It has been four hours since my talk with Nelton. After the library, I ate something in the stalls close where I bought the spices. The food was some kind of fried chicken. At least it tasted like chicken and it was fried too. You have to know that oil is fairly expensive, not for an apprentice, but for normal people it is. So it cost me one silver to eat a portion. Might be overprized but I don’t really care about that. While strolling on the street, I catch a sight of one of the handlanger of that guy from the airship. The one who wished to buy from me the formless mage potion. What was his name again? Jeff? Something with J. Oh yes, it is Jerald. A fairly strange name.

“Good morning Jerald, I have something for you.” I said. Thinking about it, I really don’t talk to a lot of people.

“Yes, yes, you are the person who got the formless mage potion, is it possible that you acquired another potion?” He asks excitedly. This confirms to me that he didn’t get his hands on one yet. Good for me.

“Yes, I got a formless herb, come later to my dorm room with those things you showed me last time. I was deeply interested in some of those items.” I said. He accepts, thinking that my ‘deep interest’ is mainly about reminding him of the prize he has to pay for a potion. Just that one amulet is my point of interest. I don’t care about the rest. Are they valuable? Yes of course. Does that mean that I have a use for the majority of them? No, it doesn’t. Treasures are nice to have, but useless ones don’t really help me a lot.

“Alright, bye.” He says and nearly runs away. His helpers next to him hastily follow him. Youth, so easily excitable. Then I go back to strolling around. After taking in all the fresh air I am going to need for the next month or so, I go slowly back to the dorms area.

In front of the house, a person is awaiting me. At least I suppose he is waiting for me, he is one of the people from Nelton when we met and I gave him the head. After spotting me, he comes and begins to speak. “Mister Thale, Master Nelton sends his regards to you. Your room has been retrofitted as you wished. We also hope that the bad blood because of that incident is over.”

From my perspective, blackmailing him into giving me some stuff does qualify in leaving bad blood behind, so I happily accept his hands and shake it.

“I am happy that it went without a problem. Mister Thale, I have to go have, a nice day.” He bowed and the went on his merry way. Feeling a bit excited inside, I went into the building. A short while later I arrived in front of my door. The first thing I noticed is that the door from next to me has vanished and is replaced by a wooden wall. This made me very excited.

Entering the room felt instantly different than before. The layout changed a lot. The wall is gone on the right side, connecting the two rooms together, making it look a lot more spacious. Now, this action might not have been expensive, but to achieve this, one needs some influence amongst the tower. In the middle of the room is a big table, on top of which a lot of different vials and chemical appliances are placed. Taking a closer look, I notice their quality. Not the highest grade available, but nothing to scoff at. In a sealed container on top of the table is the formless herb. A strange combination of a flower and glass-like translucency. Strange, but no stranger than some things I have seen so far. On the other side of the table are chisels, hammers and writing utensils. For making formations and array’s, something I still am on a basic level of proficiency. This might help me change this fact. Now on the right side are boxes. Two big ones and dozens of small boxes, taking up a fifth of my room. In combination of the boxes from before, it takes up a big amount of space. Luckily, I can put quite some of them under the table to a safe space.

Besides these two things, the rest of the room is filled with cabinets and other storage spaces. Even the light source has been changed and made brighter. Something I can change any time if I want to.

All in all, I quite like this place. Enough for me to spent the next couple of year uhum, months cooped up inside. I still have to go out occasionally, or else my fighting capabilities will worsen a lot. The same thing that in the end killed Joe, the VIP.

After the full inspection, I notice a small booklet on top of the table. It was written from Nelton. He talks about how sorry he is for getting ambushed, how he is already after how the spy could infiltrate his network, which by the way is ironic because he is a supposedly intelligent handler. Oh what irony. I hope that he will learn from this that no organization is spy free. Not even mine. I am pretty sure that some of the gang members or even the ringleaders have spies under them from other gangs. The ring leaders are pretty much silenced because of enslavement, but you never know.

Back to the booklet. It also writes about the books he talked about. The old one about formations he has should be inside one of the boxes, but the others from the library are too numerous, so he simply send the title and a short description in the book. If I want to have them, they would deliver it.

