After his first outing with George, the clay took two weeks to be delivered. He had the delivery men take it to the storage shed in the rear bailey, “What’s all that for Fred?”

“Ah Steven,” Fred was supervising the delivery with the butler mark. He walked over to steven to keep their conversation quiet, “I’m planning to build a blast furnace,”

“Blast furnace isn’t that what the Blacksmiths use. “

“Well not exactly, their furnaces only heat the iron to just above the melting point, but at best this just results in a very err… viscus liquid,”

“Viscus liquid?”

“Well unless you stare at it for a very long time it would look like a solid chunk of stone.”, “with a blast furnace, we would be able to get the iron hot enough to match the viscosity of water, or at least close enough.”

“I see, how fascinating”, Steven wasn’t a fool, he knew that the blacksmiths were using the best of the kingdom, but he had heard of rumours that the Western Heavenly empire was able to melt Iron and that it was a closely guarded secret. The question was where Fred heard of such things, but quite frankly, if they can get results from his endeavour, it might be better to turn a blind eye to such mysteries. “So how do we go about this?”

“We? You’re going to help?”

“Well after the last debacle with the Wine, I think you are too young to be left alone.”

“Yeah…” Fred felt embarrassed about the incident, and couldn’t refute Steven “thanks for offering to help,”

“No problem, Kiddo, so what do we do first?”

“We need to bake the normal clay into bricks using that oven, as we will need to build a more efficient bloomer first. and then we need to bake the fire bricks in the bloomer, as they require a stronger heat source”

“Ok, where is the mould?”

“Err… Mould?”

“Yeah, you’ll need a metal band that is in the shape and size of your bricks before you pour the clay in.”

“O, I forgot.”

Steven just facepalmed.

It took another week to get the mould, and between them, took over 2 months of baking for the bricks of the first bloomer to be cooked, mainly due to the fact the oven was too small, and they could only do 2 bricks at a time, as well as the oven was needed for other tasks.

As they were building the bloomer Fred asked. “Hey Steven, the red fire bricks are used to handling Higher temperatures, do you reckon it would be more efficient to add a bit of Fire spice to the mix?”

“That might be a great idea, do you have enough clay for experimentation?”

“Well, if not, we should be able to get more if I don’t”

The two went about experimenting with 4 types of bricks, each with a different amount of mix in it, the one with the largest amount of fire spice kept cracking and was no good, however, the 3rd highest was quite stable, not only that when they placed it on the grass to cool, in the space of an hour there was a meter circle of dried-out grass and the brick was radiating out heat, Fred got an idea and placed a mana crystal on the brick but had to step away quickly as it agitated the brick and the dried-out grass caught on fire.

Thankfully two servants were nearby to put out the fire as well as the water well is located in the back. Fred then ran to his mom for help, “Mom,”

“Yes, honey?”

“you’re a fire user? Can you cast fire spells?” Fred had heard a lot of people say his mother was a fire user but didn’t know if this was like a fire knight or fire mage.

Isabella’s eyes lit up, this might be an opportunity to show off in front of her son, she was already excited to see the look of amazement in his eyes. “Do you want me to show you?”

“I need your help with my project,”

“The bricks?” Isabella was getting sceptical now and a little disappointed.

“We are trying to make heat resistant bricks, but we need to know if we are on the right track. So, err… I was wondering if you could come and try to destroy them with fire.”

New vigour lit up in her eyes, she got up and started walking to the garden, with an evil grin while punching her hands “Don’t worry son, no brick can withstand my heat,”

“No, err… I’m hoping they can” Fred said, although, it seemed it fell on deaf ears.

Minus the brick that had cracked, there were 3 bricks left with the powder in them and a control brick with no powder. Isabella walked out to the yard, with Fred running behind, just heat mother, if you can, not any attacks that cause physical damage please,”

“Don’t worry son, mommy knows what she is doing”

Fred doubted that, she looked like she wanted to go all out to show off, then her clothes changed into a black metallic, fabric-like, form-fitting suit showing off all of her curves, Fred was stunned, both from the transformation and from her looks.

“what’s a matter Fred, do I look good.”

Fred instinctually raised both his hands to cheer and let loose a “Mommy, you're amazing”

Isabella was over the moon, and she started to giggle. “All alright, alright, let us get down to business” Isabella walked over to the centre of the bricks, they were all roughly equal distance to her, Steven got Fred to move back. “Right, I’m beginning,”

Isabella started generating heat quickly causing the grass in a five-meter radius to dry up and then combust, then Fred could see a faint dark red aura surrounding Isabella by half a meter, with a black outline, and the colour of Isabella’s body suddenly had an orange hue, as if Fred was viewing her through an orange filter, ‘Goku, is that you?’

