And just like that, Kaelum became accustomed to a new routine. Wake up before sunrise, be watched by some flesh-eating monster that he was now accustomed to ignoring then make his way to his clearing in the forest where he would train with Tiela.

After training, he would head to Miller’s camp until sunset before making his way back home. All while he felt like something was nearby, waiting to eat him. After getting home the first night, he made Tiela promise not to let anything eat him before he was willing to go to sleep.

When he got home, Kaelum would enter his soul space and Tiela would use the mana he had accumulated throughout the day to clear his veins. After that, she would have him think of his spear stance and tell her what he thought was wrong about it, recalling the memories from their morning training.

After the first day of training, Tiela took advantage of their souls’ bond to push images and thoughts of the correct stance into Kaelum’s mind while he practiced. He hadn’t known before just how useful this ability would turn out to be.

With the right image in his mind, he was able to see just where he went wrong and how bad his previous attempts were. With that, he was able to improve all the more quickly.

On his second morning of training, Tiela had him stop to pick some green herbs on the outskirts of the clearing. He recognized the herbs as Green Myata, an herb that made your mouth feel cold when you chewed it. Supposedly it also helped with upset stomachs, though he had no idea why she wanted him to collect them. He didn’t like getting close to the bushes though, it felt like a monster was lurking just out of sight.

After he got home, she had him hang the Myata in his window and told him to leave it for a few nights.

“Why do you want Green Myata, anyway?” He asked her aloud during their fifth day of training. He had taken to speaking aloud when they were alone training in the clearing. Half because it was easier and half because he wanted some noise.

‘I told you before that training was expensive, I found a way we can reduce some of those costs.’ She replied in his mind. ‘We can brew a simple strengthening tonic with ingredients that you can collect over the next few days.’

“A strength tonic? Does it make me super strong?!” Kaelum shouted excitedly. If he didn’t have to do this hard training anymore he’d gladly take the chance.

‘No, and it’s a strengthening tonic. It’s used as a training aide.’ Tiela said, stressing the word strengthening ‘It will make it easier to train your muscles, helping them heal faster and increasing muscle gain.’

So it seemed he would still have to train. At least it makes it easier, Kaelum thought.

Over the next few days, she had him collect a variety of ingredients. Like sap from the white birch trees that were on the edge of the forest, some red roses and some heatworms. The nasty worms lived in the roots of ironwood trees, and they smelled horrible.

Apparently, the birch trees weren’t “In season” so Kaelum had to push mana into the tree to actually make the sap flow.

It actually took Kaelum a few days to find some heatworms, they were sneaky little worms. The morning after he had found the heatworms -a week and a half after he actually started training- Tiela told him ‘We won’t be training today, instead go to the market.’

It was a sunny day, and he didn’t feel the weird presence while he was walking around the market, so Kaelum was in quite a good mood. Not only that, but he could also feel Tiela’s pleasure through their bond at having a stroll through the various shops in the marketplace.

Tiela had him stop at a shop that sold various kitchen instruments. There, he picked out several small ceramic jars and a large iron pot. Kaelum paid without trying to haggle, the woman he bought them from even gave him a drawstring leather bag to carry them with. Saying “It’s an old bag and I’m sure you’ll be able to put it to more use than I will with it collecting dust here.”

She smiled as she gave him the bag full of items, what a kind lady Kaelum thought.

‘That was nice of her.’ Said Tiela.

Kaelum stopped by a small stand selling skewers and got a few, savouring the honeyed roasted meat. Over the past few weeks, he had only been buying some bread or the grits that the city provided for the guards to eat. The grits were really cheap for a filling meal, but he was glad to have a taste of meat again.

After both Kaelum and Tiela enjoyed the meal, the sun was still high overhead and they had plenty of time left in the day. They visited various different stalls and shops in search of the items Tiela wanted him to get and because it was such a nice day.

By the end of the shopping trip, Kaelum had gotten several small ceramic jars, a small bag of red coal, a mortar and pestle set, and a large iron pot. Having nearly spent all of his hard-earned money, Kaelum returned home with only a handful of coins left in the afternoon.

After stashing his few remaining coins, Tiela had Kaelum set up a small fire pit under the awning outside of his ex blacksmith shop home, saying ‘Alright, put some water in the pot and start a fire.’

After a few minutes, the water was brought to a boil.

While Kaelum tended to the fire, Tiela had him collect his ingredients before saying ‘Put a bit of water into the mortar with the rose and grind it into a paste.’

Kaelum did what his master said, making sludge with a light pink colour. Before he added in two heatworms at Tiela’s behest. The mixture now stunk to high hell, but he wasn’t done yet.

His master commanded ‘Add in the dried Myata before crushing the worms’ Tiela said. ‘Otherwise, the tonic will lose its potency.’

She then had him pour the birch sap into the boiling water. Telling him to stir in the sap before adding the herb and worm sludge from the mortar and pestle.

After he added all of the ingredients to the pot, Tiela said ‘Remove the pot from the fire.’ Once he had done so, she continued ‘Good, now circulate mana to your hands.’

By this point, Tiela had cleared all of the mana veins in his body aside from those located in his head. Apparently, those could be dangerous to clear, so she was taking it slow. She originally said it would take a week to clear his veins, but it had been a week and a half and she said they should be done by tomorrow at the latest.

After the mana reached his hands, she took control and forced the mana into the pot while he continuously stirred it.

