The egg of mana pulsated and spiked in some spots before fracturing and dispersing. Johan let out the breath he had been holding in for a few seconds.

"Hah... That was tough. But at least something visible happened." Johan smiled for a minute while panting, "Makes me feel like I actually am doing something at least, even if what I did is borderline useless."

Nath laughed a bit at that. "Kid, you managed that on your first try. Most people have trouble the first several times they do this training. Yes it wasn't a great shape, nor was it very stable, but you still *technically* succeeded in completing it. Now you just need to focus on rounding out and condensing it."

Johan nodded at this, and before he could respond verbally there was a knock at the front door before a different, but recognizable voice came through the front entry.

"Nath, you home? I brought your share of meat and leather. It's Finch." Finch and Markus seemed to have completed the skinning and portioning the meat and leather from the beast the Johan and Anne had caught.

"Yes! I'm in the parlor with Johan, come on in and leave the meat in my ice box." Nath replied.

The front door creaked open and footsteps went down the short hall to the kitchen before coming back to the parlor before the parlor door opened, revealing the old hunter.

"Doing a lesson at the moment? I can come back to play chess later on." Finch revealed his intent on playing the strategy game with Nath.

"Oh, no, no. We just finished up actually. I was just teaching Johan how to make an orb of mana so he can start working on his external mana control better. We just finished up, luckily the kids a natural didn't even take ten minutes for him to succeed." Nath laughed a bit, "He also got himself a watch, not sure why he is so obsessed with time though. Then again he is young so it could be impatience."

Johan blushed a little at the compliment then he blushed a bit harder at the slight against him, but he didn't say anything since Nath had a point, he was a bit obsessive over it, but having that pointed out made him a bit self conscious about it.

"Well, it was the norm for him in his homeland it could be a comfort thing, Nath." Finch defended Johan, "And besides it can be useful to know how much time to have for something, he is a mage after all, and you always talk about time being important in magic." Finch then smirked as he teased Nath a bit.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"Ahem. You have a point there." Nath seemed a bit embarrassed as Finch pointed that out to him. "Seems like I need to be more quiet about magic around you Finch, you know enough to point out my own mistakes. Heh." Nath walked over to the coffee table to set up his old chess board.

"Well, when you are old like we are it helps to have someone remind us of things. It's just something that happens as we age, nothing to be so embarrassed about Nath." Finch smiled as he took the chair across from Nath.

"That is true." Nath laughed a bit.

At this point Johan decided to excuse himself to go and retrieve his own share of meat and leather, if he was lucky he might find someone willing to trade some of their leather for a bit of meat. Otherwise he'd have to wait to get new gloves.

Although... he supposed he could always see if Kirky would be willing to just reinforce his gloves with the scaly leather from the weird beat Anne and him fought. It likely wouldn't be as good as just having a new par of gloves, but he couldn't yet afford to be picky.

Johan soon found himself at the small shack that was used to butcher any beasts that were killed and brought back. Inside the shack he found his sister and Markus waiting for him.

"Hey boy. What took so damn long? About died of boredom waiting on you." Markus greeted him before handing him a parcel of meat and hide. "Here is your share. Anne already has hers. Good job on the hunt this beastie was a good catch. Even had a magic core inside of it's head."

"Thanks. And that's good to know, bet Nath will be pleased with that." Johan smiled as he took his portion.

"Should be, it'll make his work easier this month, less mana needed for water this way." Markus shrugged a bit at that, "Not entirely sure how that helps him, but I don't know squat about magic and all that anyways. Probably means more to you than it does me. I just think it's incredible that water is able to just appear from thin air."

"That's fair, I also still think it's incredible as well, since I have yet to learn much about it as well. Anyhow thank you for separating the meat and hide, I'll see you tomorrow for our sparring, I'm going to go see if Kirky can reinforce my gloves with this scaly hide." Johan waved goodbye to Markus and his sister as he headed over to the tailors home.

Kirky was a strange man, and seemed to have a few screws loose, similar to Cal. He had this sort of feeling about him that made Johan feel unsafe, but Johan wasn't able to place why he felt that way around the odd man. Aside from that though the man was great at his work. He seemed to know how to measure someone just by looking at them and was very good at working with anything he had been given.

Johan arrived at the tailors home and gave the door a short knock and announced himself.

"Hey, Kirky you home? I've come to ask for some work to be done on my gloves." Johan waited a few seconds as he heard the scrape of wood on wood, probably a chair being moved back, before Kirky opened the door a second later.

"Oh, it's you, Johan, please, come on in." his creaky voice came out.