After meeting the two, he leisurely went back to his house. On the way back, he gave it a deeper thought. What did he want to do for the future?
He didn't want to stay in Solhaven for long because it just had bad memories left for him. All he remembered was the amount of grimy work he had to do just to stay alive. At least he had Daphne accompanying him to make it worth it, but now she was gone too. With that, there wasn't anything holding him back in the city.
Along with that, he needed some friends in his life. Having no social interaction sometimes made his life unbearable. He wanted to actually talk to people his age and make friends that he could enjoy with. He had none of that here at Solhaven.
He got back to his house and laid on his bed. He liked the idea of finally leaving the city he was in and exploring the bigger world outside. He thought about it and decided. He would go to Eldridge and join an Aura Knight Academy there.
He got up and brought the spell book from his dimensional ring. He had thought enough and had to go back to work. He had a lot to learn before he could even consider leaving the city.
He had around 5 more months before he had to get to Eldridge. That was when they started the admissions for any Aura Knight or Magic School anywhere in the empire. So he was planning on growing in strength in time. He was only going to focus on training his magic.
If he was a proper 3rd Circle Mage who could hold his own by the time he got to Eldridge, then he would be able to defend himself in the bigger city of Eldridge. Even though 3rd Circle Mages or Aura Circles wouldn't be that commonplace, there would be a lot more of them than in Solhaven. In fact, there were more than a hundred times the number as in Solhaven.
With several dozens of 4th Circle Mages and hundreds of 3rd Circle people that could all see through him, he would have to be careful. If he was trained properly though, he would be able to hide himself. He knew that the stronger the person was, the stronger their perception. A person who was strong enough might be able to see through him and see that he was a mage. It was helpful that his aura automatically made everyone consider that he was not a mage, but if people knew that he was both, then his life would become harder.
The key to disguising his identity was learning the spell in front of him. He took out the spell book and started reading it. He read through the entire book a single time and then read it again to make sure he understood it properly.
After doing that, he went to the training room and started practicing the spell. Somewhere in his mind, he hoped that the training room would also somehow provide a silhouette that showed him how to execute the spell he was learning, but that was asking for too much. At least it gave him a completely empty room with a single large mirror to practice.
He realized that the mirror appeared because he innately thought that the spell was solely to disguise himself, but the spell had a lot more functionality than that. It could also be used to disguise objects like the mage did to everything in the cave. As he was thinking that, a table appeared in front of him. On the table was a single object.
The object was a single chess piece. He walked forward and picked it up. He saw that the piece, a king, was made out of wood. He thought about what the book said.
The spell was using magic to mask the actual appearance of the object and replace it with another one that fooled the eyes of the person. He wasn't changing the actual object at all. He was only using magic to trick the person into seeing something else. If that person touched the object, they would quickly feel the real nature and the magic would be dispelled.
To achieve the level to fool real mages, he would have to use magic subtly so that even people who used magic to see through it wouldn't be able to notice that magic was used to tamper with the object.
The issue was that using magic subtly was incredibly difficult. It was what made the spell so hard to learn. He tried it and found out the difficulty level firsthand. The easiest part about learning the spell was masking the object with a layer of magic.
He quickly changed the king to look like a queen. It was very easy for him because of his mastery of magic. He was very good at controlling it because of how his body welcomed it. However, after that, he had to try masking the use of magic. That was difficult.
He knew whether he did a good job by looking at it himself. If he could see through it, he assumed that everyone stronger than him or as strong as him could as well. That would mean that it was a failure.
He sighed and tried again. Compared to every other spell that he learned, this was the hardest. Even the 3rd Circle Spell was a lot easier to learn than this one. And he hadn't even gotten past the novice stage for that.
After the entire day, he made barely any progress. He simply couldn't figure it out in a single day. He sighed and stopped training in it. He still had other things to do. He decided to train the rest of his spells since he was already in the training room.
For the rest of the night, he trained in the Shadowbind bolt. He picked that spell because of how much he liked it compared to the Soul Fire Burst. The Soul Fire Burst to him was a less useful spell to learn compared to something that would restrict his enemies' movements.
If he could do that, then he was more likely to survive the fight. If he ever faced a stronger opponent, then he would have to be able to run away. The Shadowbind bolt would be enough of an annoyance to his enemies to help him run away.
Compared to that, the Soul Fire Burst would only help him defeat the enemies that were on the same level as him. It was still important, but he put it on a lower scale than the other spells.
The entire night passed and he switched over to the next spell - the Intermediate Arcane Shield. Another few hours passed and he switched to the Soul Fire Burst. He kept switching the spells and trained in them without actually taking a rest. He was starting to just dive into training instead of thinking about giving his body a rest.
As he was doing this, he suddenly realized something. It had been two days since he threw in the Beast Core in his mind. What happened to it?
