After his unexpected expenditure Irwyn was a bit low on money, relatively speaking. What he had left was still far more than most people earned in a year, but it was just not enough to go on another bidding spree. So instead he decided to concentrate the rest of his time in the capital on teaching Alice and Elizabeth magic. They both took a well-deserved break after the Dragoncull festival, but he needed them to start practising again. With that in mind they were currently seated on the large lavish carpet in Irwyn’s room, the fabric was so thick it was even comfortable to sit on.

“So,” Irwyn initiated his lesson when the girls were both seated “you had a long break, but it is about time you start practising again. Today I shall introduce you to magecraft,” he said while looking at Elizabeth before he turned to Alice “and make sure you have built solid basics without cutting any corners. I will start with the theory.”

“Magecraft is by nature vastly different from sorcery,” Irwyn explained, mostly for Elizabeth “it is important to understand that sorcery uses evocations and mana in accordance to what Logos demands and in exchange Logos provides a blueprint for the spell. This allows for great ease in casting magic, however, causes great inefficiency in mana to effect ratio in addition to also not being very versatile,” as if to show his point he conjured a wisp of flame above each of his fingers, “This is the most basic spell, Flame, in the boundaries set by sorcery I tried to make the one on the right burn out as quickly as possible after I cut it from my mana, while I tried to make the one on the left last as long as possible,” he then quickly removed both his hands, leaving the wisps of flame to float in their original position. They both swayed gently and quickly dimmed, in about 2 seconds the one on the right was extinguished while the one on the left followed about half a second later. Irwyn did not actually use sorcery, since he couldn’t because of his Keystone, but what he did was an accurate representation.

“As you can see, the difference in both results was not vast. Magecraft, on the other hand, is not restrained. It is the shaping of raw mana into a form of your own making. Albeit it is exponentially more difficult to control, you can achieve absolute efficiency and efficacy. You may create a fireball powerful enough to burn down an entire city or a pyroblast weak enough to not burn even through paper,” he then rose his hands again and summoned two new wisps of flames, seemingly identical to those from before, “I will do the same thing as before, however, I have shaped these through magecraft,” he then removed his hands, and the moment he removed his hand the right flame fizzled out in less than the blink of an eye, leaving not even a trace behind, meanwhile, the other wisp did not appear to be getting any weaker even after 10 seconds had passed. At that point Irwyn hovered his hand over it, causing it to vanish.

“It could have lasted for a bit over a minute, but this much already proves my point. First I will give a task to you, Elizabeth: Try to replicate the flame spell without using sorcery. Usually a teacher would give you a hint on how to go about it, but I believe it will be more beneficial if you figure out these simple things on your own,” Irwyn gave Elizabeth her assignment; she dutifully nodded and closed her eyes, seemingly focusing on the mana within her body, “as for you Alice, I want you to replicate what I did, however instead with the spell Tear.”

“Easy,” she grinned and raised her hands in front of her while closing her eyes. Above her erect index fingers two thin cracks in space manifested. She spent another moment focusing before she opened her eyes and withdrew both hands. One of the tears sealed itself in half a second while the other lasted about 10.

“Not bad,” Irwyn praised “but nowhere near good enough. For now focus on making the short duration one last even less time. Blink of an eye is your goal.”

“Blink of an eye?” Alice was slightly baffled “it will take me a long time to master that sort of thing. Could you rather teach me something more important.”

“You think you are already quite accomplished at magecraft, don’t you?” Irwyn smiled as he saw Alice fall for the most common misconception among novice mages “I will admit that the spell you cast during the competition was good enough to kill most second-tier mages, but it was also learned rashly: You just gave it a rough form and let your mana rampage in a certain direction. You had no control over the spell once it was active. That doesn’t really matter with the low-level magic you produced, however, if you ever intend to use actually potent magic this approach will kill you in 10 out of 10 cases. The first step towards the fine control necessary is to train the basics until they are as natural as breathing.”

“Alright, I will as you tell me. But I wonder: How much further would I have to train until I could pull off something like you did in the competition?” Alice seemed convinced by Irwyn’s explantation, and asked this out of curiosity.

“With a similar degree of control? You would need to do about something like this,” he chuckled and suddenly wisps of flame began to manifest all around him. He did not beckon with his hand or use any other supporting gestures, he just let them appear. And just as they appeared they began dancing around Irwyn, about 100 wisps of flames, their glow and size constantly and haphazardly fluctuating, “If you can do something similar you could definitely try.”

