The seeds of strength

"Mom, can you teach me?"

Sylvia was still lost in her thoughts when Weasley's voice cut through her daydreams and pulled her back to reality.

Sylvia looked down at the child who was not a child in her arms who was looking at her with sparkling eyes full of hopefulness and inquisitivity.

Henner who was standing to one side nearly jumped in surprise. The eviction notice alarm blared loudly in her head. She had expected that Weasley would study under another teacher sometime in the future due to their different affinities but she hadn't expected that it would be this soon! She hadn't even applied for her next job yet!

While Henner was struggling to deal with the threat of unemployment, Sylvia's heart melted in her chest and she wanted more than anything to immediately give in to Weasley's request.

However, she pooled her willpower and held herself back.

This was where she had to show her resolve as his mother!

Sylvia set Weasley down on his feet and looked into his eyes.

Sensing the change in his mother's attitude, Weasley knew instantly that playtime was over.

If he wanted to gain his mother's tutelage he would have to take this seriously. He did his best to stand tall, not that he was vey successful and looked straight back into his mother's hazel eyes and waited.

Seeing her son's determined gaze, Sylvia felt more assured. She asked.

" The strength I have today is the culmination of work that cannot be achieved in one night." Her eyes narrowed in to silts as she continued." It took a lot of training and hard work. Much more than you can imagine."

" I know mother."

" But do you really?"

" I do." Weasley asserted, trying his best to appear resolute.

He wanted to be able to perform magic like his mother had just shown him and he wasn't going to stand idle as the chance slipped by.

' This was a limited time event! No way I can miss it!'

Sylvia wasn't truly convinced yet.

While she could see that Weasley meant his words, his expression reminded her of her young and naive self. She didn't want him to make the same fundamental mistakes that would bottleneck his strength like she did.

However, she didn't know how she could test his determination in a quick and convenient way. Sure she could beat him black and blue to see if he was truly determined. Sure she could give him a near impossible task to accomplish alone like tossing him into a jungle to survive for a week.

But if she did any of that, Sylvia would never be able forgive herself. She was also worried that he would end up hating her for it.

Sylvia could only sign in exasperation at the dilemma of her current situation.

Eventually she resigned herself to a long term solution. She had wanted to be quick about this mere formality so she could skip right to enjoying the good parts but unfortunately, that seemed rather impossible.

" You will continue training in the basics with Miss Henner for another five months. If you can reach Adept stage by then, Mommy will personally teach you in wind magic. But, you will still have to continue attending Miss Henner's lessons as she has many things to teach you that I cannot. If you can do this, then mommy will agree to your request." Sylvia declared in the sternest voice she could muster.

The logic was simple. If Weasley could achieve results within this span of time, it would show that he was indeed capable and adamant about improving his skills. It would also give Sylvia enough time to finish sorting out her administrative duties and dumping the rest back on her husband so she could enjoy her time together with her son!

Weasley beamed in happiness.

He smiled," Thank you mother! I won't let you down!"

Sylvia smiled and inwardly screamed in joy.

'FINALLY!! ' she wanted to scream aloud.' Finally I would get to spend some quality time with I son!! FUCK YEAH!!'

Naturally, she couldn't do that so she simply said " I know you won't."

She also wasn't the only person who was glad with the new arrangement. Henner was secretly really relieved to find that she wasn't going to get fired after her lady decided to take part in the young master's education.

It had been the first time in awhile for her to come into such a close shave with becoming jobless and shudder ran down her spine as she recalled her time as a mage in the early days of her career. She unconsciously resolved to up her efforts in Weasley's training and prove her worth as unemployment wasn't something that she was keen on revisiting.

Eventually, Sylvia had to leave to continue tending to her official duties and only Henner and Weasley remained on the field.

As he watched his mother's lithe figure soar into the skies and out of sight, Weasley turned back to his teacher.

An awkward silence descended on them both for a few moments before Henner broke the silence.

" Looks like you've got quite a lot of work laid out for you. Reaching Adept stage and all."

Weasley nodded in agreement, seemingly in contemplation of how he should go about completing this task when he realised that he had missed something important.

" Master, what is Adept stage?"

Henner looked at Weasley like he had just asked the stupidest question.

" Didn't I just teach you that the other day?"

Weasley felt his face getting warm as he apologised and admitted that he had been half asleep when she had went through it.

" Hiaz…" Henner signed.

" I will explain it again then but listen carefully because this will be the last time I will be doing so." She admonished.

