Under the supervision of Madam Livi, I was finally permitted to leave the house. Just before we left the front yard, I was stopped by Ms. Heirel, who was currently attending to my mother’s garden, something I was sure she appreciated.

“Ikarus—-, no, Sir Velor,” She corrected herself.

“Really, there’s no need for you to call me that. Just Ikarus is fine.”

“I couldn’t possibly. Addressing you properly is the least I could do to repay the great debt I owe to you and your family.” She said, lowering her head.

I guess she sees it the same way as her daughter.

“Ms. Heirel, I don’t want you to worry about silly things like debt. Just enjoy your stay,” I smiled politely.

“Please, call me Vanessa. And I thank you, once again,” she bowed even further.

Geez, she didn’t get it at all.

Livi and I waved goodbye to Vanessa as we began walking down the path from our house. “So where are we heading, Ikarus? Livi smiled excitedly. This was probably the most freedom she’d ever had, so it made sense for her to be jumpy.

She was still keeping a close eye on me though, at my mother’s instruction. Which meant my first order of business would be lowering her guard, and distracting her.

“Where do you want to go, Livi?”

LIVI HEIREL

“Huh? I get to choose? O-Okay then, how about we head into town? I’ve never been to a small town before, and I wanna see what it’s like!”

“Not much to see, but alright then.” Ikarus laughed.

Ikarus had downplayed his hometown, but I really did find it nice. It felt like a much more personal atmosphere, as I saw Ikarus waving to a number of people we passed by on the street. Something like that would never happen in the large city of Camidinne, as there were far too many people who were each busy with their own lives. Things were slow and relaxing in this town, and everyone seemed to be friendly.

Even with how much I was enjoying the town, I made sure to watch Ikarus carefully. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him, but his mother had given me quite an earful about how he likes to slip away.

“Living it up, eh Ikarus? I guess with Elise and all, it ain’t ridiculous that your family got one, but isn’t she a little young for a maid?” A broad shouldered man conversed with Ikarus.

Ah, that’s right. Though I had cleaned up, I was still wearing my fanciful maid outfit from the Milbourne family. I wonder if it made me look out of place here?

Ikarus just laughed it off and avoided the man’s question as we continued walking through the town, but we were often heckled by people making similar comments. Those who were familiar with Ikarus seemed happy for him, and those who weren't gave off a much more envious vibe.Ikarus didn’t seem too bothered by it, but I felt a little bad for attracting so much attention.

We walked into what seemed to be an area popular with vendors and sales people, a small plaza of sorts, and in no time at all we were being called out to. They likely saw us as high value customers because of my presence, which implied Ikarus was rich enough to have a servant. “Come onto some money, boy? Whaddya say to trying on a few of these?” A man running a small stand that sold hats called out to us.

Ikarus sighed, but then turned to me with a glint in his eye and asked, “Want to try them on?”

I didn’t understand why he wanted me to, but Ikarus was being rather insistent about having me “model” a hat. I did want to do it, and if it was going to make Ikarus so happy, I figured I might as well. I walked over to the stand and picked out a white one with a blue feather. Turning back around to face him, I asked “Well?”

And that was when I realized I had been tricked. Ikarus had vanished without a trace.

IKARUS VELOR

Hehe, sorry about that, Livi. Slipping out into an alley, I looped around to another path that led back towards my house. I don’t know where that bastard is, but hopefully it’ll be easier to find him around here.

“Good thinking.” A familiar voice rang out inside my mind right as I turned the corner into another alley. I looked all around the dusty alleyway I was in, with piles of boxes and only a single stream of sunlight slipping through, but didn’t see what I was looking for.

“Arghhhh, where is he?” The voice said again.

“Okay, stop messing with me.”

At those words, the slender shadow of a cat momentarily loomed over me, before Khiros plopped himself down in front of me with a graceful landing.

“You were on the house’s roof?” I asked, speaking out loud now that we were face to face.

“Ding Ding Ding! Correct!”

“And hey, can you actually read my mind? How did you know what I was thinking?”

“Only sometimes. You weren’t thinking anything you didn’t want me to know, after all.”

“As vague as ever, aren’t you?”

Khiros merely stuck out his tongue teasingly in response.

“So, what do you want from me? I thought I told you I was giving you a break? That poor girl is probably freaking out right about now.”

“Yeah, well I’ve got more than a few questions for you.”

“Ah, so that's what this is about,” Khiros yawned as he curled up into a ball on the floor.

“Yeah, make yourself comfortable.” I scoffed, to which the cat smirked back at me.

Sighing, I took a seat on a wooden crate up against the fence, leaning forward with my hands crossed.