How cunning. This restricts me a bit and also gives him a small amount of control over me. He knows what I do. As expected from him.

PART 2

Making sure that the door is closed, I put down the three booklets from my bag. And begin to copy them for later use. This took me around a day. The complexity of the spells I choose this time are very high. Even higher than minor teleportation, which I used too rarely for my good. I really shouldn’t’ forget about other spells. Lamenting over my own lack of experience in fighting, I stand up. After copying for a day, my shoulders feel a bit stiff. Standing up and moving them is the right exercise to do.

After some moving, I take out paper for a letter and make my first letter about the books. In between, when I got too bored or stiff, I read through the books available and boy, he didn’t lie when he wrote that it is too much to put into one room. Basically, most of the booklet was about the books. In the range of hundreds of books. It took me some time to read them all and decide on a dozen of useful ones.

I have also contemplated about taking up the job of a magic scroll scribe up again. It had been a good exercise and also a good venue for new spells. A couple of seconds later, I forgo the idea. It isn’t efficient anymore and the spells I might get wouldn’t necessarily be useful. I am not that desperate for spells anymore as I used to be.

having finished copying them, I look over them again.

The first spell is wind scout. A wind type spell and a very rare one in that affinity. It is a doped-up version of smelling the wind. I can detect abnormal airflow around me. The only up and downside is that if the wind is especially strong then it can interfere with the spell. It is also very difficult to learn and engrave. This also means that the scroll of such a spell would bring in a good amount of gold. High utility. This spell also helps me in regards of having minimal or close to no scouting ability. Once this spell is cast, for a small amount of mana it can be sustained. It is also a fairly stealthy spell, so it isn’t immediately picked up in comparison to a fireball.

The next is called Arcane wall. This is a fairly strange spell in my opinion. Very different from other spells I have read and seen until now. It erects a three times three wall in one direction. This wall weakens spells considerable and when someone tries to walk through, he will receive catastrophic damage. This spell is building on deception. A lot of people would dare to run through a wall of fire, because in and itself it is not that damaging. With a decent defensive artefact, it is survivable. They are just very good at messing with spells. Prematurely unloading and detonating the spell. If they try the same trick with this one, then they are in for a very nasty surprise. This spell is of course arcane type and is very complicated. I sometimes really envy people with more normal affinity who don’t have such a hard time building spell models. For them, something like minor teleport is already the apex of complexity that they will ever make in the apprentice level. For me, minor teleport is only on the middle levels of difficulty, with soul and arcane type spells being more difficult. Sighing, I continue my thought.

The last spell of the arcane type is called arcane sight. It is also a utility type spell, but one far more useful than wind scout. It enables the user to see magic. Not like in a fight, where the concentration of mana and the transformation of mana enables the naked eye to see it. It is more like seeing a new colour, that is magic. It is highly useful for spotting magical traps, seeing through magical contraptions and spells like my arcane wall and in unearthing anything useful and search for secrets. Even if a tiny amount of mana is leaking out, it is easily seeable. Even a normal stone that no one would bother about. If it had been in contact with concentrated mana for a long time, then I could spot that. And what means a spot with concentrated amounts of mana? Treasure, rare places and ruins. Places that had been used for millennia’s, but very well hidden. Now I am pretty sure that this I not omnipotent. On a ruin like the one in the mountains, it would be useless most of the time. It would be laughable if some apprentice-level guy could see through stuff that could even fool official mages. They might just kill the apprentice out of embarrassment. Something I heard has already happed some time ago. So being better, at least openly, than an official mage is a bad idea. Becoming stronger doesn’t mean that they become more human, on the contrary, they get even worse. Power is corrupting in and of itself. Then imagine a society where the strong ones are revered and you get the picture. All in all, they can become massive dicks, with egos the size of the moon.

Now going on to the last spell. This is one I wanted for a very long time. Mould metal. The dream spell for everyone who works with metal in any shape or form. This spell enables to change the metal in forms that are very hard to make with traditional smithing techniques. One of the reasons why mechanical stuff is a thing here. Most of the small parts are made with this spell or similar spells. Or else, making something like a spring would be too hard. This is also the reason why those contraptions are so ridiculously expensive.