Four months had passed since Mary had started exploring her magic, she thought she had done decently, achieving decent control over her mana and managing to cast her first spell a month prior. Today she would continue experimenting with creating magic spells as trying to understand the spell her mother cast on her ears. She had decided it would be fruitless to try unlock its secrets now. Instead she would focus on exploring the shapes required for magic to work.

She found out her small light spell actually consisted of two different shapes, one that confined the magic to a small sphere where she wanted it go originate, and the other actually made the light. By experimenting with the manual creation of the spell she could alter the spheres radius by increasing or decreasing the amount of mana in the specific shape, on the other hand she could change intensity of the light the same way. Adding a color increased the needed mana by by fifty percent as another shape had to be added.

A week of experimenting a few hours a day with the same shapes she grew bored and started to think of something new she could try.

She eventually decided she would try to either influence the plants or ground in the orphanages courtyard in order to have some fun tripping other children who were running around.

She managed both, slightly moving the ground and making plants move the way she wanted them. When she found out she could make plants move in any way she wanted, she used an entire afternoon to make her hiding spot as pretty as she could get it, making the tree she sat in form all the pretty plants she had seen on their walk through the park. She was having so much fun doing that, she nearly forgot dinner and going to bed afterwards. Luckily the exhaustion controlling mana seemed to lessen with each try, as she could by now cast spells for as long as she still had mana.

On the next day all inhabitants of the orphanage seemed to have a tendency to stumble in the most inopportune times, it really was a wonder no one got hurt.

The new spells both consisted of three separate shapes two of which were quite similar to each other, the shape essentially controlled the form the plant or ground would take, the other one was the same, it allowed her to cast her magic from afar, the last ones were completely different though, as they determined the object the magic should influence. In the next week she explored the new shapes and their interactions with adding and decreasing mana available for them. Increasing the mana used for one shape increased its size.

Next she tried combining the shape of the light spell with the others and got a spell that created not a ball of light but any form she wanted it to. Furthermore they both costed way more mana than the light spell, practising them turned out to be harder, as her mana reserves depleted quickly so instead of one long session per day, she practised in several shorter ones.

Fifteen months ago

Griel and his team traveled to the capital to report back to the baron it took them the better part of a week to reach it. When they approached the gates of the capital they were relieved, as the wilderness around the capital was left alone so the nobles could hunt to their heart's content while regular adventurers had to take care of the most dangerous monsters. Most of the time adventurers had to travel to the five big cities surrounding the capital, sometimes even further out. And while there was one big road leading to each of the surrounding cities, inns were few and far between as they had to be heavily fortified and were built mostly for the convenience of the empire’s five grand dukes governing the cities surrounding the capital. As these had the fastest means of transportation there were very few inns.

Baron Falconbridge was quite surprised to see his team showing up on his doorstep only half a year after they started adventuring. When the Guildmaster of Rhovara had contacted him a few weeks prior and told him he had a pleasant surprise moving in his direction. While he had wondered, he knew Hendrik well enough that he patiently waited. So when his butler told him his team had arrived at his mansion he told him to show them in and was sure Hendrik’s surprise had arrived.

“Welcome back, I didn't expect to see you for quite some time!” he greeted them.

“We had quite the luck, my lord, after reaching tin rank and our gear reached the required level, we got our advancmentquest really quick, as the quest to kill a lesser earthdrake came up just a week after the guild was informed we wanted to advance our class.”

“I take it you were successful?” he asked.

“Yes, luckily we planned to kill the monster like we would an actual drake, which turned out to save out life, as the lesser drake evolved in a normal one, it nearly killed Drisk before we were able to kill it. The Guildmaster advanced us directly to iron rank as well.” one of them answered.

“Congratulations are in order! With you reaching iron rank in just half a year, you are officially the furthest team so far. I reacon most other teams will need quite some time until they reach the middle class, monsters as powerful as a lesser drake don't come around often in the middle of the empire after all. I heard some nobles sent their team to the north, as the monsters there are way more dangerous. Why are you here then?”

“We came back because you promised us more training once we had some experience, we thought it would be smart to do the training now, as our new gear will need some time until your craftsmen have completed it, likewise Drisk needs some time to heal completely.” Griel answered him.

The Baron quickly summoned his butler. “Summon the mage Ebilius, the ranger Nolan and the Knight Melton! As you are now allowed to take on more dangerous monsters, you will be taught how to fight the most common of them.

