The snow was slowly falling from the murky clouds, and the smell of blood and fire lingers in the air. On a quiet battlefield, the contrast between white and red was striking. Hundreds of dead bodies were scattered around in piles, and scavengers were looting the untouched corpses for something of value.

An old man was digging in a pile of corpses with a big smile on his face as if he was in a beautiful garden of flowers and not on a cold battlefield where the smell of rot and death was everywhere.

The work of the scavengers wasn’t that profitable but once in a while one of them would find some enchanted ring that they would sell in the black market for a silver coin, it would let them live for a few months without work or even settle down in a village or a town. But for this old man, it didn’t matter he only did this for survival without any hopes of getting any riches.

Of course, the job had its own drawbacks like the diseases that slowly spread among the corpses that were laying on the battlefield for days, and in the end, those diseases would spread to those who touch them.

The old man removed a broken chest plate from a dead knight but it immediately disintegrated into many pieces, suddenly he noticed a weird sound that was coming from one of the piles nearby.

“*Cough* *Cough* It can't be.” He coughed twice and said with a hoarse voice while still continuing to smile.

He moved to that pile of corpses and started to move them out of the way while looking for something. After a few minutes of work he stopped and said with disbelief, “How did you get here little guy?”

At first, the old man thought that he heard the sound of a moan from a survivor, but the reality was different because in front of him laid a small living baby that was covered in a bloody cloth.

The old man was really shocked not only because he found a baby on the battlefield, but also because the baby somehow survived in this cold for days and looked back at him with clear calm eyes. He picked up the baby into his embrace and said, “Come come, let this old fool find you a home.”

After picking up a bag of junk that he "borrowed" from the corpses, he started to slowly walk out of the battlefield and disappeared behind the hillsides.

Days passed by, then months, and then years. A kid was sitting inside an old shack that creaked even from the slightest of winds, his skin was pale as snow and his hair was even whiter, his eyes were light blue reminding the color of an endless clear sky, if one looked at him they would surely think that they are looking at a snow elf.

Currently, he was reading a dirty book in front of the fireplace. By the book's crude look you could tell that it went through a lot, it even had a few blood stains on it for some reason.

There were many books like that around the kid in piles, every book was in the same state, or even worse, some books couldn't even be called books just a few torn pages that were held together by a few crude strings.

The kid was immersed in reading and didn't even notice how the front door of the shack opened, a dirty old man entered through it.

The kid raised his head and said with a deadpan face, “Welcome back grandpa.”

“*Cough**cough* I am back.” Said the old man, you could see the tiredness in his eyes but even so, there was still a big smile on his face.

He came closer to the kid and gave him a thin book that looked a lot like the others.

“Here you go Elliot, I found you another one.” The smile on the old man's face didn't disappear even for a second as he handed him the book.

“Thanks.” Elliot stood up and took the book from the old man's hands, touching them lightly in the process, to his surprise they were completely cold.

“It's cold outside grandpa, come I made a hot soup while you were away it will heat you up.” He said as he ran to the shack's kitchen that was separated from the last room only by a thin cloth, then he poured a bowl of soup for the old man and himself.

His bowl was a lot smaller than the other but it didn't faze Elliot at all, he took them both back to the room where he was before.

The old man was already sitting on his mattress facing a small table. On it, there was a candle that gently lit the room.

Elliot placed the big bowl of soup on the old man's side, then he sat in front of him on his own mattress and was ready to eat but before he started to eat he looked at the old man and said, “Have a nice meal.”

The old man didn’t answer and only continued to smile as he started to dig into the soup, Elliot started to eat as well. The soup was colorless and you could easily see right through it, its taste was bland and almost not noticeable, it only showed how few ingredients it had in it and that it was mostly made of water.

After finishing the bowl the old man said, “I am so happy that you started to cook Elliot, it's a lot tastier than what I could ever make.” The smile of the old man's face still didn’t disappear as if it was a smile of a doll, giving the feeling that it will stay there forever.

Some people would find it weird but Elliot got used to it. He never saw any other expression on the old man’s face, he didn’t know why but he did know that because of that smile he got the nickname of a "smiling old fool" that he read from one of the letters that his grandpa got.

Even worse though Elliot didn’t even know the real name of his grandfather, he didn’t care for him his grandfather was just his grandpa and it didn’t matter to him if he didn’t know his true name.

After a moment of thought, Elliot answered without raising his head from the bowl. “I just added more spices into the food, that's it.”

“Still better than what I can make.” The old man said while looking at the bowl, he wanted another serving but he knew that he had to save some food for later.

