"Yes my lord." Rudolf, an old butler that served previous head of house Astem, bowed, moved his gray hair from his eyes and turned around to share the information with his subordinates. Although old, Rudolf is still strong in his late sixties and his head is clear and loyal. When he was a kid, during small skirmish between lower nobles, previous head of house took him in and trained him as a great butler. Now, he is direct subordinate of house head and is keeping order in manor while head keeps order in land.

Rudolf walked around looked at beautiful pictures adorning the walls in manor and spread the word of feast.

House Astem isn't big by any means, however, they are notorious for their teaching systems. They would take orphans, teach them swordsmanship or magic and hire them in small but powerful army house has. Orphan girls would be taught housework and they would often marry other adopted orphans.

The house refused to take higher noble rank, instead they asked for a favour from king if Astem house ever needs it.

Orphid town, the small town house Astem resides in, is placed between angry river on south and cold forest on the north. A week of walking towards west would bring you to ocean and Teardrop town.

Being only viscount house, they didn't have much political power in the kingdom but their well trained personnel made Astem's voice heard, making higher ranked nobles jealous and often trying to force mere viscount to fail.

Now to return to the story...

"No no no! Draw a circle starting from the bottom then swipe up when you return to starting point. How can you keep forgetting such easy spell diagram?" Woman with wrinkles on her forehead put her hands on the sides of head. With her messy clothes she can't be mistaken for anyone but a mage. Mages don't keep much attention to their appearances, all they want to do is hole themselves up in some big room and research magic. The bags under eyes of this mage prove that she is staying awake during nights to make up for time lost while teaching a son of viscount house that has no chance to become next head. But, she needs money to buy books,paper, ingredients for potions and scroll creation.

"I know I said I will learn magic, but do I really need water spells? Defensive ones at that?" Young boy protested against things old hag is teaching him. When his father said that he will need to become more knowledgeable about magic, boy thought he will only read books about magic theory and occasionally spending his mana using basic offensive spells to increase his mana reserves, not learning every spell.

"You want to increase your mana reserves, no?" She sat on the ground drawing water shield diagram in the dust. The blue gem on her ring glowed with every movement leaving traces of light in air.

"Correct. I am using bow and mana arrows as my weapon."

"Then shut up and practice. The harder and more mixed spells are, they take more mana, thus you become empty sooner. You need sleep for hunting so you can't be spending nights firing arrows to empty yourself, no? Look at the time. Dinner will be done soon. Go wash that stink of yourself."

"Finally... Yes madam."

Mage stood up, she didn't bother dusting herself off as she walked away. The boy went towards room only his family uses for bathing.

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Not much stuff happened in this chapter. Perhaps I focused too much on explaining?