As you very well know, mages mosty use words to form the runes needed for magic with their mana, you may have noticed that the spells you use regularly don't need that anymore. That's because controlling mana is kinda like fighting with a weapon, you remember how your mana has to flow to cast the spell. Ebilius will teach you the advanced versions of the spells you are using now, as well as some new ones, that actually hurt the monsters you will be facing from now on. Afterwards you will be sent out to catch a familiar for your mages.”

A month later Drisk was completely healed up and ready to go while Griel and the other two humans had been taught several new spells which were way more mana consuming but packed quite the punch compared to the ones they previously knew.

Likewise, for the first time in their adventuring career they had no armor of metal, as all but the most valuable metals were not capable of being enchanted, thus being mostly useless against more powerful enemies, while possible to use the metal as a conductor, like their Ephozyrn previous armor did, it didn't hold enchantments at all. Leather armor was the exact opposite as it was entirely useless as unenchanted armor, it held enchantments for a long time as well as being easily enchantable.

Because of this, only the most successful as well as poorest adventurers had metal armor.

Present

“Comeon Mary!” Somi cried.

They were currently playing catch with another group of their age and Mary and Somi had to catch the others. The other children had scattered throughout the courtyard. When Mary and Somi took off towards the largest cluster of other children, Mary had to hold back as to stay near Somi. The others ran in every direction so Mary said,

“Let's go for Val Somi!”

“Ok"

Together they took after Val herding her in a corner and finally catching her. “Gotcha!” Somi yelled. As three they sat out again, catching the others in decreasingly short order, until finally they catched Henry.

"I win!” he exclaimed happily. “You’re the next catcher than, get someone to help you.” Mary answered, after a second she added. “But not me!”

Henry choose Carol and shortly after they all ran in different directions. Mary took care to always be on the opposite side if the catchers, at least until they split up. Soon enough, a group of five children moved in her direction, Somi among them. Mary ran away naturally taking care to not run somewhere she couldn't escape. While running she saw some others being chased by another group and slightly changed directions.

“Have fun!” she cried while passing them, shortly afterwards she was without pursuers again, as hers went after the group being delivered to them by her. The moment of respite was short lived however, as the group she sold wanted revenge and went after her.

The next ten minutes were a blur of running away, distracting her pursuers with others until finally only she was left. The others built a chain and tried herding her in a corner where she couldn't escape as she was the faster than everyone else. While she managed to avoid it for quite some time, eventually they managed to slowly do it. She wouldn't get caught so easily she decided, and took of in the direction of the wall at full speed, using it to somersault over the other children. Landing on her feet after the jump, she took of to the middle of the courtyard leaving the others behind her. After ten minutes, the others gave up, declaring her the winner.

After another hour of running around they were all tired, and Mary, Taliven, Henry and Val were meeting the only ones still up and about talking with their friends resting around them. “You really do run like a Shielk Mary!” Henry complimented her. “I told you nobody is as fast as her!” Taliven bragged.

It all started at today's breakfast, with Henry telling everyone he was the fastest in the entire orphanage, and Taliven sitting near him responding nobody was as fast as she was. That nearly escalated until one of the orphanage workers told them to make a contest out of it, of course everyone of the two groups wanted to participate, so they decided to go play catch together. It obviously turned out she was the best, though no one knew she still held back.

In the last year it became more and more apparent to her she was stronger and faster than everyone else on top of being capable of reacting faster as well. She didn't know how Taliven had known, as she always held back, but when he asked her to stop holding back today to show off Henry, the two always had a kind of rivalry going on, she decided to indulge him once.

It obviously had stopped her magic training for the first half of the day, but that was fine, the many breaks she had to take were frustrating her. After lunch Mary went back in her tree, exhausting three quarters of her mana while training. Her mana had refilled two hours later, so she tried coming up with another spell.

Extending another strand of mana, she willed it to cure her exhaustion, it worked on the third try, as she had to add way more mana for the spell than all previous ones, as it took two thirds of her mana, but afterwards she was brimming with energy so it worked better than anticipated even though different.

Jumping down from her tree, she went off to search for something to work off the excess energy she got, she wondered why her spell didn't do exactly what she wanted it to, though perhaps stuff like that wasn't a direct part of her affinity and her magic did the best it could to do what she wanted it to, something to further explore later on however.