Alice looked flabbergasted for a moment, her eyes wide, but as Irwyn allowed his magic do dissipate those very same eyes turned sharp as determination entered them. Another small tear in space appeared above Alice’s hand, but this time she left her eyes open, carefully studying her own magic. For the next hour Alice constantly dissipated and recreated that tear, getting minutely faster on each try. In the end she managed to cut down the time of dissipation by about 0.01 second, it was a difficult difference to catch, but Irwyn was giving her progress a lot of attention right now. He knew it would only get harder from there, but it was a must to perfect the basics for the girls. In the meantime a constant stream of mana was leaving Elizabeth’s body, only to result in a failure in creating the spell. If Irwyn was teaching someone the basics he would usually give them advice on how to properly manifest their mana outside their body without the necessity of sorcery, but when it came to Elizabeth he just wasn’t sure how to go about that. She was in fact the first Herald he had taught from scratch in the entirety of his eternal existence, and he was wary of damaging her growth by giving her shortcuts in places where she could find her own way while learning far more as a result. He thus decided that unless it was necessary he would only point her in the right direction and perhaps occasionally give her a warning, but let her figure things out by herself.

Another hour had passed as Irwyn carefully tracked what the girls were doing. It was unlikely, but something could go wrong, and he would rather react immediately if that were to happen, he even had 2 potent healing potions on hand. He could also afford to watch them because he had nothing particularly better to do: Training was basically useless for him, and he had no skills to grind up since they were all removed by his Keystone. The most he could do was slowly attune his body for a marginal amount of additional mana capacity, but he was already doing that basically subconsciously. Alice just performed another dissipation as Irwyn watched her. In the past hour she improved by only half as much as in the one before, but that was still remarkable progress that most mages would envy, especially those in the 1st tier. Not long after Irwyn heard a thrilled yell from the side: “I did it!”

It was Elizabeth, her eyes shining with excitement. In front of her was manifested a wisp of flame, floating gently above her extended palm. It was a bit too bright and big to be the Flame spell created by sorcery, but it was still incredibly similar for a first try, “Well done, you were even faster than I have expected,” Irwyn honestly praised her, since he believed it would take at least 3, if not 4 hours. Even Alice stopped her training to smile and congratulate her: “Incredible Elizabeth! When I first started learning magecraft I was about your age, but this much took me an entire day while I was getting constant concrete advice on how to go forward,” there was genuine astonishment in her eyes. Alice naturally knew that she herself was a Seeker, and roughly what that implied, yet Elizabeth just decisively defeated her in the match of talent. Since that was the case she could be rather sure that Elizabeth’s talent was even higher tier than her own, but that definitely reminded her of a different puzzle: Just what talent did the boy who was leagues above them both possess?

“Can you describe what you felt?” Irwyn asked Elizabeth.

“It was like a river of mana flowing through my veins,” she vividly described “at first the mana would dissipate as soon as it left those veins, but I eventually found a trick for that: I just imagined that my veins extend out of my body and contained the mana that way. From there it took me only a couple of tries to manifest a flame through that mana.”

“I see, you are doing wonderfully,” Irwyn gave Elizabeth a satisfied smile “next you should try to control how much power you are supplying to the flame. Try reducing the amount of mana you supply to the flame to the point where it can barely remain burning, and maintain that state for at least a minute. And once you can do that without needing to focus you should cut the amount of mana supplied even lower. I will leave the way of achieving that for you to figure out.”

“I will do my best!” Elizabeth nodded and both she and Alice returned to their training. With nothing better to do Irwyn spent the next few days guiding the girls through magecraft, only leaving the manor 2 times a day to eat outside as a form of a break for the girls. By the end of it all Elizabeth managed to undercharge the flame to a satisfactory manner after 2 days and was now instead focusing on overcharging the spell while keeping it under control. Alice on the other hand barely managed to reduce the decay time of her magic to the required blink of an eye, and had just begun working on extending the duration instead. They were progressing fast, and that was good. He would definitely get Alice to take her advancement trial once the business in the capital was concluded, and would slowly but surely begin preparing Elizabeth for their own. But now he had to let those things out of his head, as he arrived at the mage guild branch office early in the morning. Back in that observation room of the Black arena he set his scheme in motion. He dishonoured an Elemental lord, brought suspicion onto another, and agreed to Avys’ daydream of killing the guild master. Today all of that would come to a final conclusion.

And he would walk away as the ultimate victor.