Alex was now watching as Eve tried gathering mana, which he helped the same way he did with Susan—by triggering the air mana close to her.
Also, just like with Susan before, Alex intended to teach the girl the wind-element fist.
"I can feel it!" Eve said excitedly.
"Okay then, gather it around your midsection, where the core should be, and compress it for a while before releasing." Alex guided her. But this wasn't the mana-gathering method either he or Susan used; it was a method he had bought a year after moving here.
It belonged to a series of books that covered the basic elements.
In his case, they were the Wind Meditation and Water Meditation methods.
They were novice-level training methods, and they had cost him a kidney and a half to buy.
But they were worth every penny.
'I remember that I spent two days training for a single 0.1% when I reached novice with the last mana-gathering methods,' Alex thought.
That would have placed him at the peak of novice after roughly six years, which was insane. Yet with the new ones, he was almost there.
As Alex thought about that, he opened his status window.
—STATUS—Name: Alexander
Novice Mage (98.54%)
Age: 20
Mana: 3125/6342
Mana Gathering: Wind Meditation (Novice), Water Meditation (Novice)
Mana Control: Senturion Control (Master – 56.56384%)
Mana Sense: Water Bending (Beginner)
Elements:
– Wind (Intermediate – 11%)
– Water (Intermediate – 23%)
Alex looked at his status window. Since he was so close to reaching Tier 2, an annex of the window could be felt in his mind. When he triggered it the same way he opened his status, a new window appeared.
—Requisites—
– 100 Novice Monster Wind Cores
– 100 Novice Monster Water Cores
– 600 Wind Mana Crystals
– 600 Water Mana Crystals
Instructions: …
Alex read the requisites again.
They weren't rare materials, but they were undeniably expensive. He had started buying them whenever he had money to spare, but he was still far from finishing.
The mana crystals weren't the main issue, since elemental mana crystals were used as currency just like gold coins.
Any elemental mana crystal could be traded for 200 gold coins, while pure mana crystals could only be exchanged with the elemental ones at a ratio of 100 to 1.
This meant a pure mana crystal was worth twenty thousand gold coins, and the full amount of elemental crystals he needed was nearly a quarter of a million gold coins.
'Insane,' he thought every time he calculated it.
And that was only the crystals—cores were four times more expensive.
Each novice monster core was eight hundred gold coins, adding another one hundred sixty thousand gold coins.
Raking up the cost to a staggering four hundred thousand gold coins.
Even with the shop now fairly famous, their family earned barely a hundred thousand gold coins a year, and with their many expenses, it would still take Alex years to afford this.
So he intended to hunt for the cores himself; with poisons, he could easily fight novice monsters and kill them without damaging their cores.
But he had yet to find the time.
As Alex thought, Eve called for him.
"Hey! Stop zoning out!"
"Wha—What?!" Alex jerked upright.
"You're supposed to be helping me. What are you doing?" she demanded.
"Hey, what do you think I am, your servant?" Alex retorted.
"You promised to help me, and now you're off on your own. Hmpf." Eve faked annoyance.
By now, she knew all the ways to get Alex to do what she wanted, and she took full advantage of it.
"Okay, okay," Alex gave in and went to help her again.
After filling her in on how much time she would likely need and explaining the quirks of the status window, they went to have dinner with Susan.
After three years, the family had bought the house behind the shop and connected them with a door, allowing Alex to use the shop's second floor as an office.
The connecting door was hidden, since they didn't want anyone entering one side and be able to reach the other.
When they reached the dining room, Susan greeted them.
She was even prettier now, mana having pushed her beauty one step further, heightening her mature allure.
She looked at Alex with a soft smile.
"What?" he asked, puzzled.
"Nothing. I'm just happy to see you happy and healthy again," Susan said.
"You've been telling me this since last month," Alex replied.
"So?" she answered simply.
Alex had no counter to those two letters, so he dug into his food.
'She is right. I wasn't particularly well after we reached here,' Alex thought.
After killing Bren, Alex had been in such a rush to flee that the emotions didn't hit him. Only after they settled here did his mind catch up.
He started feeling empty inside, like nothing else mattered.
Vengeance hadn't brought comfort or fulfillment—just a void.
He didn't know how to fill the emptiness left by Marc and the revenge, so he began to grow sad, then numb, then reliant on drinking every day.
He had only the promise he'd made to live differently, and his family—the ones holding the pieces of his heart together. Without them, he might have ended it all.
Susan noticed this, and with soft, patient guidance, she turned his depression and bad habits into healthier ones. She accompanied him to train whenever he felt down and asked him to find a hobby for when she couldn't join him, which led him to pick up painting together with Eve.
Now the mother-son duo trained regularly, and the siblings painted together. That was how his family filled the cracks in his heart, and slowly, he began to heal.
Alex thought of all this while he ate. After finishing and helping with the chores, he returned to the alchemy shop.
He turned on a light, which prompted a knock on the window.
The knock followed a particular rhythm, and Alex approached.
On the other side stood a kid with a letter in hand.
Alex opened the window and handed the kid a silver coin after taking the letter.
No words were exchanged; they both understood the routine.
Alex opened the letter inside and began reading.
His expression darkened.
"There is another one," he murmured. Then, with a colder tone, "I have to get ready."