By the time I got home, the expected guest had already arrived. According to Gareth, it had only been a short while. My uncle Philip was currently inside, speaking with my family. Which meant I'd missed his entrance.
But today's tasks couldn't wait for tomorrow.
Gareth led me to the guest salon. Before opening the door, he announced my arrival. Then he stepped aside, and I walked in.
It was my first time meeting Uncle Philip.
He looked so much like my mother, I almost thought they were twins.
"So, I finally have the honor of meeting the famous young lord Godfrey," he said, placing a hand over his chest and bowing ever so slightly. Even his voice carried an air of intellect.
"Pleasure to meet you, Uncle Philip," I replied, mimicking his gesture.
"Hmm," he hummed thoughtfully, then turned to my mother. "Are you sure he's only four?"
Everyone laughed. I was sweating bullets.
"You might want to be careful around this organic lifeform." Mnex chimed in, using that dead serious tone only I could hear.
"Henry, I heard you can use magic. Would you mind showing me?"
The question was directed at me, but he glanced at my parents for approval. Not that it mattered most of them already knew. No point in hiding it.
I started with water, then ice, then purple flames. Everyone had seen those before, except for my father. But I'd been saving lightning magic to impress my grandfather.
"See? Told you!" my grandfather boomed as he stood up, pride leaking from every wrinkle on his face.
"Absolutely extraordinary," said Uncle Philip. "Stonehalls records show almost no one this age using magic at all… let alone showing mastery over multiple elements."
While they were chatting, I casually summoned a tiny arc of electricity in my palm. My mother gasped first.
Then everyone turned to look at me.
"HENRY!" my grandfather roared.
"W-Was that lightning?" Uncle Philip stammered.
Everyone was stunned. For me, it was pure showtime. I couldn't help but grin.
"Looks like your student has already surpassed you," I said, winking at my grandfather.
"When? Since when have you been able to control lightning?"
"Henry," Uncle Philip jumped in, "would you like to learn earth and air magic from me? We could start right away!"
"Ahem…" My father's voice cut through the room, cool, calm, but unmistakably pointed. "Wouldn't it be wiser to clear out the poisoned fields first?"
We hadn't spoken much since that day in winter, since I asked if he had any pride left and he slapped me. I couldn't read him. Maybe I crossed a line. Maybe I shouldn't have said it like that.
But still… he didn't have to hit me.
"I've got a better idea," I said, eyeing him. He raised a brow. "Why don't you teach me earth magic while we clean the soil?"
And here we are now, standing in the fields that had been full of crops last summer, but were now completely barren.
"Well, I'll be damned… Your idea actually worked," said Uncle Philip, crouching down and running his fingers across the soil. "In fact, if you'd waited until the next harvest season, you might not have even needed a mage. The poison's almost gone."
"Do you think you can cleanse it completely?"
"Even better… I can use the remaining toxic mana to feed the soil. That's how effective this has been." His face lit up. "If you don't mind, I'd love to study this method in more detail at Stonehalls."
Oh, now you're saying things that stroke my ego. Go on, say more. Shower me.
"Hey, Pinocchio but worse. Your mouth and your nose grow when you're proud.
If anyone should be proud, it's me. Although… this isn't even a win worth boasting about. For me, this is entry level stuff."
I tuned Mnex out.
"Of course you can study it," I told Uncle Philip. "But there's one condition. You have to record this method under the name 'Henry style Agriculture.'"
"Interesting you're not using the Godfrey surname," he said, chuckling.
"What are you, huh? Huh?!" Mnex was screaming in the background.
Soon after, we began my training in earth magic.
"Fire is the hardest element to control," Uncle Philip said. "That's why your grandfather was considered a prodigy, he mastered it at a young age. But you… you've already done the hardest part. No one would argue if we called you a prodigy too."
Everything he said was basically a compliment.
I think… I really like my uncle.
"Henry, to use magic, knowledge alone isn't enough. Knowing might be the hardest part, sure. But imagining and feeling are just as essential. If any one of those is missing, the spell falls apart. So… you have to feel the earth," he explained.
But no matter how hard I tried, I realized I didn't really know what earth was.
Mnex?
"What? I'm the God of Agriculture and Twerking."
Cut it out and just tell me, what is earth made of? What molecules should I picture?
"You're the God of Twerking and Agriculture, you don't even know what dirt is made of… You can't even twerk properly. Maybe I should give you a basic tutorial. Step one: shake your hips from the inside out…"
His tone made it painfully obvious how much Uncle Philip's praise was bothering him.
Mnex? Come on… help me out.
"Fine. Here you go: SiO₂, Al₂O₃, Fe₂O₃, CaCO₃, NO₃⁻, PO₄³⁻, K⁺, Ca²⁺, Mg²⁺, O₂, CO₂, N₂, H₂O. Enjoy."
Was that… a cosmic level insult? Or was that just chemistry? I feel like I heard "water" in there somewhere?
