Before returning from the mythic sanctuary, I went through a thorough inspection of its masking formation, which allowed it to remain completely shrouded in fog. In my inspection, I found it implemented more than just fog, however. Light played a significant role in how the illusory effect worked, although that was not my primary concern at the time.

Observing the fog-emitting formation allowed me to learn more about how to shape the fine mist particles that enshrouded the monument. The process was similar to ice shaping, with even less chance of harming myself. Like ice, it too infused water with a reverse heat weave and stitched it into a complex pattern. Surprisingly, it was even more intricate than ice shaping, perhaps only because I was not proficient at it yet.

But I rather liked the process of fine-tuning the weave. After all, fogs were hardly useful. Maybe it was the novelty of solving the problem, but it prepared me for advanced weavings.

The theory behind it was rather simple, essentially replicating how fog was actually formed. If examined more closely, fog was nothing but microscopic droplets of water, perhaps a thinner form of cloud. Now clouds, those would be slightly more complicated and a whole lot more dangerous, considering they were likely the first step towards shaping lightning.

Thin layers of fog wrapped around me as I refined the weave. Eran practised on my left. His father, Dalin Stonecutter, now a freshly advanced prestigious-class augmentor, helped with his form.

Behind them, Priam and Aleya sparred. The siblings attended more practice sessions these days than they missed. The demon incursion was a great motivator, it appeared. And I believed the Magistratus, although strict, was not wholly opposed to them training under others who had surpassed him in class.

Now at Noble class, Priam was matching well with his sister. Aleya had had a few days after the storm to get accustomed to her Stormguard set, but she was still far from matching the fidelity of a natural speedster. Unlike me, she could not channel wind or kinetic force to complement her speed.

Metal clangs rang high in the air as their figures blurred through the expanse of the snow-covered field. However, their clash was insignificant compared to the duel between Father and Delric.

They had been at it since we began, and the sunlight was barely lingering on the horizon now.

Splitting my focus, I was mostly observing their sparring, and I would say Delric's situation was no better than mine. He had missed several days of practice since the solstice and seemed to be exerting his utmost effort to compensate for that. Yet he appeared to be managing worse as time went on.

After assisting with my aura forging, Father spent most of his time sparring with him in the morning and the entirety of the afternoon session, whereas the remainder of my sword training was still limited to cutting leaves from trees.

I had already stripped all the withered leaves from the old oak in our yard and from a few of the stonecutters' as well. The improvements now were far more noticeable, though I still had not yet managed to form a solid aura blade. My manifestation could barely contend with the most common sword, and that only for a couple of blows.

After a few hacks and slashes, my aura lacked sufficient sharpness to even chop a leaf. I knew I would fare better once I implemented Weight into it. As for when Father was going to show me how, I did not know.

Thankfully, my sword sense had grown remarkably. I could now keep up in an entire spar, and not just when I was fighting myself. Even now, I could glimpse the complicated lines of strings surrounding Father and Delric, battling among themselves before their swords met. Most often, I could anticipate their moves a blink of an eye early. But of course, there were unforeseen moments when Father broke through the patterns I could perceive to manifest something beyond my sword sense to visualise.

[Way of Water Shaping VI (500/500) is complete.]

[Unable to invest the points into Arcane as your greater attribute has reached the second threshold. 8 attribute points have been transferred into unallocated points.]

Another good thing about fog shaping was that it counted mostly towards Water Shaping.

The prompt indicated that I had had enough fun with fogs. Now it was time to put myself through the final grim activity for the day.

Jumping to my feet, I joined Father for an intensive sparring session. I put everything into the next half an hour, be it swordsmanship, shaping, or rune imprint, channelling my abilities to the limit. There was a time for measured practice, which mostly involved learning the skills, but now it was time to test what I had learned and go a step beyond in mastery.

Also, it was an utter thrill, the speed at which I drove my body, the wind kissing fiercely as my blade cut through it, while my mind was wholly occupied in assessing, analysing, and deciding how to attack and defend myself.

Of course, it would not be fun at all if Father put his all into dismissing me. But he was a good teacher. He might not have been able to explain things like Mum, but he seemed entirely aware of what I required to improve. He did thrash any of the foolish moves I made, but often he let me hit him, practically beating the good habits into my bones and muscles.

