13. Training
The morning after the dinner Castus, Veronica, Tyrus, Yursa and Anabelle saw Erin and Aria off in a fanciful carriage. These carriages were apparently sent by the school to prevent anyone from being late to their arrival. It was a heartfelt morning, but the girls looked excited. Erin ran her mouth far faster than normal and Aria who was normally much more composed than Erin was keeping pace with Erin's words.
After seeing them off, Castus was quickly dragged into his next learning session with Reid. As Castus would quickly come to understand Reid seemed to be more excited to teach than Castus was to learn. It helped Castus to pick up the written language faster though as his enthusiasm was infectious. Castus' schedule had been outlined to spend his mornings with Reid and his afternoons with Ben. After the morning learning session Ben came to grab him. The same as yesterday he was forced to run until his body was at near collapse by Ben. While Ben was a jolly fellow, he took physical training very seriously and made sure to push Castus as hard as possible. This was Castus' new day to day life. learning in the morning followed by tough physical training in the afternoon. The evenings were lessons in manners by Reid and a recounting of events with his father and mother. With the departure of Erin and Aria dinners had become smaller and quieter as Erin was the one to carry conversations. Castus didn't mind too much though. He was able to learn more about his father and mother through this.
This cycle continued for the next six months. By this point Castus was now fluently reading and writing Ryden at what earth would consider a 4th grader. Reid had started to move on to other subjects like history and math. Castus' fluency in math had caused Reid to shout out that he was a genius, but Castus knew it was just past experience. The math lessons also gave some important insights in to measurement systems, money and the level of technology of the world. Overall, it seemed like this country had technology similar to medieval times, but with some exceptions due to magic. Hygiene was one, as cleaning magic made most houses and people decently clean.
The physical training had intensified with Ben. They had originally just been running, but now he was starting to work with the dumbbells and weights Castus had first seen. He was only using the lowest weights, but he had seen improvements. With these improvements he also now knew that the screen from before had changed. His strength had reached 3 and vitality and dexterity reached 2. Slow improvements according to Ben who firmly believed Castus should have been at nearly double that by now. He had been scolded that he wasn't working hard enough and Castus nearly divulged more of his blessing to Ben, but decided to bite his tongue and listen to his mother's warnings, keeping skill and blessing information to himself.
Ben had also given him some short lessons in training and becoming powerful. There were two specific things to keep in mind when becoming stronger in this world. The first was training and the other was levels. Training your body could increase your physical abilities. Strength determined the amount of force your body was able to output, vitality determined your body's ability to resist damage and heal, and dexterity determined the speed at which your body could move normally and fine motor skills. Ben mentioned that intelligence and mana could be trained, but he didn't train those as he focused mainly on physical combat. Ben placed emphasis on keeping all of these reasonably within balance as training one to far above another would result in negative effects. An example would be pushing strength well above vitality. This would cause a person to implode from the stress of their muscles on their body. Castus took these words of wisdom to heart.
As his age had been increasing Castus also started to have more freedom to experiment again with his blessing. He had recently analyzed some different types of wood, a few pieces of scrap metal and now he was beginning to look to more unique materials, like bread. He had discovered that food could also be analyzed and created to be eaten like regular food. The mana cost had been higher than wood had been, and he had only been able to produce a miniscule amount of it, but he had tasted and eaten it without issue. This had been a wonderful discovery as Castus realized that if he could raise his mana quantity he would never have to worry about starving. This had also made him immediately analyze water as well. He knew that while humans could last days without food, lack of water would kill much faster. Besides this Castus had sneakily analyzed some dirty rags that would being thrown out by Yursa. To his surprise and relief, it did not take the dirt on the rag as well. This made him realize that his blessing would consider certain things to be separate even if he was holding them together.
Today was to be an interesting day though. Today Reid would be teaching Castus simple knowledge on magic as well as how mana worked. Ben would also be getting Castus his first level up. It was a huge day for Castus, and he was trembling in excitement.
Castus had woken up extra early today and was already sitting in the study room waiting on Reid a full thirty minutes before he was to arrive. Reid came into the room right on time noticing Castus' clear enthusiasm. In Reid's arms he had a number of thick old looking books. He shuffled over to Castus and laid them down in front of him. Clearing his throat he spoke. "Castus, you've been begging me to teach you about magic and since were ahead of schedule I'm going to teach you some basics. Now listen closely." Reid sat down into a chair adjacent to Castus.
"I'm going to explain what I know about magic first and then I'm going to explain mana and you can try some simple applications. Until Ben gets you some levels or you start training mana, your mana is going to be fairly low so there won't be much you can do. I can at least teach you how to be safe with it, so you don't cause harm to yourself."
He reached over and opened one of the smaller books in the stack he had brought today. Thumbing through the pages he stopped about halfway through the book. Bringing it in front of Castus he laid out a gorgeously complex formation showing it to Castus.