Being woken up by the banging on the door is not a pleasant thing. I was about to nag the guy while opening the door. Unfortunately, I have to leave the nagging for later. Ildrick is standing in front of my door, with a barely concealed evil smirk.

„Good morning sunshine, I have the new spells for you. First is ‚minor swiftness‘, your quota is 3 a day. Secondly ‚shadow of concealment‘, your quota is only 2. Am I not nice?“ he said sarcastically.

Yeah at this point, it is clear, that he has it out for me. My small circus yesterday might have prodded him to it. Nothing I can help about, whatever he has to throw at me, I am confident at being able to overcome.

Tough I played along like I was clueless „Yes thank you mister Ildrick.“ He handed me the two booklets and left my room. He was fast enough to think, that my room is full of poison. Whatever.

I open the booklet and have a look at the spell ‚minor swiftness‘.

A wind type spell. So basically, it speeds up the user a bit. Fairly useful in my opinion. The spell formula is more complicated than ‚Fireball‘, but not by much. This scroll is the logical difficulty curve for magic scroll creation.

Then I take a look at the second spell ‚shadow of concealment‘.

„What the fuck is you problem Ildrick? Can’t you make your targeting a bit more subtle? This is like an elephant in a porcelain shop“ I ranted louder than I wanted. The reason for it is the booklet in my hand. You see, ‚shadow of concealment‘ is a very useful spell. It is a shadow type spell, it helps conceal oneself in darker places for 10 minutes. What the real problem is, is that the formula is complicated. About 20 per cent more than ‚enslavement‘.

He hopes for me to fail, doesn’t he? Tough luck boy, not with me.

After my thoughts, I leave my room to get magical ink and goatscrolls.

++++++++++++++++

Walking through the arcane hall I hear a commotion.

„Have you heard of the new mission?“

„Yeah. The rewards had been amped up a lot, haven’t they?“

„There are also some new locations. Lead apprentice Allister announced, that in 2-3 months even more missions will be released.“

Curios what the commotion is about, I approach the mission board. A lot has changed, since the last time I was here. Nearly half of the normal repeatable missions like hunting common magical animals or explorations have been taken off and a lot of new and more rewarding mission have taken their place. Most of them were similar, but the rewards have been amped up by quite a bit. There was also a notice from that Allister guy, that in 2 or 3 months. An exploration is going to take place. What we are going to explore, no idea, but it is a very good chance to gain points.

Having made up my mind. I left the arcane hall. Retrieved the allocated goatscrolls and ink, then finally went back into my room. I noticed, that lately, most of the time, I am most of the day inside my more. That may be one of the reason, why most apprentices a see have a lankier and weak build. So from today on, I put on half an hour of exercise into my daily routine.

Back in my room, I look over the ‚office‘ supplies I got. For ‚minor swiftness‘, I was still expected to have a success rate of 3/5. What I didn’t expect is to get 8 empty goatscrolls for ‚shadow of concealment‘. It looks like even that bastard can’t fool around with the allocation of the supplies. If he were to give me less scrolls than allocated, than he would be the one punished and not me. Apropo punishment. From the increased reward for which amounts to the same job, I can infer that some kind of skirmish or war is near. This might also be the reason, why he gave me that shadow spell. In normal times, people would notice the abnormality, but now? No one give a crap, they have their problems to worry about.

‚shadow of concealment‘ is a magic scroll which sells for about 5-6 silver. The spell itself cost too many wisdom points for me to retrieve. Huh Ildrick, you are my lucky angel. Thanks to you, not only did I get more points because of increased difficulty and more free supply you also gifted me a very useful spell and means to make more money. Magic scrolls like these are easy to sell, in a world where conflict is everywhere.

So my priority’s right now are:

1. Engraving spells to my soul. Thanks to my cultivation of the soul, my soul is efficient and has more capacity than normal apprentices.

2. Continue translating the parchments, ‚enslavement‘ is way too useful, I already have another application for them. I just need to learn to engrave.

3. Renting out more useful books and copying them, I am already finished with the three I previously selected and 1 more. I am in the middle of copying a book for beginner engravers.

4. Finding out, what the artefact Leon gave is good for. At least it is the plan, so none cared about it.

5. Getting more spells.

6. Building gadgets like the time bomb from last time. They seem very useful and not hard to make, that is with my knowledge from earth.

Back into my room, I began memorizing the two new spells and wasting scrolls. This time, brought 2 dozen inferior goatscrolls from that shabby shop. With this is should be set for 1 or 2 weeks

2 weeks went by in a flash. Between inscribing, copying books and making my first attempt at inscribing spells into my soul and meditation, I had very little time for anything else.

Though, i is till translated the parchments, and their content made an evil smirk appear on my face.