“So, I’m going to be turning my mana into fire? All right. I’ll give it a try,” Hester said.
After lighting the candle, she held up her left index finger right next to it, as if it were a second candle. Then she passed her right hand over the flame, feeling its warmth on her skin to help visualize the fire magic more easily.
Watching her made me want to give it a try too, but I knew there wouldn’t be any point when I couldn’t even get in touch with my mana.
According to my ability assessment, though, I did have at least a trace amount of it.
“All right, then. We’ll do some swordsmanship training until Hester’s done practicing this lesson,” I said.
“Sounds great! Thanks...master!”
“Don’t ever call me that again. Just hearing you say that makes me want to throw up.”
“What? Why? God, you’re always so hard on me...”
My father’s apprentices had called him “master,” so hearing that moniker made my hair stand on end. Unfortunately, it seemed like I couldn’t help remembering him at the most random times.
After I composed myself, I started working with Ralph on his swordsmanship.
Ralph’s movements were fluid, but he lacked the basics. I decided that we’d start by drilling them into him. Since he was a paladin, I knew he’d probably start growing exponentially stronger once he had a good foundation.
As I was giving Ralph some rigorous coaching, I heard Hester call out from behind us.
“Chris! Look! I’ve made a flame!” she exclaimed.
Sure enough, when we turned around to look, a small flame was coming from the tip of her left index finger.
How in the world did she learn that so quickly? I wondered. She only started that lesson half an hour ago.
Was she a prodigy, or was magic just really easy to learn for people with mage affinities?
I had no clue, but either way, it was undeniably a good thing that she was such a quick learner.
“You’ve learned how to conjure a flame? Okay, then next is...practicing shooting the flame from your finger,” I told her.
“Um... I know this might sound a bit cocky, but...can we just skip this part and get to the spells?”
“You want to skip the basics? Well, all right... If that’s what you want, then I guess it’s fine.”
“I think it’ll be okay. This lesson was enough for me to get the idea.”
“All right. In that case, I’ll read you the spell section. Try to commit this to memory,” I said, then proceeded to read aloud the incantation for the spell Fireball.
It all sounded like gibberish to an amateur like me, but according to the grimoire, it was the perfect sequence of words to cast the spell.
After I’d finished reading the incantation to Hester, she closed her eyes and began to chant several times in a soft whisper.
When I’d said the words, they hadn’t even had a trace of any magical feeling about them, but when Hester whispered them, I could see her mana moving around in the center of her palm as clear as day.
“Just give me a shout if something happens,” I said.
“Sure. Thank you.”
I had a feeling that Hester was pretty close to mastering the basics of magic. Suddenly, I felt like I was starting to understand Ralph’s earlier anxiety a bit better.
If she kept progressing at this rate, she’d be leaving us in the dust in no time.
I’d resolved to spare no effort in helping both her and Ralph grow stronger, but...the thought of dragging behind them one day did hurt what little pride I had.
I tried to motivate myself again, reminding myself that I needed to keep pushing if I didn’t want to get left behind. As I gave Ralph some more tips, I treated the coaching session like a training session for myself too, and focused on honing my technique.
Roughly two weeks had passed since Hester had started learning magic.
Every day, I’d go out to hunt stray cowbirds, and then I’d come back in the evening to help Hester with her magic lessons while I coached Ralph on his swordsmanship.
Hester was learning magic at an abnormally fast clip. She’d already mastered all of the four elemental ball spells, and now she was quickly making her way through a lesson about arrow spells, which were known for their speed.
Once she mastered that, I figured she would probably be ready to take on some bronze-level quests.
Ralph had been making surprisingly fast progress too. He was now winning one out of every fifty of our stationary sparring matches, which told me that he’d probably be able to manage bronze-level quests without much issue as well.
As for me, well... I hadn’t made much progress as far as training, but I did manage to identify the plant that improved strength: It was a purple fruit with white spots on it, which I’d dubbed “lyzoff fruit.”
The plants I’d gathered last time were almost all gone now, so I knew it was about time to go into the forest again and gather some more.
I was wary of running into another Ducalursus, but I couldn’t afford to let fear keep me from making another visit.
I decided to focus my efforts on getting a bunch of ghost grass, speckled shrooms, and lyzoff fruit next time. It might also be a good idea to buy a bigger bag, so I could gather even more to take back with me.
Now that I’d figured out which plants I needed to eat to improve my HP, strength, and vitality, I didn’t even need to do any more ability assessments—which meant that I would have to part with far fewer gold coins in the future.