AITMW-ch16-Windy Outskirts

Adam woke up frustrated, he didn't get his robe! He wasn't a very impatient person, but the robe situation caught him off guard, It made him nervous and frustrated as when he was walking to the adventurer's guild the day before, he was expecting to leave with the garment on him. 

He put his clothes on, unfortunately not as cool as a robe, and went downstairs. While eating his breakfast, Adam met an eccentric middle-aged man. 

His name was Galeb, he had a somewhat prominent belly, short blond hair and blue eyes. He had a pair of golden-framed spectacles on his nose and a green robe wrapped around him.

Adam's first thought was that the man was related to Lady Cynthia, judging by their hair, eyes and their main element. But that speculation turned out to be wrong. 

Galeb introduced himself as a patriarch of a powerful noble family, the Harop noble family. Which was a bloodline of nature mages, that dominated the field of agriculture augmentation in the kingdom. 

Apparently, he just arrived in the Capital, two days before Adam, to bargain with the king for newly cleared-up land. The aftermath of deforestation was caused by repairing Capital's walls after a horde attack and the king's aggressive construction politics.

"That damned king won't do me a favour and cut those costs! thousand gold coins are definitely too much to ask for merely twenty hectares of land!" He shouted while complaining to Adam while eating breakfast.

The man felt weirdly comfortable talking to a stranger, a 15-year-old boy whom he saw for the first time merely half an hour ago. Also, Adam later found out that his eating companion failed to mention that the land was already mostly prepared and ready for cultivating the crops, and from Adam's knowledge, the price king offered him for it was outrageously cheap, as if the king just wanted to get rid of that land.

After a heated debate with an unreasonably greedy noble, Adam went outside, towards the northern gate. Which was in the direction of the marketplace.

He headed there to fulfil one of the plans he made while travelling. Even if only partially.

When Adam was sitting in the carriage all day long, he came up with one thing to do after arriving in the capital. Today, he planned to research wind magic and judging by how fast was he able to use ice magic, he had a high chance of success today. Maybe even create a wind-based spell.

After arriving at the marketplace, Adam went further north, to the Poor gate.

While Main Gate was named first, then the road and parts around it followed, naming themselves the main/central district, Poor Gate had a directly opposite story. The Poor Gate led to the poorest district of the city, just as the name of the gate implied.

He heard about it from Steven and Cynthia when they were touring the Capital. While it was called the district of the poor, those who lived there weren't the poorest, they actually had a house.

It was placed outside of the northern gate and had its own, smaller walls. Though, even if it had walls, every inhabitant of the commoner's district goes to find shelter in the marketplace while hordes attack.

Walking through the gate could be shocking. On one side are clean roads, paved and maintained. On the other side, roads didn't actually exist, there were just paths, earth flattened and hardened over time by pedestrian soles. There was also a huge difference in housing, as houses in the commoner's district were covered in mud and other filth. But it had to be admitted that those houses were in relatively good shape. A few missing planks here and there amounted to the most severe damage Adam had seen in the district. 

There were also some stray dogs and cats walking around, in the inner parts of the city, those were either taken outside by the guards or were pets of citizens, here they just lived on the streets and ate scraps thrown out by the residents.

And yet, despite poor roads and somewhat damaged houses, Adam felt it wasn't a bad place to live as it reminded him of Ferston, where paved roads are a rarity, though, in Ferston houses were better than those in the poor district. 

While talking with Steven and Cynthia, Adam found out that decent housing appeared here relatively recently. As the current king ascended the throne, he started to initiate a large number of projects all across the kingdom. From paving royal roads to building fortifications in cities and towns in dangerous areas, all of these projects gave the poor people, who didn't have stable incomes, decently paid jobs.

Adam traversed the whole district and came out of the city through the gate. A nameless one this time.

A great plain spread before him, white snow covered everything in sight, from occasional boulders to lonely trees. Frozen earth carried inhabitants of the Capital through the winter, growing an abundance of wheat and vegetables in the season. Now it remained empty, with wind dancing in the snow.

That was Adam's destination, the windy plains behind the city. An ideal place to feel the wind mana for the first time.

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Firstly, to make everything easier and more comfortable, Adam checked where the wind came from. He licked his finger and raised his hand above his head. Adam felt a slightly colder sensation from the direction parallel to that of the city, from the gate's right to left.