“Are you a spirit?” I asked upfront, in a serious tone. Before I went to sleep last night, I had studied up on the different creatures that inhabit this world. The only one that somewhat fit the bill for Khiros and Soleis were spirits.

Soleis was a familiar, but all that means is that he is a being that is lending its strength to a human. Monsters were the most common familiars, so people tended to assume they were one in the same, but a familiar isn’t a type of creature in and of itself.

Out of all the different beings that I was able to look into with my limited scope of the books my parents bought me, the creature that most closely resembled Khiros was a spirit. Spirits were once again somewhat loosely classified, but were in essence creatures that possessed abilities that exceeded the scope of human magic. That descriptor most certainly fit Khiros, with his ability to mimic the effect of teleportation portals seamlessly. As for Soleis, I honestly don’t really have any idea as to what his abilities are. The book had said that although extremely rare, some spirits did possess the ability to speak.

“Spirit, huh? I guess that’s accurate.” Khiros responded unhelpfully.

“Okayyy…” I looked at him skeptically. “Next question then, what were you doing at the bottom of that cavern? And why did you save me?” It made enough sense for Khiros to be down there because of the abundance of mana in dungeons, but I didn’t understand why he saved me. He didn’t give off the vibes of some good-natured samaritan.

“I was in the cavern to retrieve that compass thing that I handed off to you,” He paused. “Which you do still have, correct?”

“Yeah, of course.” I took the black compass out of my pocket and looked at it, but the entire display was just a glowing purple.

“As for why I saved you, let’s just say I was feeling kind that day,” He smirked.

“Right.” I dismissed his aloofness. “Clearly you aren’t too keen on giving me definitive answers to anything, but I figure this question is more difficult to be indirect about. Either way, this question is the main reason I wanted to talk to you, so please at least try to help me out.” I pleaded.

Khiros nodded for me to continue.

“What made the mana from that elixir so much more powerful than my own?” I looked intently into Khiros’s eyes. “Even when I barely infused any mana into an attack, the results were vastly different than when I used my own mana. That got me thinking, if the strength of magical attacks were determined only by how much mana is invested, then how are powerful mages like my sister doing everything so effortlessly? There has to be some other factor, right? Right?” My tirade came to a stop as I realized I had gotten uncomfortably close to Khiros in my excitement. As I backed up, Khiros let out a sigh.

“You really are a smart one, huh. Alright then, Listen up,” Khiros said as he leaned in, his

expression shifting in a way that looked like he was about to tell a campfire story.

“Have you ever seen raw mana?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

…

Khiros’s storytelling expression froze as he appeared stunlocked, eyeing me in disbelief. “What the hell do you mean, ‘yeah’?! I’m talking about mana with no elemental infusion, just as is!”

“Yeah, I know.”

…

“Alright, slow down here,” Khiros said as he took a deep breath. “When exactly did you see this raw mana?”

Looks like I had finally surprised him for a change.

“When I first began learning about magic, the first thing I conjured was a ball of pure white raw mana—-”

“PURE WHITE?!” Khiros interrupted with a shocked yelp. “Sorry, but there’s no way I can believe that your raw mana was pure white.” Khiros told me.

“Well, it was mana that I had absorbed from my sister, but why does the color matter?” I looked at him quizzically.

“Ohh, so that’s it…” Khiros mumbled to himself. “Still, the fact that he was even capable of conjuring raw mana is very intriguing, seems like they really were right about this boy—-”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I cut off his mumbling.

“O-oh, sorry,” Khiros straightened himself. “You see, raw mana is not typically conjurable for— it’s not typically conjurable.” Khiros corrected himself in the middle of his sentence. “I don’t know why you were able to then, but I assume you haven’t done it since that time, correct?”

“Well yeah, I haven’t really tried, because Elise immediately transitioned me into finding my elemental affinities.” I responded.

“Of course. Well, since you have already seen it, I guess it makes the rest of the explanation easier. But you really ruined the dramatic atmosphere I was setting, man!”

“Screw your atmosphere, can we get to the point?” I was growing impatient.

“Alright, alright. Basically, you weren’t too far off with your ‘another factor’ hypothesis. Your mana, and essentially every other person’s mana on this planet, is impure.” He said with a knowing smirk, like he was having fun boasting his superior knowledge.

“Impure? What do you mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like. The mana you and the absolute majority of others possess, is impure. However, in that little elixir you popped into your mouth, was extremely refined mana.”

“So that makes it stronger?” I mumbled to myself. Mana having levels of purity would certainly check off a lot of my questions from earlier. If the purity of mana corresponds to its strength, it would explain how Elise is so easily able to use her power, and how easily I was able to do devastating damage with the elixir.

