"Ha, Ha, we're partners then. lets shake on it."
Marsha spit in her right hand and reached out towards Nick for him to shake it.
(Is she serious? Man, that's gross.)
"Ahhh...Marsha, no offense but I don't like to touch people so lets not do a handshake."
Marsha wasn't please at hearing that.
"What kind of man are you? Everyone knows that handshakes are necessary when making a deal and doing business."
It was Nick's turn to be displeased.
"I don't care what 'everyone' else knows. Who even spits in their hand and then expects someone else to shake it? Where were you raised, a farm?"
Marsha looked shocked for a moment.
"My older brother told me that this was how real men did hand shakes and I had to do it if I wanted to do business with men. Do you mean to tell me that he was lying?"
Nick didn't know what to say.
"..."
(It seems that this woman is missing some common sense...)
"Marsha I've already agreed, just give me the translation and everything will be settled."
Marsha nodded with some embarrassment on her face. She took a copy of the translation out of her backpack and gave it to Nick.
(That definitely proves that she had planned for this scenario. Note to self, in the future, never assume a meeting with another Magician is just a friendly get together to exchange ideas. Hmph, plotting against me, Marsha I'll excuse you this once but if you do it again, I promise that I'll rip you apart someday.)
Because of his harsh upbringing, Nick detested when people made schemes with him as the target instead of just being straight with him. He would definitely not tolerate the behavior from anyone going forward. Nick's face became visibly displeased. Marsha noticed this and winked at him.
"My bad for concealing my real intentions. I just didn't know if you'd agree If I made the request over the phone."
Nick's face returned to a plain expression after hearing Marsha acknowledge her actions.
"I understand your actions but that doesn't mean that I like them. If you ever do that again, just do both of us a favor and erase my number from your phone."
Marsha looked at Nick seriously for a few seconds and said:
"...Okay I get it. You look simple but I can tell that you're a super cold guy. I can't really tell whether that's a good or bad thing."
Nick replied:
"I don't care. If that's all then we should end our meeting now, I have other things to do. As for the translation, I'll need a few months to make a new magic scroll based on the them. I'll call you when It's ready. That'll probably be around the time of the end of year exam. That's okay with you, right?"
Marsha seemed unbothered by Nick's timeline, she carefreely said:
"Kay, Kay. That's fine."
Nick was internally glad that she didn't seem to be in a rush.
"Oh, by the way, I want to ask you a question. With how expensive magic spells seem to be, how is it that people like me who are on scholarship afford to get spells, it seems unlikely that they would be able to? Since the end of year exam is a survival challenge, wouldn't that be an obvious problem?"
Marsha thought for a while and then answered Nick's question:
"It's not like there are absolutely no way for poor students to afford spells. You can complete missions given by the academy at the Mission Hall to gain school credits that can easily be exchanged for spells. You can also choose to become the disciple of an instructor; once you become a Regular Magician, getting a hold of low tier spells is as easy as taking a deuce so many Apprentice Magicians become disciples and in exchange for some assistance, these instructors give them spells that are in their collection. While the latter seems normal and okay, the world of Magicians is often cruel and many instructors use the arrangement to take advantage of students. Many students end up being used as lab rats and there are a lot of females that..."
Marsha suddenly stopped speaking but Nick could guess what she was going to say so he spoke instead:
"Alright, I'm ready to leave. How about you?"
Marsha placed her things back into her backpack and got up from her seat. Nick and Marsha left the library and separated, walking towards their dorms but Nick stopped halfway from the library and waited another hour. Nick then returned to the library and returned the book, Theory of Meditation, back to librarian Jack. Jack nodded his head and spoke:
"You left without returning the book and then came back so that your little friend wouldn't know what you were reading, right? That's very smart kid. Let me give you some unsolicited advice, although, it doesn't seem like you need it but I'm old so I'm going to say it anyway. If you want to live long enough to become a powerful Magician or anything else that you'd like to be, don't trust anyone that you didn't raise or bring back from the dead, do you understand?"
