14 Progress

The next morning, Vance found that his sleeping position had done nothing good for him. Now, he added a sore tailbone to the list of injuries, which he took careful account of: A Bruised stomach and back, a broken nose which he'd need to visit a doctor to set properly, a burnt left hand and various cuts and scrapes all over the place.

He'd woken early, he couldn't hear anyone moving around in the halls, and although the college only had about 60 students they'd consider Arcanists, there were a lot of other people who stayed and studied here, mostly those with strictly academic interests, if it were later, there should be more activity.

He spent his morning practicing with his mana sense. He'd already made significant progress yesterday, his original 3 minutes had become nearly 5, today he had been hoping to push to 7 or 10, if he was lucky. Now, after his altercation last night, he wasn't thinking of pushing quite so hard.

Nevertheless, he finished his practice and then prepared himself and left his room. He brought his sword with him, this time and wore it at his waist. He went into town to look for medical help and found a local doctor, to whom he paid a few silver pieces to help him out with his nose. Evidently, this doctor was feeling generous and gave him a small discount on the fee, no doubt the elderly chap felt sorry for him.

Vance felt secretly grateful for this small mercy, the money he'd taken from home wasn't going to last much longer, he barely had a gold coin left to his name. He'd been offered medicine to help with the pain, but Vance refused it. In truth, he didn't want the expense.

On his way back, he stopped in place. Then immediately contradicted himself. He could smell candle wax, lots of it. He was struck by an impulse and spent half of his remaining money on candles, he bought 2 dozen of them. They were tall, thick affairs that were supposed to burn for a few days.

He stuffed the candles into his bag and refused the offers of a fire-starting kit the shopkeeper tried to push on him.

He went back to his room. By now, most everyone in the college was attending some form of class or another, so he was entirely unimpeded on his way back to his room. To his great embarrassment, he tried his key on the wrong door first, fortunately nobody was there to laugh at him for it. He spent a few minutes tracing his steps to make sure he'd never make that mistake again and made a mental note to mark his door somehow.

When he got inside, he dropped off his backpack and returned to his seated position on the floor, no cushion this time.

He placed one of the candles on the floor in front of him and gathered ambient mana in his hand. By this point, he'd become intimately familiar with fire mana. He'd shifted it into pure mana many times, but he'd never really practiced shifting the other way.

He focused on the feeling that he'd experienced that day in the inferno within the school, the simultaneous sweating mixed with a heat so intense that it evaporated straight off of his skin, the terrible lick of the flames as they brushed gently against him and the inferno he'd conjured that took to the wind like so many leaves in front of the school grounds.

All of these things came to mind as he considered what fire meant to him, recently it hadn't meant much more than pain and loss, but it also meant warmth and home. The firepit back home was often a gathering point for him, Leon and his father. They'd often sit there and they'd tell Vance stories of what they saw in town, who was up to what and all of the funny situations Leon would find himself in trying to court the local girls.

This was the feeling that won out, overwhelmingly so.

Moments later, the mana in front of him began to change. Slowly at first, it began to spit out tiny globules of pure mana, as if emulating embers spitting out from a woodfire. Then, as if one of those embers had caught on dry leaves, the pure mana began to catch and light into bright flames. The mana hovered like a roiling liquid above his outstretched right hand. Although it was warm, it did not burn him.

A Smile crossed his lips, he was definitely getting better at this.

As soon as he'd succeeded, his mana core roiled. The feather began to spew out fire mana at a much higher rate than before and Vance pushed the fire mana he held into the wick of the candle, he did not shape it, just allowed it to linger there for a moment until the candles wick ignited. Had someone without the ability to see or sense mana been there, it would've looked like Vance gave a small gesture and the candle lit of it's own accord.

As the majority of the gathered fire mana was dispelled he felt the feather calm, responding now only to the candle flame. He fought it back down and repeated the process, lighting more and more candles in the same method, starting from scratch each time.

It became a little easier to shift the mana type and a little harder to battle back the feathers momentum each time he repeated it. This was precisely what he wanted. Once he'd ignited six candles, he decided that was as far as he was willing to go and extinguished them all, then he repeated the process.