By the end, much of the snow-filled field had crumbled, ice drying out, various deep scars marking the crusty surface of the earth. I, too, collapsed into a sitting position and used the last of my power to stitch back the cracks we had left with earth shaping. Thankfully, it was only an empty field, or else the atrocities we could have accomplished would have been raised to another class.

Father gave me a few minutes to recover my breathing, and positioned before me for the second session of Aura Forging of the day. A week into the new practice, I could now endure sword forging for two fifteen-minute sessions and still have some strength left to complete other tasks.

It was remarkable that I managed such a marginal improvement in aura with so little practice. Now, the light brush of Father's sword aura barely affected me. He had to exert a bit more of his mastery for the practice to be worthwhile.

"What are you doing?" Priam's voice sounded from behind me, followed by a brisk wind carrying his lithe body. "Aura training? Can I try?"

He looked between me and Father tentatively. Eran was too reticent to ask anything of Father, even though he was more of an apprentice to him than myself. Decidedly, Priam had no such problem, always blunt with his tongue.

Before Father responded, his sister landed beside him, pulling his arm.

"Priam, stop bothering Sir Jinn and Arilyn," she scolded. "Do you know how much Will and concentration is required to even attempt what they're practising?"

"Will?" The boy snickered at his elder sister. "That might be a problem for you." He flexed his biceps. "I am brimming with Will."

Alaya snorted. "You think so?" Her eyes shifted towards me. "Even I am unsure if I could endure what Arilyn is experiencing right now."

"Now you're just embarrassing the family name," Priam clicked his tongue.

She glared at him.

"Will is a necessity for aura skills," Father said before the siblings fell into another fit. "But you need substantial aura strength to begin your aura forging."

Aleya nodded earnestly. "I have seen the centurions practise like this, though far more intensely. Even standing a dozen paces away from them felt like standing on a field of landmines."

"It can be like that if they go wild with their aura," Father said, "and militant officers are not exactly known for being level-headed. I see they did not help you much with Aura."

Aleya's eyes widened as she looked down. "I don't think I have—"

"You have sufficient to begin aura forging," Father said, brightening her expression. "What I am training Arilyn with is the method chosen for a swordsman. It might not be suited for your path. Your gift is related to perception, yes?"

Alaya nodded.

"Have you begun some perception training with your aura?"

"Only the aura sensing during meditation."

Even I went through something like that in the morning. Sword forging was good and all, but you needed to have a swift aura sense to complement it. Ability-wise, I could cheat with Fractal Sight, but it was a fun practice, trying to imbue aura into my Influence. The final goal was to form an aura radar that could sweep through areas without needing me to go in person. I reckoned Fabled Class had an ability like that.

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"That's indeed a helpful form to build a solid foundation," Father agreed. "But getting elementary mastery makes the form lose all purpose. To train your aura perception, you must advance several realms beyond that. Come early tomorrow. I believe I can offer you some guidance."

"Really?" Aleya beamed. "Thank you."

"What about me?" Priam said, pointing a finger at himself.

Father was about to respond, but turned his head, where he spotted a couple of figures striding towards our home.

The leading man frowned upon finding us, then nodded as a look of recognition dawned on his face. A tallish figure with glossy blond hair pinned to his scalp, as though some luminescent ointment had been applied to it. He wore a lavish white trench coat and, combined with his square jaw and blue eyes, presented the perfect image of a patrician lord. The other person beside him maintained a respectful distance, his posture slightly slumped as though he were there to serve.

"City folks keep streaming into the town," Alaya muttered.

"Who's that?" I asked Father.

"Quintus Septimus," Father said. "He was the commander of the expedition into the mountains. I think his family runs the Serpent's Spite Guild."

I tilted my head. "Why is he walking towards our home?"

Father shrugged, unconcerned, and made sure I focused on the training at hand.

Quintus Septimus was prestigious-class, and although he possessed a formidable aura, it was nothing compared to Mother's. He seemed likely to be on official business, perhaps to discuss Diana's recruitment into the guild. Diana's mother did not understand anything about it, and although the wealth the guild offered her seemed lucrative, she was astute enough to wait out the offer. From the last discussion she had with Mum, I feared she had left most of the decision-making to her. After all, Mum was Diana's mentor.

In a few more minutes, my aura forging was finished, and my curiosity got the better of me as I flew towards home. But it seemed Quintus Septimus had finished his business rather quickly. His gaze darted to my darting figure in the air as he exited through the gate.

