Kai let out a tired groan as slowly he woke up. His blinks were slow and lethargic; the air was cold while the blanket was warm. Kai lifted the blanket over his head burying himself in warmth. Kai let out another sleepy groan as his brain slowly started working again.
Kai shot up the blanket off his head as he looked around the room. Where was he? How had he gotten here? Where were the others?
Mana flooded his eyes and instantly everything was taken in. Kai let himself relax. There was a small desk and chair against the wall to one side on the other was a closet. Across from Kai’s bed was another bed with a small end table in between them. Lying asleep in the bed was Sarah.
Kai laid back down in his bed allowing the mana coursing through his eyes to slow. Kai started playing with the mana in his eyes trying to completely cut it off but no matter what he did he could manage it. When that proved to be a dead end, Kai started to experiment to see just how much control he had over the enhanced senses his eye gave him. A little while later Kai had determined that he could slightly lessen the enhancement on one sense to enhance another one. Though the effect was minimal, he could feel that he just needed more practice. So Kai started practicing.
Slowly the room began to lighten as the sun rose and Sarah began to stir. She flipped over her eyes open but foggy with sleep.
“Oh, hi Kai” Sarah said, her voice quiet and thick with sleep. She let out a deep groan before forcing herself out of her bed. “You wanna go down and get something to eat?” Sarah asked through a yawn.
Kai quickly got up and opened up the door hungry and ready to eat. Looking back Kai saw Sarah standing next to her bed in a long cotton shirt and shorts.
Sarah walked over and ruffled Kai’s hair. “Why don’t you go down and find a table. I’ve gotta get changed and then I’ll come down.” Sarah said while closing the door behind Kai.
Kai quickly made his way down the stairs. Looking around Kai saw Tom and Nixie talking to some of the other people in the room. Quickly he made his way over to them.
“Kai.” Nixie said getting out of her chair to give him a hug. “Did you sleep well?” she asked while picking him up and setting him on an empty chair.
As Nixie was doing that Tom waved over one of the waiters and ordered some food.
“Sarah’s also up. She’s going to be coming down soon.” Kai told them.
Tom quickly ordered her some food as well. Tom and Nixie talked with some of the other Hunters in the room while waiting for the food to come out. Surprisingly Sarah wasn’t the first one to come down. Bear came tromping down the stairs head down his steps slightly unsteady. Bear let out a loud groan as he slumped down into his chair.
“What’s wrong Bear?” Tom asked, his voice filled with triumph. “By any chance did I win our bet?” Bear just let out another groan as he handed Tom a couple coins.
He turned to Nixie, his face filled with desperate hope. “Nixie, can you help me out here?”
Nixie snorted at him. “I told you not to drink so much last night and you didn’t listen to me. So you get to deal with the consequences of that.” With that she turned to where a waiter was coming over with their food. The waiter set the trays down onto the table.
Nixie grabbed two plates of scrambled eggs and a plate of hash browns, setting them down in front of Kai. Kai immediately dug into the food on longer listening to Bear, Nixie and Tom’s playful bickering.
Eventually Sarah came down and started eating.
“Come on Nixie help me out here. I won’t be able to properly train Kai with a hangover.” Bear said groaning out the newest argument for why Nixie should help him.
Finally she relented. “Fine I’ll heal you, but any more hangovers are on you and you will have to deal with them.” Nixie said, while summoning softly glowing water into her hands.
Nixie reached out and placed hand onto Bear’s head. The water slowly seeped into him and its effect could be seen as Bear’s face was filled with relief.
“There your hangover is gone. Now get started teaching Kai.” Nixie turned to Kai and smiled at him. “As long as you’re ready Bear, Tom and Sarah are going to start your physical training now. We plan on starting the magical training after lunch.”
“I’m ready to go now.”
Nixie reached over and tussled Kai’s hair. “Ok, I will see you later then.” turning to Bear she said. “Well you heard him get up and get to work.”
“But I hav-”
Tom set his hand on Bear’s shoulder interrupting him. “Come on let's go” he said before muttering so quietly that only Bear and Kai, thanks to his enhanced senses, could hear. “If you try to eat she might kill you. We can get you something from a vendor.”
With that the four of them left the building.
“Ok first things first Kai.” Bear said “From now on we are going to start the day with a two hour run through the city. This serves two purposes. The first and most obvious purpose is to help keep us in shape. The second purpose is to help you map out the city by traveling through it. Knowing your terrain is very important.”
With that they started jogging. Though their jog was closer to the run of a normal person. But Kai wasn’t normal any more was he? For two hours Kai’s thoughts spiraled thinking about how inhuman he now was. In the end Kai came to the conclusion that he really didn’t care. So what if he wasn’t as human as someone like Sarah or Nixie. He was himself and that was all he cared about. After some more thinking Kai started to contemplate how he probably wasn’t completely sane either. But in the end he came to the exact same conclusion as before.
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Two hours later they were back in the guild building. Bear took Kai over to the only set of stairs that went down. At the bottom of the stairs was a long hallway with a couple of doors on each side. Bear took them to a door about half way down the hall. It was a large room with more than enough room for them all to move around in. The floor was sand and Nixie and Thane were inside. Along with them there were various types of equipment stacked up on one of the walls.
“This is where we will be training for the most part.” Bear said. “To start off we need to find out how strong you are and what you can do in a fight.” Bear went over to the equipment and grabbed a variety of weights bringing them over and setting them down in front of Kai.
Kai walked over and picked up the first weight with ease. “5 pounds.” Bear said. Kai picked up the second one. “10 pounds” he turned and picked up the third one. “15 pounds” It wasn’t until the sixth one when Kai had problems and the final one he could pick up was the eight one. “Wow, well done Kai that is 40 pounds.”
