Chapter 9

Acerol, who in the safety of her own home had let her hair loose, leaned forward to look at the work that she and Soul had done.

"What if we shifted constantly shifted the threads so that they would better conduct magic?" she suggested to the Levin.

"It would take less aether to form but it would also be much more unstable," Soul commented from his seat on the floor of Acerol's living room as he looked at the formulas spread across the table.

"But if we don't do that then it'll be too inefficient for practical use."

"And that's the problem with magic," Soul grumbled. "Theorizing and study is fun and all but very few of the things we come up with can be useful in battle"

"There's a reason why a lot of the magicians down south are noncombatants, but we're making good progress at least"

Soul let out a sigh and rested his head against his hand. "We only have a bit over a week before the trip, we need to get this done," he grumbled to himself as he began scratching his head. It was clear he wasn't satisfied by the progress they had made so far.

"You should take it easy. We only just started after all." They had been working on it for a few hours already and Acerol felt it would've been time to take a rest. When Soul still refused to budge though she realized that she would have to go about this another way.

Acerol stood up and headed to the kitchen. She grabbed a paper bag filled with tea leaves from a cupboard, haphazardly poured a small pile of leaves into a cup, and then quickly filled it to the brim with boiling water. She gave it a few seconds to steep before walking back to the living room and placing the bait in front of the Levin.

Just as she had planned, Soul put down the notebook he had been reading and immediately reached out to grab the cup. However, he grimaced as soon as he took a sip. "What did you put in here?" he complained as he looked inside the cup.

"It's tea that I got recently." A traveling merchant in Foral had sold it to her for rather cheap, but it was unlabeled, so she had no idea what type it was. It certainly wasn't made in the area judging by its exotic appearance.

He stood up and headed to the kitchen. "Could I take a look at this tea?" he asked.

From a drawer Acerol took out a brown bag and handed it to him. He opened it revealing the very dark and curled up shriveled leaves inside. "This is Orsheng," he commented

"Orsheng?" Acerol asked

"A type of eastern tea," Soul explained. "Did you just dump in boiling water on top of these?" he'd ask holding out the cup.

"Aren't you supposed to brew tea in boiling water?"

"Black tea yes, but the steeping methods of Orsheng are different if you do it like this you'll just ruin the entire brew and you didn't even-… I'll just show you," he walked toward the kitchen and began gesturing toward the kettle she had left on the counter.

Acerol was a bit hesitant at first. It was a pretty big kettle and he was pretty short so she wasn't sure he could handle it. Eventually she relented and held it out for him. He grabbed it with one hand and started walking to the kitchen faucet.

"Now first we have to-" Soul stopped as he reached the counter which was somewhat taller than he was. "Um… could I get a stool"

Acerol looked for something he could stand on. She didn't have any other chairs as she usually read and ate on her couch. After thinking it over, she walked into her bedroom and came out with a pile of old book. She stacked them on top of each other and then bound them together with a bit of magic. With the makeshift stool completed, she set it down in front of Soul.

"Now first," Soul began as he emptied his cup in the sink and set the kettle down, "I need two large empty containers."

Acerol pulled out two large bowls down in front of him. Soul poured boiling water into one of the bowls until it was only two-thirds full. He then put his hand against the bowl and began to mutter a spell.

"What are you doing?" Acerol asked as the water began to steam.

"Purifying it. You know how the water here has this strong aftertaste?"

Acerol nodded. The water in Foral was clean, straight from the mountains that flowed down in the river next to the town, but it did have this strong aftertaste that made it unpleasant for her to drink by itself.

That's because of all the minerals in the water. They're great for making coffee but for tea you have to get rid of them or adjust the way the way you brew the leaves, especially with the lighter kinds," Soul explained as he dumped the water into the other bowl. In the bottom of the now empty bowl were small beady little clumps, likely the minerals that he had been talking about.

That was probably the reason why the coffee she brewed here tasted a bit better then whatever she brewed back home. She had always just attributed it to her being homesick.

Soul wiped the bowl clean, making sure to get rid off all the clumps, before the dumping the water back and forth between the two bowls.

"What are you doing now?" Acerol had to ask as he repeated the process for the third time.

"Another important thing about tea is the variety you're using and the temperature you're brewing it in. For tea like this the water needs to be cooler, if it's too hot you'll up end making the tea sour and bitter," Soul explained. "You could also use ice magic to cool the water, but I prefer to do it naturally"

"So, what temperature does the water need to be?"

"About ninety degrees Celcius." The Levin continued the process until he was satisfied. He then reached into his coat and brought out a strange glass bottle. It had a large cap on each of its end and a strange mesh close to the bottom.

Acerol was about to ask him what it was, when he screwed off the bottom end of the bottle and poured in two spoons of the leaves. Trapped by the mesh, the leaves gathered at the bottom before Soul screwed it shut and flipped the bottle over. He then screwed off the top and poured in the water from the bowl.

She wasn't surprised that Soul would carry around a bottle with the express purpose of making tea.

Letting the bottle sit to the side, Soul poured out more water into a bowl and let it sit outside to cool for the next batch.

"Would've preferred a proper tea set with cups with such good leaves, but this'll have to do."

