When Dirk heard an overly enthusiastic shout from behind him, he was startled into a fighting stance, flipping around with a drawn knife.

Now in front of him, Garel recoiled at Dirk's pointed weapon. After a second though, Dirk drooped as he sheathed the blade. It was just his teacher.

Seeing Dirk calm down, Garel smiled and straightened his back. He was currently dressed in bright green jester clothes, a large top hat on his head with a giant feather sticking out the top, not the side. Dirk tilted his head at the foot and a half long green feather that rose to the sky like a sword.

"...Why are you here, teacher?"

After processing the odd clothes and glancing at the empty sleeve of Garel's coat, Dirk finally asked. Garel smiled brilliantly.

"Why, to speak to you, of course! I must say, your wanting to speak with me and my coincidental meeting with you is truly fate! Say, I have a bottle of alcohol here, courtesy of the generous Master Sheng. He left it out just for me! So should we toast to this occasion?"

"Huh? No."

Dirk rubbed his forehead, half expecting to hear the roar of an infuriated alchemist any moment. When nothing happened though, he sighed.

Garel put away the bottle.

"Shame. I hear he had been aging it for nearly 300 years! It must really taste good. Nonetheless, we aren't in a fine dining environment. This wouldn't be the appropriate place to open such a bottle. Anyway! I digress. Dirk, my pupil, I have come to a startling realization!"

"What is it?"

Dirk was confused as Garel suddenly took out a book. Looking at the cover, he saw the title 'Void Walking'.

"The spell book?"

"Yes! It turns out, I've been conned! There aren't any runic pages within this book!"

"...Is that right."

Dirk was a bit baffled as Garel showed him the pages. He had just been meaning to speak to Garel about this, but he actually found out first.

"Indeed! I had been in the process of transcribing the book, and that's when I had this epiphany! Those dirty scam artists!"

"...I think the Academy was just protecting its property."

"The academy? No, I'm not speaking of them. I mean the Empire that handed the Academy these faulty books! They're trying to scam this magnificent institution of highly valuable knowledge!"

"...I'm sorry?"

Dirk's face turned incredulous. How the hell did he come to that conclusion? The Academy was an institution directly underneath the Empire. Why would they scam them of books?

Garel raised his head high.

"You heard right! But fret not. I recently found where the genuine, original copy of these books are through some unsavory but useful friends I found lingering around this place. At first they tried to run and disappear with their black cloaks, but I was able to tempt them with some potions. Truly, they were very secretive people, and they ran a high price. But I was able to get what I wanted. I suppose I should thank Master Sheng for sponsoring this exchange."

"..."

Dirk was silent as Garel followed his own train of thought. Unsavory people? The genuine copy? What was this teacher getting himself into?

Before Dirk could speak to reprimand him though, Garel got back to the point.

"Anyway! Here you go."

Suddenly, he raised his arm. Four books appeared above his hand. Dirk had a bad feeling.

"These are the books I found! There's Curse of Darkness and Void Walking, both books containing the original techniques themselves! Along with these, I found two more that you might like since I can't have my pupil be educated by low quality texts. They are called Theory of Stealth and Series of Lightning. These books were rather difficult to attain, but nobody can stop my ultimate technique! Now, these books are yours."

Garel suddenly pushed the books into Dirk's chest. He grabbed them, their weight bearing down on his arms. The covers of these books were made of scale leather that Dirk had never seen before, the scales so fine that the book titles could still be engraved as if they were on metal. They also radiated intense power that spoke of the profound runic pages within.

Now, Dirk was certain that Garel had done something extremely illegal. On one hand, he wanted nothing to do with these books. On the other, he was now really tempted by the runes within. If he could trace these...

Suddenly, Dirk lifted his head, and with his AI, he scanned all around him. After seeing nobody suspicious, he instantly put the books into his pocket ring, the contraband disappearing from his arms.

"...I'm going to hang on to these for now. You can't tell anyone."

"On my life, I would never."

"And you must cover your tracks. Nobody can know you stole these."

"Hm, I didn't steal them, but I understand what you say! Any investigators will understand that this was done for the good of the Academy!"

"...Sure."

Dirk couldn't bother correcting him, just giving a thumbs up. To this approval, Garel pat his chest.

"Very well! My work here is done. Now, if you'll excuse me, a lucky lady happens to be waiting for me right now."

"Lucky lady?"

"Indeed! Romance never dies, my friend! I've been pursuing this lovely flower for almost a year now. She's always so busy with her classes and students, but I have finally grasped my opportunity! I'm taking her to a secluded restaurant in the city. Oh! Such a thing deserves a toast! Perhaps I should bring out Master Sheng's bottle for the dinner! If you don't mind, of course."

