With a twirl of my hand, the snow swirling around me took on another shape, forming into a javelin. It wasn’t quite as hard as Ice, but closing my hand and focusing my magic changed that, right before the Javelin was launched forward, piercing into my target before shattering, tearing it apart.

Training my Ice Magic had changed just a little over the summer. Instead of focusing on using my Frozen Shuttle, or waiting until I had enough snow on the ground to use as a natural resource, I went a different path. Conjuring a block of Ice was fairly difficult, but conjuring Snow, simply letting my Ice Magic manifest like that, was fairly simple. With a bit of training, it took just a few moments of concentration before I had a cloud swirling around me, useable in both defence and, as I was now training, offence. Defensively, the snow mainly helped by obfuscating my body from visual sight, but it could also act as a fluid defence, deflecting attacks by pushing them away from my body.

Using snow like that had the added benefit that it cooled the air around me down, keeping it nice and cool, even if the air everywhere else was far too hot for my tastes. While I hadn’t altered my Astral Power by bringing Ice into my soul, pushing the comfortable temperature of my body down by quite a few degrees, I was still heavily Ice aligned, greatly preferring the cold. With the snow swirling around me, I got the cold and, amusingly, it even helped with other Ice-spells, reducing their cost just a little bit. Not enough to make for manifesting the snow in the first place but almost.

In addition, training like this increased my Ice Magic skill by a considerable margin, pushing me to level fifty-three about a month after the summer solstice. Similarly, my Ice Rune Mastery gained quite a few levels, too, pushing it from level thirty-seven to fifty-one, as I had put quite a bit of effort into gaining the next Rune. When it got to level forty, I had decided to glean the Snow-Rune, as I had been using it quite a bit and learning the rune allowed me to conjure it far more efficiently, even if I only used the Rune within my mind, while the Rune I learned at level fifty was an important one. The Rune of Hard Ice, allowing me to craft a new flight of Frozen Shuttles. Now, instead of having only a pair of them, I had crafted two flights of three, though it took my entire focus to employ them efficiently.

Similarly to my Ice Magic, my Darkness Magic had made some strides, too. My focus remained on concealment and obfuscation, it was simply too useful to shift away from, but I didn’t want to limit myself. Curses were useful, too, though I was considering other ways to employ that particular rune. In the end, I decided to go into something similar to concealment, pushing myself in regard to illusions and misdirection, muddling the senses and the mind. Working in that direction allowed me to combine Darkness Runes with a bit of Mind Magic, especially the new Rune I gained when reaching level forty, aptly named Fear. It was fairly similar to the confusion Rune I had previously learned, only instead of making people lose their way in the dark, it made people fear the darkness, making them more vulnerable to mental intrusion.

Combining the two gave quite interesting results, though the lack of serious opposition in the region limited me quite a bit. There simply weren’t any enemies worth fighting, even the few remaining Withered hadn’t posed a challenge, their lack of wide-scale coordination limiting the threat they could pose severely. We still hunted them, if only for the EXP, but that gave limited results. Still, I had managed to push my Darkness Magic to level forty-five and my Darkness Rune Mastery to level forty-seven.

The limited amount of combat also limited the amount of EXP I could get. Sure, teaching was useful and together with what little combat we could get, I managed to gain a few levels but spending over two months to gain only four levels was fairly disappointing. Still, those four levels brought me to sixty-two, giving me another boost from my Dragon Touched Trait, increasing all attributes by one and before getting there, I had put the two points I gained at level fifty-five into Intelligence, bringing it to fifty. That, in turn, granted me another trait, reflecting what I had been getting up to. In this case, it had been teaching and the trait reflected that, increasing what I could learn from observing others work their magic while I was teaching them. It wasn’t ground-breaking, not at this point, but it gave me quite a bit of interesting insight into elements other than my primary three. While I wasn’t trying to work with Weather or Nature Magic, I now had an idea where to start. I didn’t think I’d get far, even with my increased affinities I wasn’t a Nature Mage, but Weahter had some potential, especially with my considerable attributes.

