When I arrived home I went to my room to find Persy waiting there. “Welcome back.” She walked over to me and held out the key, then sniffed the air and smiled. “Seems like you did a lot more than just have a few drinks.”
I took the key and put it around my neck. “I didn’t say I was going out for drinks with a friend.”
“Still, I take it you had a good time?”
I gave her a smirk. I knew she was just joking. “It’s fine. I’ll tease you about it whenever you find a man.”
“Then I’ll just have to find a woman.”
“Then I’ll have to tease you even more.” She giggled. “I know it’s been a long day, but do you think you could prepare one of the guest rooms for a friend I offered one to? You can have tomorrow morning off if you need it to get the room ready.”
“A Lady friend?” I gave her a knowing smile and she smiled back. “How about I draw you a bath first so your parents don’t smell it the second they get within twenty meters of you, then start on the room?” I nodded, and she went into the bathroom to start my bath.
The next day went really well. We finally managed to finish giving checkups to everyone in the slums that had signed up for a free exam, and would be allowed to start seeing refugees now. The incidents of waterborne illnesses from the slums had greatly decreased, and the mages I had hired had finished their job, so the water should stay clean at least until spring, when the paving could be properly repaired by the Mason’s guild. I had even gotten several rich or noble guests today which weren’t looking for relationship aids.
When I arrived home the butler was waiting for me. “You father wishes to speak with you in his office.” he said, and I nodded. He lead me to Father’s office and knocked, announcing my presence. When Father invited me in the butler opened the door and then closed it behind me.
“I see you invited Lady Shadowblade to stay in the palace. Does this mean that you finally found a lover?”
“Yes, sir. Is that a problem?”
He smiled. “Not at all. I was just surprised it took you so long. I had one at thirteen and your mother had one at fourteen. With yours being a baroness, no noble would care if she got pregnant or even if you married her. I would recommend that you try to avoid having a child until your businesses are more stable, though.” He walked over to the office’s liquor cabinet and poured us both a shot of whiskey. “Congratulations on finally being a man.” I took the glass, tapped it to his, and swallowed it.
I nodded. “You don’t have to worry about being a grandfather yet. Long term Infertility potions only cost four coppers to make and work for at least three months if a woman takes them.”
“Good. You can’t properly devote yourself to being a father with your businesses not being stable. I know when your were born I had to take over your mother’s business so she could spend time with you. I didn’t have a merchant certification, though, so I couldn’t handle it, and she had to return to work just to keep the business from collapsing. I wasn’t there for you when you were little, and I just want to make sure don’t make the same mistake.”
Father looked sad thinking about it, so I put my hand on his shoulder. “I know you didn’t do it on purpose. And I’m sure you’ll be an excellent grandfather one day. Just not now. I don’t think I’m ready for that, and not just financially.”
He nodded. “Good. Now I just need to make sure your mother doesn’t start pressuring her for grandchildren. She always wanted to have more kids, but with your sister being so young she knows this is the only chance she’ll have for grandkids for over a decade.”
“Yes, please don’t harass her about that. I don’t think she wants to be a mom yet either.”
We had one more drink, and he told me to go greet my girlfriend. We left the office and he went to go find mother as I went to find Samantha. She was in her room and, as soon as I entered, she kicked out her maid, saying that she wanted to “talk in private”. We both know she was interested in more than just talking, but I played along and said goodbye to the maid. The second the maid closed the door she started untying her blouse. Well, I guess I knew it was coming.
Thirty minutes later we both got dressed, with me helping her tie her blouse. We would need to go to supper soon, but we still had a little while to talk before then, so I started the conversation. “So, what can you tell me about summoning?”
“Which kind? Spirit or physical?”
“Either. Honestly, enchanting is also interesting.”
“Not as much as healing or combat magic.”
I hugged her from behind as we set on the bed. “In that case, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll buy a book on one form of magic you know, you buy a book on a form of magic I know, and we can teach each other at night. We can even go to the Mage’s guild in a month or two and take our tests at the same time.”
“Hopefully the studying won’t turn into something more personal too often and keep us from studying.”
“Three months, then?” I joked.
“No, let’s say two at the most. If we let ourselves push it back just so we can do...that again, we’ll never learn. I had to do the same thing when I was learning spirit summoning or I would have let myself get distracted too much.”
“So you had another man then?”
“Multiple men, not that it’s any of your business.” She showed me a silver bracelet she was wearing. “Level 4 infertility enchantment. Haven’t taken it off except to clean it since I made it at thirteen.”
“No wonder you know what you are doing.”
She smirked. “You’re a good student. And hopefully you’ll be just as good when I’m teaching you skills that you can market in polite company.”
“But what if I want to become a palace debutante? I’ll need to learn those skills too.” She slapped me with a pillow and we both laughed.
