Chapter 25: A friend.

In my entire life I always thought that before a person learnt how to talk, they should learn how to listen and how to think.

I didn't curse often, but holy fuck did this girl know neither.

How did she even get this good at magic in the first place?

All she does is play around using her mana, which I admit is a pretty good way to find out things, but the randomness of it all bothered me to no end, she didn't actually know how the things that happened, happened.

Magic is the process through which the mage uses the mana to carry out their will to create an effect, but apparently, you didn't have to actually comprehend the effect you were creating!

It felt like going crazy, all the studying I had done in my life and the rigid training day after day could have been substituted by randomness, but well, I liked knowing how the things I did worked that way so it was fine.

That, and the fact that I started believing the girl humming by my side was probably the luckiest person in the entire world, if randomly finding the right way of doing things among possibly infinite possibilities wasn't luck I didn't know what was.

The only silver lining was that she was constantly playing around with her mana which somewhat made the chances of finding out things higher, however slightly, I even began believing that she was as much of a magic junkie as I was.

It was much more probable that she was just lying and she didn't want to tell me about the theory behind her spells, but I found that difficult to believe after looking at her in the eyes.

She was probably the most honest person I had ever met, this was something that I really appreciated, trust was the basis of every relationship after all.

I couldn't help but wander how someone this innocent could exist, she basically took me, who she didn't know anything about, and declared me her best friend.

That argument could be said about me too, as I accepted staying in the house of people I didn't know in the least, but I had the assurance that I'd be able to incapacitate all of them in the case that they did have bad intentions against me, even if I found that situation improbable.

Her parents, Leonard and Arianna seemed like wonderful people, they gave me my space and didn't stop me from leaving to explore the city whenever I wanted.

But learning with her wasn't useless at all, she did have a method to learning new things, she started from the water mana, for example, and manipulated it to do what she wanted.

She learned to create a mist by dispersing the mana, which consequently dispersed the water into the surrounding.

For lightning it was a bit more tricky, but still nothing complicated.

It was a bit irritating that she could do basically nothing outside of those two elements other than the most basic of things, but she was cute so I let it slide.

It's not like I didn't try teaching her how to use them, but she seemed simply unable to use them, as if there was something completely stopping her from generating those types of mana.

"Hey avys, why do travel with your father? Isn't it dangerous?"

It was the third day of my stay in Honeyfall and the two of us spent most of our time together, except for when I left her behind to go and train my body, she didn't even leave me alone to sleep, always managing to make her way in my bed.

I felt confused by the affection she showed towards me, but I couldn't say I didn't enjoy it.

"I like fighting, every time I discover new things it makes me feel proud of how strong I'm growing, and it isn't dangerous most of the times."

"But aren't you scared of them? The beasts are big and weird, I always hear grandpa's stories about how weird they look."

The grandpa she was talking about was the old man Arthur, a man that seemed harmless once you forgot about the evident magical might that could be seen through his eyes.

I was sure that he was really strong, perhaps at old man Sigmund's level, but of that I had no certainties as I didn't know if he could teleport.

"I think you misunderstand something about the beasts, they aren't dangerous for me, I killed more of them than I could count, they are prey, not me."

To my answer, which I thought sounded really cool, she looked at me with sparkles in her eyes which meant that, evidently, it wasn't cool only to me.

"Wow, Avys, you're so cool!"

I cracked a smile, almost destroying the impression of a cool girl I wanted to give her, the cool and cold magical genius and her best friend, that's what I wanted to be like, but sometimes I couldn't help but smile at her antics.

Did what I was doing to purposefully look cool have any purpose other than tickling my own ego? No.

But did I actually look cool? No, but as long as I was cool to her I didn't really care.

"What weapon does your grandfather use?" I asked the girl, I had half a mind of picking up some more weapons to increase my arsenal, this was because I realized that what I learned with weapon training could somewhat be transferred in the way I used my magic, but there was also another reason.

