Mana flowed through his eyes as Kai practiced controlling his senses. Kai focused slowly, shifting the enhancement to focus on his smell instead of his other senses. Slowly his vision dimmed, his touch was muted, his taste dulled and he couldn’t hear as well. As he focused the enhancement on his sense of smell. is other senses started to drop back down to normal.
Kai focused, attempting to further enhance his sense of smell and limit his other senses. Ever so slowly Kai began to pick up on different smells. He could smell the wood that the building was made of. He could smell the clean air coming in from a window outside his room. The faint scent of smoke from candles. He could faintly smell something that he didn’t recognize that made his nose tingle. Finally he smelt something that he didn’t think he had ever smelled before. Yet he intimately knew the scent of. It was the smell of bacon.
Kai jumped out of bed, all thoughts of more practice leaving him. Quickly he went over to Sarah’s bed and gently shook her awake.
“What is it, Kai?” Sarah mumbled. Clearly still half asleep.
“Can I go down and get something to eat?”
“Sure.” Sarah grumbled out while pulling her blanket up and rolling over in bed.
Not wanting to wake Sarah up any more than he already had. Kai quickly but quietly ran over to the door silently opened and shut it and then ran downstairs excited to get something to eat.
When he got to the bottom of the stairs Kai channeled some mana into his eyes and scanned the room. Immediately Kai found Bear, Tom and Nixie sitting around a table. As he walked over Kai changed his focus from his eyes to his ears and focused on hearing what they were saying. As he enhanced his ears Kai was hit with a cacophony of sound. Focusing he tried to see if he could direct his hearing on what Nixie was saying.
“Find one spell but we were told that they were expecting some new ones some time soon. We will need to find out how Kai wants to fight and with what weapon if that's how he even wants to fight. After that we can get some spells focused on that.” Nixie said as Kai walked over to them.
“For fighting we can ask Kai what he wants to do later today. For now what spell did you get a hold of?” Thane asked.
Nixie winced. “I could only find candle flame. There were a couple other spells but I didn’t want to buy anything until we had a better understanding of what Kai wants to do. The other spells that could have been useful no matter what he chooses but they are too advanced for now. We can purchase them when the time comes.”
As Kai approached he slowly decreased the mana enhancing his hearing until he was right next to them.
“Oh hey Kai did you sleep well?” Bear asked.
“Hi Bear.” Kai said.
“So what do you want to eat for breakfast? We were waiting for a couple more people to come down before eating but since you're here we can eat now.”
“We can wait for the others.” Kai said not wanting to leave the others out.
“Nah, it's fine. Thane will eat on his own since he’s busy with his own things and won't be down till after we start training. As for Sarah. Well she’s probably going to be sleeping for a good while.” Bear said.
“What’s Thane doing?” Kai asked.
“Uhm well.” Bear said nervously before regaining his confidence. “Ehh it doesn’t matter. Nothing you will need to worry about. So what do you want for breakfast?” Bear asked changing the subject.
At the mention of food Kai remembered the smell of bacon and instantly knew what he wanted. “BACON lots of bacon.” Kai said, excited to eat something that he had never had. Yet at the he had eaten and knew he loved.
Bear got the attention of the server calling her over and ordering Kai some french toast and bacon. After that he turned his attention back to Kai.
“I heard part of your conversation and I was thinking about how I want to fight.” Kai said while staring down at where he was clenching his fists together. “I have Seth which if I use him he will be an extremely powerful asset. I also have the training that they provided me and finally I have the strength I got from their experiments. It feels like it would be a waste not to take advantage of that. But I also really want to learn magic and be a mage. I want to be able to cast spells and do all of that. So I don’t know what to do.”
“Ok the answer to that is easy. Just do both. You were given boxes that people can be put into. A lot of people will cleanly fall into those boxes but a lot more people won’t cleanly fall into those boxes. So all you have to do is learn both, then focus on which one you like best. ” Bear said, shrugging. “We can teach you. It's not like our time is limited.”
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Kai perked up at what he said “Really?”
“Yeah sure why not. We can get started today.” Bear said.
Tom nodded before speaking. “Currently our plan is to spend the mornings doing physical training. We will do that until lunch. After that we will take a break to eat and relax a little. After lunch we will spend a couple hours working on your magical training. The rest of the day you can do whatever you want.”
As Tom finished up talking the waiter came over with their breakfast. Kai immediately started eating the moment his food was placed down in front of him. He devoured a plate literally piled full of bacon and another plate with 10 pieces of french toast. As Kai was finishing up one of the empty chairs at the table was pulled out and Sarah sat down.