Getting to sixty, and getting the attribute points from my trait and class, also pushed my Intuition above forty, giving me yet another trait. Again, the trait focused on my recent activities, which meant teaching, the trait giving me the ability to, quite literally, sniff out the affinities somebody had, even if they lacked the trait or didn’t want to share for some reason. It wasn’t just useful in teaching, I could easily see the use of it in combat, but for now, I was using it to teach. Given that the trait improved my magical senses, it meant I could also use my Magical Sight to see the affinities of somebody, but that was far less amusing than sniffing them, or tasting the air with my tongue, to learn them.

The least amount of progress I made over the summer was with my Blood Magic. Using it to push my body was one thing, or to work with Luna on her healing, but there wasn’t any great stimulus, no interesting project. I managed to gain a few points, bringing Blood Magic to level thirty-nine and Blood Rune Mastery to thirty-seven but that was it, nothing more.

Similarly, my Death Magic languished, gaining only a single, measly level, bringing the skill to eighteen and while I tried to gain Death Rune Mastery once again, the only thing I got from the attempt was a headache.

Mind Magic, as I had trained it in conjunction with my Darkness Magic and used it fairly regularly to help with the teaching of people at the farm got quite a few more points, pushing the skill to forty-nine, though I had no success in finding out if there even was such a thing as Mind Runes. I hadn’t come across anything indicating it, but I was still looking.

The various elemental magic skills all made a bit of progress. Nothing major, but a few points in each, as I tried to improve my ability with them occasionally, or tried to work them into my other magical skills in an attempt to find useful synergies. Water Magic and Rune Mastery got to eighteen and twenty, respectively, allowing me to learn the Rain Rune in an attempt to improve on the idea of Blizzard, Hail and Snow, adding Rain to that repertoire. It was somewhat useful, but far from the success I had hoped for.

Wind Magic and Rune Mastery made similar progress, getting to twenty-one for the Magic and nineteen for the Rune Mastery, partially because I wasn’t sure where to take the skills. Using it to improve my concealment was well and good, but there was so much more I might be able to, if I could invest the time. Sadly, there were other, more interesting, things I focused my work on.

Fire Magic remained my black sheep, so to speak. It wasn’t as bad as Death Magic, I gained two points in it, but I wasn’t overly enthused with the skill. Still, those two points brought it to ten, while the Rune Mastery got to eight, showing my lack of interest.

Earth Magic was something I invested a little more time into, as it could be used to provide shelter while out and about. If we ever got caught, I wanted to be able to excavate a cave for us to hide in, thus I pushed the skill to fifteen, while the Rune Mastery got to level thirteen, allowing me to learn the Compress Rune, increasing the density of earth I was working it. More a supportive rune, but I was using Earth Magic to support myself, so it was okay.

Lightning Magic got to three, mainly because I didn’t want to let it linger at one, but I wasn’t about to invest the time and effort to make the skill useful. I lacked the affinity and the interest, similar to my stance toward Fire Magic.

Meanwhile, Crystal Magic was a lot more interesting and useful, as I was using it a lot while Enchanting. As such, both skills gained quite a few points, Crystal Magic reaching a respectable level twenty-two, while Enchanting got to level eighteen, making the people at Apple Gate Farm appreciate me even more. While they had been trying to work with metal without magic, there had been quite a few problems, reducing them to what they could loot and those items weren’t changed, marking them as trash in the system, greatly limiting their efficiency. Once I was done with a weapon, it was a weapon, though the quantity was fairly limited.

Sadly, that focus on Enchanting meant my Alchemy was left to languish, to the point that Alex and Lia were working far more on it than I was. Thus, Lia took over that part of my work-area, including the various items we had gathered that might be alchemical in nature.

All in all, the summer had been quite successful, even if I was greatly looking forward to the coming winter.