A strong wind blew against the shack’s walls, making the walls creak and even move a little bit.

”*Cough* *cough* The wind and the snow are getting stronger, I think a storm will soon befall this mountain. We should start to collect more food and wood from tomorrow morning, Elliot please try to go to sleep early today.” The old man said as he made himself comfortable on the mattress.

“En, I just read a few more pages and go right to bed.” Elliot said back with his expressionless face, as he took both of the bowls to the kitchen and returned to the piles of books in front of the fire.

Actually, those piles of books weren’t normal books, most of them were journals, journals of fallen warriors who died on a battlefield. Most of those warriors were just commoners that had a little bit of luck and found a few pages to write on.

Journals of noble knights were among the first items to be looted by both sides of armies. If it was to return their belongings to their family or, just not to waste away a high-valued item to the scavengers. Because of that Elliot couldn’t even dream of getting one of those but still, he didn’t care there was enough useful information in these journals for a small kid like him.

Even if Elliot called it useful information, in reality, those journals mostly had just some local gossip or poems, maybe a small story of the outside world.

But once in a while, Elliot would find some information about herbs or recipes for food. Even though Elliot placed all of this knowledge to heart he still just loved the mundane stories of these warriors the most.

They weren’t special, just how their day passed, how they felt before their first battle, and how they felt after. How they missed their family back home or their loved ones.

Eliot loved to read these stories as he knew that most likely that the people with lives he read about aren’t in this world no more. It gave him a feeling of completing the circle that their lives weren’t wasted and now part of them lives in him.

One of his favorite journals talks about a warrior who had the chance of being one of many guards of a mage. The lone mage was able to destroy a small-sized army with just a few spells as if nothing, while he who studied the sword from a small age couldn’t even dream of achieving something like that in his lifetime.

From that book, Elliot found out that mages as knights and nobles could live longer than ordinary people, and sometimes their social status was even higher than those of nobles. But Elliot didn’t care about their life expectancy or their social status, the only thing he cared about was magic itself.

From what he read, mages could use many forms of magic, they could summon flames out of thin air, materialize water or even command the earth itself. Because of that every time he could find even a strand of information about a mage or magic his eyes would shine like stars in the darkest nights, even though his expression still stayed the same.

Especially today, today the journal that his grandpa gave him had a mark of a mage something Elliot read in another journal, he was really excited to read it but it still didn’t register on his face.

The reason for that was almost the same as the old man he called grandpa, while the old man could only show a smile as his expression Elliot couldn’t show any expressions at all, sometimes it felt to him that it was destiny that the old man found him.

Elliot shook his head lightly and came out of his thoughts and looked again at the mark on the book. In one of the journals, he read it said that each mage made their own unique marks that they filled with unique mana, but to his surprise, the mark didn’t light up in the dark as it was told it meant that it wasn’t filled with mana or that it was fake.

Elliot slowly opened the journal with anticipation and it really did contain some information about magic, and indeed it had. It was a journal of a merchant's son who tried to become an apprentice of a mage but failed to become even that, his father paid the mage all of their riches but he still failed.

He stole the book as he left the mage's tower when he found out that the mage was just exploiting him as a free servant for the spawn of a few years.

While most of the people would never do such a thing as a mages wrath is no different than a curse, he knew that the mage wouldn’t even care for an empty useless book, because he was old and already at the end of his days even in the life span of a mage.

He wanted to sell the book for its value but when he returned home he was immediately drafted into the war. During the war, he used the book as a journal to calm himself because death took almost everyone around him and he knew that it was only time before he would die as well.

What came after that is what it takes for a person to become a mage, first strong mental power second magical sense, and third functional natural mana foundation. Of course, there were a few other things but these three were the main ones.

If any one of them were lacking at best you will get a mage that can cast only the most basic spells. At worst you will be a failed mage apprentice like he was, because of these three main reasons there were so few mages in the world.

The man wrote that he had a broken natural mana foundation, something that immediately disqualified him from being a mage. But the mage he taught as his teacher never told him that, and for years he was sure that one day he would have a breakthrough and become a real mage.

One day though the mage forgot a book about "magic foundation" in the main hall, the curiosity of the young man got stronger than him, so he opened it, and that is how he found out about his condition.

Elliot continued to read about the young man when suddenly the journal abruptly ended, sadly it was missing a big chunk of its content. Elliot could only sigh with regret but could do nothing, so without further ado, he went to bed with one question in his head.

“Do I have what it takes to become a mage?”