The Truth of the Matter [Training]

The capital was a beautiful city, and despite the amount of racism that he'd had to deal with to get here, he was able to say that it was all worth it. Sure, he wasn't allowed to join the king's people for their feast, the front door cost being over 100,000 huang, money that he never let himself spend all in one sitting. 

However, hanging around the castello did lend some interesting advantages. One of those advantages being plenty of rich people to prey on.

Now, Jian was an assassin by trade, and that was where he enjoyed making his living - he could get rid of people who hurt the world by their sheer existence, there was a certain level of respectability to it, and it wasn't like his old jobs wouldn't have gotten him killed either. 

However, that didn't mean that he was above resorting to his old methods of making money. Well, except for prostitution - that was just too demeaning to get back into. 

The last few days in the city, even before the coronation, he had been able to witness rich people coming and going every day and almost every hour of the day. 

They were easy to tell from the average man on the street, generally because they were the ones kicking men into the gutter and laughing like assholes. 

Since he could get contracted to kill them later, he refused to kill them, but that didn't mean that he wasn't going to give them some sort of punishment for their selfishness and cruelty. 

In fact, he decided on a rather appropriate one, given the exact nature of this party and how things were handled - he robbed them. 

Now, depending on how badly they'd behaved, he robbed from them a different amount: 
- Ignore everyone who begged them for help? They lost a whole pouch full of cash. 
- Kick someone out of the way? They lost everything they had on them. 
- Make a scene out of it? Well, then they wound up stripped in an alleyway, unconscious and usually covered in the piss of homeless by the morning. 

This had alarmed the city guards over the last week; not only was someone doing this, but they were coming and going from under their noses and trying to find him was like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands. 

Jian passed them during the daytime and was amused when they actually warned him to be careful of the robber. He could only smile and nod his head respectfully. 

"Yes, sirs. Thank you for your courtesy" and he moved on, eager to find his next mark. They felt good about having done their good deed, and never once considering that they had just let a threat to the city's security walk right under their noses with nothing more than a security warning. 

Tonight's mark, however, was the most interesting one yet; it was a magician, from the king's own court - he was going to lose something a lot more precious than simply a money bag. What was a wizard without his wand, after all? 

0517 / 1000 Stealth C->B
0000 / 2000 Intelligence Secondary Spec
000 / 500 Intelligence D -> C

The man in question was a young man, or at least young in the standing of court magicians; he appeared to be in his late twenties or early thirties, with a long, red beard that made Jian think of a Fanalis for some reason. He certainly wasn't the typical scraggly, scrawny magician, rather he was heavily muscled and he had a large red scar going from the top left corner of his face to the bottom right, as if someone had decided to split him directly down the middle but had stopped at his chin. 

Normally, Jian would have liked someone like this - to be in such a lofty position at such a young age he had to be excessively bright, as well as very determined. That was the kind of person Jian was, and so he tended to wind up being kindred spirits with those who shared such a personality.
 
Unfortunately, this man's strength made him cocky, and according to many people within the city, he was beginning to let his position go to his head and imagine himself untouchable. Some even dared whisper that he had kidnapped homeless people to experiment upon them. 

Now, Jian didn't like to take the word of rumors, especially those directed at higher-ups in society, since people tended to like hurting those kinds of people verbally if they couldn't do it physically, so they were often false. However, he had certainly seen the man acting too big for his boots and that was something that was going to have to be stopped. 

Tailing the man through the city, Jian slipped from rooftop to rooftop, like a hound pursuing its next meal. When the man took a wrong turn that took him down an alleyway, Jian knew it was time to strike. 

Dropping from his position to a lower rooftop before landing on the ground behind the man, Jian charged the man, a fist outstretched to smash into his shoulder and thus force him to drop his wand. Yet, as he did so, the man's shield burst up like a jack in the box, before promptly shattering. 

The man had turned around by this point, but Jian slipped around him like a shadow, before he slipped his arm around the man's neck, pinning him against him whilst choking him out. In this position, the man would have no way of looking behind him and would thus never be able to see who was robbing him. 