After supper we both visited the Mage’s Guild where I bought a book on Basic physical summoning and she bought one on Basic combat magic. We returned home where we spent the next several hours just sitting in the library together reading our books. Apparently, summoning was developed by the Precursors around the time they all but disappeared, and some historians even believed that it may have been the cause of their genocide. It was essentially an inversion of teleportation, finding a valid target and bringing it to you instead of taking a designated target near you and sending it to another location. It could have a huge number of filters added to it, what the manual referred to as ‘white lists’ and ‘black lists’, to control what it would summon. One of those filters could even whitelist a specific creature or object you were familiar with to bring something specific. After that the book went into detail about magic circles and how to whitelist or blacklist something, and I started getting bored.
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Noticing that Samantha had already went to sleep, I closed our books and carried her to her room. The maid, who I learned was named Charlot, thanked me for carrying her back and helped her into her night clothes before putting her to bed.
I spent the next day at work trying to study my Intermediate Combat Magic manual. I had mastered most of these spells when I was studying the Army manual, but there was only one spell I hadn’t managed yet, the ability to knock a target unconscious. Most people would consider this no different than the standard sleep spell that intermediate healers learn, but it was quite different when you looked into it. The sleep spell was the magical equivalent of singing them a lullaby. This was the magical equivalent of hitting them in the head with a club. It was a more sure way of knocking them out, but came with a severe risk of serious injury or death. There was even a warning in the book that it could cause serious brain damage and even kill the target.
Unfortunately, you could only really practice on a living, awake target, unlike most of the spells. Persy had already run into a few victims of mages that practiced the spell on their slaves, then brought them in for treatment afterwords. I wouldn’t be testing it on an intelligent being, though, even if I was invited to a martial arts studio where getting knocked unconscious via a blow to the head was normal. I would instead do what they would do in the test should they test this particular spell, and use an animal. If I practiced on the livestock at the slaughterhouse, the worst I could do was severely brain damage an animal they weren’t ready to slaughter yet.
At lunch time, rather than go to a restaurant, I grabbed something from a food stand and walked over to the slaughterhouse. “Lord Starshine, what brings you here?” asked a middle aged man that was wiping blood from his hands with a rag.
“I was wondering if I you would mind letting me practice a spell on your animals. I need to practice a knockout spell, and I need a living, awake target to practice on.”
“I take it you’re taking your Intermediate Combat Mage test in two days, then?” I nodded. “In that case, you aren’t the first to think of practicing here. We normally give a mage one chance per animal just before we kill them ourselves, at a cost of one copper per attempt. And, of course, if you accidentally hit an employee or bystander, you have to cover their medical bills. With you owning a clinic, though, the second part shouldn’t be an issue.”
“If I hit anyone I’ll have my employee in the Standard section treat them.”
“I prefer the Fox!” shouted a Weasel man from nearby. “She’s hotter than that human woman.” One of his coworkers slapped him on the back of the head, but he smiled at his own joke.
“Fine, if I hit you, I’ll get Persy to treat you.”
The owner nodded. “Very well, we’ll go and grab the next one. You can pay at the end.”
By the time lunch was over I had knocked out seven of the twelve large animals they brought up, and all of the chickens, geese, and ducks. The man gave me a discount on the small animals and charged me an even silver. Thankfully I hadn’t hit any of the employees.
I went back to the clinic and found Persy in the Rich area rubbing the feet of the pregnant woman from a few weeks ago. Her midwife had come with her. Apparently the midwife was worried because the woman was starting to feel pain in her abdomen but the midwife didn’t believe it was time for the birth yet. After a few minutes her feet stopped hurting enough that we could lead her into an examination room. There I ran test threads throughout her and the baby’s body, and even physically examined her. She didn’t appear to be having proper contractions. Braxton Hicks contractions were rarer here than on Earth, but they did still occur.
“I believe they are false contractions.” I said putting the sheet back over her. “They aren’t very common, but they can happen, especially as you approach the end of your pregnancy. And it appears that the baby will be here in one or two weeks.”
The midwife nodded. “Thank you.” she said. “I’ve never had this happen with any of my patients.”
“None of them thought they were going into labor before they actually were?” asked Persy.
“Well, this one Elf woman did, but she was only twenty two, so I thought she just lacked the experience to really know.” Full blooded elves weren’t considered adults until they were twenty five years old, so it was understandable that the girl didn’t know anything about it. The rules about getting certifications by the fifteenth birthday still applied to them, though, which meant that most full blooded elves that were born to nobles were effectively trying to get certified at age ten, and I didn’t even manage that for both my certifications, even though I was something of a prodigy in the kingdom. This meant that pure elf nobles were quite rare in the kingdom.
They paid and left, and I thanked Persy for stepping in for me. “Not a problem.” she responded. “I’ve had to do much grosser things that rub a woman’s feet before. You would be surprised how much puss I dealt with in the slum dwellers group.”
“I’d actually prefer to not know.” She nodded, and left for the Slave section.