Once or twice he tried to shape mana into water or wind to see if he could blow out the candles, or snuff them out with a dash of water, but he had no luck. It seems he'd need a chance to experience those elements a little further before he took that step.

He performed this activity many times over the course of the day. A few rotations in, he realised he needed to open the window. It was getting far too hot in here, not to mention he didn't know if these candles were giving off smoke or not. Better safe than sorry.

He opened up the window and stuck his head out, taking in a deep, refreshing breath. He stayed there for a moment, letting the breeze push his unruly hair around. Had he been walking around all day without having taken care of his hair? That made him chuckle a little, then he went back to practice.

The next day he performed the same routine, and the next. Each time he went through, he checked to see if he could handle another candle and when he could, he added one in. Then, once he'd added 24 individual candles, he started to try and allow the feather to maintain a higher level of output by fighting it back less intensely, so that he'd be keeping a persistent amount of fire mana lingering in his core, but not too much.

Each time, he made the process slightly more difficult for himself and in return, he felt that it was getting progressively easier for him to control the mana he was working with. He'd handle each flare up when he conjured new fire mana with more ease and was steadily maintaining a higher level of fire mana in his core.

Whenever he'd take a break from this, to go out for meals or relieve himself, he'd spend that time focusing on his mana sense, trying to focus on the natural mana around himself more and more. He used it whilst walking down the street once and he was suddenly overwhelmed with information about his surroundings, he briefly took in that there were people walking nearby by the tiny metal jewellery pieces they wore, which had tiny spots of all too familiar metallic mana.

He had to stop quickly, lest the hundreds of other mixed signals cause him to waste his freshly consumed meal on the pavement.

On the fourth night, he was able to maintain all 24 candles lit, a hand full of fire mana and battle the feather construct back all at the same time. Honestly, he was shocked at how quickly he'd improved.

Unfortunately for him, tonight was the night he had to face the music. He was running dangerously low on money and would need to find a source of income. So, naturally, he went to visit Thomas.

Thomas didn't stay on campus, he had a room that he kept rented at another local Inn, not too far from the nook. The place was called the "Pious Pint" and catered to a crowd that seemed to be a healthy mix between religious pariahs and those who put the word "Drunk" to shame.

The rooms were nice enough. When Thomas invited him in, he told Vance he was welcome to explore, which he did while they were talking. Vance was a little jealous that the college didn't have bed sheets this nice.

"So, you're having money troubles, huh? Makes sense, nobody is sponsoring your attendance, right?"

"No, I came here of my own accord. My family has a little money, but I wouldn't want to take it from them, it wouldn't last long in the city anyway. This lifestyle is surprisingly expensive."

Thomas nodded and said "Well, what are you going to do? Got any particular skills? Outside of magic, I mean."

"Hmm, I'm a fair Artist."

Thomas looked at him blankly, silent.

"Kidding." Vance said with a little smile. "Honestly, I didn't really ever learn many skills. I do know my way around a blacksmiths shop, a family friend taught me the basics, but actually working somewhere like that isn't practical, too dangerous for me. Isn't there a way I can make money with... you know, magic?"

"Sure, there's plenty of ways if you think you're ready for that. What useful constructs do you know?"

"I, Uh..." Vance went entirely red.

"You don't know any constructs at all, do you? What was Elijah even teaching you?!"

"Control, mostly. Shaping and shifting, transference. That sort of thing."

Thomas sighed and looked around for a second, rummaging through one of his drawers.

"He did show me that attractor construct, but it was so complicated, I couldn't..."

"Why'd he bother showing you that? You need at least two mana cores for that, maybe three."

"Why?"

"He didn't even..." Thomas rubbed a hand over his forehead and down his face, then he pulled a little stone from his drawer and brought it over, placing it on his desk.

"Alright, I really have no business teaching you this, but damnit if I let them get away without telling you even this much. Have you actually tried controlling the fire mana from your core? Even if it's produced by the feather thing?"

"...Not really?"

"Try it. Your mana core belongs to you, and so does the mana in it, in theory. Granted yours is a bit weird, but it should still apply. You just need to be careful not to let it explode, I suppose."