"Sorry, your lordship, but drop the wand or I'll snap your neck like a twig." There was a certain coldness in Jian's voice that suggested a callousness. Now, Jian would never actually kill the guy until he had ardent proof against him, but the man had no way to know that. He was a red magician; he was a heat user. He couldn't create flames without burning himself up with him, so he knew that he had no choice but to surrender. 

With a thunk, the wand was dropped on the ground, leaving the man unarmed. 
"Now, what do you want? Do you want money?" he asked, clearly impatient to get back to his work. However, Jian never answered, instead just tightening his grip, cutting off the man's air circulation. 

"I want you to take a nap, your lordship. Your wand is mine now; You need to learn how the people you laugh at feel - having everything they care about stolen from them without being able to do anything."

Though the man protested, his lack of oxygen made it very hard to speak, and within seconds he was unconscious. Jian, now finished with his work, walked over to the wand and pocketed it. Honestly, he'd originally just intended to sell the thing on the black market, but now that he held it... it felt right! He actually really liked the feel of it, the texture of the handle, the weight of it in his hand. This was... weird, he'd never had a reaction like this to anything else. 

Oh well, he thought, pocketing the wand, Maybe I'll keep this for myself. Try and trick people into thinking I'm a wizard. Wouldn't that be the ultimate insult - his wand's not even going to another magic user. 


Little did he know just how wrong he was soon going to be proven to be. But, for now, he was just pickpocketing the man's regents. These could be sold to a magic shop for some good huang. 

1000 / 1000 Stealth C -> B
0000 / 2000 Intelligence 
000 / 500 Intelligence D -> C

Moving out to a village just outside of the capital, knowing just how foolish it would be to sell something belonging to a member of the royal chamber inside the royal city itself, Jian approached a small magic reagents shop near the outskirts of that small village.

Judging by the look of it, it wasn't very commonly used - this didn't seem that peculiar; after all, you were right next to the capital, where they almost certainly had wares a million times better than what this place had, why would anyone go here? This was the exact reason he was going to sell to here, they had no other alternative. 

Stepping inside the shop, it was hard not to take notice of just how bad the place was. Not so much in terms of the stock, but more about the smell of the place. To put it gently, this was the kind of place where you could taste how bad it smelled, though what the smell exactly was was very hard to pin down. He was just going to assume it wasn't legal and not dwell any further. 

To be fair, despite his earlier comment, this place was pretty well stocked. There were frogs legs in little glass bottles, floating in green liquid to keep it preserved, herbs of almost fifty different types and, of course, pastes of things he didn't even want to think about. Among them were pestle and mortars, but he cared little to buy things here - Sure, he made his own potions, but he wasn't going to create any more of them for a while. 

"Hello!" the woman behind the desk began... at least, he thought it was a woman. The voice was very high-pitched, but the large hat she wore kind of obscured her face from view and her clothes were so loose he had no idea if she had boobs or not. Maybe she was actually a male eunuch or something, they were very common in the alchemical circles 

"Hello, I'm looking to sell a few reagents. I hear you're in the market for people's goods." he said, forcing a smile even though the girl probably couldn't see his face. Still, no point in changing it and winding up upsetting someone. That would lead to a lower sale price, and then he'd have less money to be able to do things with. 

"Are you sure you just want to sell, my dear? I mean, you have a wand in your pocket, are you sure there's nothing you want to buy? We could always do with the custom." Wand in his.... shit, he mentally chided himself for his carelessness. The magician's wand was still sticking out of his pocket, and she'd noticed it. Who else had? Hopefully nobody - the village was pretty empty, so he liked his chances of anonymity. 

"Oh, no, I'm holding this for a friend. I don't actually have any magic ability whatsoever," He didn't even get to finish his sentence before the crone started laughing. If you could call that laughing - it was more like she was trying to cough up a lung. 

For someone who had been around dead bodies for a long time, it was rare for Jian to get nauseous. Yet, listening to her laugh actually made his stomach turn. That was probably a bad sign.  

"Oh, never say never. I bet you never even got tested, did ya? Not every magician winds up seeing the rukh, ya know. Sometimes it goes completely undetected, and the brightest minds of a generation are neglected."

