A blinding flash of light later, I appeared back in my room. I could see that much time had passed. Mother and father would surely be worried about me.
After contemplating for some time, I decided to open the door and leave my room. But before that, I had to change my clothes to precisely the same as the previous ones. Else, from my current situation of clothes, they would surely be overly worried.
As soon as I opened my door, what greeted me was the shocked faces of the maids. They dropped the things in their hand and screamed, "Young master is back!".
Sometime later.
I was now sitting in a room with my father, mother and even grandfather present. I couldn't see little Sophia as she might have been sleeping as this was late at night.
"Son, are you alright?" my parents asked me worriedly.
"Yes, mom and dad. I am completely fine."
"Do you remember anything that happened, kiddo?" my grandfather asked.
"No, grandpa. When I was experimenting with alchemy, I suddenly lost consciousness. And when I woke up, I found myself back in my room. Only after Emily told me, I realised I had disappeared, and many days had passed since then."
I could see father and grandfather discussing something mentally. I could feel the tiny ripples of mana that were fluctuating between both. Mother was sitting beside me, gently patting my head.
After a bit while, father told me to go to sleep and assigned me a shadow guard.
I went back to my room and started meditating. I could now feel the mana particles in the whole Zephyr family estate in detail and could feel the existence of it beyond it.
If I could adequately refine my control over my soul power, I could even feel the whole universe. But right now, I was only able to use a small part of its power, and the rest of it was dormant.
Right now, I am just a novice Mage, and the system recognised my profession as a mage due to my high soul power. But I wanted to follow the path of both a Mage and a Knight.
Mage and Knight followed a different type of path after they made their core.
A mage would accumulate soul power to an extent and use it to inscribe a spell in a ring around their core. They can then use this spell as their innate spell without any chanting. We can then call them a first circle or first ring mage, and they become Rank 2: Apprentice or a [F] ranked individual. The better the spell inscribed, the better power a mage can exert in that rank. The mage then would have to repeat the process until he reached nine rings. After that, the path would differ slightly.
A Knight, on the other hand, would have to make stars around his core with his vitality. We call them a one star Knight and they become a Rank 2: Apprentice or a [F] ranked individual. They would have to train and increase his vitality and repeat the process to make cores. During a fight, the Knight can slowly release the accumulated mana and vitality in his stars to give a continuous boost in strength and stamina. Or they can suddenly burst out all the mana and vitality to give an ultimate blow to the enemy. The Knight can have a maximum of nine stars. After which, like mages, their path would start to differ.
People in this world generally follow only one path, but there are many talented individuals that follow both ways.
For me to progress as a mage, I would have to create a ring on every core that I had. Fortunately, I had an immense accumulation of spells of every kind from my master's memory.
I started the process of inscribing perfect first-ring spells for each affinity core. They were:
Fireball for Fire,
Waterball for Water,
Growth for Nature,
Wind blades for Wind,
Quake for Earth,
Thunderbolt for Lightning,
Magnetize for Metal,
Ice wall for Ice,
Primary Heal for Light,
Shadow Step for Dark,
Warp for Space,
Slow for Time, and
Glimpse for Destiny.
System show my Status.
[Ding! Showing Status.]
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Name: Ethan Zephyr
Age: 5
Rank: Apprentice [F]
Strength: E+
Agility: E+
Stamina: E-
Spirit: A+
Mana: D+
Luck: F-
Charm: B+
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Skills: Ancient Core Creation, Basic Sword Art, Basic Mana Manipulation, Basic Spells.
Profession: Mage(1 Ring)
Storage: 100 Cubic metres
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I still had more than enough soul power left but did not want to alert anyone with the mana disturbance. So, I kept the plan of increasing my spells for later and went to sleep.