out of habit, began pushing neutral mana out of it. As I started transmuting it into water mana, Ghiraldi hit me with his staff on the hands.

“Inside! Inside the body!” He scolded me. I remembered our discussion yesterday.

“Why does it matter!” I asked, wheeling around to face him. He tsked at me,

“Efficiency! It’s faster, and there’s less wasted mana,” he replied. I glared at him then sighed. It made sense, when you pushed neutral mana out some of it dissipates into your surroundings. I wasn’t too sure about the faster part. Concentrating on the mana circulating in my palm, I tried to turn it into water mana. I thought about how the mana should behave, flowy, rapid, smooth. I felt the mana I converted get whisked away as it was swept up by my natural flow of mana. I did it again, keeping in mind what Ghiraldi said about spellswords. I didn’t want to hurt myself here. I pointed towards the wall and focused on the mana coming down to my hand through my arm. If I could change it into water mana before it got to my palm, then it wouldn’t be whisked away. It’d arrive exactly where it needed to be.

I pushed the water mana out of my hand as it reached my palm. I focused on the same feeling as when I cast the light ball spell, or the fire ball variant. I curved the water mana in on itself as it came out, forming a small ball of water. I focused on increasing the size of it, I added water mana layer by layer. At this point it was the size of a large onion, I pointed my palm towards the wall and built up water mana behind my palm. The strain from holding it in place was more than I expected, I aimed as well as I could while building up more pressure. THen I released all of the built up water behind my palm. It slammed into the ball of water and sent it rocketing towards the wall. I watched as it flew clear over the wall and disappeared into the distance. I missed a wall.