" The adept stage is one of the stages within the magic tiering system. The second stage to be exact. The tiering system is dissimilar to the Magic aptitude tiering system in that it is only used in the Pixis Kingdom due to our specialty in cultivating mages. Other kingdoms have their own specialised combat forces and such use different tiering systems. However, they all have eight stages. "

Henner paused and looked at Weasley who was listening attentively while nodding occasionally. Satisfied, she went on.

" The system you mainly have to concern yourself with is our mage tiering system. The ranks are Novice, Adept, Mage, True mage, Grand mage, Archmage, Arcana and Overlord. These go in order of strength with novices at the bottom of the ladder and Overlords at the top."

" The stage that you have been tasked with reaching is the adept stage, which is the second stage in the ranks."

To be perfectly frank, the task that your mother has given you is borderline unreasonable. It's not impossible but it will still very hard even for someone with Grade A talent like you." Henner went on as looked at Weasley with a tinge of pity.

" Reaching the Adept grade from being a novice is widely known as one of the toughest things we mages go through on our journey to improve our skills as it signifies the first steps we normal humans take to become closer to the divine." "Typically, it would take at least a year and a half for people to succeed in advancing yet you only have five months. This only worsens because you are so young that your magic circuits have not yet fully developed."

Weasley received all this information with an unchanging face yet deep down his worries only grew as his teacher continued elaborating.

He had expected an easy task but why was he already hearing boss music? Had his mother never heard of being beginner friendly?

He didn't know quantifiably how long doing this would take him but he sure hoped that even if he failed the task, his mother would still teach him if he begged hard enough. He was already considering such an option.

" Haiz… it's going to be tough so I will need you best if your truly intend to do this."

Steeling his nerves, Weasley said cheerfully," It's fine master. I'll make sure to give it my all so don't you worry!"

Keeping up the carefree, child-like act was proving even more stressful with the new information dump that he had just received.

" This had better be worth it" Weasley grumbled.

Over the next few weeks, Weasley diligently trained in a variety of techniques to advance his skills under Henner's tutelage. Due to the prestige and Wealth that the Ashborne clan enjoyed, resources weren't a problem.

The mechanics of advancing levels involved completing tasks that one had to do. Once one completed the task, one could advance. While the number and difficulty of each task would increase in the later stages, even differing from person to person depending on their natural inclination and temperament, the steps needed to advance the first level was the same for the majority of people.

That was to successfully cast a spell.

This was a three staged process and each step had to be learned individually before combining them together. The first step was to accumulate mana. Novices had to learn how to gather mana from their body and concentrate it into their magic circuits. This taught them how to tap into the mana that was lying dormant in their body.

Next came mana binding. Now that one could use the mana in one's body, one had to learn to channel it from one's circuits into a spell. This was the most difficult skill at the novice level as one had to learn how to use mana to create magic circles by channeling it out of one's body. The circle was the point from which one's mana would interact with the physical world and had to remain stable at all costs if the spell were to be maintained.

This was not a skill that one could learn from knowing the theoretical aspect alone. It was a feeling that had to be developed over time and as such, made it the most time consuming portion of the training in Novice stage.

The last stage was mana conversion. In this stage, one had to tap into one's affinity to convert the mana one released through the magic circle one had formed into one's element, allowing one to release gusts wind or blazes of flame.

As the weeks turned into months, Weasley did his best to learn each skill in the quickest time as possible. He followed a strict daily schedule and would do so regardless of rain or shine. He would also read many books to get a stranger grasp on how the mechanics of magic casting worked and if there was anything useful to help him out.

Occasionally, his maids would report hearing the young master mutter strange phrases like "Gotta continue the grind" to Sylvia who would fly into a worry fit and rush to Weasley's side, much to his befuddlement.

Weasley thus far had been making solid progress. Due to his prior knowledge of how to circulate mana which he used to determine his affinity, the first step was already complete. The second step had been where Weasley had encountered problems.

The creation of the magic circle was extremely complex and he had to exercise a lot of his imagination to visualise it forming before his hand. And that was not all. While he handled the magic circle, he also had to focus on drawing mana out of his body and focusing it into a point on the magic circle.

Essentially, the skills he had to learn was parallel processing. As a human on earth, such a feat was biologically impossible but this was where the distinction between the worlds of Earth and Beriad set in. The presence of mana which one circulated through one's brain as well as the rest of one's body enabled one to speed up one's processing power by a hundred times, allowing one a faux pas version of true parallel processing. However, this was more than enough to perform the task. Weasley spent nearly three months learning and coordinating the two skills before finally embarking on the third.

Elemental conversion.

When Weasley heard the name, he didn't even know where to start.

' Is there an easy way to handle this?' He thought.

Naturally, there wasn't.

