The traditional route for knights is to apply to an academy. They are assessed for affinity, strength, and skill with weapons before being admitted. Each academy will have a standard they set, but some of the wealthier parents may choose to have their children be a page.

  Being a page help train the child from a young age and provide knights with someone to do some of the menial labor. It is not too uncommon for how it worked on Earth. Once in the academy, I thought it was closer to boot camp. Physical training, weapons training, and tactics are drilled into recruits over a two-year period. Once done, they can then apply to specialize in one of the knighthoods.

  The knights will then spend another year learning and refining their skills for their specialization. The knights will then go on to apply to houses to work. Some knights who cannot find work may be mercenaries or form mercenary companies, but times are lean in the years when the war between the humans and elves settles. During war times, it can be quite lucrative and there are even a few stories of knights earning baronies.

  The training of magi is almost completely opposite. No magical academy exists. Most of the training is done internally with training stones the house keeps around. From a young age, nobles are given training stones to practice and will learn spell forms by brute force memorization. They are kept sequestered in the house to prevent leveling as much as possible. This is to prevent stat point acquisition when they will gain stats naturally from growing and exercise.

  An example might be a normal person who might level twice in their youth, will have their stats equalize at close to ten by the time they become an adult. If a noble reaches the age of adulthood with a level of zero, his stats will also level off around ten. Any stats gained in youth before a person reaches ten in that stat are considered lost.

  If a noble reached adulthood at level zero, then leveled twice, his stats would have an average of eleven, giving him a small but noticeable difference. The closer to adulthood they begin leveling, the higher their stats will be when they begin their journey as a mage. Most nobles hold off until their teenage years to start leveling, but in some extreme cases, like with the royal family, leveling will not be done until they reach late into adulthood.

  In the human empire, raw mana shaping is an archmagi-level skill and may be used to tweak spell forms, though doing so is very dangerous. Elves take a hybrid approach. Allowing any elf to enter an academy where they learn some shaping and mana theory, but rely heavily on brute force memorization to learn spell forms.

  A few are available at the academy, but most of the affinity-specific ones are owned by the elven houses. Graduates of the academy who are not from a noble house may apply to noble houses with their affinity. The Elven Empire also has the equivalent of graduate school, where they focus more on raw mana shaping and spell formation theory.

  One thing Farmer Jim mentioned was training water. There was a range of training materials. These are mana-dense reagents that are given to students to aid in spell formation. Training materials are easier to control and reduce the cost of spells by a small percentage, making them great tools for training spell forms or raw mana shaping practice. Fire, wind, and light are the hardest to acquire training materials for, but using special oil, containers, or lenses, training materials can be created for a short time.

  -Notes taken by Jason Kelley from memories and lessons on the training of magi

  “-but how is training water made?” I ask the mage aid sitting in my house. He had arrived in the morning. I had him for a day, and so I paused my lesson with Alyssa to ask a few questions I had on training and training materials.

  “I am not sure. My specialty is fire. To create training fire, we put mana-dense oil in a brazier and light it.”

  “So, the mana-dense oil, how is that made?”

  “The mana herbs are mixed with oil to create mana-dense oil.”

  “Wait, what kind of oil?”

  He shrugs, “whatever kind of oil you have that burns. Plant, animal, all that matters is that it is flammable. There have been some examples of mana-dense wood being used, but it is much easier to mix the mana herb extracts into a liquid substance.”

  “Wait, you said plant, plants should not have fire mana. They have Earth mana, right?”

  He looks away, rambling a little as he answers, “It is theorized a wood mage would be a tri-mage of Earth, water, and light. While we do not have a tri-mage to confirm, there have been certain studies where petrified wood has been shown to contain a significant mix of water and Earth affinities. Though the entire benefit of mana herbs is that they are neutral, so they can be used-”

  I cut him off before he gets too far off subject. “-right and none of those would be fire mana. So you have a substance without any fire mana that creates concentrated fire mana.”

  “Yes… Training materials are made from high mana density materials, when ignited the mana is converted into fire mana.” He responds, unsure of where I am going. I feel like the pieces are all in front of me, but I cannot quite understand how to put them together.

