The next morning I am greeted by a pretty stern Vegter. “how’d ya do what ya did back there boy” Vegter asks. “well you know Vegter” I say, kind of indecisively. “I just had an idea and I knew how to make into reality so I did. I had three days to think of the thing” I say, adding the last part as an afterthought. Vegter ponders a little on what I said, then seems to… not exactly accept it but accept that that’s all I’m willing to give. “well boy it’s time to for your next trial preparation period to begin” Vegter says, moving on from the previous topic. “we need to go over to the chieftain so that you can go tell him what you want your next trial to be” Vegter says. And so we go and eat a pleasantly quiet breakfast with Clara, and later leave on our journey to the chieftains place.

By the time we’re actually outside and moving the suns already up in the sky, making us a bit later than we usually are. I guess Vegter woke me up later so that I can recover from making that howler sword. Speaking of, I should really think up some sort of name for it, since it is one of my better works. I try to think up names all through our journey, almost losing sense of my surroundings, making it so that when Vegter stops in front of me I walk right into him. “we made it to the chieftains place boy, come on” Vegter says.

We walk into the chieftains main office, since he didn’t come out to meet us today. “Ah Vegter, boy, I’ve been expecting you” the chieftain says. “truly a magnificent showing yesterday with the forge. You’ve come to inform me of your upcoming trial, I assume” the chieftain says.

“uh, yes. I came to tell you that I chose the combat trial for my next trial” I say, somewhat nervous.

“nice choice boy, nice choice” the chieftain praises. “now as always Vegter will be taking care of you for the next five days” the chieftain adds. He then motions for us to leave.

Once we’re outside Vegter starts talking to me about my decision. “well, the combat trial truly seems like the best option considering the fact that you don’t really know how to read and write, so I commend you on your choice. Since you’ve already proven that you can use your magic effectively for combat by killing all those howlers in your first trial, I am just going to be providing you a much more in depth look into how animals work in our here corner of the world. Tell you all about it when we get to the forge. Still got a job to do after all”.

We then go on our merry way to start working in Vegter’s forge. When we get there we see Caden standing near the door. “been waiting for you guys” Caden says to us. “sorry we’re late” I say as Vegter unlocks the front door.

Caden then goes in and mans the desk as always, leaving me and Vegter to go to the back. “I’ll lecture as we work, so move along boy” Vegter says, curtly. I start doing as I always do and pump the bellows for Vegter. “to begin with boy, we must first talk about the three categories of animals around here. The first rung are those animals without barriers-” Vegter says before I interrupt him. “I don’t know what a barrier is in this context” I tell Vegter. “oh, well guess we’re to have to get even more basic then that” Vegter says before starting again.

“first things first, a barrier in terms of animals is simply a field of power that certain animals project outside of their bodies that interferes with magic. I usually wouldn’t be focusing in on them too much, but since you’re a mage and you mainly use your magic for combat we’ll be focusing more on it and things related to it” Vegter says. “in the first rung, for you anyway, are the animals without a shield present outside their bodies, animals like the howlers that you killed. Animals like these do have barriers present in their bodies but it’s just that they can’t really use them for anything” Vegter lectures, as I continue pumping the bellows.

“after that are animals with barriers present outside their bodies. You’ll find things like obice, jormur, and lydons usually fit in this category. Sometimes the barriers serve more of a job than just protection for the animal, like in the case of some species that use their barriers to reproduce.” Vegter says. “after that are animals that can actually use magic on their own. Animals like Dragons, Fenri, and Basili spawn, are found in this category. They usually don’t have any barriers up because it would interfere with their magic, although most are still capable of projecting their barrier if the need arises. Their magic will usually be strange and wonderous compared to our on magic since animals need to specialise to the extreme, unlike us” Vegter lectures.

Well that’s a flood of information. Really puts some perspective on everything. The howlers that I beat up seem kinda like small fry compared to everything else out there. This all doesn’t really help with my trial though since I don’t really have any strategies to help with fighting an animal with a barrier. “Vegter, that’s all well and good but how are you going to prepare me for the upcoming trial with the five days we have” I ask.

“I was planning on just having you memorize as many facts about as many combat animals as possible. any combat training would be superfluous since you’re already good at magic, and we don’t really have enough time to actually teach you anything of that nature. I was hoping on coordinating this with your writing and reading training as well” Vegter answered.

Huh, well that might work. He’s right that I might not exactly have enough time to learn how to fight properly, but still, it might be nice to have some training, although the information might be a lot more valuable. For the next couple minutes me and Vegter hashed out the details of my schedule for the next five days before the trial. In the end we settled on me helping in the forge for a the first couple hours of the day before moving on to general monster studies. After that I would move onto more specialised monster studies, usually focusing on only one or two monsters per session. While this is happening Vegter would have me read and write the information as well.

And so the days passed by in a haze. My fast learning ability making it so that I went through a dizzying number of monsters before the actual day came. The day before the trial Vegter ended our session early, saying that I needed more rest for the big day.

That night I slept with knots of anxiety in my stomach, worried about what might happen the day after.