"Ah, you're here, just in time." A familiar old woman's voice called out to me as I arrived at my destination.
It was Gladden sat atop of a horse and cart. The cart was filled with things that were covered by a canvas sheet, so things wouldn't fall out during transit. However, it was obvious to tell it was all of the furniture and things she was planning to take with her.
"Hello, Gladden. It looks like you've been busy." I joked as I talked up to the woman, coming to stand next to her.
She laughed lightly at my greeting. "If by that you mean telling my son what to do. Then, I've been very busy." She replied with a chuckle.
Before I could say anything more, a man came out of my soon-to-be home. He carried a small chest in his hands, and quickly spotted me and realisation spread across his face.
"Ah, you must be the man who's renting this house?" He spoke as he walked to the back of the cart. He had a thick accent that often fit with people who worked the land for a living.
"The name's Adam, I'm Gladden's son. Nice to meet ya." He introduced himself with his now free hand.
"Nice to meet you too. And sorry about having you do all that lifting." I gave him a dry smile as I accepted his extended hand. His hand was rough to the touch, the tell-tale sign of someone who has used their hands their whole life.
"Nah, don't worry about it. Ma always gets me to do something when I come to visit." "Oi, I heard that, you cheeky beggar." He said but was soon chided by the old woman who seemed to have good hearing. Adam laughed at being rebuked by the her and I couldn't help but smile at their exchange.
"Ma also told me about what you do for work and what to do on rent day. So, don't worry about rushing back as we kids all have keys. Though, I'm the only one who lives nearby, so you don't need to worry about unexpected visitors." He smiled a toothy smile with some gaps here and there.
"That's good to hear, I wouldn't want there to be any misunderstandings." I replied, with a small laugh. He simply clapped his hand on my shoulder and laughed with me, finding my small joke amusing.
"Well, we must be off before the sun fully sets, wouldn't want to risk the roads at night, even though we're this close to town." He said as he climbed up the cart into the driver's seat.
"Take good care of the house, I've got some fond memories of living here." He said with a wispy expression.
I said I would, and he seemed to believe me as he sent the signal to the pony to set off, after giving me a thankful nod. I watched them for a few moments before turning about and walking inside, not before I took the key out of the door and locked the front door behind me.
I stood in the hallway for a long moment, feeling a little lost as to what to do next. But I decided to do what was practical and began to take out the stuff I had bought and put them in their place, making things more comfortable and homely.
As I walked about the house, I noticed that most of the furniture was still there, the only thing that seemed to have been taken was the things from the storeroom and the food from the pantry, apart from a few dried herbs and tea leaves.
She was nice enough to leave me some cooking utensils and a kettle. I decided to brew some tea but realised that I didn't know where to get water in the city, apart from inns. This was obvious, considering that I never needed to know. I never had a house before, so as long as I could fill up my water skin, then I didn't care to find out the basics such as city infrastructure.
But then, I realised something, I could simply create water using magic. That realisation made my cheeks burn with embarrassment at how stupid I was. I used to party with magic users who created water and such, so I had no excuse for my blatant stupidity.
'I'll take a while to get used to the convenience of magic.' I thought as I hovered my fingertips above the open kettle and conjured water from the atmosphere. Of course, it wasn't as simple as conjuring a torrent of water from nothing. Without the time I spent working under Stein, I wouldn't be able to create a single water droplet, let alone enough to fill up a kettle.
Once the kettle was filled, I did the same thing for the cooking range, instead of using the flint and steel that was set to one side. Once the fire burst into life, I felt a little strained. Not because of using too much MP, but because I had to strain my mind to focus on creation. Creation of something from nothing was far more taxing than simply manipulation. But I think that was because I wasn't used to using magic yet. I just needed to stretch my magic muscles.
With the water boiling, I began to fill the empty shelves of the pantry with the preserved goods and grains that I had bought. As I was doing so, I noticed a small barrel off to one side, just before you stepped inside the pantry proper. Opening it up, I saw that it was nearly full of water and realised that this was where most people kept their water in this world. However, that didn't make me want facepalm any less.
'Well, at least it beats walking for ages each time you wanted to brew some tea.' I mused as I sealed the barrel once more.
Turning back into the kitchen, my eyes fell onto the boiling kettle and remembered my time training with Stein and once again felt stupid. 'I could have raised the temperature of that water in an instant by using both fire and water control. I've done it many times while practising alchemy, so why do I keep forgetting things?'
I was starting to become annoyed with myself. I made the decision to become a mage, and yet, I have always reverted back to my old self, simply because it was the easy way. But no more, I'm going to start walking a new path, even if it isn't magic completely, I will walk a path that I feel satisfied with.
The whistling kettle interrupted my vow, which made me realise how cheesy it sounded and quickly set about making myself a cup of tea, trying to cover up my embarrassment.
With tea in hand, I made my way to the living room, where the fire from the day before had been cleaned out and replaced with a fresh batch of firewood.
