Chương 55: 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 Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. 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 Affiliation: House Blackstone - Seynhold (Tier 5) Opening his status page, Ember noted that the improvements in his attributes were not uniform, similar to when he had advanced to tier 2.

He suspected it was related to the skills he trained. Most of the evolutionary EPs came from mana and mental skills, so the improvements in those attributes had been the most apparent. Now that he had trained Running to its maximum mastery, there had also been some improvement in Speed as well as Might. However, as much as that delighted him, some black lines appeared, marking the new progress bar next to his race. As he had feared, the cutoff number had doubled once more.

Ember had calculated it beforehand and knew why they called Tier 4 the first and arguably the biggest hurdle for unclassed ascendants. On that note, he swiftly concentrated on Mana Sense to see its evolution path. [You do not meet the evolution criteria.] To his utter disappointment, no matter how many times he tried, he was met with the same notification. What do you mean, I don't meet the evolution criteria? What other criteria were even in there? The system didn't even give him a hint.

I guess I have to go down the other paths, he thought, letting out a forlorn sigh. There were two ways he could tackle the requirement of 2400 EPs. The conventional path was to evolve all three of his common skills, as it would take eight copper skills at maximum mastery to reach tier 4. If he were to take even a single common skill now, then he would most likely face the same problem his mother did—being stuck at tier 3 for life.

Unless he used one of those evolution potions, there was no other way to surmount the tier. Of course, a good title could get him a few more Skill Slots, but there was no easy way to get them. Even getting the Knight Squire title from his father would take years. Cliff would have to reach Silver rank before he could take a squire. Ember didn't want to wait. His sister was already tier 4, whereas his father had been tier 6 when he gained his class.

There were also those noble kids who had chances to reach Tier 7 before their class ascension. Born at Tier 0, he'd pour everything he had into overcoming his initial standing. And the faster he could achieve it, the better. For him, taking the conventional path seemed to be the most reasonable. He could already evolve two of his skills. However, looking at Language Acquisition, he feared it would take four years to reach Tier 4, as it had for Rain.

Language Acquisition was the most common skills among ascendents, its copper evolution, Language Mastery, was perhaps even more notorious, taking more than one language to reach its Maximum mastery. The other path wasn't any bit easier, though it might be less timeconsuming for him. It was to advance one of his copper skills to Iron. Since an Iron skill bestowed ten times the Evolution Points compared to its copper counterparts, even one Iron skill would make tiering up a breeze.

Yes, Iron skills were supposedly more difficult to master than copper or common ones, but as far as Ember was concerned, it couldn't be any slower than Language Acquisition. But an Iron skill required nine skill slots. If he decided to go down this road, he would have to leave all six remaining slots open for who knew how long. Since Mana Sense didn't seem to have an Iron variant, or his failure to meet some mysterious criteria, he would have to look at his other copper skills if he were to take this step.

Ember was still reluctant to take this path, mostly because he would have to leave his skill slots open for a time. It could take months, as it had with Meditation. Although he was fairly certain he could get Heightened Focus to Max within a few months. Indecisive, Ember went into deep meditation to suppress any urge to spend the slots. In a couple of hours, his father and Lady Evelyn would return with the rest. He would consult them before taking any drastic step. Thankfully, they arrived much earlier today.

His father easily saw through his advancement the moment he came. The same was true for Lady Evelyn, who came to see him a minute later.

"Wow, I didn't believe you would make it to tier 3 at such an early stage," she said.

"It's all due to your teaching, Lady Evelyn," Ember said. There was no lie in that. Without her guidance, it would have taken him a couple of months, if not more, to improve his mana skills.

"You made it through your hard work," the noble lady said.

"No need to be too humble." Ember thought he managed to imitate his father's stoic exterior, though a faint flush crept across his cheeks at her praise.

"Well, now that you have more skill slots, what skill are you planning to have?" she asked. Ember had been deliberating over it for an unhealthy amount of time already.

"If you want to embark on the pure mage path, I may have a few suggestions for you." Ember wanted to accept her offer immediately, but he froze, remembering that he was no mana prodigy after all. All this improvement had only come because he had been pushing himself from the start. Without the wisdom and mindset beyond his years, he believed he would be far worse than those snorting kids. Yes, it had given him a head start, but Ember didn't imagine it would remain to be effective indefinitely.

Which only made the decision he was going to make all the more important.