Nick was a little caught off guard by Jack's advice but he knew what Jack was saying so he replied:
"Thank you for the kind advice Mr. Jack. Can I borrow a book on the basics of modifying laws?"
Jack was pleased to see that his advice did not fall on deaf ears. He waved his hands and a book appeared on his desk. He handed the book to Nick and waved him off. Nick looked at the book and the title read, "All Laws Are Not Made Equal". Nick left he library and returned to his dorm room. Nick didn't waste any time because the end of year exam was in two months. Nick sat at his desk with his new book at around 6 pm and kept reading until 10 pm. He took a one hour break and took about one hour to practice some math problems from his text books. All along, he had just been reading math texts but now he decided that he needed to put major emphasis on actually solving problems, after all, math is a problem solving art. After absorbing enough theory, he decided that the next logical steps would be to focus on pre-calculus problems to really build a foundation for the application of his mathematics. Since the mid year exam, Nick has learnt a lot and by this time he feels that his first three original spells were just a happy accident. To be honest, by now he can see that they were shabbily made and if put up against an experienced Magician, even if that Magician did not know anything about rule magic, they would find a way to overcome or break his spells. Nick's intuition had been whispering to him since he left the dean's office that there were some problems with his spells and so he wanted to create better spells and maybe improve the ones he had, but for right now, his foundation laws took precedent.
After an hour of practicing math, Nick closed his eyes and begun to chant his meditation. His consciousness entered his mindscape and he watched the golden figure of light walk endlessly along the slightly cracked and crumbling road under his feet. Nick watched seemingly for a long time until his consciousness was forcibly pushed out of his mindscape. Nick felt light headed and he could barely stand.
(It seems that when I reach a certain point of mental exhaustion, my consciousness will leave the mindscape on its own.)
Nick slowly got up from his chair and walked to his bed and collapsed on it. Nick fell into a deep sleep for hours, even his alarm did not wake him. When he did wake up the time was 11 am and he felt very hungry. Nick got up despite the pain and sadness he felt; he realized a long time ago that pain and a feeling of sadness was commonplace when you spent all your time improving yourself so he didn't mind it too much, instead, he took it as a sign that he was making progress down his path of life. Nick did his usual reps of pushups, showered and went to the cafeteria for breakfast. When he finished eating, Nick bought snacks at the convenience store and holed himself up in his room for the next two weeks reading his books, doing his pushups and practicing writing scrolls. Nick realized that most of his time was spent doing the same thing until he reached some sort of growth. the process was boring, depressing and pain filled but he knew that the results would be worth it, so he persevered through his feelings of doubt, sadness and pain.
(Nothing's going to stop my progress, nothing.)
While getting up another morning, this thought permeated his mind as a few tears rolled down his red and blood-shot eyes. Nick once again did his pushups, showered, ate and read the book that he received from the library. At around 12 pm, Nick finally finished the book.
(Alright, I think I feel confident enough to start trying to modify the Laws of Syracuse, at least enough for a good start on my journey.)
First Nick needed to translate the Laws of Syracuse from Valteese into Nickel, his own language. The Laws of Syracuse was about five textbook pages worth of symbols so Nick picked up his notebook and started making translations slowly. Ever since he had his encounter with Rules, he was able to recall Nickel without much problem, although, he had trouble speaking it out loud, writing it was fairly easy. The real problem was that translating Valteese into a another language was always difficult because the magical meaning imbued into the laws had to be reinterpreted precisely in the other language and that required some experience. Nick mostly stayed in his room for the next three weeks just working on the translation alone. He only left his room sometimes to get food but did not go anywhere else. When he wrote the last symbol of the translated version, Nick felt so mentally drained that he didn't have time to get into his bed before he fell into a deep sleep at his desk.
When he woke up ten hours later Nick lifted up a set of documents glistening with a dull grey light.
"Translation completed."