Chapter 14: Magic Lessons

by inkadmin

Chapter 14: Magic Lessons

I hate all those high noble brats.

After spending a week in the hunting town of Desir, that was the only conclusion Ember had come to. He didn’t like any of them. Even Benny, whom he had a good impression of at first, had returned his spider construct broken. Much less an apology, the boy didn’t even admit he’d broken it.

From the outside, the construct looked the same, but when Ember tried to manipulate it with mana, he found that a couple of its legs were not functioning properly. Being the only adult among them, however, Ember did not make much of a fuss.

He tried to fix the construct. Unfortunately, although he could detect whatever was wrong within, fixing it seemed to be beyond his capabilities. Even when copying similar scripts from the other functioning legs, he had no clue how to proceed without smashing it apart. He had no tinkering skill and was even more unsure about engraving those fine scripts on his own.

Thankfully, what he lost in the mana construct, he gained through the mana lessons from Lady Evelyn. Every night, she would instruct Elin and Benny on mana foundation, and since they were staying in the same inn, she would summon him to impart much of the necessary knowledge he had been missing.

Ember knew he would learn all of this once his formal mana lessons began, but he didn’t believe the tutor his family could afford would be as enlightening as learning from a silver-ranked mage. Mages were a rare breed of people, and if one filtered out anyone below the Silver rank, there were barely a handful of them in the entirety of Seynhold. From what he knew, House Blackstone barely had five Silver-classed ascendants, and none were full-fledged mages.

The most significant lesson she imparted was on the mana circulation method that would allow him to open more of his mana apertures—and more apertures meant he would be able to store more mana. He managed to open three apertures without even trying. Beyond the apertures, Ember began to see clear improvement in both his Mana Accumulation and Mana Circuit.

According to her, there were 360 mana apertures in an ascendant’s body, and they became harder and harder to open as one progressed. Even after reaching over level 150, the number of apertures she had opened was merely a little over 200.

“Is the mana aperture more important than the number of breaths of mana?” Ember had asked.

The woman hummed thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t say more, though they can be equally as important to a spellcaster.”

To cast a spell, one required three things: breaths of mana, the mana apertures through which the mana should be circulated, and the Will that would guide the whole process. There were, of course, other nuances like attunement and skills, but those three were the primary requirements.

The more powerful a spell, the more apertures and breaths of mana it required to cast. For example, a tier one spell would only require a single open aperture and a breath of mana. The number doubled for tier two, quadrupled for tier three, eightfold for tier four, and so on.

With only a couple of days of her guidance, Ember learned where many of his apertures were and how he should circulate his mana to open them.

After a week, he even stopped venturing into the wilderness with the hunting party. It was nothing but pacing around unfamiliar hills to him anyway. Saving himself from the walking, he poured that energy into his mana practice.

And it bore fruit. Within a week, his Mana Circulation had reached the 9th level, but the biggest surge had been in his Mana Accumulation, where he gained two levels of mastery—not to mention the two new breaths of mana that managed to form even with such a thin density of mana in the surroundings.

With the improvement came Ember’s most awaited advancement to tier 3.

His elation knew no bounds. He had thought he was still months away from reaching it, yet only a few hours of mentoring from a silver mage had shortened the time so significantly.

Once again, he could learn new skills or advance his old ones. He knew there were already a couple waiting for their evolution.

Ember Blackstone

Human (Copper) – Tier 2 (Progress: 1258/1200) → Tier 3 (Progress: 58/2400)

Class: N/A

Titles: N/A

Mana Foundation: Tier 1

Mana Circuit: 63.4% → 68.2%
Mana Aperture: 4
Breath of Mana: 11

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Attributes:

Might: 1.8 → 2.4
Speed: 2.7 → 5.6
Will: 13.4 → 17.6
Insight: 17.5 → 25.2
Mystic: 16.3 → 19.7
Immunity: 7.3 → 9.4

Class Skills:

General Skills: [Skill Slot: 18/24]

Common: Active Recall Max | Language Acquisition +6 → 7 | Running Max
Copper: Mana Sense +9 → Max | Mana Circulation +8 → 9 | Heightened Focus: +6 → 9 | Mana Accumulation +6 → 8 | Meditative Muse +1 → 4

Boons:

– System Access I

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