Garel turned to Dirk like a puppy awaiting its master's word. Dirk gave him an awkward smile.

"You have my blessing, teacher."

"Fantastic! It will make for a magical eve-"

"GARELL!!!"

"...Oh."

Suddenly, there was a guttural roar that shook the Academy. Moments later, the ground rumbled with fast approaching steps. Garel panicked ever so slightly.

"Anyway, that's my cue! Wish me luck!"

"...Good luck, teacher."

With a smile, Garel was enveloped by darkness, disappearing with a blur. That was void walking, a skill he was obviously proficient at.

After that, Master Sheng appeared. As if he were a blood hound, he sniffed out the dark mana in the atmosphere. Dirk swore he could see all the mana within the surrounding 20 meters get sucked right into his nostrils.

Sheng spoke with a friendly but obviously enraged face as he rapidly approached Dirk.

"Excuse me, Dirk. Have you seen that good for nothing rat named Garel?"

"...He just disappeared. I'm sorry."

"Damn! That thieving no life! Hear me Garel!! I'm going to gut you alive the next time I see you! I've been planning to drink that bottle for over a hundred years!! You will not take this away from me!!"

Master Sheng roared with rage, the surrounding students turning to the short, pudgy elf in curiosity. Dirk could only sigh. It must be difficult, having a slippery nemesis like Garel.

After letting out a bit of anger, Master Sheng turned back to Dirk.

"Hehe, sorry friend. I'll take my leave now."

"I understand."

Dirk nodded. After Master Sheng stomped off in another direction, Dirk also took his leave, quickly heading back to his house.

Upon arrival, Dirk found that Ava wasn't home. It was still around noon, so she was likely in her alchemy class. Thankfully, that allowed him some alone time to trace some books.

Despite the throbbing headache he still had, Dirk was quick to open up one of the four books he was given.

The first was the one called Theory of Stealth. Dirk wasn't sure what to expect from this. It was a very thick book with a width of nearly 5 inches, though only the second thickest among the four.

After reading the introduction though, Dirk was quickly immersed.

'Stealth and Darkness. The fundamentals and concepts behind distorting the body's presence, concealing aura, withholding aura, and erasing your existence from the world.'

Dirk scanned through the introduction which was a whole three pages. After this, he found nothing but runic pages. The early pages in the book weren't that complex, Dirk able to make out much of the meaning with mere glances. But with every page in this huge book, the runes got more and more profound until Dirk couldn't so much as look at the runes.

"This book... it contains everything one needs to know about stealth as a whole. It's not a single spell or technique, but I'm sure there are many skills and spells contained inside this thing. This is definitely extremely valuable."

Dirk was baffled by what he saw. This book really did contain the most fundamental knowledge and theories behind what stealth was. It was no secret that dark mages often utilized spells that were stealthy by nature. Void Walking was one of these spells and definitely popular despite its difficulty. But this book contained knowledge that formed the basis for those spells. Just the runes that he couldn't look at in the back of this book told him how valuable it was.

Before Dirk got too immersed though, he quickly grabbed another book. This was called Series of Lightning, and it was the thickest book among the four that Garel gave him. It was an entire 8 inches thick.

Dirk opened this book. When he did, the hair on his arms stood up as an electric field was created.

He read the introduction.

"A series of theories on lightning, electrical fields, and plasma, alongside specialized spells and techniques for these theories... This book is actually filled with spells?"

Dirk was surprised yet again. When he flipped through the pages, he could see all kinds of runic formations. And there were many that looked like spell formations with mana circuits and magic circles.

"More than that though, this person actually knew what electricity and plasma were. That's kind of amazing. I can learn a lot from this book. But seriously, how did Garel manage to steal this stuff? I definitely shouldn't be reading this. Hopefully this doesn't get traced back to me."

Dirk mumbled as he flipped through a few more pages. After that, he took a deep breath, closing the lightning book and opening the book the dwarf gave him. He was quick to begin tracing runic pages within that book.

Now more than ever, Dirk was adamant about tracing these runic pages. Besides his anima and mana techniques, Dirk didn't have the luxury of keeping these for a long time. Four of them were stolen goods that belonged to the Empire while the other came from his teacher who wanted it back. In order to get as much out of these as possible, Dirk needed to scan them as much as he could. That would allow him to study them later. His AI was turning out to be his most valuable tool, but he needed time in order to make use of its abilities.

So despite the fact that Dirk still had a huge headache from the earlier forging session, he began tracing Tobasden's book. He moved slower than usual since it was harder to concentrate, but he was gradually able to acclimate. Digital lines constantly corrected themselves to the runic lines around the page in his vision, and a percentage meter slowly but surely increased.

