I spent the next several days practicing my swordmanship and healing magic. Every night I helped teach healing magic to Marya. She seemed to get a handle on the easier spells quickly, but her mana pressure and capacity were too low to really practice or get an effect the first night. They second night, however, Persy loaned her the Core necklace I had given her all those years ago. I noticed that Persy had a new core necklace, one which was smaller and had a silver chain. As it was putting out mana at a pressure of four, I immediately knew what she had spent her gold coin bonus on.
With a source of mana to channel, Marya rapidly expanded her mana capacity and increased her pressure to three over the course of the next week. To increase it further would be quite difficult unless she were to acquire a better core as well. Now that she had enough mana, however, she was able to learn most of the entry level healing spells.
At the end of the week I informed Persy that I had signed her up for the Intermediate Healer’s certification. She seemed both happy and concerned about it, as she still believed that she had more to learn before she was ready. In order to help her, I offered to let her practice at the Healer’s Union Clinic. It was set up as a place where the poor could go to get the worst of their injuries treated, even if they only dealt with serious injuries. They allowed trainees to volunteer to work, and in return get advise from the senior healers and practice using their magic in real world situations.
I took Persy by there and we went inside. “Slave and livestock entrance is to the side.” the receptionist said, pointing to her right.
“Oh, I’m not bringing her here for treatment,” I said. “She has her beginning healer certification already, and is testing for the intermediate at the end of the month. She just needs more practice with the more advanced spells.”
The woman gave us a quizical look, like she didn’t understand why anyone would train a slave, then nodded. “Can I see her certification, then?”
Persy pulled out her ID and handed it to the woman. “My name’s Persy.” she said. “It’s short for Persimmon.”
“Yes, I can see that.” the woman said, before calling someone over from behind the counter, and handing Persy back her ID. The woman motioned to Persy. “The fox is a guild certified healer and will be helping us for the next few days. See if she can handle those two injured sheep, and if she manages to heal them, assign her to the livestock group for the rest of the day.” She looked back at Persy. “Do well on that and you might get to work on other slaves tomorrow.”
Persy nodded and bowed slightly. “Thank you.” she said, then followed the other person behind the counter.
Persy didn’t get home until after sunset. She looked exhausted. Apparently, the fact that she had a Core necklace was taken as an excuse to use her as a mana battery to recharge all of the other mages between healing pets and livestock. Mana Transference was technically in the intermediate handbook, so she couldn’t complain, but it was a secondary skill that you didn’t need to learn to pass the intermediate certification. I let her use the bath before me so that she could destress.
Before sunrise the next morning she set out for the clinic again, carrying nothing but her backpack with some food in it and her staff. Again, today, they had used her as a conduit to recharge all of the staff, and even some of the customers, but at least she got to practice on other beastfolk, so it wasn’t a complete loss.
The third day she set out before sunrise again, only this time they had her work on some of the poorer customers, mostly people from the slums that the more well-off healers didn’t like working with. As she had worked in the stables and done laundry for years, she didn’t mind the scent of body odor, even when it was that bad, and was able to treat all of the people they brought to her. At the end of the day the manager called her over. Her help would no longer be needed, as she had demonstrated that ability to perform all of the spells required by an intermediate healer, and several more trainees wanted her position.
While I had no doubt that the woman simply didn’t like working with beastfolk, Persy seemed okay with the situation. She had proven to the woman and herself that she was capable of passing the test.
By the end of the month I had mastered the two new spells in the Combat Healer guide. I had also volunteered at the clinic, but my experience was much different. The manager treated me with respect and only had me heal rich merchants and lesser nobles. The most serious wound I had to deal with was a stab wound from a duel for the honor of the noble’s sister, which flash heal quickly sealed before I used more traditional healing spells to erase the scar. Apparently, the fact that his sister often snuck out of the house to drink with her multiple male friends in no way implied that she was a “loose woman” as the other noble had said.
I still had a month before I would need to test for the combat role, but maybe Persy and I could test together.
Our two tests went well, with both of us passing, Persy with distinction. For the next week we both volunteered mornings at the clinic to practice our emergency healing. Again, I was sent to deal with minor nobles who couldn’t afford private healers and rich merchants and she was sent to the other wing, where the poor went. At least she was mostly assigned to dealing with people from the slums who got into bar fights this time instead of livestock.
