The Burning Fiend

During the first month, Reynold keep fighting fourth ranked magical beast with his spear without using his magic and he became proficient and managed to get a certain degree of confidence in his skills.

He was reluctant to fight a magical beast of the fifth rank as that would require a fifth rank spell that needed time to be chanted and he would find himself in danger in the magical beast managed to survive. He thought that being a warrior was more effective that being a mage and was starting to suspect that mages were mainly important for the army. Unless he had the support of a powerful magical beast that could protect him while he chanted his spells.

As he moved closer to the center areas but never quite leaving the border of the Mountain Range of Magical Beasts he found a small cave that he could use to sleep and decide to make preparations for camping.

As night arrived, Reynolds was ending his meditations as he felt a little wind current coming from behind. This surprised him as he was facing the small entry of the cave and started to look for the source out of curiosity, after a few minutes he found that the came from a passage that was hidden behind a bush and he become excited with fantasies of finding treasures.

After making his way through the bush, he ended on a small passage which do not allowing to stand straight and he had to kept crouching as he made his way while using his magic to produce a small fireball to keep light. After advancing for 5 meters he found a skeleton from what he thought would be a young person around 13 years old at the moment of his or hers death, the clothes had already become dust and the only thing that remained was a simple iron ring on one of his fingers.

Reynolds hearth started to pound in excitement as he has read about the legendary space rings and was begging to the heavens to bless him as he moved to get the ring. The bone finger broke into pieces at his gentle efforts to remove the ring, he smile as he kept watching the ring that have no carvings or jewels on it. It was a simple iron ring. He made his way back as he was uncomfortable in this small place.

He did not find anything special about the ring for a couple of hours and started to try remembering what he had read about space rings, after a while he remembered that they were bonded by blood and he took his dagger to make a small stab on his finger drawing a drop of blood that fell into the ring.

He smiled as he felt a connection with the ring and concentrated trying to figure out how to use it. After a while he learned to use his spiritual essence to communicate with the ring and found that the ring had a small space of about 1 cubic meter and it only contained two books. He took the books out with care and started to read the titles.

They were magic books, one for life magic and one for necromancy magic. They described training methods for both types of magic but only had spells recorded from 1 to 6 rank. He was a little disappointed that the book did not contained a complete legacy but he though that his luck was extremely good, he could tell anyone about the ring or the books before he become strong enough. He use a cord to keep the ring as he would a necklace hidden below his shirt as he would only kept important things in there and rarely use it.

He controlled his excitement and started to read the books, he found that both life and death magic required rune arrays powered by spiritual essence to meditate and gather the corresponding energy. But necromancy required an extremely pure soul or one may hurt himself while trying to practice.

Reynolds decided to stay in this place during the next month to practice and learn if he had the talent for these magic systems. It took him two days to depict the rune for life magic as he decided to start with it because it seemed to be no danger. After a week of constant meditation he found that his talent for life magic was low, medium at best, and it could not be compared to his fire elemental affinity. But as the life energy gathered around him and made its way to soul he felt his body being nurtured in a similar way to what he would feel by gathering qi to nurture his body.

He immediately took his warrior training stance and found that the life magic energy seemed to help in his warrior training, it may take him a couple of years to reach the first rank on life magic, but it would take him less than a year to his body to reach the fifth rank as warrior. He was delighted and decided to keep practicing, he would have to find a remote place within the Ernst Institute to practice and surround it with rune to avoid other finding out he is practicing life magic, he figured his eldest brother Yale would be able to help him find the corresponding rune-array.

He also found that even if his soul could barely absorb life essence, practicing had healing or restoring effect, so he decided to try the necromancy magic as well and dedicated the next two days to depict the necessary runes.

When he finally started his first try on meditating in necromancy magic, he felt as if his soul were being teared by the death essence and could not last more that five minutes before interrupting the process and forcefully making his way to the rune-array he used to meditate on life magic.

He felt his soul being washed and after a few minutes the pain was gone. Reynolds was scared and spent a full hour looking for damage on his spiritual essence, to his relieve he found that whatever damage he had suffered was restored by life magic, but it seemed as if his spiritual essence had become a little brighter. Curiosity won and he repeated the process carefully for another week.

His spiritual essence was damaged by death magic and healed by life magic day after day. He found that the pain seemed to become less with each repetition and that his spiritual essence was being purified by the process, he was not able to practice necromancy magic now but if he continued with this process perhaps in time he could. He was happy and his reluctance for the pain disappeared, he was deeply interested on some of the recorded spells that would gave him control over others and if he could add the poison to his spear attack he would reach a new level in battle obtaining a hidden powerful card.