Lucan's POV
I was staring at the flame in the palm of my hand as I reminisced about the first time I had entered that dark alleyway into the market. It was hard to believe that it had already been three years since I shook that man's hand.
It has been a whole of five years since I was 'reborn' into this world. The flame had grown much stronger and brighter since the first time, it was hotter and stronger but the feeling of frustration over the last few years had increasingly been growing on me. I had been giving all my effort and energy to mastering and controlling my body and my powers but I was always hitting the same roadblock and that hadn't changed in the past few years.
I was still only able to use the mana that this body was born with and no matter how hard I tried I was never able to use the full potential of the powers that Ambrose had shown me. No matter how hard I tried, I was never able to absorb mana from the surroundings into my body consciously. Even when I used up all the mana in my body while training, my body would unconsciously regenerate that mana and only to the same amount that I had, It was also a very time-consuming process and the frustration of my inability was adding to my other problems.
The only upside was that I had achieved a fair hold on the four basic forms of magic that Ambrose had shown me, especially fire. I had thought being able to use the basic forms would be an even bigger challenge but it seems that I had an inherent advantage in terms of knowledge about what the forms of magic are made of, at least scientifically. I had found that visualization and understanding of why, how and what exactly the forms are, greatly helped and seriously accelerated my growth in becoming stronger.
For example, I knew that fire was nothing but a concentrated form of energy that was released in the form of heat, water was nothing but an atom of hydrogen and two atoms of oxygen that had bonded together. Earth was an amalgamation of metals, soil and organic matter all of which could be visualized and manipulated if you know what you are thinking about and finally lightning was very similar in thinking to lightning where the release of energy and power is done through light and electricity.
It might sound counterintuitive to think but I was now sure that magic was the very thing that was holding this civilization. The very existence of magic is something so divine that the curiosity for knowledge was an afterthought. This created a paradox as the knowledge they could have gained would have aided them in discovering new magical capabilities that they could have never have imagined before. I now knew that my knowledge would be my greatest weapon and preserving and using it will get me a step closer to my goal.
I crushed the flame in my hand into nothingness and looked at the orchard in front of me, it had grown bigger but not by much, a single man couldn't start a whole farm after all. My business with had been going well if that's what you could call selling sugar to a criminal a business. Even over the years of our dealings, I was never able to gauge his entire character, to this day all I had seen was his eyes and face through his translucent mask. I didn't even know his name, I resorted to calling him snake, a quite apt nickname if I do say so myself.
The first two years of selling to him were smooth, with little interaction besides the time I had to deliver the supply to him every few weeks. He was always prying and trying to get under my skin but I knew that I had to keep my nerve, but over the last year things have changed drastically, he keeps asking for an increase in the supply and his taunts have now become threats. There is not a single time he would not pester and threaten me for my sugar making secrets. The snake was biding its time in its burrow but I didn't know how much longer I had until he bore his fangs at me but I knew it would be soon.
I had noticed the bulky man who had greeted me at the entrance that day in the market following me out after I had delivered the supply. Fortunately, I was able to get away quite quickly every time. Things were starting to get dangerous and I knew that I had to cut things off soon. I looked at the tree by the river where I had buried all the money I had made over the last three years. The amount was nothing to scoff at, I now had enough money to take both me and Miriam far away from the slums and live a comfortable life for a few months. I was now only waiting for the right opportunity and information to learn about the world outside the slums before leaving for good. I also need to find a way to explain how I got this much money to Miriam without sounding suspicious.
Speaking Of Miriam, something about her had been nagging me for the past few months. She was acting very weirdly at times, she would spend a much more considerable amount of time at her job than normal and she tries to distance herself from me. Every so often I see flashes of pain and sadness in her eyes...like a glooming threat was approaching.
All these frustrations were gnawing at me and I couldn't help but feel a sense of dread over the coming future. It was just an irrational emotion but somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that I was at a watershed. There were so many worrying things happening at once that I felt that the dam was about to break soon enough and it would have disastrous consequences.
As a looming sense of unease filled me I got up and headed towards my home, along the way I stopped outside the tavern in the slums, if you could call it that, it was an open space with a counter in the corner with a tiny kitchen attached to it. The bread was cheap here and I had to grab something to eat because Miriam was probably not going to be home again tonight. I have said this in the past as well but an advantage of being in the slums was that even taverns were not off-limits to anyone willing to pay. Of course, I wasn't interested in alcohol though I had given it a taste last month and hated it.
I paid the barkeep the money and took the loaf of bread and a soup to dip it in to make it soft and edible. I sat down on the floor near a corner of the open area and started eating. The slums are a gloomy and depressing place but the tavern is the one area where the worries of the world are thrown away, mostly due to them drowning in alcohol. People were merry and uncaring, laughing in one corner while fighting in another.
I heard a group of people near me discuss something and they seemed quite interested in it.
"I heard some noble's daughter is going to visit the slums tomorrow, she is visiting to check on the famine that is happening in the dukedom" one of the people said.
"Hmph! She is probably just coming here to pretend that she cares about us...do you really think that a noble like her will ever be interested in the lives of bottom-feeders like us, especially the Duke's daughter" another one said.
Their words caught my attention, the famine had been devastating but to the slum dwellers, things like this was an often occurrence every few years or so. It seems that the duke's daughter will be visiting, nothing of that sort had happened in the time I had been here and I still didn't know much about the outside world due to lack of information and education. It will probably be a good idea to be present at her visit...who knows what could come of it.
I got up from my spot and headed home, the conversation I had just heard being replayed in my mind while the looming sense of dread that I had been feeling was getting stronger in another corner of my mind. I felt a sense of deja vu about what I had heard. There was an eerie sense of familiarity I had about the situation unfolding before me...A famine, the duke's daughter visiting. It felt like I had seen something like this before. My heartbeat was rising steadily as a hopeful thought entered my mind but I immediately dismissed it, but a seed of hope had already been planted and as I walked home with both a sense of dread and excitement filling me at the same time, my thoughts escaped from my mouth as I whispered to myself.
"What if...."