Ch. 12 - Apprentice Already??

Seeing that I've gathered enough attention, I cast a quick glance toward the child and noticed that the bread in his hand is now dirty and covered in mud.

Feeling bad, I crouched in front of him and grabbed the bread, secretly using Transfiguration.

Much to the child's surprise, the bread transformed from being dirty to fully washed clean, it wouldn't be wrong to say that this bread is now the cleanest bread in the entire world.

Source? Trust me, bro.

Handing the bread back to the child, I stood and calmly walked away, ignoring the painful groans of the bread seller on the ground.

To be honest, I wouldn't interrupt the event as I could understand the bread seller being stolen from a thief, however, when I saw him raise his hand to strike on the poor boy, I knew I had to step in.

It's been a month since I arrived in this world and with Grandpa Rad's help, I found my calling to this village.

Yes, I call him Grandpa now after he 'proved' to me that my original Grandpa, which is God, abandoned me on the stables that day.

I never bothered clearing up his name. Hopefully, God will understand.

I also made quite a few friends on the way. When I say friends, I mean Rad's horses on the stables.

As for human friends? For some reason, they avoid me, as if I was some sort of a plague. Which I understand considering I'm a foreigner and they don't know who I am.

I now actually live at Grandpa Rad's farmhouse and it's the perfect place for me to grow my strength without attracting attention from those high in power.

Thanks to my hypnosis spell, I managed to land myself a good job. If pays quite well and besides, I won't stay long for that job. I just need to earn cash without resorting to stealing.

Then use my hard-earned cash to buy myself a portion of this village's land from the village's Chief.

You see, I was planning on building my own force in this world, a force that is quite similar to where I was affiliated.

An order of sorcerers dedicated to protecting humanity from the supernatural side of the world.

MMA or Masters of the Mystic Arts.

Maybe I should consider changing the name. I don't want to fully copy everything from the Marvel world.

Order of the Sorcerers? Nah.

Sorcerer Society? Not gonna lie, this sounds a bit good.

You know what, I should stick to Masters of the Mystic Arts for a while.

Suddenly, I stopped in my tracks. I could sense someone following from behind me. This is one of the few skills I developed on my own during my 1-month stay in this village.

It's kind of similar to having sixth sense except that it works around sensing the magical aura of a living being, it doesn't even need to be activated as it is passive and doesn't consume my reserves.

A few days ago, I discovered that everyone whether human or animal, has magical signatures unique to them. Most are feint considering they're not from the Supernatural side of the world.

Unfortunately, I haven't encountered any supernatural beings to compare the magical signatures of a normal human to a supernatural being.

Sure I could've just compared it to myself but it's still different to use another person's magical signature. It's similar to a Researcher looking for other people to gather data for his research when the said researcher could've just gathered the data through himself.

That's called being biased towards their research.

And so, the same goes for me.

Back to the current situation, I didn't turn around immediately and instead, continued walking.

I could sense that whoever was following me, had much larger reserves than a normal human, of course, it's smaller if you compared it to mine. It's like comparing a swimming pool to a large ocean.

After turning to a small and cramped alley, I quickly glued my back on the wall and waited for my stalker to approach.

As soon as he turned, I quickly grabbed him by the shoulders and flipped him upside down, holding down his ankles.

"Uwaah!"

"Who are you and why are- eh? It's you?" Just as I threw the questions, I quickly held back my words as my eyes widened in surprise.

Isn't this the little thief from earlier? What's he doing by following me?

"Look, I don't have any coins on me. You should go and find your parents." Gently putting him on the ground, I patted his shoulders and prepared to leave.

"Wait mister!" The little thief yelled with desperation in his voice, which is quite weird.

"What?" With a sigh, I turned around and faced him, masking the annoyance I'm feeling towards the child.

I already helped him earlier and even cleaned his bread, revealing my magical capabilities.

There are various reasons for this but the main one being is that no one would believe a kid if he started going around and telling people I use magic, not to mention he looks like a beggar.

"I saw you use magic earlier, mister! Are you a magician?" The child asked with a hint of reverence and fascination on his eyes.

"Magic? Me? Pfft! Magic's not real, you're probably too exhausted earlier so you mistook it for magic, I just patted the bread from dirt earlier." I shook my head and said, only for the kid to rebuke me.

"But I didn't say anything about cleaning the bread, mister?"

'This motherf-' My eyes twitched in irritation as I almost blurted the curse out loud.

Wait, do curses even have effect during this era? Could I just confront someone and call him Motherfucker and watch the confusion?

Now that's something worth testing out.

"Sigh, alright you got me, what do you want then, want me to perform a magic trick on you?"

Secretly grabbing a coin from my pocket, I hid it inside my fist and pretended as if I was taking something out of the kid's ears, before opening my palm and showing it to him.

"Voila! Magic, alright then goodbye." With that, I turned around without hesitation and started walking away.

"What? Wait! No, please stop! I need your help!" The kid quickly stood and chased after me before stopping in front of me.

"Sigh. What?"

"M-My sister. S-she's unhealthy, she's been coughing for the past week and she even coughed blood this morning! I need your help Mister Magician, please help my sister!"