Isabella could see the amazement in Fred’s eyes and was feeling proud until she looked down, never mind destroying them, it was as if none of the bricks cared for her presence, this infuriated her, ‘you are not embarrassing me in front of my son,’ and through the fuel of anger, she raised the temperature more and more, the small crowd that had formed found themselves stepping further and further away and the burnt grass circle had doubled in size and was nearing three times, and it was still not doing anything.

Then as she reached three times she heard a crack, and then a few more cracks formed in one of the bricks, Fred noticed this one was his control brick. There were no signs of breaking with the other bricks, so this proved his conjecture about the powder. The second brick to falter was the one with the lowest amount of powder at around 3.5 times the original circle, he didn’t have a thermometer in this world. Or at least accessible to him, so the visual impact of the dead grass gave a good alternate measurement, the third brick lasted till 4.5 times however the last brick was still standing at 5.5 times when Isabella had to stop due to near mana exhaustion, this meant that the 3rd bricks ratio measured to almost twice that of the control brick.

Isabella was angry, she had been humiliated in front of her son, by a fucking brick, she was about to hit it with a fireball, which would have caused physical damage as well, but was stopped as her son came running over, “That was amazing, mom,”

This brought a warm smile to her face, and it helped to dampen the humiliation a bit. “it’s ok son, how come the bricks are so resistant to heat.”

“Well first of they are all made out of red fire clay, which is a clay that’s resistant to heat, furthermore, except for the first brick you destroyed, each brick has ascending levels of fire spice, in the order that you destroyed them.”

Isabella was intrigued, she had to practice her fire magic in an open clearing or fear the threat of burning down the castle. This was a weakness as she either had to allow the chance for foreign spies to snoop or she would only be able to practice sub-par skills, but with the bricks still standing she might be able to build an enclosed training area.

Both Isabella and Fred were brought out of their stupor by the ruckus of servants carrying buckets of water while running behind Isabella, when they turned to look, they noticed the storage shed had started to catch on fire. Only now did they notice the damage done by Isabella. Most of the grass had turned to ash, and the stable boy was struggling to keep the mare calm. “Oops,” they both said in unison. And then both started laughing.

___

Over the next 2 months, Fred and Steven managed to finish the Fire bricks, while they took longer to bake, the Bloomer could hold more bricks and wasn’t needed as much as compared to the oven.

In the downtime of waiting for the bricks, Fred kept up his herblore, chemistry as well as his two latest skills as he knew he would need them at a high level soon, he also managed to capture more rats and was able to test his mana skills. In line with his guess based on the water crystal test, when he held the Lightning Crystal he was able to see the rats nervous system. Although the brain looked like a complete mess, still he was able to map out the nerves, and with a few more levels in mana sense, he could start noticing what he presumed to be signals from the brain to its motor functions and back again. This gave him the neuroscience skill as well as neurosurgery and neuro bioengineering, two sub-skills of their respective parent skill

It took him a good 3 months since the water incident to be able to notice differences in the signals,

As well he gained a new stat.

*Alert* due to long exposures to the lightning affinity you have gained a new stat: - elemental affinity – Lighting, 1% assimilation

Gain 10% efficiency in Lightning-based skills

Gain 10% efficiency in Lightning-based magics

Gain 10% efficiency in the study of lightning-based magic theories

Gain 10% efficiency in the study of electrical-based subjects

You are more likely to gain insights into lightning and electrical based theories.

Your body is a 1% attunement with the Lightning mana element

Gain 20% affinity assimilation due to bloodline bonus

(O.O) ‘what… is… this…’

He ran upstairs to his mother straight away. “Mom, mom, mom”

“Stop, stop what’s the matter dear, why are you so panicked.” Isabella was in the lounge with George, Johan, and Kelly, it seems they were enjoying afternoon tea.

“what’s elemental affinity, I’ve heard a lot of people say you have a fire affinity, but no one has explained it.”

“Well, Fred, affinity is your attunement to a particular mana element, George is attuned with earth and metal element and Doctor Johan is attended with water and life element, and Kelly is Nature attuned.”

“I mean I figured that but what does it mean in more detail.”

