Gregory had been discovering new things about his abilities and training all this week, aside from the time spent in school. Even that led him to a discovery though, as he was using reveal on everything and everybody at the school. He revealed that his history teacher, whose modern name was Timothy Barnes, was actually a time sage with the name of Aetius Tempus. At that time, Gregory decided he would go to his house on Saturday, the first real day of summer vacation, and ask him for help with time magic.

During the weekdays, Gregory studied other things as well after school. Discovering that there were areas called PROTECTED SPACES, which could be opened through a person’s mana. These areas could be used for multiple things, such as a training ground, an area for gear and equipment that could not be carried, and a place to sleep and stay away from dangers. The best feature though was the fact that it had potentially infinite space, and could be divided up into rooms. Gregory learned from the description that all people that can control mana could use it, which meant that he had probably got sucked into one of these rooms when he fought the lava mage.

Upon investigating and learning what he could about this skill, he had leveled it up enough that he could have up to seven rooms in it, which could be used for whatever the optional rooms were. He had five for personal spaces, one that was nearly identical to his bedroom save being in a house, one for blacksmithing, one for creating jewelry, one for tailoring clothing, and one for making leather armor and any kind of bow or other weapon made from wood or bone. The sixth he had open as a Training field, a large clearing area with “trees” on the edge, which were actually just constructs of his own mana, but could be used for testing destructive force of his spells. The seventh was also being used a training field, though it was created for running in laps up and down hills. This was so that he could practice his VIT and AGI without too much difficulty.

Using the rooms in his protected space, Gregory had trained his elemental masteries, his spinning mana lance, his fire land burst, his elemental summoning, as well as his tailoring and jewelry crafting skills. With level 95 for his spinning mana lance, intermediate level 3 for his elemental summoning skill, 19 in ice mastery ADVANCED, 17 in both INTERMEDIATE levels of his wind and water mastery, 73 in fire land burst, and 89 in his fire mastery ADVANCED, he was no longer weak in combat. He had also trained his tailoring to INTERMEDIATE, and level 73; it could be used to craft actual clothing now, with the ability to more precisely sew in smaller runes. His jewelry crafting was harder though, he did not have quite as fine a hand as required for it. The leveling was slow, and he lost experience whenever failing a craft. The tough part was the etching of runes onto stones. He had to use softer stones, but couldn’t hit too hard that it broke.

To learn the jewelry crafting skill, he had gone to a local jeweler, one that knew Greg’s father as a respected businessman in the area. This allowed Greg to practice there, creating fake jewelry though, only with artificial stones and the oldest tools. As Gregory worked on the jewelry, he knew it would take longer to learn it. Makes me wonder how people assembled jewelry back when there were only tools like this, they must have practiced for years to get good. Getting the stone effectively in place without ruining it is the hardest part, though I am just using a cheap piece of plastic in place of a stone, this is still too difficult.

Still, Greg didn’t give up and eventually learned it well enough to start it on his own; which basically means he had gotten the skill for it, though only at level 1 of NOVICE tier, which meant that he could still fail in crafting the jewelry. This also meant that Gregory could train in jewelry crafting faster though, since it was the lowest tier, it gained levels at much smaller intervals. It also gained less experience per craft though, due to the low level. I need to get this to BEGINNER for crying out loud, I will never get better if I keep on failing crafts like I am now.

Through all this training he had been doing, Gregory knew that he was definitely gaining in combat power, but also in other skills. He knew that the crafting skills in a game were just as, if not more important than the combat skills. The combat skills worked through the crafting skills in some games, and since this was his life, his game, that is the way things would work out. In fact, what he had just crafted proved this, the weapon called the Xi Blade, which ignored all defenses put in place against it. Although, it would probably not work with enchantments on the blade, since the body is what resists magic unless there is a shield in place, not spells. Although, this also made his Xi Blade the deadliest weapon against him. If anybody used it to attack him, it would likely be able to kill him, or at least damage him in such a way that he would need to recover in a bed or with spells.

Now that the school week was finished, Gregory woke up early in anticipation of being able to learn time magic. While it wasn’t absolute, he guessed that it would be possible to study from the time sage who was his history teacher, since the man seemed at least to be less corrupted than the one man who attacked him a week before. The history teacher even had a good nature listed under a description that he found other people possessed in their “reveal” data. Gregory entered the protected space he could create, working on advancing it further to better house equipment and assist his training. As he was practicing with it, improving it by channeling his mana into it, the level went up. The further the level went up, the more rooms could be created, and the more space it had. It was something he wanted to be as far along as possible, to prevent him from ever needing to worry about needing to go out and endanger himself without being strong enough.

After the hours had passed, he left his protected space, having further increased it by enough that the space had grown by another few hundred miles and could house two more rooms. He decided to keep the space as empty for now, just using it for one large space until he needed more rooms. He left the house, running for his history teacher’s house. Within an hour he had reached the house and knocked at the door. The history teacher opened it and looked confused for just a brief moment before smiling and deciding to welcome his student. ”How are you doing Greg? If there anything you need from me?”

Gregory decided to respond bluntly to the teacher, not wanting to beat around the bush with him. ”I want to learn time magic from you. I am guessing you know my father, but that isn’t why I am asking.” Aetius took a step back, but quickly recovered composure. He had never seen anybody know about his time magic without being told, but this boy, the child of a friend of his knew somehow. ”I will teach you time magic if you will teach me some ice magic, and tell me how you knew about my time magic.” Aetius had already learned rather high level ice magic from Gregory’s father, as they had been friends since Aetius had saved his father. However, he wanted to see if Gregory would be willing to share, in which case he would teach Greg about time magic. Gregory instantly responded to this question as if he didn’t even need to ask the question ”I will teach you after you have taught me, and I know because of new ability I just learned, one that seems to be rather unique to my newest set of skills.”

The man then let Gregory inside of his house, he would teach him time magic, knowing that Gregory must have had a very good reason for even considering coming to him without knowing he wouldn’t hurt him.