Then, he created a flat icicle and cleaned a spot on the ground from snow, so that he could sit there comfortably, and return to the tower without wet, or possibly frozen, pants.

He sat down and started to focus on the wind. How does it behave? Why was it flying in this direction? What was its purpose? Adam asked himself those questions, and many more, trying to understand the wind.

Before, when comprehending ice, he had massive experience in that regard, as snow, ice and cold were important factors to take caution of in everyday life. When Adam woke up in the middle of the winter, the cold would probably seep into the room, effectively making them experience a part of the ice element. When he got out of the house, and accidentally stepped in a high pile of snow, burying himself and completely wetting his clothes, he experienced the gradual change of state, that was a part of the ice element, that would occur as long as heat existed. Then when he walked and slipped on hard, slippery ice Adam experienced the second change of state, in the opposite direction, and smooth hardness that the ice element brings forth.

Now, wind also was important, but not as much. Especially in the cold northern plains, where wind only acted as a booster for ice to do more chaos. The wind here was frequent, but not very intense.

After pondering about it for some time, Adam got up and started to walk around, in random directions. After a while, he changed the course, still randomly. He repeated this manoeuvre several times. Changing his speed in each of them.

What he tried to do, was to feel a difference in the wind, and he succeeded.

As he walked around, the wind's intensity changed, it didn't stay the same for long periods. After a while, the wind completely changed direction, there was also a place where the wind was non-existent. It changed all the time. And it somewhat followed the landform, in small depressions, the wind blew lighter than on higher terrain.

Thanks to this little experiment, Adam remodelled his definition of wind.

Before, he thought that wind element was just air that moves around, in random directions, chaotically.

But now, as his understanding improved he realised that wind elements didn't focus on wind, travelling particles of air. But on the whole concept of air, all of it. So even a patch of air that didn't move around, that can't be felt on the skin, also is a part of the wind element.

How did he arrive at that conclusion? As he moved and felt the wind crash into him, even if a strong whiff blew on him from the back, if he moved fast, he felt the air on the front also. It meant that wind was everywhere, but was felt only if someone was fast enough, be it air or a man.

After his experiment, Adam returned to his spot on the ground. It was still mostly uncovered, but some snow was blown on it by the wind. Adam cleared it a second time.

He sat down and concentrated, trying to feel wind mana in the air, however ridiculous it sounded.

It proved not to be a hassle for him, maybe because of his earlier preparation, or he was just talented enough to communicate with it. Either way, he proved to be attuned to wind mana. 

Afterwards, Adam changed the mana inside himself to wind elemental one, raised his hand and let it out. Keeping it in ethereal form proved to be as hard as he remembered from his experience with ice mana.

Wind mana was greyish-blue in colour, quite similar to ice mana's arctic blue. Unlike ice mana thou, it yearned to be free, scattered across the land. It was much harder to compress because of that. Additionally, while it was harder to compress in ethereal form, Adam found that it moved way easier around than ice mana, he concluded that it wasn't a matter of wind mana's mobility, but rather ice mana's will to stay in place, not to move.

After playing with its ethereal for a bit, Adam released his hold on it and let it change into its physical form, not letting it scatter at the same time.

The greyish-blue hye disappeared immediately. Adam still felt it though, it was still under his control after all. But aside from that mystical feeling, the only thing that marked its existence was a tingling feeling on his hand, a wind within, created by the movement of air controlled by Adam.

"Wow." Said Adam unconsciously, fidgeting with the air between his fingers, which gave him an incredible sensation.

"Pheww, it will only go downhill from now on." He said to himself.

Now came the spell part. Adam thought that only after creating a spell, a mage can boast about learning another element.

He decided to create a non-lethal attack. He didn't have a spell like that, [Icicle] created wounds and potentially killed his opponents and [Shield] was a defensive spell.

Adam started circulating mana from his heart to his fingertips, changing it into wind mana along the way. Firstly, he built up pressure, slamming mana into the furthest ends of blood vessels and compressing it there. Then he released the mana into the atmosphere, accelerated by the pressure and free nature of wind, the air had blown off nearby snow, raising it in the air across dozens of metres.

He could have accomplished similar power using mana he took out of his body, instead of preparing it inside. But this way had its advantages, if he wanted a quick strike without any follow-ups, it was more mana efficient than the other method, and it could be released more stealthly.

After finalising his concept, Adam started to train his mana memory of the cast, at first while using the name he had given to the spell.

That's how [Sway] was created.