Something about the way that she was speaking made him feel certain that she wasn't going to relent unless he agreed to take some magic test with her. He had no idea what it was, but he was certain it would be quick and then he could leave this place behind and never have to deal with it again after he'd sold his wares. 

0652 / 2000 Intelligence 
000 / 500 Intelligence D -> C

Moving towards the back of the shop, Jian couldn't help but notice how messy this place was. Whilst it was pretty normal for shops to be in some sort of mess as they were constantly getting new stock in or putting new stuff out, this place took that to an almost offensive level. 

He didn't know why this was the case, but there was something distinctly wrong about this place. Maybe he was just being paranoid because this place was actually able to get on his nerves when nowhere else had. He'd even tolerated portsmouth, what was so bad about this place that it was worse than the tundra? 

Well, whatever it was, it didn't matter for the moment. On the table at the very end of the store-room,there was a strange little item on a desk completely on its own. Considering that every other desk in this room was filled with mountains of junk, the fact that this single glass item had an enire table to itself was strange. What could be so important about this item? Sure, it looked pretty and was probably expensive, but not to the degree it was worth its own table, right? 

That being said, the item itself did seem pretty interesting. It was a bust of a strange woman with long hair, said hair falling down in a platt to over her right bosom. It seemed to be made out of some sort of transparent crystal, though there was a strangely shifting color inside it. He honestly didn't know what caused something like this, but there was an aura about it that was beginning to make him certain it was important. 

"This, my dear boy, is a very important item. If you know why it's so important, I'll give you 10% more on top of my regular prices for your wares." Oh, now she was playing a game with him? He simply shrugged, trying to communicate that he neither knew nor particularly cared, but that wasn't enough for her - she seemed obsessively happy with the fact that she knew and that he didn't. Any victory was a victory he guessed. 

"This, my boy, is an Eight Magic Selection Crystal. They're very rare, Magnostadt's the only country that really knows how to produce these. But, I managed to get my hands on one and it's helped me detect many people's magics. All you have to do is give it a touch and we'll see if there's any potential inside you."

All he had to do was give it a touch, eh? That was simple enough. It wasn't going to do anything, and then he would be able to leave and not have to consider this silly little thing any more. All he had to do was earn peace from this woman was to touch the bust, and as such, his hand went forwards and he touched the statue on its shoulder. 

At once, the light inside the bust turned as white as snow, actually managing to catch Ji off his guard. He'd honestly expected nothing to happen. What did that white light mean. Did it mean that he was devoid of magical potential, a blank slate? Apparently not, as that damn hag was beginning to laugh in delight, once again sounding like she was trying to get a fish out of her throat or giving birth to chest babies. 

As he turned to ask her what was so funny, a strong burst of wind hit him upside the face. It was cold, chilly, like something you might expect upon a winter morn. It was weak enough that it didn't physically hurt, but his hair was blowing about, getting it all messy and making him look even weirder than he already did. 

"Congratulations, boy, you're a white magician! Welcome to the wonderful world of wind! I told you there was something special about it, I can always sense when a fellow mage is around, and luck has it that we're both wind users!"

1327 / 2000 Intelligence 
000 / 500 Intelligence D -> C

At first, Jian was honest to god shocked. How do you deal with knowing that you had magical potential that you'd never know about before? Would Jian have become part of Magnostadt were his parents not so controlling when he was a kid? 

This was like saying that his entire life had been, at least in part, a lie. He was a magician and yet had been bred to be an assassin. What did this mean about his life so far, was this a corruption of his fate? Was this part of why he'd hated the way his parents made him live so much? 

Still, the woman who had just dropped such a huge bombshell on his head seemed not to care about the crisis the man in front of her was having. It wasn't selfishness, she certainly wasn't apathetic, rather she was focusing on something somewhat different. 

Instead of being pleasant and sympathetic, explaining that she understood that this must be difficult for someone to just find out about out of the blue (or, out of the white) , she suddenly seemed to be a lot more excited than she had been before, which was truly saying something. 

"You know, I hadn't expected you to be a wind user. It's so rare to see wind users come through here. I've never had a protoge before, do you want me to teach you? I have teaching experience, you know. I know what I'm doing. 