“Hi.” She said through a yawn while rubbing her eyes clearly still tired. “So where’s breakfast?”
Kai guiltily turned to look down at the final piece of french toast on his plate.
He started to push the plate over to Sarah so that she could eat it but before he could Sarah reached over taking some food from Tom and Bear. “Thanks for saving some food for me. I really appreciate it.” She said through a mouth full of food.
“Hey, that's my food.” Bear said, grabbing at what Sarah had taken. “You can get your own food.”
Sarah said something that Kai couldn’t make out through her full mouth. Causing a blast of wind to hit Bear in the face. Before their bickering could get any worse Kai asked a question.
“How did you cast that spell without saying the words properly? Or do you not need to say the words properly.”
Turning to Kai Sarah swallowed her mouth full of bacon before answering him. “Oh yeah, that’s a simple spell that I have enough familiarity with to not need its full incantation to be able to cast it. Thane will probably explain it later.”
They finished up eating with Bear and Sarah bickering about the stolen food. After eating they all got up ready to start training.
“Yesterday I got an understanding of what you were physically capable of doing. Today we’re going to start your training. The same as yesterday and what we’re going to do everyday.” Bear said.
With that they set out at what for the adults was a light jog but for Kai was closer to a run. For an hour they jogged around the town. During their jog Kai was able to slowly start to familiarize himself with the place. Toward the end of the hour Bear started to direct them back towards the guild.
Arriving back at the guild Bear immediately took them down to their training room.
“Ok.” Bear said, clapping his hands together. “The rest of our training is going to take on two different parts for the foreseeable future. The first part is going to be basic training to help you build up muscles. The second part is going to be dedicated to teaching you how to use various weapons. This is something that no matter what you want to specialize in you will need to know. Do you know why that is?” Bear asked him.
Kai nodded “It’s so that if I ever don’t have time to cast a spell or I’m out of mana or for some other reason my magic won’t be effective I have another option.”
Bear nodded at his answer. “Yeah essentially, most mages don’t see the point in learning to fight with weapons. Especially the stronger ones. They think that they can just blow something up with their spell and they will be fine. Most of the time they are right and they can. Mages are very powerful but there are people who specialize in killing mages. Who are trained to avoid or negate spells and get in close to kill them. That is just one reason to have this training.”
With that Bear and Tom spent a couple hours helping Kai learn how to build up his muscles and create a routine for the foreseeable future.
Bear clapped his hands together, a grin spreading across his face. “Ok, yesterday you showed me that you have a solid foundation in hand to hand fighting. I don’t really know if there's anything we can do to help with that other than letting you get more experience. So we will be moving straight onto weapon training. For weapon training we are going to teach you to at least be competent with a variety of weapons. Do you know why that is?”
Kai nodded again “It’s the same reason you would teach a mage how to fight. It's so that they are never without options. Being able to fight bare handed is important because you will always have your fists on you so you will always be armed. Being able to fight with a variety of common weapons makes it so that if you end up with a random weapon in the middle of a fight you won’t just be flailing around.”
Bear nodded along at Kai’s explanation. “Yes, that is correct.” Bear said tossing over a dull training sword. “Let's get started.”
It turned out that Bear would not be not be training him to fight with a sword since that wasn’t his primary weapon. Instead Tom and Sarah taught him. Slowly he learned how to use the sword. The first thing he had to do was learn how to hold the sword. Something that he picked up on surprisingly quickly. After that they taught him how to stand so that he would be knocked over immediately. It was easy enough for him to learn since it was just an adaptation from what he already learned. Finally they started teaching him how to swing the sword.
***
Sarah watched as Kai swung his sword down. It was a little off but for his age and the fact that he had just started he was already amazing. What confused her was that everytime he messed up even if it was only slightly he would flinch.
Tom walked over to help Kai fix his posture. As he got close Kai flinched before seeming to get control of himself.
“Why does he keep flinching?” Nixie asked “I’ve only been here for a couple minutes but I’ve already seen him flinch at least 5 different times.”
“I think he’s expecting to get punished for messing up.” Bear said from where he was standing next to them. “He told us that he was trained in hand to hand combat. I would imagine that they weren't kind in their training.”
Sarah “ Yeah we will need to remind everyone to be careful with him.” She slapped Bear on the back “Go tell them that we’re going to take a break and eat lunch after that we will start magic training.”