20 A Month

A month passed with my current training schedule, my body was now more lean, filled with explosive energy that could be seen when I clenched my fist. The hours of training, and studying had greatly changed the way I looked from a weak looking boy to more of a swimmer's body.

The demon I talked to a month ago hadn't been picking up my communications but I tried once a day. I knew he could hear the rings because each time there was a spike of mana and frustration. I felt a bit guilty like an ex trying to get ahold of the girl I dumped. He obviously felt annoyed that I was the only one who could start or stop the connection.

The mornings were five hours in the garden practicing balance, jumping, and dodging. The afternoon was for four hours studying, and making alchemical products to register with the system. Of course this was followed by a thirty minute rest for warm milk tea, and cookies. Lastly, there was the circuits study that reminded me of coding.

The most basic of codes were, "Receive (command), do (action)"

The other basic code which had been turned into what's considered the Dummy Code was simply a list of 'if' statements. If user targets a, defend with b or c depending on variable d. It was a long list of if statements but in its entirety it wasn't complex. The more complex the dummy the more if statements and that was simply it.

The last set of code was a self evolving circuit, which was basically an artificial intelligence which wasn't seen as that useful as it took years to train a golem. When you had enough if statements it was battle ready who would bother with a self evolving circuit? Though I found something that had been theorized which was adding the circuit to a core of the system which would be able to be placed in different bodies but the research was canceled in favor of making the bodies more durable.

That wasn't to say that individuals didn't do more research but making that research publicly available would hurt their bottom line. Schools were instead made to learn of these methods which required gold, and a signed agreement to work for them for several years. This was obviously not an option for me.

Tapping a pen against the table I sighed, it seemed that I needed to start from the incomplete works in front of me. Though even with complete works it would require a bit of work due to intent, Magic didn't work exactly the same for each person.

Like let's take a fireball for example, an assassin's fireball might be small, fast, with high penetration power where a noble might have something large and flashy with a large explosion. The formula was the same though, release mana, shape it into a sphere, convert mana into fire as you condense the ball, finally add pure mana to the ball forcing it in a direction. Where do you put emphasis? How much mana do you use?

All I knew was that the process required a core of a beast, the more powerful the better as it could hold more information. Cores weren't cheap either, they could cost hundreds of gold to even get the least expensive if you didn't have a connection. With my pitiful funding of actual gold, unless I told someone what I was planning to research the best bet was to hunt the beasts myself.

This was my main purpose for my current training, I would be heading to the wilderness soon after my weekly trainings with both instructors. One of them had to sign off on the fact that I'm going to be exploring in the woods, I'm betting on Solomon letting me rather than the baldie, but I would be asking him first.

Baldie has been training me in explosive strength, and making me do things only a thief should know how to do, or Houdini, but I doubt I'm going to be doing a stage performance. Now I knew how to pick locks, escape from ropes, properly throw a grappling hook, and a bunch of other miscellaneous stuff. Sometimes I feel like he's training me to be a cat burglar instead of an alchemist but it works well within my plans.

Five others had been added to the group too all of them seeing me as a rival of some kind since I was the first one there in this group. The childish pissing contests weren't something I was familiar with though.

Making my way to the sparing room, I grabbed my cloak and hat strapping two knives under my arms, two into my boots, two on my hips, and the last pair over each of my shoulders. Against human training partners I found that they had a tendency to try and disarm me. After a rather bad broken rib, I had taken it to heart to have more than one weapon.

As I walked many people could hear a whirring noise as I spun a crank that was on my belt, a series of lights appearing, five in total. With the alchemy products of this world this was the max I could do to bring modern technology into this world. I had gotten the idea from my very first kill before I got to this world.

With a smile I entered the large circular room filled with dirt, the walls were filled with circuits that were programmed to protect the people sparing as well as the people watching using a mixture of time and space magic. When a person in the spar was hit with a killing attack, time would reverse by half a second and the person would be teleported to the side outside the ring.