Mother was standing on the porch and paused at my arrival.

"What was he here for?" was the first thing I asked.

Mother displayed a thick invitation letter in her palm. "To invite us to the grand opening ceremony of their new guild hall," she explained. "Apparently, he is also going to be our new local Guild Master and deemed it necessary that he came personally to invite us."

Yes, she had covered why it was necessary to show courtesy to high-ranking people in the etiquette lesson. Suppressing a groan, I scurried into the washroom before finding my way into the kitchen to get something to eat. Picking an apple and a couple of bananas from the dining table, I went to lie on the couch, only to see Mum with an intricate octagonal star diagram alight, disembodied before her. She had a frown on her brows, steadily applying one strange rune after another, referencing from a parchment floating before her.

"What is that?"

"A kind of magic I'm scratching my head to figure out," Mum answered, eyes remaining on the task.

I dwelled on what to tell her but found myself staring at the diagram with fascination. Although it applied runes, we did not implement star diagrams into spellforging.

"Sorry," Mum said, sparing me a look. "I should have guessed you would want to learn more about it. Thank the Aether, you did not go after your father, or I'd be lonely once you're baptised with his whole 'stick with a sword policy.'"

"What?"

Mum shook her head. Sitting upright, she gestured for me to take a seat next to her. "It's a modified ritual Master Kaius left me last time we were at Klearon. Apparently, he invented it so that it did not require any sacrifice to function."

I raised an eyebrow, looking at a similar formation drawn on the parchment. "I'm guessing it's not for asking the spirits to bless us with good luck?"

Although I would be elated to no bounds if it were.

"No, nothing as useless as that," Mum said without seeing the crumble in my expression. "The ritual supposedly opens a line of communication to another person, even on the other side of the world. Unfortunately, that old man had no consideration for others not well-versed in ritual magic, as I've been scratching my head for the last hour trying to figure it out."

I gaped at her. Wow! This was perhaps the first time I had heard her admit she was poor at something.

"I shouldn't have ditched the ritualistic magic class in the academy." She rested the unfolded parchment on my lap. "If I understand the theory correctly, it supposedly uses the aetheric connection between our world and the spirit realm to deliver a message."

"Really?" I asked. "Why have I never heard about something like this? We even use letters to Aunt Emi and Rose?"

"Pumpkin, did you miss the 'supposedly' part of the whole thing?" Mum exhaled. "Even after I figured out how this diagram works, there are still a couple of significant reasons why our postal system should still be better than whatever this is. Unfortunately, letters do not reach that old chap, so this is what we have to roll with if we want to communicate."

"I'm guessing one of the reasons is how demanding the diagram is?" The number of lines and runes she had imbued in the thin air was astronomical for someone below Prestigious Class.

"This?" Mother laughed. "This is the easier part. The difficult part is figuring out how to infuse my aura into the diagram without it crumbling down. And after all those complications, I still don't think it will be much faster than going postal."

I watched her rant on, biting into my apple. Tor's unfathomable balls, it was magical to see her complain.

"What are these runes?" I said. They seemed more similar to the ones I saw in the Praying Hands than to the ones we were most familiar with.

"There were many civilisations over the ages," Mother said, "and many formed their own scripts. Some of them are utterly torturous, not because they needed to be this way to function—nah, the way I see it, only spite could manifest this kind of creativity."

Father returned a few minutes later. Finding us having the time of our lives figuring out the ritual, he picked up a book to read while I helped Mother decipher the star chart. Well, it was mostly me pointing out the obvious, but she did not complain.

The diagram was not the most complex formation I had seen. I supposed it would have been much easier if Master Kaius had bothered to leave some simple instructions behind. Once we assembled all the components and deciphered all eight parts of it, it was rather straightforward. Although the way I saw it, it would require a Prestigious-Class shaper to channel enough power to make the ritual work. Fortunately, we had no such concerns with Mother.

With this ritual, Mum could leave a message in the spiritual realm, which Master Kaius—only the Oracle knows where he is—would be able to access.

"How are you going to leave a message through the ritual?"

Mother considered it, studying the ritual diagrams floating in mid-air. "I suppose I shall see once I begin the ritual," she said. "If it doesn't work, we have all night to figure it out."

