So… I expected Mother to continue training me but aside from the usual, she’s really gotten into the girl side of training a lot.
That means teaching me on how to dress up, how to do my hair and even how to ‘flirt’.
She did ask me if I wanted to act like the ‘noble lady’ type,
That sounded interesting so I said that I wanted to try it.
I’m happy to say that I lasted for a week before I said hell no to that kind of training.
I had to be aware of how I walk, how I talk and even how I breathe. There were so many restrictions and so many subtle things I had to remember for a simple thing alone!
Even just talking to someone could have various different meanings depending on how I phrased it, where my eyes were looking, where my hands were placed, to what degree my chin was tilted, the angle of the fan I was carrying if I possessed one, how my hair was arranged and various other things.
Yeah, no way. Noble society can go dump itself somewhere else, preferably far, far away from me. I’ll just continue acting like I have, thank you very much.
Aside from that, Mother wanted to teach me about makeup as well but it turns out I wasn’t really good at it.
Mother then admitted it wasn’t really a bad thing since I was already beautiful to begin with, according to her at least.
She said I could always just get some girlfriends to do it for me in the future if I really needed to.
Mother also took the chance to help me upgrade my equipment, replacing my former wolf and bear armour with another one that was made with wyvern and dragon scales.
She also bought another dagger for me to replace the one I had broken, one that was made to be much better than my first one.
Initially, Mother also wanted to revamp my wardrobe but she decided against it in favour of wanting to bring me to shop for it myself. To say that she was looking forward to it was an understatement.
In addition to my physical training, I also continued with my magic training as well, but I found out that to grind tier two skills to tier three takes an ungodly amount of time.
Take my Mana Management and Umbramancy for example. I haven’t stopped using them for all these years and I am still stuck at tier two for each of them.
[Umbramancy: To gain proficiency, materialise the shadows and don yourself with darkness. (Progress to tier 3: 65%)]
[Mana Management: To gain proficiency, grow your internal mana pool, claim mastery over it and go beyond the limits of your magic. (Progress to tier 3: 48%)]
Only this level of proficiency after all these years… They really weren’t kidding when they said it will take years to even increase in proficiency for them…
Mana Management became especially difficult to increase my proficiency in, as evident by the fact that my Umbramancy had already overtaken it despite having a late start.
On the other hand…
[Electromancy: To gain proficiency, obtain mastery over the energies of your own body and direct them elsewhere. (Progress to tier 2: 88%)]
Electromancy is coming along nicely, helped by the fact that I understood electricity from my time in school.
A new spell I learnt for this magic is [Static Bolt], a spell that is similar to [Static Shock] where it paralyses an enemy for a short time except this spell uses a electrical bolt that I fire out to affect them. The downside is that this requires a longer casting time and it can be dodged if the opponent is fast enough.
[Lumenmancy: To gain proficiency, solidify the light and bend its forms to your will. (Progress to tier 2: 62%)]
Aside from [Spotlight] that creates a light ball that illuminates an area, I have also learned [Light Flash] which functions in a rather similar way as compared to [Darkness Paranoia].
[Darkness Paranoia] blinds my target with darkness and also makes them more susceptible to fear.
Similarly, [Light Flash] also blinds my target but through using light to obstruct their vision. It might sound like the darkness version is better but the light one has two very nice effects that I can use.
The first is that I can intensify the light used to blind the target to damage their sight in the long term especially if they are sensitive to light. The other is more subtle where instead of outright blinding them, I can manipulate the light particles to create blind spots in their vision temporarily.
In a way, it can be used more subtly than its darkness counterpart, ironically.
But putting those aside, I decided to ask Mother to teach me magic as well, specifically the ones that I did not choose during the character creation.
“Ara, ara? As expected of my little one! Which magic shall we start off with first?” Mother asked, sitting me down sideways on her lap.
Just a quick reminder that I’m already the size of a sixteen year old but Mother still likes to spoil me like I’m a child.
I considered for a moment, “I suppose the one with quite a lot of utility, Pyromancy?”
Yes, yes, very cliche. But fire is a very useful tool in a lot of situations. That is not to say the other elements are less useful since I’ll also be learning them eventually.
“Ufufufu~ That is quite easy~ You already know how to turn your mana into other elements, so first do the same except change it to fire.”
“Unn… Mother said this would be quite hard as compared to altering the mana inside a Mana Crystal, right?”
Mother patted my head, “That is correct~ Which is why most mages don’t learn multiple elements and instead, devote their lives to learning only one or just a handful of them. For my little one to already have a grasp of multiple forms of magic despite being so young, it’s proof that my child is a genius!”
Well, not really since I simply bought my first tier using the character creation points back then… Though I decided against telling Mother about that.
She then stretched out her hand and lifted a single finger, materialising a small flame on top of it.
“My child can first try projecting your mana out like this and change it to fire~”
“Umm… Shouldn’t we be doing this outside then? I don’t want to accidentally burn the house down after all…”
“Ufufufu~ No need to worry my sweet child~ Mother is here to prevent such a thing from happening so you don’t need to worry!”
Well, if she says so…
I directed my concentration within myself to find my mana so I can manipulate it.
Thankfully, my proficiency in Mana Management helped quite a bit and I was able to direct it quite easily as compared to the first time I tried.
Stretching out my hand, I directed a small part of it towards my fingertip and tried to imagine it changing into a small flame.
I felt my mana squeeze itself out of my finger and I stared at my fingertip to see… Absolutely nothing happening.
“Ufufufu~ Just imagining the flame is not enough, my little one. To change your own mana into the element, you must also keep in mind the properties of said element. For example, fire burns and has heat, so imagine the flame while also keeping in mind how hot the flame is at the same time~”
Ugh… This is harder than I thought. I’m at least thankful I didn’t have to do this for Lumenmancy and Umbramancy, how the hell was I supposed to imagine how darkness and light feels like?
I tried again, this time keeping Mother’s advice in mind by thinking about the fire.
I first started out with imagining the roaring flames of a bonfire but quickly shredded that image from my mind, I did not want to create that big of a flame after all.
Instead, I went with the image of a candle flame, imagining my hands cupping over it and feeling the heat that radiated out from said flame.
While holding on to that image, I manipulated my mana at the same time, only to start losing my concentration on holding that candle flame image.
Ok, this is way harder than I thought this would be. It feels like I needed to split my mind just to do this… No wonder it’s considered exceptional for normal children to learn magic and why most mages would be content to just stick to one type of magic…
Well, too bad, I’m not a normal child and neither am I most mages.
I tried again, this time directing more of my concentration in maintaining that candle flame image.
Surprisingly, it was easier this time and I managed to hold that image even as I was pushing out my mana and changing it to the fire element.
Why did it suddenly become easier?
Ah… It took me a while but I realised what was happening… Thank you, [Machine Learning].
Honestly, I didn’t think it would work this way either but I’m definitely not complaining.
Soon enough, a small flame appeared on my fingertip as big as I had imagined a candle flame to be.
“Ahhh! Well done my child!! Mama is so proud of you!!” Mother squealed, hugging me to her chest.
Damn, that boon is so cheat… I think with this I should be able to learn the other basic elements quickly too.
Alright then! Time to learn all the magic!