This setup was not only expensive, it was easily countered by an attack that killed the target more than a second later or Kings would be invincible in their chambers. This did demonstrate why a good time mage was invaluable to a kingdom though, not only did he increase the lifespan of a king but was able to reverse a lot of damage that could be done.

Two kids, both with bright blue eyes stared at me mockenly from the stage, the two brothers. Their bodies were bulky like bodybuilders and their head as bold as a monk. They thought themselves the teacher's true disciples, in fact the larger of the two standing at 6 foot already at 15, was the one who broke my rib.

They believed that strength ruled over all things, taking hits to their bodies was a manly way to say hello, and a glorious shiny head was the sign of devotion. "Coming to the slaughterhouse little chicken?" The bigger one yelled out.

"Yeah, a chicken slaughterhouse!" They were both amazing fighters, but I wouldn't waste a breath on teaching them anything other than punching things. They both high-fived each other and I was reminded of my pigmen, those guys were so cute.

They knew what was coming, the others were stretching or preparing in some way. All in preparation for the bet I had made with my bald headed master, who had still yet to introduce himself.

The youngest here was a girl that looked like the gothic version of Alice from Oz, being three months younger than me. She was also the only female, and despite her looks she was a very warm person. Giving me a wave, she went back to doing her yoga poses to make her mana stretch her body.

Two other boys were fighting with each other, one with bright red hair, the other with a deep blue. With a pair of glasses the blue one looked like a classic evil glasses character with his pristine white and teal suit, and calculated moves. He was a rapier and shield user that made my head ache, his defense was almost impenetrable.

Being part of the Nightingale was not his end goal, as he constantly said he'd be one hell of a butler if someone gave him the chance. Servitude didn't seem like a very healthy dream in my opinion but we got along well, and was the only one who I spent time outside of training with.

Heh, he was a man of taste, he already has a few of my special golems that I've created. Battle Maids series 1, bought for an amazing 350 gold. Now I knew there was a market for the black and white warriors.

The red head was in short an alcoholic, I never expected to see one so young, being only 14. His immediate family had come up with a new fighting style that could only be considered Zythomancy! Or the magic of beer, as he carried a case of it on his hip.

His drunk body moved in ways that would normally make people tumble, fall, or break something but he would always be attacking the blue haired one. Daggers flashed at strange angles being batted away by a very small side buckler, both of them seemed angry.

"Alex… Zack!" I yelled at both of them, watching them split up I saw Alexander point at Zackoria.

"He spilled my beer." Alex sounded like he was raffling to an older brother even though I was younger.

"You put the beer on my cloak using it like a damn coaster!" Zack growled back at him.

"You spread it across the table like it was a tablecloth, I thought it was just a fancy one!" A lazy shrug and Alex was brushed off.

"How.. dare.." A glint appeared in Alex's eyes as he pushed up his glasses with a smile, before walking away. The whole thing made both of us shiver knowing how calculating the bastard was.

"Can't wait to start the fight either Nikolai?"

"Crowley."

"Whatever you say man, I just can't believe you're willing to be beat so hard, not even I am that hot headed!"

"Who said I'm going to lose?" Alex raised a brow, "I don't mean to say that any of you are weak, just no one has seen what I can do when I prepare."

"You saying you were going easy on us?" There was a dangerous glint in his eyes as he opened a beer drinking it down. "Then I'll drink four today."

"I wasn't going easy, this sparing is meant to test my physical abilities not my tricks. I'm breaking that personal rule today so I can win." I shook my head as I heard another beer hiss open.

A large glint of blinding light pierced through the room as a globe of flesh came out of the darkness, our very own perverted monk came into the room. His eyes glistening as he looked across the room, four of us shivered the only one not was the gothic lolitina. She was spared from this man's torturous hands that everyone here feared, even the two 'devoted' students of his.

"You have five minutes, then everyone in the ring for the first ever five versus one match!" He was immediately at my side, seeming to teleport with his speed. "Do you need me to loosen you up Nikolai?"

Shaking my head, he continued, "Oh don't be shy, it's no problem. You need every advantage you can get in this fight!"