With that, the ritual formation glowed in brighter gold as Mother's essence threads and will penetrated through them. The star diagram spun rapidly. I watched with fascination, Fractal Sight opened to its limit. I could almost penetrate through the gap the ritual opened into the spiritual realm, though all I got was blankness.

Mum's will and aura flooded through the link as her expression shifted between sombre and dazzling reverie. "Hmm, now it makes more sense," she mumbled, fully locked in. "This part is rather simple. I can practically draw anything in here."

A few seconds later, the ritual formation evaporated into thin air, leaving a staggering Mum.

She wiped her forehead. "Whew, takes a lot more Will than essence."

"So, did it succeed?"

Mother shrugged. "I left the message. Now it depends on Master Kaius to receive it. The way I see it, he too will have to go through the ritual to check if there was any message. It's not quite straightforward. Still, to be able to access the spiritual realm after an hour of work, Emi will be fascinated once she learns about it."

Now that fascinated me enough to want to try it myself. Unfortunately, I could not attempt the ritual yet. Although my essence reserves exceeded those of a typical Noble-Class shaper of my rank, Prestigious-Class shapers dwarfed me several times over.

"Can the process be supplemented by an essence cell?" I asked, sensing it might be possible.

"Perhaps, though, you would need to wield the essence independently. But you need to carve the words with your Will and Aura. The way you are now, you can only leave some incoherent letters out there."

I pouted.

"Speaking of Will," she said, "I notice your prime seed seems to have recovered quite well. Remarkably so, in such a short time after your reckless gambit against the demons."

"Wait, does that mean I can attempt to advance now?" My eyes gleamed.

She exchanged a glance with Father.

"Well, the provincial meet will be in the coming month," Father said. "You will need as much strength as possible to compete with those who have had longer to cultivate their abilities."

"I'm not sure he would fare too poorly at the artisan contest," Mum added. "Hardly any journeyman artisans at the Noble rank, and almost unheard of at the tender age of seven winters."

She winked at Father, reminding him of the wager he had lost.

"You know, you two still haven't told me what the wager was," I said, suppressing my smug expression.

"Well, I didn't because I haven't decided on what I want from your father," she said. "As for your father, he wanted to take us to his homeland."

I blinked, completely bewildered. So it wasn't about a baby?

"Actually, I have changed my mind since then. Unfortunately, I lost the bet."

Mother raised an eyebrow, intrigued. "Now you have me curious."

Father's eyes shone in a rare spirit. "Then how 'bout we wage again?"

Mother narrowed her eyes. "Unlike you, Jinn, I don't gamble unaware of the stakes."

"There's no point telling you now that I lost," Father said. Was that a hint of embarrassment in his tone? "Besides, I wanted it to be a surprise." He quickly turned the subject to me. "So, Arilyn, what's the timeline he should work to advance his Noble Class now that he's recovered?"

I condemned Father wholeheartedly for this blatant attempt to conceal something embarrassing about himself, but that was a question I wanted answered as well.

With [Vigil of Protection] resting in my prime seed, I could advance four steps into the Noble Class within a couple of days if I did not care about maintaining a solid foundation. I had hoped the foundation was done after reaching Noble Class, but apparently every stage fable was merely a stepping stone towards ascending to Fabled Class.

It was a colossal hurdle for any Awakened. Most reached Noble Class if they lived long enough. The only difficult part of Prestigious Class was a Prestigious Honour, which was definitely not hard enough because I already had two of them.

It was a little reassuring that even at my worst, I would reach the peak of Prestigious Class, though I would probably not be satisfied with it in the long run, nor would my parents be happy with me floundering at that stage.

"I deem one step per month would be healthy for those in Noble Class," Mum said. "But considering how sturdy and efficient his prime seed is, I think he can progress as soon as the essence threads and Aether root develop fully."

That answer brightened my mood considerably. The provincial contest would be in a month, so if I managed to advance one step early, perhaps I could take another before it. With four steps into the Noble Class and all the honours and attribute points, I would have a real shot at the duels.

"Can I advance now?" I asked.

Mum smiled. "You know I'd have you bound to that relic in a heartbeat if it wasn't detrimental to your growth?"

"It isn't detrimental now."

Mum eyed the clock, which was barely striking past five o'clock. "Well, if you begin now, you'll be done before dinner."

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