Mastery

Several hours later,

Sitting on top of the bed, Beatrice took a deep breath before closing her eyes, a beginning to meditate.

Several minutes later, only a mage with extremely precise control over his mana would be able to see it, a tiny stream of elemental energy going into Beatrice's body.

But even though it was an extremely tiny amount, Beatrice still hurried along, not wanting this stuff in her body longer than necessary, and as such, a rune suddenly appeared in her mind.

As that rune appeared in Beatrice's mind, a slow but steady transformation of the elemental energy started taking place, as such under the influence of Beatrice's inner darkness and after several minutes the elemental energy was fully transformed into Beatrice's own mana.

But as Beatrice sent the mana deeper into her body, it was suddenly stopped for a very simple reason, Beatrice was already at the limit of how much mana her body could contain, and this new mana that she refined could no longer fit in.

Gritting her teeth, Beatrice finally began the last but most difficult part of increasing your mana pool, this was the place where talent truly shined for the first time and the diference between mage apprentices was created.

Without any hesitation, Beatrice began forcefully pushing the mana she had just created deeper into her body, causing her eyes to instantly appear bloodshot from the utterly horrific pain she was feeling right now.

After over half an hour of grinding the mana against her body the last of the mana she had created was finally either destroyed or pushed inside of her body, prompting Beatrice to once again begin the process.

Two hours later,

Just as Beatrice was about to try to push another wave of mana into her body, she suddenly stopped.

"That's enough for today," thought Beatrice as the sharp pain that was totally different from the pain she had felt for the past two hours resounded in her mind.

After that, Beatrice dissipated the extra mana she had just created before gritting her teeth.

"I can't be too stingy, this would waste too much time," thought Beatrice, deciding that testing her mana capacity by transforming it into physical mana and weighing it would take too much time.

...

Even though she had just bought it, looking at the tiny stone slab in her hands which had cost her eight elemental stones, Beatrice felt extremely mad at her lazy self.

Of course, now that she had bought it, Beatrice could no longer do anything about that as she swiftly walked back to her room.

...

"This piece of junk better be precise," mumbled Beatrice as she sat down on her bed before pressing the stone slab on her forehead.

After a few moments, a beep was suddenly heard on the stone slab, causing Beatrice to take it off her forehead and to look at it.

'13.322786...'

Looking at the number on the slab, Beatrice breathed a sigh of relief, it seemed as if her measurements were right, she had around thirteen points of mana, but even though she was roughly right, Beatrice actually had somewhat more mana than she had expected

"Then I'm doing worse than I thought," mumbled Beatrice.

In order to see how much mana using Dark Bolt took, Beatrice took her previous approximated mana pool before seeing how big of a proportion of that the spell took, as such, she arrived at the amount of mana it took to cast the spell.

"43.38... percent of my mana or 5.84 points of mana," thought Beatrice as she lowered her head in slight shame.

After calculating that number, Beatrice couldn't help but try to think of ways to improve her skills in the spell, when suddenly, she couldn't help but think of the spell testing room, or rather, the wall which managed to contain her attack.

Suddenly, Beatrice got up from her bed before walking towards her experimental room, or rather a corner of it.

After a while, Beatrice closed her eyes, and two seconds later, a fully formed dark bolt appeared in her hand, after a few moments of hesitation, Beatrice focused before releasing the dark bolt, causing it to be launched towards the bed in the middle of the room.

"It's as I expected, they are made of the same metal," mumbled Beatrice as she watched the dark bolt, which was capable of utterly destroying iron, dissipate upon touching the restraints that were placed on the bed.

"If the bed breaks, I will just replace it and put the restraints on the new one, and in this way, I will even test my aiming," thought Beatrice as her new testing ground was created.

Back when Mr. Errol had seen that his apprentice was interested in experimentation, and had given her a room with a specially built experimentation compartment, he could not have expected that this would happen.

Three weeks later,

"I did this before and I can do this," mumbled Carl as he looked at the mage apprentice sitting in the corner of the room.

Suddenly, the mage closed her eyes, and merely half a second later, a dark light flashed toward Carl at an incredible speed.

From the moment the Dark Bolt appeared, Carl had already jumped to the side, causing the attack to miss, but before Carl could even have time to recollect himself, he suddenly jumped forward, dodging the Dark Bolt, which changed it's course mid-air.

After dodging the bolt a few more times, Carl couldn't help but be happy, as he saw the Female mage apprentice look slightly tired, right now, he saw hope at survival.

Seeing this, Beatrice smiled.

"If you had survived this round, I would have let you go," said Beatrice as she waved her hand, causing the previously immaterial string which controlled the dark bolt to materialize in her hand.

As Beatrice controlled it, the string, which had already incircled Carl by using the Dark Bolt as a method of transportation, tightened around the latter's neck, causing Carl's head to fall off.