The next day, after breakfast, Lieve, Andric and Hedy walked to the Klerkse household. Wolter had met Heiko - the father of the Klerkse family - at work, when he bragged about his daughter to anyone who would listen. Since Wolter had a daughter the same age, the families met almost every day.

Hedy and Cato - Heiko’s daughter - were almost exact opposites: Hedy had long, blonde hair; Cato had short black, hair. Hedy had an ordinary water magic affinity; Cato had an exotic momentum magic affinity. Hedy loved her brother; Cato hated him.

Lieve and Susanna - Heiko’s wife - were immediate friends from the first time they met. Both of them liked decorating fruit and managing the house, and they couldn’t get enough of the bickering between Cato and Andric - though, most of the bickering came one-sidedly from Cato.

Although everyone in the Avantus and Klerse households knew Andric was an unmatched prodigy with magic, Cato’s progress with magic wasn’t far behind. She had only unlocked her mana control shortly after her fourth birthday, but she could already fling objects across a room and accurately hit Andric.

Clunk, and a wooden cylinder bounced off of Andric’s arm and rolled across the floor. He immediately glanced up from his book and saw Cato looking the other way. It was obviously her who hit Andric with the cylinder, but she would never admit it.

Cato’s magic had very special effects on objects she used it on. She could change the velocity an object moved at, but also the apparent mass. While she couldn’t actually make objects bigger or smaller, she could change the way they interacted with the world around them.

In the case of the wooden cylinder, she increased its velocity and decreased its apparent mass. That made the wooden cylinder hit Andric at a high speed and cause little to no damage. She couldn’t use his magic at a range, and the effect wore off depending on how much mana she used. Unlike some magical affinities, momentum magic could not produce a permanent change in the object.

At a glance, Cato’s magical affinity had much higher combat potential than Andric. However, that was only true because Andric couldn’t properly utilize his magical affinity in most situations. Regardless of how much damage Cato managed to inflict upon him with her blocks, he could simply heal himself, but he wouldn’t be able to stop her assault.

Even though he had three years lead over her, his ability to stop an object’s movement was lesser than her ability to start an object’s movement. If he really wanted to stop her, his magic would be far too debilitating to be socially acceptable. Wolter and Lieve had privately told him that boundaries he needed to never cross, and he wholeheartedly agreed.

Cato accelerated a wooden cube in Andric’s direction, and, before it hit, Andric covered his chest with bones - completely hidden by his shirt. This time, when the cube hit him, the clunking sound it produced was much more pronounced, and Andric didn’t feel anything beyond a thud against his bone armor.

He then let his bone armor dissolve into nothingness, since keeping it on him would require continuous expenditures of mana. He could make the bone armor a permanent change, but it would be incredibly difficult to move around it. Among Andric’s defensive spells, the bone armor held the highest defensive value.

Cato attacked Andric for the third time, and Andric blocked it as easily as the block before it. Three of her attacks failed to inflict serious hard on Andric, and Cato stopped shooting blocks at him. She never went so far with her attacks that they became annoying, and she knew about Andric’s ability to shield and heal himself.

Andric didn’t mind her childish antics, and he returned to his book. Sitting next to Cato, Hedy stifled a giggle, and the two girls resumed their playing.

Later in the day, Andric left the Klerske house, alone, and went to visit Boele at his forge. The houses the Avantus family and Klerske family were on the south-east side of Gallus Town, and Boele’s forge was on the north side, with the mines. It only took Andric a few minutes to run home and retrieve his sword, then a half hour to find his way to the forge.

The forge seldomly had unknown people walking through it, but the four workers were always doing something. The smiths never had a moment of rest, since any delay on the smelting of iron or other minerals would cause many more delays. The forge ran all day long and only stopped when the supply of raw ore fell too low.

At the forge, Andric observed Boele and the other smiths while they forged metal plates which would later be formed into whatever object the client needed. Thanks to Boele’s rare metal magic affinity, he could make almost anything out of a plate of iron. With his magic, Andric’s imitation katana only took a few minutes to form; any other magician would have needed days of time.

“Andric, it’s good that you’re here,” Boele said and continued hammering a bar of metal. “Sven burned his leg and is laying in the house. Can you heal him?”

Andric replied, “Okay,” and changed his trajectory towards the large house on the side of Boele’s forge. The house had three floors, and the first floor had a room where the smiths could recover from burns. Small burns happened every day, and they could be healed on the spot. Large burns - ones that affected more than a square foot of skin - were much harder to heal.

Boele appreciated having Andric around the forge for a second reason: his healing magic affinity. Taking Sven to a healing magician could cost thousands of coins, but Andric would heal the wound for free.

In the side room of Boele’s home, Sven laid on a straw mattress and tried his best to ignore the pain coming from his leg. From his knee down, only about half of his skin remained, and the rest of his flesh had melted off. He could see bones in several locations - mostly around his foot. As long as Andric came by, he’d be fine, but it still hurt in the meantime.

Andric entered the room without knocking and immediately looked over at Sven, and his eyes shifted to Sven’s ruined leg. Indeed, a doctor might have wanted tens of thousands of coins to heal the wound, which meant weeks of profit going down the drain.

He spoke while looking at Sven’s leg, “Don’t bite your tongue,” and activated ranged healing magic.

The bones in Sven’s leg and foot healed first, and cartilage, ligaments, muscles and skin wrapped around the exposed bone. Thirty seconds later, Sven’s original, hairy leg had returned.

Healing magic was a type of permanent magic. In order to create the permanent mass where the wound was located, Andric needed to take mass from other locations. Most humans had a great deal of mass inside them that could be used, and Andric took a section of Sven’s belly fat to use as new tissue around his leg and foot.

The magic took a lot of mana out of Andric, but he could potentially heal two more injuries of the same magnitude before feeling a headache brought on by mana exhaustion.

But, if Andric frivolously used mana throughout the day, he might not have enough mana to save someone who desperately needed him. Luckily, there were no flagpoles situated around Boele’s forge.