“You catch on fast. As mana becomes more pure, its volatility increases. Mana in its impurest form, when it is still mixed with many earthly particles, is a deep blue. As it becomes more and more refined, removing other contaminants, it transitions into a cloudy gray, and from there a brilliant white.” Khiros continued.

“Then how come I’m only hearing about this now, from you?” It didn’t make sense that a factor this big could simply go undiscovered.

“Well, as I said earlier, raw mana is not typically conjurable. And without being able to see what raw mana looks like, there is no way to prove the veracity of purity.” Khiros continued with a bored expression, seemingly growing tired of acting as a teacher.

“So nobody knows about this?” I asked in amazement.

“Well, it’s unlikely that nobody knows about it, but the general public is indeed unaware. That being said, it isn’t as if this information is particularly helpful.”

“How wouldn’t this be helpful?” I asked. It seemed game changing to me. If I knew how to purify my mana—-

Oh. I don’t.

“It seems you’ve realized it. One’s mana is purified over time, simply by gaining experience becoming more comfortable with its manipulation. Having knowledge of how it works doesn’t really change anything.”

Disappointment washed over me. I had gotten my hopes up that this would be some secret power only I knew about, leading me to become the “world’s greatest mage!” or something.

“Alright then, if that’s all you wanted, I’ll be taking my leave.” The shadowy cat hopped from box to box, climbing his way back up to the roof. Just as his tail was about to disappear from my sight, an idea came to me.

“Wait!” I called out. Khiros peeked his head out from the roof and asked, “What now?”

“You said that mana is purified over time, as one gains experience. But what if there was a way to speed up that process?”

Khiros leaned further over the roof in interest. “Okay, think of it like this, a person’s legs get naturally strengthened over time, as they run and jump around, right? But you can make your legs much stronger faster, by doing things like squats and working out.”

Khiros paused for a second in thought. “So basically, you want a mana workout routine?”

“Sounds like a good idea, right?”

“Ha, it just might be,” Khiros snorted.

And so Khiros and I got to work on developing (possibly) the first ever magical workout routine.

“I’ve been missing for a few hours now, huh.” I mumbled to myself as I dragged myself out of the alley into the town square. Both my mind and body were completely exhausted, my entire mana capacity depleted, and I was caked in sweat, but the first magical workout session had been a success. Of course, there were no immediate major changes, but that was to be expected from a workout.

We had begun by having Khiros test how pure my current mana was, since annoyingly enough I couldn’t manage to recreate the same ball of raw mana I had on that day. Khiros wasn’t surprised, but it deeply irritated me. I guess I'll just have to keep trying. Anyway, Khiros placed a paw to my chest and “pushed” some of my mana outwards. It knocked the wind out of me, and momentarily felt like some kind of out of body experience. When I returned to my senses, it felt like someone had punched me in the gut as hard as they could. It was worth the pain though, because we discovered that my mana’s current purity was a solid blue. I was somewhat disappointed in my lack of progress, but Khiros said that it was not bad at all for someone my age, as mana does not purify quickly.

Once we had gauged my mana purity level, we began testing out a variety of “exercises” that tested my ability to manipulate and precisely control mana, such as quickly switching between creating different shapes of mana, and expanding and compressing mana over small and large distances. After cycling through many different exercises, we settled on a few that I wrote down to practice daily.

The sun was just starting to set as I walked out into the plaza, which made me think it was probably around six. I really did get carried away. Livi was probably worried sick, not to mention my parents. Alright Ikarus, from now on, no more mysterious disappearances!

“Ikarus?” A man called out to me. He was a kind old man I had gotten acquainted with over my years of living in this town, and he was sitting on a bench feeding some birds that closely resembled the pigeons of my old world.

“Oh, hello Mr. Booker,” I responded. “How are you?”

“Nevermind me, that little elf has gone mad looking for you,” He chuckled, seeming to find it very amusing.

“She’s still out here?”

“As of around ten minutes ago, she was just here at these benches, interrogating me for your whereabouts after I said I knew you,” He continued, snickering to himself.

“I see, sorry to trouble you.” I apologized.

“No, no. It was no trouble at all, a bit of excitement is more than welcome for a man like me.” He shrugged, smiling softly. “Though as I said, she was here but ten minutes ago, so if you’re hiding from her, I don’t think she’s gone far—-”

Mr. Booker was cut off by a loud roar from across the plaza.

“IKARUS!!!!”

A flurry of rapidly approaching footsteps came from behind, as I was able to whip around just in time to see what could only be described as a fierce predator pouncing its prey. I barely had time to get out the words “Livi, wait!” before she slammed into me, knocking us both to the ground.