Black Onyx - Forgotten Magic

"Adelard my son, you are finally here. Lord Green Fang was just telling me the next phase of the plan, but it seems that we have to fix a little issue first." The city Lord spoke first and explained a few things to his son.

Lord Green Fang nodded, not saying anything. He was a middle-aged man, dressed in dark green leather armor, over which was draped a cloak of an even darker green color. His face had average proportions, but his eyes had a sinister luster. He stood up with hands behind his back and stepped to look through the window.

"I will not waste any unnecessary words. Recently, my men were searching for the one that ruined our plan last time. We were sure he came here, to Geldern. However, we were unable to locate him until recently, and even that happened by chance," Lord Green Fang spoke in a deep voice.

"He masked himself well and he perfectly blended between the common folk. Luckily he was arrogant enough to keep the weapon he stole, and keep it on display for all to see. A team of undercover Scales bumped into him in the market, but unfortunately, they didn't get any useful information out of him," the green-cloaked man continued.

"Long story short, we now know that he is part of the Warrior's Guild, so he poses even more of a threat. We can't have any loose ends. I want your men to track him and observe him for now."

The old Lord Egott frowned when he heard that. He was currently trying to keep a low profile and not give the Guild anything to use against him.

He tried to respectfully turn down the request, "Lord Green Fang, it's not that I would want to refuse your request, it's just that I'm in a tough spot at the moment. People of the city don't like me anymore and the Guild is actively trying to get rid of me."

"If they find out we are trying to do something to one of theirs they will definitely use it as an excuse to arouse the ire of the people and use them to banish me from the city as they almost did once before," Egott Serrell laid out all of his grievances on the table. He really didn't dare go against the Guild, since he already suffered at their hands once.

Lord Green Fang scoffed at him and said, "I only need you to pay attention to a single person from the shadows. If you can't even do that, what use are you to the Blood Sun Viper sect? We never considered this small city to be of much value either. We could just as easily replace you with some other noble family."

Now both the father and son became nervous. It was indeed true that they could be quickly replaced. They already lost the authority in the city and Egott Serrell was a city Lord in name only, nothing else.

Egott got a pained expression on his face when he gave in and asked, "Then we will do our best to carry out your request. Might I ask who are we stalking this time?"

Green Fang snorted and said, "Hmph, it's good that you decided to cooperate. I think your son would be perfect to oversee this task since he is a member of the Guild. Even if just in name. The fellow I am referring to is quite young. His name is Gerald, he is about twenty and has short brown hair, and his height is about…"

Adelard was not listening any longer from the point where he heard the name 'Gerald'. His blood started to boil and he couldn't help himself but ask, "Lord Green Fang, are you saying that it was Gerald who killed two of your men when you tried to capture Sera?"

Green Fang swiftly turned his head and gave the lad a poisonous gaze.

"Watch your words, boy. They weren't my Scales, they were the useless mercenaries that you got for the job. If it wasn't for your stupid request to get the girl alive, how could a few other unpredictable factors come to be? We would have eliminated them all… Wait, do you know this guy?" Green Fang wasn't exactly pleased with Adelard interrupting and questioning him.

"I apologize, Lord Green Fang, it was not my intent to question you, it's just that I recently suffered greatly at this guy's hands. I appreciate you trusting me with this job, I will not disappoint you." Adelard even bowed while speaking. Hatred for Gerald boiled inside him and he couldn't wait to get his revenge.

Green Fang nodded and said, "Good, after you collect enough information we will begin planning a way to dispose of him. Since my specialty is poison, we can make him suffer a painful death. I have here with me the Purple Frog Saliva. Just a single drop is potent enough to kill ten men. If you do your job well, we can finish this before the end of next week."

"Purple Frog Saliva!" Both Adelard and Egott Serrell sucked a breath of cold air when they heard the name of the poison. It was a famous poison for covert assassinations and was extremely hard to get. Just a drop on your skin and death would follow in less than an hour.

Green Fang proudly smiled and waved his hands, dismissing the meeting, saying, "Alright, now go and don't let me down. I don't have much time to waste here, at most I will stay in the city for the next ten days. After that, you will have to take care of things here by yourself."

"Yes, Lord! I will do my very best," Adelard quickly promised and went out of the room to gather his best spies and organize the stalking. Time was of the essence.

***

Gerald was completely oblivious to the ongoing plans in the Serrell family household.

Since he now had a lot of free time, he went back to his room and wrote down all of his discoveries and hypotheses about the intricate workings of magic.

He documented his progress and findings just in case he needed to refresh his memory later. At the same time, he would also increase the amount of knowledge humans had on the topic of magic in case some unpredictable disaster happened.

Now that he had a few Etherium Crystals, he was able to finally experiment with them and understand them better.

The first thing he tried to do, was to inject his own Mana inside Earth Crystals he got from wolves.

For some reason, he was unable to do so, unless he only used the Earth attribute of Mana. His complete Mana profile was, after all, a mixture of all Elements so it was rejected by the crystals.

He also noticed that the crystals regenerated Mana on their own, although really slowly. After a full day of observation, he concluded that the crystal regenerated about 1 LIS per day. It was an absurdly slow process and for the Earth Crystals, that meant two to three days since they had a low capacity for Mana.

"Good, now my Mana problems are almost solved. Now I can use Earth Crystals to fuel my Earth spells.

He also tested the Fire Crystals on the sword and came to a similar conclusion. The gems only accepted Fire attributed Mana and the recharge rate was just marginally better than Earth Crystals. Gerald figured that each crystal would need somewhere around two to three weeks to fully recharge.

"There is probably some unknown factor that recharges Mana faster when a creature is alive. Too bad I have no idea what that is…or if it even works that way," he murmured.

Now that he had a much greater Mana capital, he could afford to cast some higher rank spells, at least Earth and Fire kind. The rest of his internal Man could be saved for Wind magic or the Unmoving Boulder defensive Combat Art.

With optimal usage of the Greater Mana Potion, it could be active for somewhere around twenty to thirty minutes.

That extra defense gave him much more confidence in staying safe against enemies that were around his level of strength.

"I need to get my hands on some medium-grade spells to be officially considered a Spellcaster. Too bad my Elemental Codex only contains the simple novice spells. They are good, no doubt about that, but I need something stronger just in case."

Gerald jumped on the bed and closed his eyes, going in deep contemplation. He tried to search his memories for something useful, especially video games.

On the surface, it might seem like a bad idea, but video games were a great source of inspiration. Even if he couldn't just copy a spell, he could, however, take the idea or form of a spell and bring it to the real world.