As with anything to do with magic, one had to use one's brain and imagine the desired outcome. Weasley was given a magic tool that emitted pure mana inside a tube and practiced by converting this isolated mana into wind mana.

Weasley quickly got the hang it but when he tried to combine the three steps, he kept failing again and again and again, unable to take the final step to break through. It had been a month before the deadline when he reached the requisite mastery for all three individual skills and had started practicing them together but no matter how he tried, trying to get the the step of mana conversion to flow into the other two steps continuously eluded him.

Regardless, he practiced on, hoping that it would come to him eventually.

~ One week before the deadline.

"Blast!"

Weasley's voice rang through the air as he recited the chant for the basic wind spell. He had already lost count of how many times he had said it.

Weasley waited with bated breath for something to happen but deep in his gut, he knew that once again, he had failed.

Henner who stood beside Weasley took out a napkin and handed it to him.

Weasley looked at the piece of fabric in a daze before realising that he had been going at it for all most three hours in the blazing sun.

Gratefully accepting his teacher's kindness, Weasley took the napkin and wiped the sweat that was pouring down his forehead like a waterfall.

" Miss Henner, where did I go wrong this time?"

" Your elemental conversion was too slow. By the time it was done, the mana you released had already dispersed into the surroundings." Came her reply.

Hearing this, Weasley could only sign dejectedly. He had encountered this very problem the past few times he had tried as well.

" Maybe you should try a different method of approaching mana conversion. You've been trying the same thing for a long time and it's not working. "

Henner had made the same suggestion multiple times before but Weasley had turned it down.

Her suggestion made a lot of sense since his current method of mana conversion felt forced and strong armed. It didn't have the flow of the previous steps in the spell casting sequence. However, it was the first method that he had learnt and practiced all this time. With the deadline a mere week away, he was reluctant to change his style.

Henner could only sign as her student shook his head and reassumed his casting position.

" Blast!"

Weasley chanted again vehemently.

Failure.

"Blast!"

Failure

"Blast!!"

Time passed by leisurely and the sun continued its daily routine. All seemed well in the world except for the young man who was yelling and panting in the sun.

Half an hour later and Weasley still had no results and his frustration grew and grew

'He wanted to scream and curse at himself.

" Blast!"

Failure.

'Fuck!'

"Blast"

'FUCK!!'

"Bla-"

A thin yet strong hand grabbed his arm. Weasley stopped mid-chant and felt the mana sizzling out from his fingertips. Weasley looked over and saw his teacher looking at him with a stern expression on her face,

" Why did you stop me master?" He asked, his voice full of indignation.

" Let's take a break."

Weasley grew confused and even more agitated.

" What?"

" Take a break. You're overdoing it."

Weasley looked back into his teacher's eyes in annoyance but his resistance melted away in the face of her firmness that left no room for negotiation.

The strength left his arms as Weasley walked over to under a tree and plopped down on the ground and sat cross legged. His shoulders sagged significantly as he did so showing how tense he had been the entire time.

Henner went over and sat down next to Weasley. She looked over at her student and allowed him several moments to catch his breath.

" Why are you trying so hard?" She asked suddenly.

Weasley was dumbfounded as he looked at his teacher in surprise. He hadn't expected such a profound question.

Weasley didn't know what to say so he half heartedly gave a response.

" Because I want mother to teach me wind magic."

Sylvia nearly rolled her eyes and shot Weasley the 'Do you think I'm stupid?'look. Any idiot could tell that that was not the reason!

There were hundreds of mages out there who would jump at the chance to work under the Ashborne family! Even more so if the job was to directly teach the young master of the prestigious clan to use magic!

And even then, it wasn't like Sylvia would let them!

Weasley remained silent. Somewhere down the line,he had made this challenge his goal. But even then, it felt like it was just a means to an end but not the end itself.

' Why am I trying so hard? It doesn't even feel like I am forcing myself so it can't be that bad right? Hmmm.'Weasley's thoughts raced about in his head as he contemplated his teacher's question.

In the end, he couldn't find an answer so the two sat together for awhile in silence, simply enjoying the shade.

After awhile, Sylvia said " Okay, let's continue."

She stood back up and Weasley quickly complied as he followed her to his casting position in the centre of the field.

" Remember, channel the mana while forming the magic circle. The minute they are complete, simultaneously release and convert the mana to the form you want." Sylvia reminded.

Weasley nodded in acknowledgment and focused his attention.

He could feel the power coursing through his body and congregating at his fingertips. A magic circle gradually appeared out of thin air, as if someone Wes drawing it out by hand.

As the final lines of the circle connected, Weasley recited the chant while simultaneously willing with all his might for the mana to burst out of his fingertips and into the surroundings.

" Blast!"