The next morning, Alex was seated on his bed, writing in a book.
'At this rate, maybe tomorrow I'll have it finished,' thought Alex.
After becoming a mage, Alex's memory had improved quite a bit, so his effort to remember the mana control technique was fairly successful.
Still, he had only managed to memorize up to the halfway point—at least reliably—so he left the remainder for tomorrow.
After spending some time writing, he went out of his bedroom.
The living room was empty, but he could hear faint noises coming from the kitchen. After reaching it, he saw Susan cooking. He approached her and greeted her.
"Hi, Susan. Good morning."
"AHH!" Alex's sudden greeting nearly scared Susan's soul out of her.
"Alex! By the love of god, make some noise when you walk!" Susan said, exasperated.
"Sorry… I'll try," said Alex apologetically. He didn't intend to scare her.
"Don't worry. Besides, I forgot that you don't have enough mass. You probably wouldn't even leave a footprint on snow, much less make noise when walking," she said.
"Ugh, that's mean, you know…" Alex replied. He knew she didn't mean any offense, but still—weight and height were sore points for teen boys.
"What I mean to say is that you need to eat more! How are you so skinny when you have enough money to spare a gold coin?"
"Ehm… I generally buy food. I don't know how to cook. In the orphanage, we weren't taught." Alex spewed nonsense—not exactly answering the question, but saying enough to satisfy her while still keeping a great deal hidden, like how he'd lost all that weight after being stranded for thirteen days in a jungle surrounded by monsters.
"That's insane. How could they kick out a kid without teaching them basic culinary skills to survive?" Susan was growing pissed.
"It doesn't matter. Then start helping me. In exchange, I'll teach you what I can during your stay here," Susan said suddenly, her tone turning stern. It seemed she wouldn't let him leave without learning how to cook.
Alex had been planning to spend the morning learning water mana and then return to the library to study the theory behind the elements of water and wind.
Still, he reluctantly agreed—knowing how to cook was indeed a good skill to acquire.
"Hey, don't look so down. Get the knife and start chopping those vegetables, pronto."
Susan suddenly turned into a sergeant, giving orders left and right while explaining things he didn't understand.
"Cooking isn't about throwing things into a fire and waiting. It's an art, and each artist has their own way of doing it," Susan said when she saw Alex carelessly toss the meat into the pan without even seasoning it.
"When you cook, you have to season stuff; otherwise, it'll taste bland. So throw in a little bit of salt and try it when the meat is cooked. If it's still bland, add a little more. Remember—it's easier to fix something that has too little salt than to fix something with too much."
Susan kept explaining. Alex had a total of zero hours of experience cooking, but he absorbed knowledge like a sponge.
And so, a symphony of orders and explanations echoed through the kitchen for the next forty-five minutes.
Alex found himself enjoying the moment and suddenly wondered if this was what having a family felt like.
Thinking about it, his smile disappeared. He started to feel sad at the unfairness of the world. He had been robbed of his family by the war, and afterward, he was never adopted—no matter how much he tried to be seen as a good kid.
Susan wasn't blind; she noticed his shift in expression. Seeing his eyes fixed on nothing, she kind of understood what was going through his mind.
She wasn't dumb either. She knew he was keeping some secrets, and looking at his almost too-skinny body, she knew he hadn't exactly had a good life before meeting her. But if he was unwilling to tell, she had no right to demand answers.
After they finished cooking, Susan went to wake up Evelyn, and they started eating.
They ate in comfortable silence.
After that, Alex went outside and sat by the riverside while Susan took Evelyn to school.
The water had already washed away the blood he'd left there when he was found.
After sitting, he opened the Water Drop Meditation book and started following it. This meditation technique required one's hands to be wet for some reason, so he simply stayed by the riverside to meditate.
After soaking his hands in the water, he started following the book's guide.
And sure enough, after barely thirty minutes, he could feel the water mana start to fill his core.
He kept meditating a while longer, taking a break when he started to feel hungry.
'I thought it was going to be harder, but I guess that once you have a core, adding another kind of mana is easier than gathering enough to form the first one,' Alex thought.
He then looked at his status window.
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—STATUS—
Name: Alexander (Beginner Mage 2.3%)Mana: 113 / 113
Mana Gathering:
Water Drop Meditation (Beginner)
Wind Gathering (Beginner)
Elements:
Wind (Beginner) (42%)
Water (Beginner) (33%)
Skills:
Wind Slicer (95%)
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'It's been a while since I last opened the status window,' Alex thought.
It had indeed been a long while—the last time he had checked it was before setting off on his journey to leave the forest.
It seemed his progression had increased a lot, but that was expected, as Alex had read in the library that cultivating each element contributed equally to progression. With one element, one would be stuck at 50%, and only with two could someone reach 100%.
His Wind Slicer skill had reached 95% after being tempered in the battle to the death with the bear. Now he could cast it in around 0.3 seconds—not even close to the 0.1 seconds he'd achieved in the battle's last moments, but that was something only possible on the face of death.
He also started with a far better understanding of water than he did with wind, since water was something one studied in primary education.
After finishing his look at the status window, Alex trained for a few more hours, then he stood up and went back to the house to help Susan with breakfast, as per their agreement.
He had to admit—he was actually looking forward to it after the first session.