In the afternoon of the in-game day, Stahl had learned all the weapon-skills that Brody told him to, at least their basics, and was now simply sitting there, meditating to get the skill to Rank 1. Brody had to leave, because he was just on an extended break from work and needed to return to teach another class, so Stahl had to practice the skills on his own for a while.
And now, meditation was the only skill that still had to reach Rank 1 out of the skills that Brody had taught him, although that also changed after a little while, and when Stahl heard the little ringing telling him that a notification appeared, he swiftly deactivated the meditation and just took a look at it with a sigh.
"Alright, this one's gonna be pretty boring to level up if I don't find anything good to do while I'm at it." Stahl muttered out to himself, before standing up from where he was sitting and checking out his friend's list to see if a certain someone was online.
"Yes, finally!" He exclaimed as he noticed that Xenia's name was written in a light green as a sign that she was online, and then made his way out of the training room and up to the meeting hall, where Xenia spent most of her time. There, Xenia was currently talking to Komer, while Koro was sitting at the table, drawing an Enchantment circle onto a piece of paper.
With a wry smile at the sight of his grandfather's avatar simply sitting there in its metal form, Stahl approached them as he scratched the back of his neck. "Eyooo! I'm ready to take my Magic Lessons!" The young man exclaimed, before Komer turned around and looked at him with a smile.
"Ah, right, you were gonna do that. Well, I'll leave you alone then, see you later. Xenia, we'll talk about it some more later, I'll figure the logistics out for now." Komer said and made his way to the door with a wave, before Stahl looked at Xenia confused.
"What're you gonna talk about later?" He asked, but Xenia just shrugged. "Oh, Komer was thinking about selling different basic magic contracts or scrolls, and we need to figure out proper pricing for them." She explained, so Stahl nodded his head with a smile.
"Gotcha! Anyway, should we get to it now? You're the last one I need to learn from. Well, except Grampa… He's most likely going to make me learn some more skills as well." Stahl said with a smirk as he looked at the metallic figure, before Xenia nodded.
"Probably. Should we go outside for that? I want to talk about something alone. Koro, keep drawing the enchanting circles." She explained and stepped to the door, before the two of them, plus Thul and the skeletal animals, made their way to the small roof-area on the top of the meeting-hall. It was usually quite windy there, so they never actually used it because it was a bother most of the time, but right now it didn't seem like a big issue.
"Alright, so what did you want to talk about?" Stahl asked with a light smile, already knowing the reason why Xenia asked him to talk outside, and Xenia slowly turned to him. "I… Want to say sorry… Th-There's a lot of stuff going on in my re-real life at the moment, but that doesn't excuse th-that I nearly had Eisen arrested…" She said with a bitter tone, and Stahl just responded with a long sigh.
"Listen, I'm going to tell you the truth, I'm hella pissed. But… It happened. Grampa told me not to be a bitch about it, so I won't be. You had your reasons as well. Anyway, let's just move on from that and have me learn some magic, alright?" Stahl suggested, and Xenia slowly nodded her head.
"Sure… Let's get back inside then… We'll start with magic-crafting skills, but for the rest, we should probably come back outside." The High-Elf explained calmly, before they made their way back inside after the short talk and sat down at the table.
"Let's start with enchanting. Right now you can only use basic elemental runes, meaning fire, water, wind, earth, light and dark, and can only make 'create' enchantments. So that's what we'll be doing, having you make 'Create' enchantments of different elements until you get the skill to rank 1." She started, and Stahl slowly nodded his head, taking the mythril needle that he was given into his hand and looking down at the flat crystal plate in front of him.
"There's some tools as well that you should probably use for now to get straight lines and proper circles." She suggested, handing him said tools, before Stahl did as Xenia was explaining to him.
She was basically rambling a lot about different things, but in the end, she manged to at least properly tell Stahl about the basics. Luckily she now had a bit of experience in teaching others because of Koro. That, mixed with the fact that she was feeling pretty awkward around Stahl because of everything, made it that she could keep her rambling to a minimum while telling him the maximum amount of needed information.
And so, Stahl learned the Enchanting skill and brought it to Rank 1 pretty swiftly. He had already heard about the mechanics of enchanting through his grandfather before, so it didn't take him all that long to get a hang of it in the end.
That meant that they soon moved onto Alchemy. And again, that wasn't much either, it really just meant that Stahl made a few large potion batches, and then soon reached Rank 1 in alchemy. He would work to rank Enchanting and Alchemy up again after he learned the other magic skills so that he would be able to learn Transmutation and Ability Enchanting as well, because that was something that his grandfather used quite a lot in all kinds of different items.
