I woke up in my bed. Blume was resting next to me. It looks like she had cried quite a lot. She looked so cute like that… When she noticed my movement, she woke up and then suddenly hugged me.

“You’ve woken up ! I was so worried !”

“Ouch, my left arm hurts !”

“O-Oh sorry.”

It didn’t hurt as much as before though. It looks like my wounds had also been treated. They weren’t serious in the first place. As far as I know, I probably collapsed from using up all my Mana rather than because of my injuries.

When they heard the ruckus, Tras, Hell and Mother entered my bedroom. Tras was wearing his usual wry smile, Hell seemed relieved and Mother looked worried. “Is there something on my face ?” is what I thought to myself.

Mother spoke first.

“Zwölf… When you first started reading the books inside our library and then went to the town’s library, I thought it was because you had taken a deep interest into alchemy… But it turns out you started learning Magic instead ?”

“Well yeah… I’m still a beginner though haha…”

“A beginner ? You beat 3 C-Ranked Monsters on your own and injured a 4th one… Do you know how much of a feat it is ?”

Although she said that, she sounded slightly disappointed. I think she started to expect that I took over her Alchemy shop after seeing me reading all her books.

Tras and Hell joined the conversation.

“Your mother is right, Zwölf. Without you, we would have died back there.”

“I always thought that big brother was not the type to be a fighter and was kind of a coward… But Tras is right. To be able to take down 3 C-Rank monsters by yourself… and you’ve only started learning a few months ago…”

“Mmhm…”

***

After finishing the conversation, everyone let me to rest a bit. I thought about what had happened back then. I successfully understood how to improve each magic. It was actually quite simple in theory but not having any material to learn it was quite the barrier. Anyway, that 『Wind Cut』 could now be considered as an Intermediate spell. I called it 『Wind Blade』. It was roughly on the same level as 『Furious Slash』. In other words, in 3 months I had mastered a spell on the same level as the skill that Tras took 3 years to fully master. Kinda overkill in my opinion. However I could currently use it only 5 times due to my Mana limitations whereas Tras, who has been training his body for years is able to use 『Furious Slash』 10 times without breaking a sweat.

Now if you ask how to increase one’s Mana, there are many ways to do so. Mana naturally increases as one ages but every time Mana is used, the total Mana capacity of the user is increased. As such, the best way to significantly improve Mana capacity is to train on a regular basis. Some enchanted items can also help increasing Mana capacity by storing Mana inside of them, however such items are usually extremely expensive.

“It’s a shame that all the books at the village’s library only talk about Beginner level Magic. That’s probably the reason why barely anyone tries to learn it around here… Anyway now that I understood how to fuel Cindril with my own Mana, the barrier that stood in my way to learn Intermediate level spells is lifted.”

I decided to start my own Magic training. There was nothing like a Magic academy in our small village so I had to teach myself Intermediate Magic, for the most part. First off, I started by revising my basic knowledge of elements. According to all the books I read, there are 5 elements : Fire, Water, Wind, Earth and Lightning. Each element has its own weakness and attributes. Fire was the most efficient to deal damage, Earth was the best one for defence, Lightning was the fastest one, Wind was the sharpest one and Water was the one that required the least Mana to manipulate big quantities.

Lightning is an element that is barely ever used due to the fact that Lightning Cindril only exists in thunderbolts and as such, it only ever possible to use it during heavy storms. Fire was also rarer as one would have to use flames or fire of some kind. Therefore I decided to focus on Wind, Water and Earth.

After 1 month of training, I was able to manipulate these 3 elements to an intermediate level. I knew different kind of instant-launch spells such as『Wind Blade』,

『Earth Spike』,『Rock Wall』,『Whirlwind』 and『Water bullet』. Most of them are pretty self explanatory. 『Rock Wall』 and 『Whirlwind』 are simply stronger versions of my previous『Earth Wall』and『Wind Push』. As I kept training and my Mana capacity increased, I simply stopped using Beginner level Magic. I also knew the theory for『Tsunami』 which was an expert level Magic (at least according to my own rating). However I lacked the sufficient amount of Mana to launch it.

To put it simply, Intermediate level Magic adds one step to Beginner level Magic.

Beginner Magic works by finding elemental Cindril and molding it.

Intermediate magic works by find elemental Cindril, fuelling it with Mana to make it more dense or bigger and then molding it.

Which is why Intermediate Magic requires of course more Mana.

Although I had made such a discovery, I still couldn’t understand what it was that allowed raw Magic to turn into elemental Magic. Although it was probably a waste of time to try to understand a kind of Magic that I would never use… something just kept me curious.

***

As my 15th birthday approached, I kept training. I wanted to surprise Father whenever he would come back.

It was frustrating to know that the answer to my questions could probably be learnt if I lived in a bigger town, one with more Magic-related books or a Magic academy.

Well, little did I know that it would all be solved when Father came back.