‘Keep stirring, infusing mana cools the mixture. Once it reaches room temperature, we stop infusing mana and it’s done.’ She explained the process

It only took about five minutes for it to reach room temperature. All in all, the recipe only took about twenty minutes, and all of its ingredients were commonly found items, except the heatworms. Kaelum had no idea why everyone didn’t just make these tonics to get stronger.

Sensing his thoughts, Tiela responded ‘This tonic is a secret royal recipe, so most people don’t know about it. Most strengthening tonics use expensive ingredients, but this one is a rare exception.’

After the tonic was finished, Kaelum poured the tonic into the ceramic jars, putting the cap on and tying the string to keep them closed.

‘They aren’t completely sealed, so they won’t last too long, but we’ll use them long before they lose potency.’ Said Tiela.

Their batch had made five jars, or five doses of the tonic and the ingredients were easily found, so Kaelum was set for the next while. At least until he needed stronger training aides.

Kaelum's form was thin and wiry, after years of constant malnourishment. But after hours of consecutive physical labour carrying wood, his form was starting to fill out with a bit of muscle. After about two weeks of hard physical labour and eating at least two hearty meals a day, he looked just a bit less like a twig, more like a stick now. It was something at least.

Ten days after he got a master, he drank his first jar of strengthening tonic, he felt intense energy through his body, like he could lift ten boulders!

Putting all of that energy to good use, Tiela trained him much harder starting that morning. Having Kaelum do all kinds of weird training methods, like balancing on one foot on a tree branch while swinging his spear. Supposedly it helped with his balance.

Every time he would swing, she would make him fix his posture and stance to the image she sent through their soul’s link. After getting into a textbook perfect stance, she would have him swing, every day her evaluations slowly rose from ‘Wrong’ to ‘Acceptable.’ She even said ‘Good’ once!

Over the course of the first two weeks of his training, she had him find more and more iron tree branches for a variety of different makeshift weapons. All of the weapons she trained him in started with him learning a stance and a single strike, over and over again.

She had him practicing with the spear first, then the short sword, long sword, two-hander, a bow, even throwing knives.

Though with every new weapon type, he was starting to get the hang of the proper stances and with the assistance of the image being shown in his mind, he was learning quicker and quicker.

She did eventually start teaching him more moves over the course of the two weeks, teaching him how to step forward and lunge with his spear. Or how to deflect strikes with a short sword and even some counters with his short sword. The ability to show him the technique in his mind really helped to speed up his progress. But it was difficult without an actual sparring partner, right now she was helping inside of his soul space, but it wasn't the same. Regardless, Tiela was beginning to think that their goal wasn’t as far off as she had once believed.

Though she didn’t just teach him combat training, after the day that they had finished clearing his veins, she decided to teach him a magic technique.

“Congratulations,” She said after they finished the very last artery in his neck. “You’re now officially a first-tier mage.”

They had just finished their last nightly ‘vein clearing’ session after two full weeks of training and they were sitting in his soul space. Clearing the head and neck veins was especially painful and slow-going, but Kaelum’s excitement overpowered the remnants of the pain he felt.

He asked her “It doesn’t feel that different… I’ve heard a knight… or I guess a mage has the strength of at least ten normal men.”

“Try circulating your mana, but instead of keeping it flowing in a rhythm, let it seep out from your veins and into your body.” Tiela commanded in her authoritative tone that he now recognized as the tone she used when she was commanding him to do something as his master.

Confusedly, Kaelum left his soul space and did as his master told him. After letting the mana seep from his veins into his muscles, he felt even stronger than when he drank a strengthening tonic. It was totally awesome! It was the first thing Tiela had taught him that actually felt like something a knight would have.

Remembering something, he asked aloud “This is what you did on the day that I had to carry all the parade decorations, right? I didn’t realize it used so much mana.” After they finished clearing his veins, he was left with about half of his mana. Using the technique for only thirty seconds had already cut that in half again, he hurriedly stopped the technique.

‘Exactly, except I was using my mana. Now that you’re an official mage, you can use your own mana to strengthen yourself.’ Tiela explained ‘All mages can strengthen themselves with mana in this way, it’s how they’re able to perform inhuman feats of strength, though it takes a lot of mana, it strengthens you quite a bit.’

‘Though, the stronger your body is, the stronger the effect will be.’ She continued ‘Mages who don’t focus on their bodies at all will have a much weaker strengthening from mana.’

Tiela then explained the first tier of magehood ‘A person is known as a first-tier mage when they fully unblock their mana veins. But all tiers are further divided into the minor tiers low, mid, high and peak. In that order of power.’

What separates each minor tier? Asked Kaelum in his mind.

‘In the first tier, the size of your mana heart. When you first step into a tier, you’re a part of the low minor tier. When your mana heart is five times larger than it originally was, you’re mid-tier, seven times is high, and ten is peak.’ Tiela continued ‘Alternatively, you could say a mid-tier is a five-ring first-tier mage, a high tier is a seven ring and so on.’

That doesn’t make sense, how would you know how many times bigger it’s gotten? And what’s a ring? Kaelum had a lot of questions.

‘Every time you empty your mana heart, it exercises it, making it grow just a little larger each time. Every time it increases capacity by a certain amount, it gains a ring of colour around it. It’s common to use rings as a measurement of mages.’ Tiela added ‘Three rings is roughly three times the original size, five rings is five times and so on. That’s how everyone measures it.’

Looking at his own mana heart, it hasn't grown in the slightest. So Kaelum was at the very beginning of the first tier. A zero ring first-tier mage, but a mage nonetheless.