He then stood there and watched the cup for several minutes, long enough for Acerol to get impatient. "Can we drink now?" she asked

In response, Soul held the bottle over the sink, flipped it over, and dumped the contents out. "You always dump the first brew," he explained as he filled the bottle once again. He then handed the bottle to her. "Bring this to the table please," he asked he filled yet more water into the bowl, completely emptying the kettle.

Acerol brought the bottle to the table, sat down, and waited until came over with two empty cups. He filled both cups with the tea and handed one to Acerol.

"Seems a bit too complicated for tea," she commented as she sniffed her drink. However, a single sip from it immediately erased her doubts. She looked at the tea, pleasantly surprised. "This is… good"

"Of course," Soul responded smugly. "It'll taste even better by the third or fourth brew." He began to pace around the living room, cup of tea in one hand and one a notebook in the other. It was habit of his whenever he was thinking. "What about instead of making it a remote cast spell, we could make it react to a certain physical input?"

Acerol felt that that was one way of achieving the purpose of casting the spell from a distance where the caster could stay hidden away from retaliation. However, the suggestion brought on a whole new set of issues.

She took a piece of paper on table that Soul had been working on to review his previous work. His handwriting was terrible and the only reason she could read it was that she was used to reading documents like this back when she worked at her parent's shop. It seemed to a common trait for most magicians, and doctors for that matter, to have terrible handwriting.

"Having it activate on an environmental input would make it akin to a trap. You could be at a distance when its activated without sacrificing power, but the problem with that is that you won't be able to control the strength of the spell once it's set off," Acerol explained.

This normally wouldn't be an issue for a rune with the sole design of killing or maiming, but for a constriction spell meant for non-lethal capture being able to control the strength of it was important.

"Too little and it won't work, too much and you end up squeezing the target to death. You also have to remember that everyone has a different body type, the amount of energy you would need would change for each person."

"Which was why instead of an automated spell we could make it a tethered spell between the rune and the caster. Like those rope traps used to catch animals in the forest"

There were plenty of magicians that had worked on tethered spells in the past whose research they could borrow. Qadius's work on conductive magical circuits immediately came to mind. However, there was another issue that needed to be addressed.

"What can we even use for the tether?" Using magic to strengthen a thread so that it wouldn't break was simple enough, but she didn't have any materials on her that had the magical conductivity and purity to allow for the fine control necessary for the spell. It was the sort of stuff the that would be expensive even in areas where magic was common, much less in Foral.

"The silk of Eurek black spiders," Soul responded.

"Where would we even-"

"Eirwen has a farm in her house."

"Could you get us a large spool then?" Acerol asked. It was a bit much for their current work, but Eurek spider thread was incredibly high-quality material to work with and she could use the extra for any future projects.

"I'll bring it the day after tomorrow." He relaxed a little. "I'm hoping we can get this all done before we leave."

"How is Felix going to get us all horses?" Acerol asked. She didn't know much about him, but it would certainly be surprising if he actually had the money to make such an extravagant purchase

"His family supplies all the horses. They breed and raise them in their stables and are actually pretty well respected by the town" Soul explained. "Apparently he had a falling out with them."

"How do you know all this?"

"He's surprisingly open about it when you ask him. Same thing with Raiko… just don't ever ask about what her shrine worships, if you do you'll be listening to her for half a day"

Acerol took note of that information. "You visited her?"

"You mean before you broke it." Acerol could tell she had hit the mark by the way that Soul had suddenly dropped his pen. "Apparently, a certain burglar complained about being chased through the northern district by a short monster. They went through the grounds of a strange building before being tackled through said building," She had done her investigation to confirm some of her suspicions on the matter. The way he looked at the floor was only more proof that she had found the culprit.

"The damn bomb he used made it hard for me to use magic, so I tackled him. A bit harder than I wanted too actually he was really skinny," Soul his ears dropped as he admitted his guilt. "How pissed was she?"

"Says she'd bind the culprit's soul to the earth for all eternity," Acerol paraphrased what the priest had told her.

"Oh, that's not good. That's close to the cruelest punishment in her religion at least if I remember her lecture correctly"

"Maybe you should tell her what you did? She might be less willing to torture you for all eternity?"

"I'll tell her once I've paid her back for that wall, besides I also owe Felix a favor."

"How so?" From experience, Soul usually wasn't one to ask for help.

"Just an unfortunate history with him and Felicia"

"You must have a lot of history in Foral"

"Eh, just a bit. Not really much to talk about though"

Soul was always tight-lipped whenever Acerol asked a question about him and that only made her more curious. He was such a peculiar figure. A Levin, a normally desert or island dwelling race, this far north was an incredibly rare sight. And unlike most Levins he had fairly light skin and his eyes had an edged shape in contrast to the normally round shape characteristic of his race.

Statistically speaking, Levins as a race didn't deviate quite far from the mean, compared to humans at the least. They had less variance among each other in their appearance, their culture, and the environments they were raised in. Of course, with any race there were outliers, dumb or smart, short or tall, but Levin's were much more likely to be quite similar to one another. Soul's existence as an outlier, even when it could be attributed to environment and individualism, was thus even more pronounced when considering his species as a whole. It just made him such a rare subject to work with.

It didn't help that he also acted more like an anti-social human than he did a Levin.

Magicians were theorists and researchers, she couldn't call herself if one if she didn't seek out the answers to whatever interested her. Acerol had been busy with other things, but perhaps it was time for an investigation.