Ambition and Training
Aldrich woke up first, probably because he was still not too used to letting himself just go and sleep like that. He looked up at the ceiling. Dark still. He considered his internal clock quite consistent, and he roughly estimated he had slept seven hours. He felt incredibly refreshed from just sleeping, his mind feeling clear.
According to game lore, mages would feel mental exhaustion the lower their mana became, and this made it more difficult to control their spells. For example, though it was not actually possible in the game itself, the lore stated that mages were capable of controlling details of their spells like projectile speed, output, area of effect, and so on by finely manipulating the mana that went into it.
Mages often did this by chanting their spells, delaying the cast and giving it away but in exchange letting them customize its effects a little.