  “What if you mixed the oil and the water? Would that create training water?” I ask.

  “No, the water would not be pure enough. The mana might dissipate some to the water and air around it, but when you shape the water, you would not be shaping mana-dense water. You would be shaping water with something else mana dense on top of it.”

  I scratch my chin and ask another question. “Is there a way to remove mana?”

  “You mean like empty your mana pool?” The question catches me off guard.

  I remember back to when I had pushed neutral mana, and it had dissipated. I also remember that I can cycle mana to increase my affinity. Am I converting my neutral mana to affinity mana? What will happen if I can control releasing the affinity mana or even push neutral mana into water?

  “What if I just pushed neutral mana into water?”

  “Good thought, but it does not quite work as well as you might want. Neutral mana converts slowly and disperses rapidly. Putting neutral mana in a pot of water would cause it to disperse into the water, the pot, the air, and maybe even the light. You would have increased mana for a short time, but not enough to create training water.”

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  I think back to my mana cycling. I pushed mana into the water and pulled it back. I was converting my neutral mana to an affinity mana by association, but pulling it back before it could disperse into the water. I felt giddy at my discovery. If I could create training water or something similar, then I could create a production of reliable mana herbs for money or convert them into a reliable supply of potions.

  With enough mana herbs, I might even be able to experiment with creating my own potions. The process sounds circular in nature. Growing herbs to create mana-dense materials, then using those materials to keep the land fertile enough to grow more. I can do something to push more mana into the process; there must be a way to convert my neutral mana and strengthen the affinity mana in water. The more I think of herbs, potion making, and potential alchemy, I also consider some of the other magical crafts in other games.

  “Do mage houses ever do enchanting?”

  He looks uncomfortable at the question, squirming in his seat. “Yes, it is possible, but the craft is crude at best. The quick version is grinding down artifacts and boiling them with what you want to enchant. In almost all cases, the artifact is worse off, and the effects of enchanting are somewhat random.”

  “Can you use the training materials to enchant?”

  “Yes, but it is slightly different than what you think. You need to have mana-rich materials in addition to the artifact dust, so the ground artifact dust does not deteriorate. If you put artifact dust into a pot of water, you will drain some of the mana into the water. The higher the mana, the material, the better the result, but most artifacts have a solidified affinity. The process essentially takes solidified mana products and saturates an item in a high enough mana solution it will become enchanted by proximity.”

  “What about runecraft?”

  “What craft?” He says, and I have my answer.

  “Like creating channels for mana to flow through or…” I taper off my question as he stares at me dumbly.

  “Lord Kelley, I don’t mean to be rude, but I must remind you that only living things can channel mana.” I wave off the comment.

  “What about golems?” I ask.

  “An active spell form that maintains a flow of mana- created by a mage’s mana.”

  I can’t find a fault in his logic, but I refuse to believe there was no way to enchant or create the equivalent of mana circuits. I will need to do some experimentation, but the first step will be creating training water. I continue to ask the man a plethora of questions. The longer the questions go on, the more I can feel him growing bored, though he hides it well behind etiquette. Once our time is up, I thank him and see him to the door.

  I feel Reagan’s approach before I see him, “Do you want to practice sword forms now?”

  “No, I think today I will take a break. Fetch me a pot of water.”

  A few minutes later, I sit outside with a large pot of water in front of me.

  “Did he say what he wanted to do with the water?” Alyssa asks. She and Reagan are just out of hearing, but one of my surveillance rats is nearby, so I eavesdrop on them.

  “No, he just canceled training and asked for a pot of water. Does he do this often?”

  “I think we should just be grateful it’s water he wants. He hired a worker to wash poop all day.” She says with heavy derision in her tone.

  I decide to make a mental note to plan a prank on her. One day, I will have my revenge, maybe have a few rats infest her room, or turn her water ice cold when she tries one of my new showers I plan to build. For now, I will just wait.