"Okay, so we're done with these two now. Next is actual magic. Do you know where Mana comes from?" Xenia asked, and Stahl just scratched the back of his neck. "From the core of our souls, right? Like, that's where the source of our mana is."
"That's true for us, but other than that, Mana is something that exists at all times at all places. It's basically an infinite energy that dwells everywhere, but it depends on the 'vessel' how much mana is actually present. Even regular animals have mana in their bodies, they just don't know how to use it. The biggest variations within the whole 'Magic' category is where the mana you use for magic comes from." She swiftly explained, but Stahl just looked at her confused.
"Doesn't it always take mana to use any type of magic?" He asked confused, and Xenia nodded her head. "Basically, that is true. Magic is taking the mana from our bodies to cause an effect. Sorcery does that by using a Magic Circle as a 'tool' that uses our mana to fuel itself. Technically, sorcery, as well as enchanting, cause their effect by taking mana from the environment. And then there are types of magic that use mana as a sort of 'offering'. That includes Miracles from priests, that exchange their mana for divine energy, Druidism, which exchanges mana for natural energy, and Witchcraft, which enchanges mana for World Energy. Well, world energy is used by a lot of different things, not just by witchcraft."
"Huh… Wait, do you also have a Priest skill?" Stahl asked confused, and Xenia immediately nodded her head. "Yes, I do. It's not as strong as for people with Religious occupations, but it lets me cast simple miracles. I have a priest skill to follow the God of Magic, and that simply allows me to strengthen my magic by mixing it with the divine energy I get through the blessings." She answered while Stahl listened curiously, although he was slowly facing a small issue.
"Then… Can I even learn a skill like that at the moment? Don't I need to visit a church for that?"
"Actually, you don't. It's the Pastor that usually bestows those skills, and there's a lot of them on this ship. For what you're going for, I recommend getting the skill from someone following the God of Skills." Xenia suggested, before Stahl slowly nodded his head. "Huh, that might be a good idea… Erm, but that's not the first thing we're doing now, right?" Stahl asked, and Xenia shook her head.
"Don't worry, we're not. First, you'll learn some mana-skills. Right now my suggestions are Mana Modelling, Mana Copy, Mana Search, Mana Double as well as Mana Doll. I'm guessing you have Mana Manipulation already, so it's just those five." The High-Elf explained to Stahl, who swiftly began to grin.
"I already have Mana Modelling! That's what I was doing when I was waiting for you all the other day." Stahl answered with a smile, before Xenia nodded her head slowly. "Right…" She muttered, feeling uncomfortable remembering what happened then, so Stahl swiftly moved on after noticing this.
"Anyway… So, what's Mana Copy?" He inquired curiously, before Xenia explained it to him. "Basically, it's just copying something with mana, that's about it. There's different ways to do it, though. You can for example just model something out of mana to look like something else like you do with Mana Modelling, or you pour mana into an object, fill it out everywhere, and then pull that mana out of that object while having it keep its 'structure', so that you can basically take over the shape of the object." She told him, so Stahl slowly smiled.
"Is that it? Well, I guess then I can just…" He muttered and placed his hand onto one of the books he got from Jyuuk the day before, using it as a reference to copy it in the second way that Xenia described to him, simply filling out every part of the book before pulling the mana back out of the book.
And just like that, Stahl had gained the Mana Copy skill. Using that skill, Stahl then copied his own body to the deepest extent that he could, as well as Thul and his skeletal animals. This continued repeatedly until Stahl's Mana Copy skill reached Rank 1, at which point, Xenia made him move onto the next skill.
"And now, create the copy of yourself and manipulate it to walk. And don't forget to put the clothes you copied on it. That should give you the Mana Double skill. At the beginning, it might seem a bit weird that it's a separate skill from the Mana Doll skill that you'll learn later, but at higher ranks, you'll notice a real difference between the two skills." She explained, and Stahl did as Xenia told him to immediately.
Over the past few days, that was really all he was doing. He was told something, and he did it. Sometimes he gave a funny, snarky remark back at them, but most of the time he simply did so, continued grinding the skill through repeated actions, and then moved on to the next skill. It would most likely pay off in the end, but for now, it was rather annoying that he had to grind these continuosly in such a boring manner. He would much prefer to be able to go out and actually use the skills in a constructive manner, although that wasn't possible considering that they were stuck on this ship at the moment.
"Alright, now just keep your mana double there at all times. Shouldn't take too much mana to keep it up and have it follow you." Xenia explained as she looked at the pure-white version of Stahl just mindlessly standing there, before she moved on.
"Now, do the same with one of your undead." She said with as smile, before Stahl sighed loudly, already creating the figure of Des.