That night Samantha and I met in the library to read our manuals once again. This time, we actually asked each other questions instead of just reading. Samantha explained to me the basics of magic circles, which I had skipped in my combat mage studies because they were slow to set up and therefore unsuited for battle. I had learned enough about them from the healing manuals to keep up, but I was by no means an expert. She told me that they would be important when learning enchanting as well, eventually teaching me the basics of whitelisting and blacklisting things. Apparently that was done by designating traits, which could include essences, something I was quite familiar with.
After that we went to the training field where she practiced putting out pulses of mana, a technique which went completely against the slow, meticulous way her other forms of casting used mana. As a combat mage, though, she would need to draw out the mana and fix it with an image in less than a second, so I told her we would be practicing that for at least thirty minutes a day until she could manage a level four spell in less than a second. “Is that even possible?” she asked, and I raised my hand towards the target, firing a fire bolt into its face almost too quickly to see. She nodded. “I guess it is.”
“If I’m not around, you can always ask Persy for advise. She may not be as fast as I am, but she can manage a few attack spells.”
“Yet you haven’t got her proper combat mage certification.”
“She doesn’t want to be seen as a combat slave, as she sees them as inferior to a domestic slave for some reason. She can still hold her own in a fight, though, so the certification doesn’t matter. Maybe one day, if I think I’ll need more combat help, I’ll finish her training, but for now focusing on her healing is good enough.” She nodded and we went back to practice.
She taught me the basics of magic circles the next day night, which I was was sure was to avoid having to practice her spells, but as soon as we were finished with my practice I drug her out to the practice field to do her practice. I may have had to bribe her with sweets, but I got her to practice.
The next day both I and Kanta had to take the day off to take certification exams. He went to the healers guild to take his Basic Healer’s certification, and I went to the Mages guild for my intermediate combat mage certification. Apparently he had found it quite easy to learn most healing spells, as he was familiar with potions and salves which duplicated the effect and could simply focus on imbuing the essence of those potions into the magic. Once he got his mana pressure to a point where he could cast level four spells reliably, he succeeded on casting the spell within two or three tries.
My test was fairly normal until I got to the final spell test. I and a mage from the city guards were standing in the testing field when they brought out two pigs and two chickens, putting one of each in two different pens. “Your final test is to knock these animals out. You pass as long as you knock out the chicken, but will get extra points for knocking out the pig as well. If, however, you kill either one, it will count as a failure. This is to prevent you from simply overcasting the spell to make sure you succeed. The point is for it to non-lethally take down an enemy. If we wanted the enemy dead, any of a hundred other spells would do the job.”
We nodded and the mage guard stepped forward. He held his hand towards the pen and closed his eyes. A few seconds later the chicken collapsed, but the pig stumbled then stood back up. He took a deep breath and a few seconds later, the pig collapsed. A test administrator walked over to the pin and checked on the pig. It was laying on the ground seizing. “Overkill. Severe brain damage.” The man said, the tester, then waved his hand at it. There was a loud pop as the pig’s neck was snapped and it stopped moving.
I stepped up next and sent two detection thread into the animal’s heads. The chicken’s mind was obviously much weaker than the pigs, but the main use was to properly gauge how much was needed to knock out each one. I converted them into targeting threads and split a Knockout spell proportionately with their mental strength. This technique was rarely used to split spells due to the amount of concentration it required, but during the test that didn’t matter. Both animals collapsed, and when the tester went over to check on them, both were unconscious with no signs of brain damage worse than what would give them a bad headache.
“Slower than I’d like, but succeeded on both accounts.” We left the testing area and both handed over our cards to have them upgraded from Basic Combat Mage Certification to Intermediate Combat Mage Certification.
I returned to work and worked the rest of the afternoon, helping a few clients in my section before closing. When it was time to close up I invited Kanta out for celebratory drinks. He had also passed his test and would now be paid a silver and two copper per day as he was doing more than just healing patients.
An hour and thirty minutes later we were having a chat and a few drinks when a tiny creature with wings flew in, saw me, and flew over. “Creampuff?” I asked. The creature held up a hand to stop me, picked up my shot of whiskey and chugged it.
She burped, and started speaking. “My lady demands that you return home and stuff her like a sausage.”
Kanta snorted and I looked at her in disbelief. “Can you please not talk like that in front of my friends?”
“Her words, not mine.” she said, picking up my half full beer and chugging it as well. The whiskey seemed like too much, but I had no idea how she could drink half a beer.
“Still, your can whisper it in my ear or something.”
“Whatever.” She looked at Kanta. “I know I’m good looking but I think you’re a bit big for me.” Kanta lifted his beer to hide his face in embarrassment. “Oh I get it, you just like the wings. That’s pretty freaky, my man.” He tried to hide his face again and she took the opportunity to steal his whiskey as well. “Don’t worry, I don’t judge. You do you. I’m just not real and too small even if I was real, so you’re barking up the wrong tree.”
I shook my head, and threw the money for our drinks on the table. “Come on you perverted fairy.”
“I’m not a fairy, I’m a corporeal Id spirit! Learn the difference!” I ignored the annoying little spirit as I walked home, ignoring her shouts of indignation until she finally gave up and passed out on my head.