Moving my body was fun and it helped giving me an alternative to conserve my mana reserve.

I wouldn't always have a sword by my side, but I was sure that I'll always have my magic, especially now that I could restore it by breathing hard for some reason, at least that's what I thought.

The good news was that I created a new detection spell from what I learned from Alice, I used the method she uses to create mist, but using mana without attributes.

The mana was always connected with me so I could always feel any movements happening inside of the area I spread my mana in, it was also too thinly spread to be found out, even Alice's grandpa couldn't feel it.

"My grandpa uses a spear, but I'm pretty sure that he also knows some other weapon, why?"

"Could you ask him to teach me?" I was pretty sure that he wouldn't say no to his precious granddaughter, so using her to ask him was my way to make sure.

"Sure, but why though, don't you already train with the sword?"

"Yeah, but I never wanted to be the best swordsman, I reached the point where learning a different weapon would help me more than sticking with a sword." my real weapon was magic after all, the rest were only props and tools.

"Humm," she hummed, "I'll join you then!"

Her exclamation caught me off guard, she had never been interested in doing physical activity, she wasn't much of a fighter, but she was my age.

I was pretty sure there weren't many fighters at my age around, I was probably the weird one, I realized.

"Sure." I didn't know if she'd stick to it, but I'd see it soon enough.

"Love you Avys! Let's go to grandpa's place!"

She then, for the thousandth time or what felt like it, took my hand and sprinted out of the house and into her grandfather's.

Her parents currently weren't home and unfortunately her grandfather was the same.

"What now?" I asked her.

"Huh, I didn't expect this," she murmured while scratching her head, "I didn't think this far."

I chuckled, "Where could he be?"

"In the city hall? They might be having an assembly meeting or something."

"Good idea, Alice." I replied while patting her head, she liked being praised and I liked her reactions.

She closed her eyes and mumbled happily, but soon after she stopped me, "Not now, later, let's find grandpa now!"

I chuckled again and followed the excited the girl as she made her way to the city hall.

On the way some of the people waved to us, mainly to Alice as I was a mostly unknown face, but the story about an outsider girl from Icerock winning their magic competition had made the way around the city.

We waved back, but didn't stop on the way, we had an old man to find!

But soon enough we were forced to stop, "Alice, Avys, where are you girls going to play?"

In front of us there was the couple that was housing me, Alice's parents.

"We're searching for grandpa, we want to ask him to teach us to use a spear!" Replied Alice with her usual sunny voice.

"Arthur? It might be difficult right now," replied the man, Leonard, "From what I know he's currently out of the city, but don't ask me why, I have no idea either."

"Oh," i replied, then turning my head toward my current partner of adventures, "now what?"

"…" she, for once, seemed without a clue on what to do either, it was afternoon and we already did our magical training in the morning so doing it again might be too boring for the girl.

"How about I teach you how to use a sword?" I proposed.

"Yes, I was just thinking the same, great minds think alike after all!" she then started laughing loudly, but I could see, deep in her eyes, that she hadn't thought about it at all.

The moron, but she was cute so I allowed it.

"Where do we do it though? Do you have somewhere were we can practice with no problem?"

"You could use the guard's training ground, I don't think they'd mind it." seeing that his daughter was having trouble coming up with a place, the father came in to help.

"Great idea dad!"

I though about it and realized that it was indeed the ideal place, there was one back in Icerock too, but I was banned from using it.

Let's say that I got… a bit distracted and used a bit of magic, nothing big, really.

A bit of renovations and it was as good as before, maybe even better as it had newer appliances.

But I digress.

"You know, Avys," started the overexcited child, "dad was once a guard too, but he retired to work together with mom, isn't it romantic?"

It sure did, but it was something I'd imagined I'd never do, being a mage was my call, and there was no way love could stop me from doing magic.

As a merchant or an engineer it didn't matter, as long as I could keep using magic I was happy.