The group looked at Fred quizzically, but Isabella continued to answer. “Well, affinity can do many things, it allows you greater control over that element but at the expense of control over other elements, while you lose control, of other elements, the consensus is that having an affinity is much more preferable as it allows for a bigger impact in one element.

“Is your gain of control over the element equal to the loss of each other individual element or the combined lost control”

“Not quite either, it’s about 80% efficient in control transfer but you get to perform with much more power in that one element.

“what about dual elemental efficiency?”

“well in that case each affinity won’t be equal you will have a dominant element and a subsidiary element, the two elements won’t clash with each other for control but you will end up losing even more control over other elements,” this time Johan answered as he had more experience in dual elemental control compared to Isabella, “let’s say that a gaining 1% efficiency in water loses 10 points in control for other elements, you would gain 8 points of control in water, however, if you had a second element with 1% efficiency, instead of dividing that 8 points of control, the second element would take another 10 points of control away from non-attuned elements, but this time you would only receive 6 points in return”

“How many affinities is recommended?”

“Well single affinity gives the most gains, but it limits flexibility. Whereas only those with high talent in mana control can push for 3 affinities, but even they question whether it’s worth it.”

‘Talents a thing, I thought anyone would be able to access the same skills. Well, I guess it matches something to do with this bloodline bonus.

“Are their complementary elements?”

“Yes, of course, you have my water and life elements, they complement each other for healing or George’s earth and metal elements,”

“What about bloodline bonus?”

Isabella chimed in this time, “have you awakened an affinity?”

“Well… yes”

The group was amazed, “how did you do it?”

“I was practising my mana skills, manipulation, sense and meditation, and I found out their effects change depending on what crystal I am in contact with. Well for my recent experiments over the last 3 months I have been in constant contact with lightning crystals, so I awakened a lightning elemental affinity.”

“O, my” Isabella gasped.

“You shouldn’t be able to awaken a lightning affinity by just holding the crystal, it would have been too far away from your mana pool.”

“Well, I needed two hands for my experiments and so I was holding them with my teeth.”

“?”, “?”, “?”, “?”, all four of them were bewildered. Fred was always up to such strange antics.

“What were are you doing that needed you to hold the crystal in your teeth?” George asked with a displeased tone in his voice

“Well, remember when I did that thing with the rat and the water crystal?”

“That time you fainted, didn’t wake up for five days and had a fever for 2 weeks, yeah?”

Fred Gulped “well I found out I could do something similar with the lightning crystal”

George slammed the table causing Fred and Isabella to jump. “Didn’t you learn anything from last time?”

“Yeah, I learnt four skills out of it.”

“Sarcasm won’t get you anywhere Fred.”

‘But I’m British, that’s all we got, we even built an empire on it,’ “I wasn’t trying to be sarcastic”

“Maybe not, but you are trying to avoid the issue here.”

“But that only happened because it was my first time, this system needed to get me up to speed with the skills for what I was trying, causing exp overload. But now I’ve got the skills I won’t suffer from Exp overload from it.”

George looked around the room, “can anyone help me here,”

Johan responded first, “what he says does make sense,”

Fred stuck his thumb up to Johan who returned the gesture with a smile

“You’re not helping here” George retorted.

Isabella chimed in at this time “let’s talk about your misdeed another time, was there anything else you wanted to ask?”

“Yeah, about the bloodline bonus, according to this I gain a 20% bloodline bonus to affinity assimilation.”

“Well, do you remember George talking to you about dukes and the fact they cannot intermarry?”

“Yes,”

“Well, there are loopholes so to speak.”

“How so,”

“Our two duchies are separated by an earldom, of house de Anjou, to prevent hostilities, the Earl about 200 years ago offered a proposal to the two duchies, who were still close allies at the time. It was to have it so the earl’s family can only marry the two duchies and in return, the two duchies were ‘Married one house apart’. This backdoor angered the king at the time but had already used a lot of influence to pass the first anti-marriage bill, and simply didn’t have the power to try a new one.”

“So, what’s that got to do with my bloodline bonus?”

“Well, my family, De Ansul have fire attuned bloodlines and your father’s family De Plantagenet, is Metal attuned bloodlines, while de Anjou is lightning attuned bloodlines.”

‘This ‘coincidence’ is too creepy, weren’t my Esper powers attuned to these elements.’

“Having twenty per cent means their bloodline is strong in you.”

“Why haven’t I received the bloodline bonuses for your two families”

“because you haven’t achieved affinity with those two elements yet, they won’t show up until then.”