"Here, take this."
Roxy handed me three small spheres.
They were smooth and cold to the touch. The surface was etched all over with lines: straight, winding, looping, jagged. Silvery-gray, with a faint shimmering gleam. It seemed as if they absorbed the light.
"What are these?"
"Training spheres made of tuonite. If you mess up, they'll just bounce off your forehead."
She gave me a lazy smirk, as if she already knew how it would go.
"Perfect for practicing precision, rhythm, focus, and switching attention. Or for finding out just how bad you are at all of that."
"What kind of metal is tuonite, anyway?" I asked, keeping my eyes on the spheres. "Sounds like the setup to some alchemist's joke."
"Not exactly," Roxy replied, rolling one of the spheres in her palm. "Very rare, very temperamental, very expensive stuff. It conducts mana cleanly and effortlessly. No flares, no jolts. Smooth, like a snap of the fingers."
The sphere gave a tiny twitch, as if to confirm her words. Roxy glanced at it, then back at me.
"That's why it's so valuable. Especially in combat gear—blades, armor, runes. But using it whole costs a fortune. So you just get veins, inlays, channels. Nobody's wasting it on a full artifact. Unless your dad's an archmage with a fetish for economics."
She tossed the sphere up and caught it without looking.
"There's a fine mesh of tuonite inside. It can tell when you screw up…"
She smirked again. Something flickered in her eyes, barely noticeable, but enough to send a shiver down my spine.
"You could say it teaches you. But it's a very strange kind of teacher."
She sat down across from me, tucking her legs under herself. She took one sphere back, idly turning it in her palm as though testing my patience. Her movements were slow, like she wasn't fully awake.
"Watch closely."
Mana flowed, faint but clear. The sphere reacted instantly—it jerked, then stilled. The lines on its surface began to glow, as if lit from within.
The sphere hovered in her hand.
I bit my tongue to keep from asking out loud:
Suppose I put mana into it. Will it pretend to work, or just shoot straight out the window?
This wasn't a performance for an audience. Especially not with this audience. My hands itched—not from impatience anymore, but because I could almost hear her placing bets in her head.
"Why are you staring like that?" Roxy didn't even look at me, just flicked her fingers slightly. "This is the easy part."
She added a second sphere. Then a third. The whole time, her voice stayed calm, unhurried.
"If you can hold one, you can hold two. And if two, then three's no problem. Height, speed, direction. One up, one down. One fast, one slow. All at the same time."
Roxy leaned forward, pulled out another sphere. How many did she even have? Her fingers traced along its surface, as if searching for the right line. Then a short inhale, and mana ran along the grooves.
The lines on the spheres lit up with a cold, pure blue glow. The sphere twitched and shot upward. The others followed.
One traced a slow, drowsy circle. Another jerked, vanished, reappeared a few centimeters to the side, vanished again, reappeared—its movement hard to track without straining your eyes. The third slid as if along an invisible spiral, flipping over as it went.
"Now the fun begins," Roxy said without even glancing at me. "One's asleep, the second's panicking, the third thinks he's the boss here. Great team. Just like you on a bad day."
Her voice stayed the same. Calm, even, a little bored.
"Sometimes you'll have to keep rhythm even when everything's going to hell. Sometimes slow down when panic's clawing inside. Or speed up when nothing's ready. That's when it shows what you're really capable of. And what you'll do under pressure. Like, for example…"
One sphere suddenly shot off its path, slicing past her temple by half a centimeter. Roxy didn't even blink. Just shifted her fingers a little. The thing snapped back like a scolded dog.
"It almost smashed into you," I said, trying to keep my tone neutral. "That's normal?"
I wasn't expecting an answer. I just wanted to know how safe—or unsafe—this really was.
"Of course it's normal," she said, narrowing her eyes slightly. "He's your future friend… for many, many days. Just a little jittery."
Roxy slowly ran a finger across one of the spheres still resting in her palm.
"You've got a huge mana reserve," she said quietly. "More than half the guild mages. Maybe even more than me…" She paused for a second, then snorted. "No, that would just be insulting."
I snorted back.
"But your control's a disaster," she went on, frowning slightly. "You pour power in without restraint, without thinking where it's going. That's dangerous."
I wanted to ask what happens if I overdo it. But judging by the look on Roxy's face, she'd already run that calculation. And she found it amusing.
I raised my hand. Slowly, carefully, giving myself time. One of the spheres twitched uncertainly, as if stirred by a breeze. Its lines flared, but weakly, without response.
Roxy watched silently. Hands on her knees, back a little bent, chin lifted with interest. As if I wasn't the one working, just her waiting for someone to burn out.
I focused on the feeling of the sphere pressing against my palm, sliding under my fingers as if hiding. Mana flowed, but it didn't react.
I tried again. A little more. A little sharper. The sphere twitched, then went limp. Its lines went dark.
"Are you just going to pet it?" Roxy squinted, her voice still lazy, but with a clear smirk. "Come on, put some effort into it."
I pulled in a sharp breath through my nose. Looked at her. Then at the sphere. Just in case.
"You sure it's even meant for this?" I muttered, not expecting an answer. "Maybe it's got a contract that says 'don't obey anyone under forty.'"
Thwack!
Roxy's staff landed squarely on the top of my head—not vicious, but memorable.
"Contract?" She leaned closer, not moving the staff away. "Maybe it does. But you, so far, only have complaints."
Mana surged. Smoother. Harder. The sphere twitched again. Then started to rotate slowly, jerkily, as if shoved from inside. It lifted. Just a little.
I opened my mouth to form the triumphant answer: See? It works!
"There…" Khf!
But the sphere, as if hearing me first, jerked sideways, spun, and with perfect precision smacked me right in the groin.
Air left my lungs in a choke. I doubled over. Breath ragged, eyes instantly watering. Couldn't breathe, couldn't speak. Just sit there. And try not to make a sound.
"Hahaha!" Roxy leaned back and laughed as if she'd finally received a long-promised gift. "There. Now we can officially begin…"
I straightened, wincing, and forced the words out through clenched teeth:
"And how, exactly, do you think that helps me study combat magic?"
Roxy had almost calmed down, though the corners of her mouth still twitched. Propped up on her elbows, she gave me a narrowed look and drawled, lazy and mocking:
"With your control, trying to learn combat magic is like tossing torches into a hay barn. Everything burns down—including you."
She picked up one of the spheres again, rolled it between her fingers. A cold gleam slid across her face.
"So until you can at least keep this thing steady, forget about flashy fireballs and all that 'heroic magic.'"
I snatched the sphere from her, squeezing it until my knuckles went white. It shivered and obediently flared with a thin light.
Roxy snorted, leaning her elbow on her knee.
I felt my mana surging in bursts. The light flickered and went out. The sphere slipped from my fingers, struck the stone, and rolled away.
"Useless," I muttered.
"Welcome to the beginning," she replied with the same lazy squint. She picked up the sphere, dropped it back into my hand. "Tomorrow will be even worse."
Repetition and failure. The sphere would rise—then immediately fall. Glow—then fade, leaving nothing but exhaustion. Mana came in jolts, slipping out of rhythm.
Every time the same: a spark of hope, a brief push, light in my palm… and then nothing.
Time dragged. Dozens of attempts blurred into one endless exercise. Sweat on my temples, dryness in my mouth. Yet my hands kept reaching for the sphere again and again.
Roxy sat across from me, watching lazily. Every so often she let fall a curt, "Slower," "Focus," "Too sharp." No explanations. Just her steady voice and my failure after failure.
That was the whole day.