With that they moved onto the next part. “Ok Kai, next I will need to know what you can do in a fight. So I want you to walk me through what you know how to do. After that we can do some mock fights.”
The next couple of hours was spent with them doing small fights as Bear got to know what Kai could do. As they fought the others were doing their own practice in the background. With Sarah and Tom mostly dueling each other. While Nixie and Thane practiced their own magic. Hours passed like this before eventually they went back up to eat lunch. After that was done they came back down and Thane and Nixie took him off to the side of the room. With the others following slightly behind them.
“I know that you have had bits and pieces of magic explained to you so far. But I am going to explain two pieces of the basics to you. The rest will come later.” Thane said. “Mana is the basic building block of the world and everything has mana in it. The only exceptions are things with aether and prawna. Aether is a better form of mana with prawna being a better aether. Next is affinities and how they work. Mana by itself is simply potential energy. The problem is that it has no purpose. No direction. No nature. Because of this it can’t affect much change. But an affinity can give it a nature and purpose. Allowing it to affect change on the world. But because of this that magic can’t act outside of its nature.”
Thane called Tom over and told him to cast a fire spell. Tom held up his sword and began to mutter to himself under his breath. As he got done a spark of fire slowly expanded until it had covered the sword in crackling sparking orange flames. That even from a couple feet away Kai could feel heat emanating from.
“Did you notice how the flames are hot yet Tom does not feel a thing from the.” Thane asks but not giving Kai a chance to continue. “The reason for this is because he is instinctively directing its nature into burning things other than himself. Now you must remember that while it is possible to direct your magic's nature it is absolutely impossible to completely negate it. But it is possible to focus your magic into one aspect of its nature to the exclusion of all else.”
Yet again Thane gestured at Tom. Tom began to mutter under his breath and seconds later a small flickering flame sparked into existence in front of them. Thane stepped forward and shoved his hand into the flame. Kai’s eyes widened in shock and horror. Yet nothing happened. There was no sizzling of melting flesh or burning. His clothes didn’t change in the slightest.
“This spell is called candle flame. Its purpose is to create a small flame that gives off light and nothing else. That is what I meant by focusing on a certain aspect of something's nature.”
Tom dispelled his flame and Thane clapped his hands together. “Now it's time for the exciting part. We are going to find out what your affinity or if your lucky affinities are.”
Thane gestured and Sarah brought over a small faceted crystal faintly glowing with soft white light. “At the age of 5 every kid is tested to get a rough estimate of how much mana they have. This is a crude but cheap method. Before you ask I don’t know why you were told that you had no mana since that’s clearly untrue. What we are testing today is what affinities you have. A quick refresher on what affinities there are. First there are the 3 body affinities blood, bone and flesh. Then the 6 elemental affinities fire, lighting, water, earth, wind and nature. And finally there's metal, mind, fate, time, space, dark, and light.”
Thane started to hold the crystal out to Kai when he hesitated for a moment. “Do you know what the tiers are?” Thane asked him. Kai shook his head in no. “Ok then I will need to explain that to you too. There are 5 tiers of power though most people fall into the 6th and 7th tiers. The 7th tier is what a basic human is capable of. With the 6th tier is what an absolutely peak human is capable of. After that there are the 5 true tiers. The first 2 are for normal people and they are a human thing. But tiers 5-1 apply to everything. Tier 5 is the lowest possible level with tier 1 being the highest. Among the normal people or commoners tier 3 is the highest that will pretty much ever happen. But among nobles this is average and anything lower is generally looked down upon. Though even among noble’s tier 2 is an almost impossible dream and tier 1 is the sign of a prodigy beyond all others. There is no way to truly increase a person's base affinity but I have heard of ways to increase it with outside help. Now, any questions?” Thane asked to finish up.
Kai didn’t even have to think about what he wanted to know. “What are your affinities?”
“Nixie has a tier 4 water affinity. While Tom has a tier 5 fire affinity. I have an earth affinity.” Thane paused for a moment before continuing “Elf magic works a bit differently than human magic. Since I'm half elf, my earth magic’s tier is a bit strange but that isn’t something you have to worry about.” Thane finished up while handing the small crystal to Kai. “Simply push a little bit of your mana into it and it will work.”
Kai grabbed the crystal and without any effort his mana flowed into it. In the center of the crystal a small campfire was born crackling with life and vitality. Kai felt a strange tugging in his mind but before he could figure out what it was Thane spoke.
“Wow, that's really good. You’ve got a tier 3 fire affinity. We should be able to easily get you some spells for that and Tom will be able to teach you how to use them.” Thane looked up at him. “Any chance you feel a slight tugging? If so, that means you have another affinity.”
Kai refocused on the crystal and felt more of his mana being tugged out. Inside the crystal the campfire died and a massive ball of lightning was born with pillar size bolts branching off.
“Well shit, that was unexpected” Tom said. “I didn’t expect the kid to have a tier 2 affinity. And especially not in lighting.
“Agreed” Thane said “Getting spells will be annoying but more than worth it. You also should be able to help him due to the overlap of fire and lightning even if your advice isn’t perfect.”
“Lightning magic will be extremely useful in the future for dealing with beasts.” Nixie said.
Sarah appeared next to Kai accompanied by the wind of her passage. “That’s some nice magic you’ve got there Kai. A bit skewed towards power but there's nothing wrong with that.” She said while tussling his hair.
Despite all of their words Kai couldn’t focus on any of them. At least not wholly since Kai could feel the crystal still pulling at his mana. Kai allowed the crystal to pull free his mana.
The ball of lightning winked out of existence and in its place was a roiling sea of crimson blood.
The room was instantly silenced. It was Bear who finally managed to speak “Tier 2 blood affinity.”