Like this, Dirk spent the rest of his day tracing. Since tracing runes didn't take mental energy like magic did, he was able to recover while tracing. Even then though, when Ava finally got home later in the night, Dirk had to pull his bloodshot eyes away from the books. His mind was in an odd state of being energetic from his mental energy regeneration and utterly exhausted from concentrating on the tracing. It was like he couldn't decide if he was tired.

His body was able to decide for him though. After eating dinner and spending some time listening to Ava talk about her day, Dirk instantly fell asleep upon climbing into bed. Ava was also quick to fall asleep. Her days spent concentrating on alchemy weren't easy, and she was mentally and emotionally drained after each day.

..........

The next morning, Dirk woke up rejuvenated. The constant stressing of his mind during his forging lessons and runic tracing was resulting in gradual growth.

After a nice and quiet breakfast with Ava, Dirk left for Forge 8. Upon arrival, Tobasden had another lesson planned for him.

More forging was the gist of the lesson. As Tobasden said, you learned forging by forging, not by studying books. He had Dirk stressing his body under heat and the weight of his hammer while utilizing difficult techniques. There were constant corrections that the dwarf made to Dirk's movements and skills, but Tobasden was extraordinarily pleased with Dirk's quick progress.

Dirk never complained and he did his best to step up to the dwarf's expectations. He wouldn't hesitate to put himself through physical or mental pain in order to refine his products to their utmost. And forging truly did turn out to be terribly difficult. This was especially so when Tobasden introduced him to another technique.

This technique involved Dirk infusing his power into the metal with each swing of his hammer. There were forgemasters who wielded a variety of different elements, and if they wanted to build a product with a specific attribute like earth or air, then to get the best results they needed to infuse that mana into their piece. This happened during the forging process.

Tobasden wanted Dirk to infuse fire mana into his works. This was done not just by filling the metal with fire mana, but by attaching the fire mana to the metal similar to enchanting. From what Dirk understood, each swing of the hammer would vibrate the metal, and one would need to drive the mana into the metal through this vibration.

Dirk quickly understood that this was a kind of mana resonation technique. Through resonation, the metal would take on the properties of fire mana, allowing the product to be used in conjunction with fire type spells. It was a very common technique among half decent forgemasters according to the dwarf. After all, a forgemaster needed to be able to tailor the elements of their product to the customer. While the forgemaster had to have the applicable element, there were enough forgemasters that one didn't need to worry about not finding one with their element.

However, there was another important detail Tobasden told Dirk about.

"Infusing metals with elemental power is secondary to the metal you are working! Mid to high level forgemasters always use metals and materials that are already filled with the element. This is because a forgemaster can only infuse so much mana, a level that is almost always lesser than materials which have accumulated an element for a long time. This is why infusing mana is a common skill among any basic forgemaster, because low level forgemasters and their customers don't usually have access to quality elemental materials. Anyway, you need to learn infusion as well as how to control the elemental power of materials, channeling that power into something the weapon and customer can use."

Tobasden spoke while Dirk forged, and Dirk did his best to listen and work. At first Dirk just thought these were some words of wisdom Tobasden wanted him to know and that Dirk would practice such things later. But the next day, Dirk was surprised to see Tobasden pull some light red metal out of his pocket ring.

He said it was called Infernia, a metal that was attributed with the fire element. This was an extremely popular metal that was used in all kinds of fire type constructions. And along with this metal's introduction, Tobasden explained some things about it.

"Metals like this, ones that have elemental attributes, are divided by grades. Put simply, the metal is graded according to its inherent elemental power, and each grade corresponds with our own Tiers. Grade 3 Infernia can be used to its fullest capacity by a Tier 3 mage and so on. Of course, each element has its own elemental metals. Aeralite for Air, Prismatika for Water, Geode for Earth, Voidmetal for Dark, and Hallowed Steel for Light. As a forgemaster with your elements of fire, earth, and dark, you'll only be handling Infernia, Geode, and Voidmetal. Technically you could forge with other elements, but the end product wouldn't realize its fullest potential power."

Tobasden casually explained, but Dirk had his AI store this information as notes. He didn't have elemental weapons or items, so this was good to know if he ever decided to replace his current loadout.

And after introducing the ingot of Infernia, Tobasden had Dirk forge with it. The ingot he brought out was actually Grade 3, a valuable piece of metal, and yet the dwarf didn't seem to care about wasting it on Dirk for his learning. Suddenly, Dirk realized that Tobasden was taking this whole training thing more seriously than he thought.

Dirk didn't say anything though. He just smiled a bit and went with it. Between them, an unspoken relationship was gradually formed, that of a master and his apprentice.