In the afternoons, while Persy helped around the house, I practiced my swordsmanship. I had channeled lightning through my sword during the assault on the mine, which was a thing normally reserved for Magic Swordsmen. Maybe I should look into that?
I found Sir Philip in the barracks playing cards with some of the men. “Hello, sir Philip.” I said. I saw Pancho laying on the ground beside him, so I cast Fire Resistance on my hand and knelt down to pet him. “Hey there. Who’s a good boy?” I asked the hellhound as he started waving his tail.
He tried to lick my face, but I held up my arm so that he would lick my arm instead. Hellhounds had tiny barbs on their tongues so that they could me easily strip the skin off of their victims, and I didn’t want that to happen to my face.
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“No, boy.” said Sir Philip. “No licking faces.” He looked at me. “Sorry about that. I thought I trained him not to do that.”
“It’s fine.” I said. “I can heal my arm.”
“So, what brings you here, sir?” he asked me.
“I was wondering what you could tell me about getting my Magic Swordsman certification. Even if I don’t get it, learning to properly mix magic and sword play will come in handy.”
“Well,” he said, “I got mine from the Adventurer’s Guild, while you father got his from the Mage’s Guild. I think the Mage’s guild would probably work better for you.”
“Why is that?” I asked. “They are the same certification.”
“It’s like when you chose the Mages Guild for your Combat Mage certification instead of the Adventurer’s Guild. The Adventurers train you to incorporate magic into your sword strikes. The Mages train you to incorporate sword strikes into your magic.”
“So, two different paths to the same point?”
“Slightly different end points, but not that far from each other. You are more like your father, with more talent in magic than swordsmanship. So that route will be easier for you.”
“In that case, after I get the training manual, can you train me? I can pay.”
Sir Philip looked confused. “You sure about that? Shouldn’t you ask your dad?”
“I’m sure he’s too busy, but I can if you want me to.”
“Sure. I don’t want to step on the Count’s toes. If he isn’t able to do it, I can.”
I went to Father’s office and knocked on the door. He said I could come in, so I entered. “Oh, Cam. I wasn’t expecting to see you.” There were two large stacks of papers on his desk, which he had to look around.
“Hello, Father. I was just wondering if you would be willing to teach me Magic Swordsmanship.”
“I wish I could, but I just have so much paperwork. Now that the mines have reopened we are getting new trade offers every day. I can barely keep up with all the requests.”
“Shouldn’t that be mother’s job?” I asked.
“These are official deals, not business deals. More politics than business.”
“I understand.” I responded.
“Why don’t you ask Sir Philip? He’s also a magic swordsman.”
I already had, but I didn’t want to tell him that he was my second choice. “I’ll do that.”
He nodded and I left. Well, guess I’ll inform Sir Philip.
That afternoon I bought the training manual and brought it home to start reading. Apparently, the main skill I needed to learn was to channel the spell around the weapon instead of through it. Iron was one of the more difficult materials to channel magic through and would waste most of the magical energy through heating up. By channeling the magic around the blade you could avoid that. Sure, more expensive metals like silver and mithril could be channeled through more easily, but 99% of blades were made of iron or steel.
After that the book mostly discussed different means for directing spells using a sword. You could channel a basic fire spell around the sword, the swing it in a specific way to throw a fire bolt, or channel spells into the ground by stabbing it, making it an area effect.
The next day I met Sir Philip in the training field and we started going over the techniques. It took me about three days to learn to properly channel spells around the blade, and another two to learn to swing it well enough to throw a fire bolt by just channeling the spell around the blade. I kept practicing, but I wasn’t able to learn anything else by the end of the month.
Persy and I took the same test this time, and I managed to actually beat her in this test. She performed slightly better on the casting portion of the test than me, but I greatly outperformed her on the written portion, getting almost a perfect score. We both got the new combat certification.
The next month would contain my thirteenth birthday, so I knew mother would want to throw me another party. The pregnancy was getting fairly advanced, though, so I wasn’t sure she would bother with it this time. She wasn’t the only one that was pregnant though. A few days after Persy and I got our Combat Healer certification Tanya informed us that she was pregnant.
