The Light Festival [1]

*Click*

The sound of the front door unlocking reverberated throughout the house.

The sound of crying could also be heard, while a sizzling sound could be heard in the background.

"Mom... I'm home." Silas announced while walking through the door. He had a few bags on him filled with the goods he had scammed from the merchants. They would most likely try to scam him back the next day to get their money back, but that's what Silas wanted.

He'd hook them in by scamming them, allow them to scam him back but not by too much, and then scam them again for the remaining days until they refused to do business with him.

Walking through the door, he saw his mom cooking with his brother placed on the table. His brother had a full head of blonde hair and bright orange eyes.

"Good. Take your brother and make sure he sleeps." She shouted back from the kitchen.

"Do I have to?" Silas grimaced. Maybe he should have stayed outside for a little longer? But if he had done that, he might not have been able to eat the food while it was still hot...

Sighing, Silas took his baby brother into his arms and rocked him back and forward while singing a low lullaby that quickly put the baby to sleep.

The lullaby was one that the adoption home used to sing to them when they were kids. He always hummed it when he was working, but apparently, it was really good at helping kids sleep.

Silas would never admit it, but he was really good with kids despite hating them with a passion.

"I don't get it... How are you so much better than us at putting him to sleep." Rhea sighed.

"I cast a spell on him." Silas joked, but his tone was a little monotone, so his mother instantly widened her eyes and looked at him with a piercing glare.

"I'm kidding." Silas sighed.

"Just take Lex back to my room." Rhea rubbed her brows and continued cooking. When he returned, Rhea asked-

"You remembered that you're not supposed to use ice magic, right?"

"For the 234th time, I know I'm only supposed to use it while hunting."

"Because-" She tried to cut in, but Silas still finished her sentence for her.

"Because I'm not allowed to show people that I can use ice magic." Silas tried his best to not roll his eyes.

After that, he simply sat down at the dining table and read his book on advanced water magic. He had already read through it and understood most of it, but one chapter of the book that interested him were the cultivation techniques that water magicians used.

Silas tried to replicate what they did, but every time he tried, no matter what he did, he couldn't really get the hang of it.

He assumed the reason for that was due to the fact that his body's mana channels weren't formed around a natural awakening. It was a forced awakening where his mana channels were quite literally created around his cultivation technique, not the other way around.

Throughout the past year, he also learned about the different spell-casting methods. He didn't really know how they worked since he didn't have a book dedicated to them, but he knew they existed, and for now, that would do.

The catch, though, was that every spell-casting method was dedicated to one of the major races.

For example, even though magic circles have existed for thousands of years, humans were the only ones who used them in spell casting. The other races used spell-casting methods built around the ancient magic circles, mainly around runic spell-casting.

They all had different methods of creating runes in order to make spells. Demons and beastfolk used hand signs, and elves used hymns and songs.

Silas didn't really know how dwarves created spells since none of the books seemed to mention them that much. When they were mentioned, though, they were usually spoken of the same way people spoke of demons or monsters.

Nevertheless, what Silas had learned over the past year was crucial to Silas' research for one reason.

It told Silas that it was possible to create spells without the use of magic circles, and that people had done it before him. Of course, beasts and monsters didn't really use runes before.

It seemed like their magical awakenings were based on instinct and evolution rather than intellectual evolutions throughout the years. If he could somehow replicate their way of mana manipulation, maybe it would be possible to create spells out of thin air or by simply moving one's body.

The rest of the day passed quite quickly. Silas simply sat down for the rest of the day and absorbed mana from some of the stronger mana cores he had gained to strengthen his core. However, there despite trying to breakthrough for a little less than a year, Silas was struggling to reach the topaz core. He felt like he was just one step away from reaching it, but no matter how hard he tried to break through, it always felt like there was some kind of barrier stopping him.

He hit a bottleneck, and according to his Keira, Rhea, and Diveen, it was normal for people to hit bottlenecks when reaching the garnet core. Apparently, there were a few bottlenecks throughout someone's cultivation journey. The only problem was that Syra was quickly catching up to him. She already had a solid garnet core and was close to reaching a pristine one.

She had been oddly quiet throughout the year. She didn't really speak to Silas and was slowly becoming more and more closed off than he was. Maybe it was the shock that her brother was also a mage who was much stronger than her despite not being awakened for as long, or maybe it was the fact that she felt betrayed by Silas not telling her about such a big thing in his life when she told him about everything in hers.

Despite this, the days passed like they usually did.

And after a day, a week passed, and before they knew it, the light festival was upon them.

Throughout this time period, Silas' training increased 10-fold, and his parents finally agreed to allow him to go deeper into the forest to hunt the stronger beasts and monsters.

His training with his father also became harsher. Silas was forced to go all out in a physical sense against Lochras, but for some reason, it always felt like Lochras was holding back the majority of his strength.

Diveen taught him how to use his healing factor to his advantage during a battle while also teaching him a few of the tier-3 healing spells that could not be found in her books.

Finally, Keria taught him how to use magic when fighting; by far, it was the most helpful tutoring he got. He was already familiar with healing and the ways he might use his healing factor during a fight. He was also familiar with hand-to-hand combat, something his father chose to teach him instead of swordsmanship.

Fighting with magic was much harder. Sure, his grandmother could only use the fire element, but that was enough for him to learn how to move around during a fight between mages, or how to get the advantage when he was fighting against someone who wasn't a mage.

Sure, Silas already knew most of this, but the real advice he enjoyed getting was when his grandmother showed him how to use the earth or water element in better ways. After all, she's seen how master water and earth magicians used their affinity, so she was going off that.

However, now that it was the day of the light festival, that was all over, and he would go back to his normal routine.

"Are you ready?" Keira asked while stepping outside and looking at Silas, who was stretching his limbs.

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