  “You are joking. Why would he pay a civilian to wash poop?” Reagan asks incredulously. The answer is because I’m brilliant and will soon have an arsenal of explosives, but I know explaining it would be a waste of time. They will need a demonstration to believe.

  “He said something about poop causes disease.” I pause at that comment. I can see the jump in logic, but it’s not quite the right conclusion. I tune them out and focus on the water in front of me.

  I stick my hand in and slowly start mana cycling. I feel the familiar building within my aura. Darkness mana makes me feel light and fast like a predator ready to burst. Water mana gives me a sense of momentum and weight. It’s like the feeling of needing to move when you eat too much sugar or have too much caffeine. I want to move, bounce, or even just sway. Fortunately, my mana cycling only raises my affinity by a few points, so the feeling is there but easy to ignore.

  I try using my mana cycling to release my mana into the water, but it fails to increase the mana density of the water. The amount of affinity mana in my aura must be small in proportion because it acts just like normal neutral mana. So instead, I decide to swirl the mana in the aura just above my finger. I blindly try several other methods to change the density of mana with no luck. As I’m trying different methods, I think back to Earth when I learned about water filtration.

  There are two methods: you can boil the water and then capture the steam or run it over a filter. Boiling the water is very straightforward. When you boil the water, it removes the water from all the minerals and other particulates in the water that don’t evaporate. You push the steam through a pipe until it hits coils with cold water in them. The steam will cool and concentrate on the coils. The purified water will then drip down.

  The other way is to have a manufactured filter with small holes, big enough to let water through but small enough not let anything else. The system will then put pressure on the salt water naturally, pushing the water through.

  I can’t do the mental gymnastics to understand how I would boil water mana, but I can understand putting a large amount of multi-affinity mana in the thin part of my aura where it extends from my skin.

  With considerable trial and error, I push as much of my neutral mana around my hand as I can and slowly circle it around my hand. Eventually, I get an approximation without losing control of the mana, and it works. The mana’s proximity to water causes my neutral mana to naturally convert, and with how mana-dense my aura is, the water mana naturally leeches out if I release control. I still lose some neutral mana, but I can control and compress my neutral mana; I can’t compress affinity mana. An hour of success later, and I learn a skill.

  I learn my natural affinity for water magic gives me another benefit: it reduces the amount of time it takes for me to prune. Still, after a few hours of keeping my hand in water hand starts to prune just a little. So, I decide to call it quits. I can feel the water has a higher affinity for mana. I put the pot of water to the side and decide I will check in on it later. This is another skill I had on my list to practice more, but with its potential to make money, I’m going to put it as a higher priority.

  After sitting on the ground for so long, I do some stretches, then have Reagan guide me through the sword stances. A few hours in and an hour or so before dark, Alyssa walks out to greet us.

  “Lord Kelly, you have a message.” I reach out to grab the note when she says, “It is from lord Heartbran.”

  I pause, looking over the paper envelope with the sealed wax stamp. I break the seal and read the paper.

  ‘Lord Kelley,

  Your presence is required at the estate tomorrow morning. A carriage will be sent for you.

  -Earl Robert Heartbran’

  I glance over at Alyssa and, through my empathy, feel her stark desire to know what’s in the contents of the letter. At first, I think this is a new scheme cooked up by her, merchant Evergreen, and House Sandridge, but her curiosity has me reconsider.

  Eventually, the suspense is too much, and she asks, “What does it say, my lord?”

  I pause then reply, “Earl Heartbran has requested my presence. Do you know why he would request to meet with me?”

  I see the look of shock on her face before she recovers. “I cannot think of a reason he would want to meet with you. You have not been assigned knights, but that process should be handled by clerks. It’s well beneath his notice.”

  “I will prepare to accompany you.” Reagan states. I look back at Reagan. I sense out with my empathy, and all I feel is a sense of duty.

  I give him a nod, “Thank you, Reagan.”

  We head back to the house and have a dinner of biscuits and steamed vegetables. Dinner is silent as we consider what tomorrow will bring. After dinner, we start to head to bed when I call Alyssa over.

  “Alyssa, come sit with me for a while.”