Nick sat awkwardly in front of Carla's office desk as Carla herself looked at him silently with a gentle smile. Nick wasn't sure why but that smile made him feel uncomfortable, like he was a mouse within the line of sight of the cat. Nick noticed that Marshall did not follow them into Carla's office and thought:

(This is probably supposed to be a conversation between Magicians.)

Carla wasn't saying anything and Nick suspected that this was a tactic to fill him with unease and force him to speak first, revealing more than he should. Nick internally sighed, although he understood this, since Carla was much stronger than him, he had to play along with her and spoke with a tired expression:

"Miss Carla, it is really late and I have other business to attend to. What is this about?"

Carla frowned slightly at Nick's lack of eagerness to speak with her; as a rank 4 Apprentice Magician, even military generals had to treat her with respect but thinking back on the day that Nick had been through and his obvious youth, Carla decided to not 'discipline' the young man.

"Well Nick, the formation that you used within my store interested me very much. It was clearly not an apprentice level formation like the one we use to transport our beasts but you were able to use it. Do you mind telling me where you got it?"

Nick smiled bitterly and replied:

"Miss Carla, you should know better than to ask a Magician about their methods, even if I was skinned alive I would definitely not reveal where I got my magic formation from."

Carla expected such an answer as most Magicians were selfish when it came to their methods.

"Okay, fair enough. I am asking questions because I think highly of you. I noticed that your formation used soul magic; since you are ranked 9th within the first year, you are fairly famous on campus among your peers but they know very little about you because you do not interact with them. Since you and I have business, I did some digging and it was brought to my attention that you've used magic of an unknown nature publicly as well as space magic; this is all public information. Now you have shown some capability with soul magic. Nick, as a favor to me for giving you so much store credit, I would like to know: what kind of Magician are you?"

Nick was a little caught off guard by that question because Carla seemed to have a deep intention for asking it. Nick awkwardly scratched his head and replied:

"Miss Carla, I hope that you can appreciate that I am still trying to answer that question myself so I don't really have an answer to give you."

Carla looked at Nick for a few seconds and nodded.

"Fine, I'll accept that answer for now but since that answer was really vague, I would like to ask a favor of you to as a kind of compensation."

Nick sighed internally.

(The strong have the right to be unreasonable. I should have expected this when I asked for credit and then revealed my magic formation.)

"What is it Miss Carla?"

Carla smiled sweetly and replied:

"Oh, it's nothing much. A month from now, my family is having a little tournament where we 'seniors' choose juniors to be our champions in order to compete and decide on the distribution of certain benefits. Only persons under the age of 25 are allowed to compete in the tournament and I have not yet chosen a champion. I want you to be my champion in this tournament and win me some benefits."

Nick did not expect Carla to ask this of him.

"Why choose me?"

Carla replied simply:

"Magician's intuition."

Nick squinted his eyes a little.

"You know that I am not allowed to leave the campus, right?"

"That's not a problem, I can get you permission to leave the academy for a period of time with me as your 'supervisor'. I am a proud graduate and sponsor of Richter Order Academy after all."

Nick's eyes squinted a little more.

"What exactly do I get out of this arrangement?"

Carla replied:

"You get my friendship."

Nick smiled, knowing that Carla was bullshitting him. In this world there were only benefits, friends and enemies were just fancy labels that people used to deceive each other to obtain the greatest benefits.

"Miss Carla, if that's all then I'll have to refuse your request."

Carla sighed, feeling that this young man was a little difficult to deal with but with the academy rules in place, she could not use a heavy hand against him so she had to convince him. This tournament was important to her as it would contribute to her standing within her family and she needed a good champion to win and Nick seemed like a good choice based on her own intuition that had been refined after years of business.

(I should just ask him what he wants in return.)

"What would you like as a reward for competing Nick?"

Nick smiled in fake appreciation in response to the question and replied:

"Hmmm...I would like an opportunity to explore another realm if that is possible."

Carla did not expect such a request. Exploring realms was a common thing for licensed Magicians but was not for Magicians in training because it exposed them to a fair amount of dangers including other Magicians but exploring realms was also a way for Magicians to train themselves and find opportunities. With Carla's connections, it would not be difficult to get Nick permission to enter one of her families private realms, most of them being drained of their natural resources except magic beasts anyway. Carla said:

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"That's easy but if you die in one of my family's realms, I will not be held responsible. Do you accept that?"

Nick's smile broadened.

"I can accept that."

Carla nodded.

"Good, in exactly one month, I will take you to the tournament venue and you are to do your best. You can leave now."

Nick said goodbye to Carla and left the General beast Store. On his way out, Slade asked:

[Of all the rewards that you could have suggested, why choose exploring an unfamiliar realm?]

(I did so because the end of year exam brought me so much benefits that I am eager to explore another realm to test myself. I realized that I need more combat training and real world experience if I am going to survive this place.)

[If that is your reasoning, then I won't object. So what's next?]

Nick took out his smart phone to looked up some directions and then made his way to the academy's magical tools office to return his space band. The process was easy since Nick only had to present his ID along with the space band to the clerk in the reception hall; he didn't even need to get rid of the contents as the clerk would do it for him.

Nick returned to his dorm room at about midnight and went straight to bed.

(Tomorrow, I'm going to start integrating the new parts of my meditation into the old version.)

With that thought, Nick fell asleep.

....................