"It feels like my IQ drops by a million every second I spend with you."
So you're not going to help?
"Henry?" my uncle called out. "Why not dive into your mind world and feel the soil? Sometimes you don't need to know every molecule down to the last atom."
He was right, from his point of view. I must've looked like the village idiot having a staring contest with a dirt patch.
I took a deep breath and sat down on the ground. Closed my eyes. Slipped into my mind world.
Everything was easier in here.
Earth. Earth was life and death.
When I thought of it that way, it wasn't hard to believe it held countless molecules.
Mnex's list earlier... those must've been all the components in soil.
Which meant imagining each one individually would be impossible.
I opened my eyes. Mnex wasn't here, at least not in physical form but I could still feel him somewhere in the back of my mind.
He wasn't helping right now.
That was fine. I still had time.
I opened my eyes again. My uncle had his hands pressed to the ground, kneeling in a wide stance. I watched him.
"He's channeling his mana outward, positioning himself at the center of the circle," Mnex narrated.
I was expecting a flashy glow or some dramatic earthbending moment. Nothing.
He held that position for a while… then slowly stood up.
"Wow," Mnex said. I guess I was the only one who didn't get it.
What happened?
"Same old idiot. He mixed the toxic mana in the soil with his own purified mana just using earth magic. The result? The land in that circle is now fifty percent more fertile than before."
Think I could pull that off too?
"Think a monkey could solve quantum mechanics?"
I was starting to get annoyed… but I had an idea.
If the monkey had your help, it probably could.
"Haha. Fair enough. Alright, Caesar listen closely…"
And just like that, we were back in business. Mnex's serious instructor mode clicked on. He explained. And explained.
I shut my eyes again and re-entered my mind world. This time, I went straight to the training grounds inside Mnexland. Thankfully, Mnex had already filled the area with soil before I arrived.
How he'd done that, I still had no idea. Every time I asked, he started ranting about code, matrices, formulas, and cats. But one thing was certain, every new thing he created in Mnexland cost me a bit of mana.
I stepped onto the soil and sat down.
Earth.
SiO₂. Silicon dioxide. Hard, but flexible.
Fe₂O₃. Rust. Color.
Something-oxide.
H₂O. Water… life.
Ions. Minerals. The endless balance between life and death.
I pictured the ground beneath my feet.
Every particle… touching, grinding, binding.
I tried to recall the molecules Mnex had mentioned.
My thoughts were a messy stew.
Imagining each one was hopeless.
Maybe instead of thinking about the earth… I needed to think with it.
I sat there, eyes closed, still. I had no idea how long it had been.
Something changed.
The soil seemed to breathe.
The ground beneath me trembled.
There was a pulse, weak, but real.
"Mnex… I felt it."
"I can see it. If you open your eyes, you'll see it too."
I opened my eyes and there it was, hovering just in front of me, a small clump of earth, suspended in the air.
I reached out and shaped it.
"This time, you were actually fast. I think it's been a few million years, but hey..."
"What?"
Mnex burst out laughing, clutching his nonexistent stomach as he fell back on his nonexistent butt.
"Kidding… ahahaha… just kidding. But your face, worth it. I think it's been… less than a day. You were really, really fast this time," he said, wiping away imaginary tears.
I opened my eyes and returned to the real world.
Uncle Philip was genuinely surprised when he heard I could already perform earth magic.
But I wanted more. I wanted to understand how he had just purified the soil.
"Actually, there's nothing secret or amazing about it," he explained. "It's not some healing spell either. I just spread my mana outward and use it to transform the remaining toxic mana into something the soil can absorb and grow from."
"He managed to explain it in a way even a moron like you could understand," Mnex added, one of his rare compliments. Uncle Philip had no idea he'd earned such a badge of honor.
But to me, that sealed it, he was a real teacher.
We moved a bit further, away from the patch he had already cleansed.
This time, it was my turn.
I placed my hands on the ground.
In my mind world, I gathered the mana I had left. Using the earth magic I had just formed, I shaped it into a circle with myself at the center.
"Easy there, champ. If you draw in any more mana, your body won't have enough left to sustain itself. It'll start draining your life force to compensate, and then… hypothermia. You'll die. I won't even be able to help," Mnex warned.
I immediately stopped trying to spread the mana further. Instead, I focused only on the toxic mana.
A childhood memory surfaced, one of the rare times I'd watched TV in my previous life.
There was an educational cartoon explaining biology, white blood cells fighting off bacteria.
What I was doing now felt similar.
Pure mana interacting with the toxic mana… converting it into something clean.
But when I pulled my mana back, I realized something, while my own mana vanished, the purified mana remained in the soil.
The only issue? I'd just burned through every drop of mana I had left in my mind world.
The moment I finished the spell and opened my eyes, I tried to stand…
…and the world went black.
The last thing I remembered was my face hitting the dirt.