I can do it for free. I don't even care if I lose money doing it, I will pay you for free. This reminds me of my days back in magnostadt, don't'cha know? I used to teach there before they expelled me for assaulting one of the students. "

Jian honestly wasn't thinking about getting lessons in how to use his magical abilities right now. Rather, he was just confused about what this meant for him as a person. Ignoring the fact that his life was suddenly a rather confusing thing to try and grasp properly, there was the fact that this could have a very real impact on his job. 

After all, people paid extra for specialists, and a magic assassin would go for much higher than a normal one, even one who was known to have killed princes. Wind magic was, from what he'd heard, an amazing magic for assassins. You can't see the wind, after all, but it can cut through stone like it were nought but paper. 

Surely that was a terrifying power for one such as him to wield. Could he go up a paygrade with this? If he went up a paygrade, would he be able to live a more comfortable life? Had a pathway to the lap of luxury just dropped itself right into his lap?  

Finally snapping out of his trance, he blinked a few times, forcing a smile at this woman who had just revolutionized his life. It was at this point that he realized exactly what she'd been saying, and suddenly the smile wasn't even forced any more. "I'm sorry, did you offer to train me?"

The girl in question simply nodded her head enthusiastically, clearly pumped about the prospect of having someone under her that she could teach and make her feel like a proper mage rather than just some backalley retailer. 
"yes."

This woman.... this woman was annoying, she smelled bad, and the very place that they were dwelling inside right now just went to further prove just how radically unpleasant it was. Yet, it would surely be worth it to be able to get magic powers out of it, right? 

He was in a uniquely privileged position - he had learned of a new power that his body was able to use, and he didn't even have to pay anything to use it. He didn't even need to buy a wand as he had one already. His hand went to his pocket to pull out the wand... his wand. He had thought it felt right, he guessed he knew why it did now. 

".... sure, why the hell not?" Hello, luxury. 

2000 / 2000 Intelligence 
000 / 500 Intelligence D -> C

The next few days were what a lesser man might consider weird. Okay, that was a bit of a lie. Jian had done a lot of weird things in his life, but even he had to consider this weird. The thing about the word weird was that it was highly subjective. 

For example, other people might consider tracking people down halfway around the world to kill them and then immediately go back home weird. They might find going to a party simply because you were going to kill someone inside those walls weird. None of those seemed even remotely weird for Jian any more. 

He, however, found learning magic weird. Though, to be fair, most magic users would have found this weird. The woman was much too enthusiastic about the chance to teach, and actually seemed somewhat... insane. Yet, there was a light at the end of the tunnel for Jian. This was not an area of his life that he had often explored, but it seemed that he was rather good at it. 

His teacher, who still seemed as horrendously repulsive as the day they'd first met, had finally shown her face and confirmed that she was definitely a woman. Just, not exactly what you'd call a traditional beauty. 

Rather, her face constantly put him in mind of a frog mid-ribbit; her cheeks were chubby, her eyes were much too big, and she just seemed overall slimy. Also, she smelled of mud, and of whatever it was in the front of the shop that made his stomach turn so much. 

Yet, ignoring his personal distaste for her, he had to admit that she had made him much better than he was when he first met her. Though, considering when he first met her he honestly didn't know he had magical potential, that really wasn't saying much. Yet, by the time that he had to leave, he couldn't help but feel somewhat happy that she had been on his side. 

Standing in the middle of the room, wielding the staff that he had decided to dub "Fenghuo" or "the beacon", he began casting his strongest spell. Despite the fact that there were several marble statues around him, he just had to cast one spell and there was nothing left to worry about. 

"الإعصار الوادي"

As the invisible storm raged around him, he saw the statues get shredded by the high windspeeds, turning the forms of men and women into little more than sand. Within seconds, he couldn't even look at them any-more, the debris from the statues destructions getting picked up by the wind and threatening to be thrown into his eyes. 

This... this was true power. He had a goal now, he had to go out and find out more about the world. If he didn't even understand himself fully, what bountiful information could he be missing out there. And, of course, there was a lot of money to be made. 

lots and lots of money. Lots, and lots, and lots of money. 

500 + / 500 Intelligence D -> C