The next morning my mother lectured me during breakfast. “Don’t ever try anything crazy like that again! Unless you plan it out first and can practice magic like that safely! Son, you could easily end up dead doing crazy things like that!” She pointed her fork at me while giving me a hard glare. “I’ll be more careful, mom.” “You can’t practice magic like that unless your father or I am with you!” “Yes, mom!” Looking at those eyes, I knew now was not the time to talk back to her. “Young Master Darius just remember magic can hurt not only yourself but other people as well.” Caspian jumped into our conversation and gave some unneeded advice as well. I knew how dangerous magic could be just as I knew how dangerous a sword was. “I know, I’ll be good just like my father.” I gave him a big smile and he smiled back. Casper's still annoying as usual.

After mother finished her scalding lecture, we went to the waterfall and she taught me a new spell, Wind Knife. It was a 1st circle spell that attached sharp rotating wind to a part of the body. She cut a piece of wood in half with her hand in a chopping motion to demonstrate. “This magic is like Rock Hand. You attach the magic itself to a part of your body." The wind started rapidly flowing around my mother's hand, making a sharp whistling sound. "This magic isn’t all that useful. It’s not as effective as using a real sword or knife and is magic that has to be used at a very close range. Mages don't get close enough to enemies to enter close combat, so most mages don't bother learning the spell. Unless you’ve mastered it to a certain level you probably won’t be cutting much with it either." "If it's not useful why would I bother learning it?" "Cost son. Cost and experience. Knights learn the spell for hand-to-hand combat because of its cheap mana cost. I'm teaching you Wind Blade so you can learn the 2nd Circle Wind Blade more easily. It’s similar, but it’s a spell that shoots sharp cutting wind blades up to 10 meters from your current position.” My mother chopped her hand down and a branch from a nearby tree fell to the ground. “This spell has a decent mid-range and is one of the most commonly used attack spells for wind mages." I was curious about something so I asked, "Can Wind Blade cut through another mage's defense?" "No, not usually, but it forces another mage to respond to your attack, and mages are rare, in war, not every threat is another mage, low-cost spells are the most commonly used spells by any mage including me. I've probably used Wind Blade tens of thousands of times by now."

I began practicing the 1st circle Wind Blade, “Oh spirit of the wind hear my call! Your sharp and scoring fury let it manifest and cut down my enemies, Wind Blade!” Of course, I didn’t succeed on the first try, it took twelve attempts before I succeeded in making something happen. Fire and earth were easier for me to learn, but wind magic wasn’t that much harder. The blade I made wasn’t sharp enough to cut butter let alone a person but that’s why I kept practicing. By the end of the day, I could cast the spell easily without uttering a word. I wasn't satisfied with my results so I kept practicing focusing on the speed of casting and the sharpness of the blade itself. "Darius, you can try focusing the sharpness on a single point or you can try to just add an overall sharpness to it. If you try to do anything more than that... I'll spank you until the skin on your ass peels off." Why is she being so scary! I wasn't planning anything. "I'm just trying to sharpen the wind on one side, and that's it, mom!" She gave me a look of extreme suspicion. "Really?" "Yes, mom!"

I focused my attention back on the spell. I thought to myself, what is a blade? A sharp blade is thin, and paper can cut someone due to its thinness. I thinned the wind down while holding an imaginary blade in place.

Sharper, thinner, sharper, thinner, I held out my hand and focused on the edge of the blade pouring as much mana into the construct as possible. I sliced my hand across the trunk of a tree. "Tsssss!" I sliced a quarter way through the tree before running out of mana. "Aghh!" I couldn't believe after a day's worth of work the most I could do was cut a small chunk out of a tree. "Son, you cut a lot more than butter with the Wind Blade spell, but in exchange, you're using ten times more mana than necessary." I felt dejected. "Practice is over for the day. It's time for us to go to bed. You've done well Darius." I'd have to practice later, I was tired after using all my mana. Mom dragged me back to our cabin before night completely fell.

“We’ll leave the day after tomorrow early in the morning. We can still do some training before we leave, but I want to show you around the mountains before heading back home. We're going on a hike tomorrow afternoon, and maybe we will go hunting or treasure hunting." My mother showed a beautiful yet contagious smile as usual. "Let's get some sleep little lion. We need to get up early, we have a lot of things to do tomorrow."