Nick woke up at 6 am and did his usual reps of pushups, showered and had a meal in the cafeteria. When he returned to his dorm room, he retrieved his notes with the new parts of his meditation from his backpack and went through them at his desk.

(Hmmm...I thought that adding these new passages to my existing meditation would be easy but now I think that doing so might be a little difficult. Mystical languages attract magical power based on the will of the Magician and these words are my encoded will. I had a certain intention when I first created my meditation and based on my understanding, adding to it will either enhance the meditation or change the nature of it or ruin it entirely. My experience with Nickel is limited so I should be careful.)

Nick spent the entire morning rewriting his meditation with the new passages included but each new version seemed flawed for some reason but he could not decern that reason.

Slade eventually instructed:

[Don't rush it, kid. Refining your own meditation takes time and experience so its normal to fail at the start.]

Nick knew that Slade was right and decided to stop rewriting his meditation for today.

(It's time to do some actual meditating.)

Nick sat down at his desk, closed his eyes and started internally chanting his meditation, nourishing his mindscape. The process of becoming a rank 2 Apprentice Magician was simple but not easy. One simply had to nourish their mindscape with magic energy until a qualitative change occurred with the amount and quality of the laws contained within the mindscape and the Magician had to have a properly advanced version of their existing meditation. Nick did not satisfy both of the requirements as yet so he had a lot of work to do compared to his year-mates because of his special mindscape which needed more nourishment than was normally required.

Nick finished meditating at around 7 pm and since he felt hungry, he went to the cafeteria for a meal. Nick ate in the cafeteria and returned to his dorm room when he received a text from Marsha Cassidy which read:

"Nick, I know that you and I had a little falling out, not that you gave me a chance to speak my peace but I wanted you to know that I will be spending time with my grandfather until our second year begins. I will see you again in two months. Your best friend Marsha."

Nick looked at the message and and didn't even want to reply.

(I swear to only focus on the study of magic. I don't want friends who are only interested in using me for their own gain.)

Nick put down his phone, sat at his desk and took out his notebook.

"Now, I have a concept for a new spell that I am going to call 'Copy'. I mostly need such a spell in order efficiently produce copies of magic scrolls so I can complete my contract with the General Beast Store."

"Laws, particularly the laws that I make with my mystical language, Nickel, consist of symbols that attract and manipulate magic power. For a magic scroll to work properly, the laws written on them have to be absolutely correct and ideally speaking, two scrolls with the same spell should have identical laws written on them. My spell should be like the magical version of an inkjet printer, making identical copies of magical laws."

"From my study of math, particularly mathematical transformation, I know that a way to get that kind of result is to use the theories of symmetry and rotation so those areas are what I need to focus on..."

Nick began writing notes and did not stop until midnight, at which point, he went to sleep and woke up at around 4 am. He did his usual reps of pushups, showered and had a meal at the cafeteria. Nick followed this routine for the next two weeks in addition to reviewing the information and spells he had in relation to space magic and soul magic, he practiced math questions and looked through theories on mathematical transformation, he meditated, worked on the new version of his mediation and continued developing what would be his new rule magic spell.

Nick felt tired all the time but all of the work gave him an undying sense of fulfillment. At the end of the two weeks Nick had finally rewritten his original meditation into what seemed like a successful improvement.

"I've finally advanced my meditation. Hmmm, I had some really good progress when working on my new spell recently so it could be that my increased understanding of rule magic helped me in ironing out the flaws in the new version of my meditation. I don't have an inheritance for rule magic so I have to progress step by step with it but I don't think that's such a bad thing. Now, I should test the new version of my meditation out."

Nick sat at his desk, closed his eyes and started chanting. His consciousness entered his mindscape and observed it for a long time. His magic sea of crystal blue water churned rhythmically and a few meters above was a figure of golden light that continued to walk on an unending concrete road that had cracks all over it. The stars in the mindscape's sky shone brightly with one standing out with a bluish-red glow.

"There doesn't seem to be any changes. Sigh, it looks like I have much more meditating to do."

"Huh, what's that?"

Nick noticed something he had never seen before floating on the surface of his magic sea. Nick moved his consciousness to take a closer look and was surprised at what he saw.

"Is this...ice?"

Nick was now looking at a soccer ball sized chunk of ice floating on the surface of the water and felt a little suspicious.

"The temperature hasn't seemed to change in my mindscape so where did this ice come from?"

Nick thought for a long time about this sudden change.

"Let's think about this logically. Currently most of the magic energy processed and stored by my mindscape is in a water like form and now an insignificant portion of it has turned to what seems like ice. Well...ice is a denser form of water so does that mean that my stored magic energy is starting to take on a denser, more compact form? That seems close to the truth; this should be the qualitative change that I should be observing as I nourish my mindscape."

Nick felt satisfied with the signs of progress that he was seeing and after observing the piece of floating ice for a few more hours, he stopped meditating.

"I'm close to a break through, I know it. Slade, with my current progress, how long do you think it will take me to become a rank 2 Apprentice Magician?"

Slade answered Nick flatly:

[Probably two or three months, its hard to say. I did not have a special mindscape during my lifetime so I am not sure how to judge the changes that take place in yours but I can say for sure that the quality of the magic energy that you are exuding is getting better as the days go by.]

Nick smiled silently and decided to work on 'Copy' before getting some sleep so as to be well rested for what he had planned tomorrow.