The following morning Emelyn surprised everyone when she announced that the whole household (Jasmine included) would be travelling to Shephiria. As Emelyn expected, the children were delighted with her idea. Leyla was nervous, and Jasmine really excited, but Merlin, despite being excited about making his first journey in this world, he couldn’t help but being a little disappointed, he had planned to start practicing magic that day, and, unless he wanted his secret to get out, doing that journey would mean that he had to delay the start of his magic training until he got back.

  They departed at noon with the commercial caravan. Emelyn would have preferred to depart in the morning, but the route to the capital wasn’t safe and a simple carriage would make the day of any group of bandits, so she decided that they’d join the commercial caravan in its return to the capital, they would be safer in numbers, and the tax for entering the towns on the route to the capital would be halved.

  ******************************************************************

  On the second day of the journey, Merlin had already grown tired of looking at the scenery and started thinking about what kind of magic training could he do without letting his mother know… Mana sensing training was discarded, because ever since his magic awakening, sensing mana had become as natural for him as breathing. He thought about training the same spells he had seen his mother teaching his brother Bly, but that would also expose his secret…

  He really wanted to test the limits of his mana pool, and, as the only way for a magus to know how much mana he really possesses was to use magic until running out of mana, Merlin was quite exasperated with the current situation. While looking at Bly practicing his spells in front of their mother, he bitterly thought: *If only there was a skill or a magic that allowed you to see your own status and that of others, just like in a RPG game of my previous world you had the status window and the appraisal skill… but as much as this world resembles a RPG game, I guess that’s still impossible…*

  *Ding*

  *Ding*

  Merlin: "What the heck?!"

  Leyla: "Is there something wrong, Merlin?"

  Merlin: "No, it’s nothing… Sorry for startling you Leyla…"

  After apologizing, he thought: *I guess I’m the only one who is able to see it… Well, it’s more convenient this way…*

  When he read the contents of the second window, he realized the real meaning of the riddle left behind by Orb: The only way he had to acquire the sealed knowledge of the orb was to either create new spells which already existed in Avalon, thus receiving the original spell, or to learn new spells, which would unlock the original spells related to their level and effects. One way or the other, it was going to take him a really long time to fully unlock his inheritance… Unfortunately, his “Imagination Creation Magic” only worked that way with the spells from Avalon, with the modern spells, the magic just failed, without any consolation prize.

  He tried to use his newly acquired magic "Status Window Spell".

  Merlin: "Status Window!"

  Leyla: "Did you say something, Merlin?"

  Merlin: "No, it’s nothing… Sorry …"

  He was puzzled because nothing had happened, then he tried to open it voicelessly, just with his thought *Status Window* and…

  *Ding*

  

  He was surprised at his own statuses, some of them were way higher than he expected, but then again, he had no idea of what were the average standard statuses in this world, so he used “Analytical Observation” on his aunt and then understood how really high his statuses were.

  *Ding*

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  He decided he would later use “Analytical Observation” on his mother, just to make sure…

  He was really happy for being capable of using magic, but the moment he saw his mother looking his way, he instantly stopped using magic. He had completely forgotten that his mother could feel the fluctuations in the mana around her, and he was in her range… Fortunately, as his aunt was right next to him, as long as he didn’t use magic, his mother would be unable to locate the exact point of origin of the mana fluctuations, and she would assume that the one using magic had been Leyla.

  Merlin asked Leyla if she had any book to read with him, but she hadn’t any so she asked around and the alchemist who was in the caravan lent her a couple of books, one of them was “Intermediate compounding”, which really interested Merlin (the books about compounding they had at the house only ranged from “Initiation to compounding” to “Basic compounding”), while the other “Meditation techniques during the ‘Lost Period’ ”. The last book attracted his attention because the “Lost Period” mentioned in the title referred to the period of time previous to the Great Magic Era, in other words, the time when the Avalon Kingdom still existed.

  He asked Leyla to start with “Meditation techniques during the ‘Lost Period’ ”. The first thing written in the book was a warning: “Please notice that the following Meditation techniques have been recovered from ancient texts found in ruins dating from 'The Lost Period'. Until the present day, no one has ever been able to meditate following this techniques”. Two hours later Merlin had already memorized the contents of the book and he retired to a corner of the carriage.

  From all the meditation techniques described in the book, the one which he thought most easy to learn was the “Lotus Crescendus”. That technique, in the way it was described in the book, was really similar to the meditation techniques, martial artists used in his previous world for ki strengthening. As it was the most plausible, he decided to try it out. After starting concentrating, he felt a lot of pain and thought *no wonder no one succeeded, who likes to feel pain? *. Right after he stopped concentrating, the pain disappeared and a new notification window popped up in front of his eyes:

  *Ding*

  He liked what he read on it, but he also thought: *It seems that it’s as they say: be careful with what you wish, because it might become true! I actually believed it’d be kind of cool and useful to be able to see my statuses and that kind of stuff like in a RPG game… but these notification windows which pop up when you least expect them are quite irritating! * He then tried to meditate again with the corrected technique, and he was successful. He meditated for nearly three hours before dinner. At night, after he made sure his mother was already asleep, he invoked the status window and was pleased with the improvements.

  *Ding*

  

  It wasn’t much, but with just three hours of meditation the changes in his mana were already noticeable. This made his previous disappointment to completely vanish, for the “Lotus Crescendus” meditation technique would allow him steadily but surely improve his magic, which meant that despite being unable to practice spells without exposing his secret, he’d be able to do magic training nonetheless…

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  On the third day of the journey they arrived to the commercial town of Katra, ruled by the infamous baronet Linus. There were rumors about how he abused his power and some of them even said that he was the ringleader of the black market in that town, but the royal investigators hadn’t been able to prove anything so far, so he maintained his position. Merlin could see that the prices were very high, even those of basic products such as eggs and flour. He noticed that fact because he had been taught about the value of this world’s currencies the day before.

  Each race had its own currency (with the exception of the devils, who had none), but dwarves, beastmen and humans used the same currency system, which worked as follows:

  100 copper coins = 1 large copper coin

  50 large copper coins = 1 silver coin

  100 silver coins = 1 large silver coin

  50 large silver coins = 1 gold coin

  100 gold coins = 1 white gold coin

  100 white gold coins = 1 twin white gold coin

  For a matter of reference, usually, a regular artisan family earns 2 silver a month.

  What Merlin saw at the stalls were baskets of 20 eggs each being sold at a price of 5 large coppers the basket. He was astonished, because back at Laklostia he had accompanied Jasmine to the market once, and the price he had seen there for a basket of 20 eggs was 50 coppers. That was 1/10 of the price at Katra!

  Merlin saw many new things in Katra. He saw beastmen and dwarves, for a long time he had wanted to see people of the fantasy races, but he hadn’t seen any yet, but now, his wish was partially fulfilled! He was a little sad that he didn’t get to see any member of the elven race, but he expected that he would see at least one when he reached Shephiria.

  Two hours after noon, the caravan resumed its journey towards the capital. Emelyn and Leyla saw how excited the children were and started laughing, journeying to the capital wasn’t anything new for them, but seeing the expressions of awe in the faces of the children when seeing all the things new to them was really hilarious and the two women couldn’t help themselves. And so, the journey continued without any major incident for another three days. Finally, the caravan arrived to Shephiria.

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