As if to prove his deification, the child kneeled on the ground with his head on the ground, kissing the tip of my toes as I was wearing nothing but sandals.

Swallowing my annoyance, I felt bad for the kid. So it was all about his sick sister huh?

"Stand up." Helping him stand, I waved my hand and with a breeze of the wind, the dirts on his body was removed.

"Take me to your sister. I shall see if I can do something." Speaking of doing something. I'm not even sure if I could heal his sister.

I haven't exactly created that much spells during my 1-momth time here and now, I might be forced to make another one. A healing spell at that.

'Now I wish I stayed with Serafall longer, I might've learned spells under her.' Shaking my head in regret, we walked for a few minutes, passing by several people going about their daily lives before arriving at a small and dilapidated cottage.

The cottage itself was situated on the outskirts of the village, almost nearing deep into the forest around. This is obviously too dangerous to live at. Not to mention, the inhabitants are two children.

"This way, Mister Magician." With a hurried pace, the boy entered through the front door, well technically there's no door, so just the front of the cottage.

Inside, I was met with a distinct smell of something foul and reek of stink.

'Where are his parents?' I mused to myself, taking a note to ask the question to him later after.

"Belle! Belle! Wake up, I found a healer for you! He's a magician and he'll heal you!" Arriving inside a room, my eyes landed on a very scrawny girl lying on the wooden floor. Only a torn up blanket separating herself from the cold ground.

'Their situation was much worse than I expected.' Mg face grimaced at such stomach-churning sight.

I saw the girl flutter her eyes weakly, her mouth trying to utter something but due to what I assume to be thirst, she was unable to say what she wanted.

Deciding to step in and help her, I transmuted a ball of water from the air itself.

Opening her mouth gently, I guided the ball of water by making a stream line that is directed to her mouth, like a waterfall.

Both the brother and sister's eyes widened in surprise and slight fear upon the presence of such miraculous magic.

Once she finally had enough water to speak, I placed a cap on the water ball and allowed it to disperse back into air.

All of this took an entire half of my reserves.

You see, Transfiguration and Transmutation are two entirely different concepts.

Transfiguration changes anything but temporary. Transmutation on the other hand, is similar to Transfiguration but instead, Transmutation is permanent.

Hence, Transmutation has much larger consumption compared to Transfiguration.

"W-Who are you? W-We don't have enough money to pay you." Worried that my service would require payment, I was about to refute her words when she started coughing all of the sudden.

"Belle!" Hurriedly, the young brother went and fetched a rather dirty cloth from the table and handed it to her sister named Belle.

"Cough! Cough!"

Once she was finished, she gave the cloth back to the child, my eyes quickly went over and noticed the blood on the cloth.

'Tuberculosis? Hmm, I don't have any remedies for such illness.' My face turned grim at such thought. Still, I have to try, this is a living life we're talking about and it would haunt me for years if she dies when I could've done something about it.

"You don't have to worry about any payment. I don't require such objects." Shaking my head in denial, I gently placed my hand and hovered it a few inches away from her abdomen.

"May I?" I asked and once I received a nod, I went over and placed it on the surface.

I pinched a single strand from my devil energy reserves and flowed it directly from me towards Belle's insides, effectively giving me a 'vision' of what's happening to her insides.

This is rather a simple technique so I didn't break a sweat.

Upon my scan, I quickly locked on the main problem.

'There's a parasite inside her. Thankfully, its not something worse such as Tuberculosis.'

After this, my mind went over to look for solutions.

I could use the Transmutation spell to turn the parasite into air but the spell only works on non-living things.

This parasite is a living one so I can't use it.

As for Transfiguration? Sure it also works on living beings but its temporary and it consumes devil energy per second.

'Should I really resort to that? Hmm, maybe?' I muttered under my breath.

Actually, this is plausible and it would benefit me and this woman.

I've been looking for ways to exhaust my devil energy reserves so it would grow whenever it recovers.

However, I can't just simply use it however I like as almost all of my spells would attract unnecessary attraction.

And now, the problem to my solution finally comes in front of my door step.

I could use Transfiguration on the parasite and turn it into air, consuming my devil reserves per second.

Base on my calculations, it would take exactly 8 hours before my reserves ran out, dispelling the Transfiguration spell.

The only disadvantages of this is first, during those 8 hours of non-parasite, Belle would have to eat and consume all kinds of nutrients and supplements to recover herself.

Once the 8 hour spell is down and the parasite is back, I would need an entire hour to recover my reserves which should be enough to place the spell again.

Last but not the least, Belle would now need to stick close to me whenever I cast the spell as it has a distance limit.

I explained these the solution and conditions to the two of them, and no doubt the brother quickly agreed.

"Okay then, from now on, you two will live with me." Nodding their heads, I was about to leave to give them time to prepare when suddenly, the sleeve of my robe was tugged.

"Hmm?" Looking down, I saw the little brother looking up at me.

"Mister Magician. Could you…teach me magic? If this is all it takes to make my sister healthy, then I will make sure to learn magic so you won't have to burden yourself with our situation." While speaking of this, the boy was darting his eyes around in embarrassment.

'Seriously? In just a month, I already have someone asking me to accept them as apprentice?'

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[Next Chapter: Ch. 13 - Meeting Serafall again!]

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