Vance allowed the feather to smoulder a little, Thomas was present so it was feeding on his core a little. Then he used transference and sure enough, when he pushed the flames out of his hand he was able to control it easily, maybe a little too easily, the mana followed his whims and changed from shape to shape and he didn't register any noticeable strain on his will at all.

"Having a mana core of a specific element makes it far easier to work with that element, so long as the mana comes from the core. In short, with multiple cores, it's much easier to manage multiple elements, you follow? You can think of it like someone else is handling a portion of the work for you, but instead of a person, it's the relevant core. It's why nearly all Arcanists are always trying to work up to their next core."

Vance could tell he was right, this fire mana was like wet clay, it was so easy to mould, it barely took a thought. He conjured some ambient mana in his other hand and shifted it to metal mana, which took the form of heavy floating grey coloured balls in the air. To his surprise, while he had to focus on keeping the metallic mana in check, the fire mana was barely an afterthought.

"Two types of mana at once, already? You're putting me to shame, Vance. Took me about 6 months to pull that off."

Vance dismissed his mana and smiled at Thomas. "Elijah told me the attractor construct was simple, but you're saying it's a complex one, could you show me a simpler one? I think I need a point of reference."

Thomas laughed. "He said it was easy?! By a Master's standards, maybe. Attractor contracts aren't particularly powerful when they're small, but when they're done properly they can do some pretty crazy stuff, of course they're complex!"

After his rant, he doubled back. "Of course, I'll show a simple one. I'll show you the first sort of construct you'll need for any spell that you want to last more than an instant. It's called a gatherer construct. This one in particular uses pure mana and a dense piece of metallic mana, so most coreless Arcanists can get it done with a little practice."

Thomas summoned ambient mana into his hands and weaved it into a shape that looked like a sphere with holes punched in it at different points, equidistant from one another. The very centre of the sphere was hollow and contained a tiny spherical ball of metallic mana. Thomas exerted a strong force of will for a moment and cemented the construct in place, where Vance could sense that the metallic ball in the centre was gently rotating, pulling ambient mana in a spiral around it inwards, where it gathered, as if emulating gravity.

"It's only real purpose is to pull mana inwards, which you can then attach to any other simple construct, like a shifting construct of some kind to feed a magical creation, you'll find these in many simple magical constructs, things like Firestone charms, refilling cups, even some rudimentary weapons use things like this, though they're usually a bit more advanced."

Thomas casually conjured a force of pure mana and thrust it violently at the floating mana construct he'd just made, obliterating it and sending the mana scattering back into ambient mana.

"What was that?!" Vance exclaimed, it was like transference but external, and it shifted the mana when it reached the metal core.

"Focus, Vance. One thing at a time." He sighed, then continued. "That's just a disruption, I knew how the spell was made so I used mana to tear it apart, not actually often very useful. I'll show you later."

"Right, Focus. You're right."

Vance conjured a chunk of ambient mana and easily shaped it into a sphere, then he started punching holes through it. After about 3 holes in he'd messed up their spacing, so he started again. and again. and again. After a dozen or so tries, he will was getting a little tired. Thomas performed the process along with him, giving him something to reference.

"Much harder than simple shaping, right?" Thomas added.

"Yeah, no kidding."

Thomas picked up the stone he'd pulled out from his drawer, it was one of his old practice stones, but there was a good way to use it here.

"Vance, this'll take practice, but I have an offer for you. It'll be your first enchanting job, actually. Take this stone, I need you to put one of those gatherer constructs in this for me. Once you do, I'll layer it with a fire based enhancement construct, then we'll sell it and split the profit."

Vance took the stone and gave Thomas a little frown. "But you can do it in seconds, what do you need me to do it for?"

"Call it an investment in a potential business partner. Not everyday I come across someone willing to join me in my magical money making ventures." Thomas clapped him on the shoulder and gave him a warm smile that he hoped Vance could sense.

Vance left with the stone, elated. He went back to his room and practiced. He discovered he liked this challenge once he put his mind to it, and the added pressure was nice. It made him work very, very hard.