Placing my cup on the small table, I sat in one of the armchairs and with a wave of my hand, the fire flickered into life. I lifted the teacup up to my lips to hide the smirk that had appeared on them.
After my sip, I set the cup back down pulled both manuals out of my inventory and used them without much thought.
[Air control: level 1]
A spell that allows the user to control air, the higher the level, the higher the control.
[Earth control: level 1]
A spell that allows the user to control earth, the higher the level, the higher the control.
I didn't even bother to read the description that popped up as I knew that it would have been useless. However, I was one element away from having all the basic elements. The last one was energy, more commonly called lightning. But it was quite rare to find. Even most basic spells didn't use lightning, as it was considered the hardest element to control. It wasn't until you get to more advanced spells, that lightning element starts to make its appearance.
But for now, I decided to read the notebook that Jenna gave me. While Stein taught me the basics of alchemy, he only taught me about the ingredients I supplied and not how to understand or research ingredients myself. So, I'm hoping this notebook would be the plug to my sinking ship.
Beginners' guild to alchemy that even a goblin would understand. Reading the title alone gave me confidence, though admitting that stung a little.
The essence of what Jenna wrote was that alchemists explore the world to understand how the world works. That everything has a cause and effect, and alchemists strive to find out what it was and how to use them to their advantage.
Before I knew it, my tea had gone cold, but to lessen the blow, I found myself more confident with my alchemy skills. Although it was mostly things I already knew, however, the things I didn't know, this book filled in the blanks, so now, I felt a little more confident in my path.
I had to admit, alchemists seemed a little egotistical, but that's what fuelled them to go forward. Though, as I read on, into the magic section of the notebook, I found arcanists weren't much better.
The essence of the arcanist was to understand, not only the physical world but the spiritual world as well and eventually gain the ability to manipulate them both at will.
As I read through the notebook, I came to think that it was too fanciful and sounded like a delusion. However, I have seen a high-level arcanist in action, it was a frightening experience as they literally tore space open and pulled a meteorite down onto a small army. Needless to say, that small army ended up as ash in the skies. I was glad that the arcanist was on my side.
Thinking about that monster made me feel like an ant in comparison. So, I picked up my cold tea heated it up with magic and drank some to calm myself down.
Placing the now empty cup onto the table, I had managed to get my thoughts in order. Namely, how to use magic and that was to think of it like science, or a natural phenomenon instead of a supernatural one.
To prove my point, I wanted to try something. I cupped each of my hands and in each one, I created a current of air, one going from the tip of my fingers to the bottom of my palm, and in the other, the opposite.
Then, I slowly brought them together, until they were just about touching. As they did, they formed a small swirl of air and as I added more and more current to the mix the more pronounced the twister became.
It was a delicate balance, if I were to feed too much of one current in the mix, the twister would become unstable and fall apart.
Although it was fascinating to recreate a natural phenomenon in miniature form, it wasn't the effect I was going for. So, while I had a balance of currents and a formed tornado, I decided to use water control on top, it was a lot of strain to keep this fine control of air going and adding water control as well, was a little taxing, to say the least.
But I did it anyway, though the goal was to take the moisture from the air currents and make them as dry as possible. And when I did, I saw, what I was trying to achieve, small arcs of electricity caused by friction in the air.
As time went on, with this perfect mixture of magic, a big arc of electricity jumped between my hands and instead of getting flustered, I released all other magic coated my hands in mana and grabbed onto the jumping arc, like I was catching a rare butterfly that had flown in front of my face.
At first, it stung, as the electricity bit into my skin, but then that sensation faded, and I was left with my hands crackling in electricity.
*Ping*
[Air control: level 2]
[Water control: level 2]
[Energy control: level 1]
A spell that allows the user to control energy, the higher the level, the higher the control.
"I did it!" I yelled as I shot out of my seat in excitement. My hands were crackling like some sort of villain, but I didn't care. I was happy with my achievement and that I started to finally understand what magic is.
However, the room started to spin from me overusing mana, so I cancelled my villain's hands and sat in the chair to catch my breath. Though, it didn't take long for my stomach to interrupt me and demand feeding.
I wasn't the best cook in the world, but I at least knew how to cook, but not having the comforts of a modern world made it hard to cook a lot of things without them tasting bland. Plus, in this game, there weren't any skills related to cooking, so if you couldn't cook, you were screwed.
For tonight, I peeled some potatoes cut them finely and put them to one side. Next, I got some dried meat threw it into a frying pan and fried it with some herbs to take away the overpowering taste of salt. Once it was done, I put it on a plate and used the hot oil to shallow fry the potatoes until they were crispy. Using my newfound control over water, I drained most of the oil from the cooked potato and placed them at the side of the meat.
I didn't have any sauce to go with it, but it was hot and would fill my stomach. Sitting at the table in the kitchen, I looked out into the garden that was slowly being obscured in darkness.
Tomorrow is going to be the day that I survey the land around Novrad for ingredients and monsters to grind. My goal was to level up and gather ingredients to practice alchemy with.