Upon hearing this Mother forced Father to drink a Potion of Truth and interrogated him about the situation, but this time he wasn’t the father. That would be Sir Philip. It turns out that they had been seeing each other for over a year in secret, but now that she was pregnant he had proposed to her. Once the wedding was over he would also officially adopt Marya. He knew who her true father was, but didn’t mind as long as Father didn’t try to cuckold him.
Because of this, Marya would need to have a combat and occupational certification in just over two years if she wanted to also be a knight. Normally nobles saw getting a combat and occupational certification that were very similar to each other as a way to game the system, but for the child of a knight, especially the adopted child that wasn’t adopted until they were thirteen, it would be acceptable.
Because she was going to be a noble, I was allowed to teach her publicly, so I started spending the mornings teaching her, and the evenings training myself. She was still technically a servant, as was Tanya, but as she was going to become a low ranking noble in a little over two years, Father gave her half a day off so that she could study. Maybe he was considering asking her to become a retainer?
It took us several months of practice to teach her to cast all of the spells, though she was still operating at three pressure. Increasing your mana pressure was slow if you you couldn’t channel mana at that pressure, and you wouldn’t increase the pressure at all unless you cast spells near your maximum pressure. Without that your mana channels wouldn’t get stressed to the point that they needed to toughen up. Or maybe your body just let the pressure level get higher once it got used to it, like getting used to higher or lower air pressure or the way divers got used to higher water pressure. There were two different theories on how that worked, but they agreed that you needed to push yourself to improve it.
All magic classes, including healers, required a minimum of four pressure to get their certification. I suppose I could talk to Persy and see if she would loan her Core to Marya, but Persy had bought that with her own money. I didn’t want her to get the idea that I was using my position as her master to take her property from her.
I could use such a necklace, however. One day, after my evening training session, I went to a mage’s store in town. Such places specialized in providing things that mages needed. “Hello, sir.” the man behind the counter said. “Can I help you?”
“I was wondering if you had any Core necklaces?”
“Yes, sir, right over here.” He walked to a glass counter that was full of necklaces. Some were magical amulets, but most either mana storage or mana sources. Among the mana sources were Core necklaces. I looked over those. Some were quite fancy, and some were more mundane, but the actual Core necklaces ranged from a pressure of three to a pressure of five. They also had a decimal place after the main number, and I could sense that those decimals were pretty accurate. They also greatly effected the cost of the necklace. A 4.1 cast less than a 4.2 unless its chain and holding were fancier. The biggest jump was between whole numbers, though. While a 4.8 cost a few silvers less than a 4.9, a 5.0 cost a gold more than a 4.9.
I looked over the higher end ones. A 4.8 or 4.9 would probably be best for Marya. It would be close enough to a five that you could reach 5.0 or even 5.1 pressure with enough practice. And it avoided that massive jump in cost. I would get one over five for myself, though a 5.6 was by far the fanciest, highest level, and most expensive one he had. And it cost ten gold.
“How about refined mithril or orichalcum necklaces?” The man smiled and pulled out a box from under the counter. Inside were three necklaces made from manacite that had some of the mithril removed. There was a pressure seven, a pressure nine, and a pressure 10. Just looking at that one started giving me a headache. The prices went from thirty to two hundred gold. I didn’t even have that much money.
“I’ll think about it. For now I’ll settle for those two.” I pointed to a 4.9 that had a mithril chain and a 4.8 that had a gold chain. Both had been polished to be as reflective as they could be. The one with the mithril chain cost three gold, and the one with the gold chain cost two.” He boxed them up for me and I handed him the five gold.
I got home and found Marya. She was setting the table for supper. “I bought you something to help with your training.” I said.
“Oh, is a new book, or...” I opened the box that contained her necklace and showed it to her. “For me?” she said with a massive smile on her face. I nodded and she wrapped her hands around my neck and kissed my cheek. That was nice. Wait, was that appropriate with her being my sister? Well, it wasn’t as bad as looking at her chest, at the very least.
I put the necklace around her neck and she squealed, then ran off to show her mother, forgetting about her job. Whatever. I had seen the table set plenty of times so I finished it for her. She came out a few minutes later and saw that I had done that, then looked embraced. “I’m sorry to make you do that, sir.”
“Not a problem.” I said. “I’m going to go get ready for supper.” With that I went upstairs the get changed. Maybe I’d even draw myself a bath if Persy wasn’t around.