14 - Big development

As I waited for my mana to recover and brought the next patient to the waiting chairs in my medical clinic at my father's store, my mind turned to my possibilities for the future.

From what I had discovered of this world, offensive, defensive and healing spells represented only a small part of the magical world.

Among the other factors of the magical world were studies in the areas of alchemy, potions, enhancements, herbology, formations, and perhaps a lot of other knowledge that I didn't yet have access to.

If I only continued as a healer in this small town, I would never have the chance to come into contact with these different types of knowledge.

Even though earning around 30 copper coins a day might seem like a lot, considering that this was a total income of 900 copper coins, or 9 silver coins a month, an astronomical amount for any ordinary commoner, when my father told me that alchemical artifacts from mages could be sold for several gold coins, it made the 9 silver coins I earned a month not seem so interesting.

Maybe these 9 pieces of silver are enough for my current development, but will that always be the case? Will I be able to develop into a more powerful magician in the future with just these coins?

From what I've seen at the market, there's meat from normal animals and magical animals, with magical animals costing several times more than normal animals, to the point that even my current salary wouldn't be able to replace my diet with that kind of meat.

According to the sellers, the nutrition of those magical animals is also much higher than that of normal animals, showing me that even if my progress is fast, it could be even faster if I had even more money.

Or... if I were strong enough to hunt these magical animals on my own.

With my current strength, hunting normal animals alone might be possible, but hunting magical animals would be a completely different story.

The only offensive spell I had studied was the ice spear, a spell that even with my branch and leaf optimizations, could still only be cast once every 60 minutes, which was not ideal for someone who intended to venture into the forest.

So my only chance of being able to hunt a magical beast on my own would be if I had a strong enough physique for it, or even more Mana to the point where I could perhaps cast at least two spells in a row without getting exhausted.

Feeling the change in my body over the last few days, I would soon reach that point, but it would still take a while.

With the daily use of [Nutrire Vitae] on my body and eating more protein at home over the last few weeks, my body was already showing muscle formation.

Because I have little fat, any muscle development in my body was very clear, so when I looked at myself in the reflection of the water this morning, I could already see the muscles in my body larger than they were a few days ago.

My height was also increasing at a faster rate, taking me from 1.40 m to 1.42 m in just a few weeks.

I still looked like a child of 10 or 11, but now I was confident that this would only be temporary and in a few months I could reach my ideal height.

This physical development also worked miracles with my body's Mana, increasing my Mana limit by a few more points, which for someone who had little Mana available, was a huge boost.

Now what remained was the question of what I could do to have the best magical development in the future...

The first thing that came to mind was magic schools, which was the path that the eldest brother of this body had chosen to follow.

Becoming a student at a magic school was a lot like becoming a member of a sect in those Chinese cultivation novels I read in my previous life.

You had free lessons, but in order to attend more advanced classes you had to use resources that you had worked hard to obtain in missions for the school.

Students could just study with peace of mind if they had money, but without money you had to work for the school and use the payment to learn more and develop.

For someone without a master, like Hal, magic schools were great choices, giving everyone the opportunity to gain any kind of knowledge through merit.

But thinking about my specific situation, I don't know if that would be ideal for me.

First of all, if I joined a magic school, I would have to worry a lot about the talent I would show, so I couldn't be too brilliant or too average.

If I showed more talent than I could possibly have, this would attract the attention of influential people who might try to control me, study me, or just sponsor me, with the first two options being the most likely.

But compared to the shortcomings of magic schools, the shortcomings of not being part of a magic school are even greater.

The biggest being the difficulty in accessing any kind of magical knowledge.

Not being in the middle of magic circles would alienate me from the knowledge that those magic circles provide...

The only way I can think of that I would have access to magic would be if I worked directly for a noble, which would be a great way to access magical knowledge easily, but which came with the big problem of becoming practically a servant to someone I'm sure I couldn't trust.

So between the two evils, magic school seemed to be the best.

Thinking that only 15-year-olds could apply to magic schools, I still had four months to practice and develop until I turned 15, a time I would use as efficiently as possible...

Feeling the mana in my body recover enough for me to do another healing spell, I called the next patient into the consulting room and got 2 more copper coins.

-

Four months was enough time for my body to show a big change.

The clearest change was that I finally grew from 1.42 m to a height of 1.52 m, leaving me at the average height someone my age should be.

Another big external change was that my body now looked muscular.

Not muscles like those of a barbarian warrior, but muscles like those of a swimmer in my previous world. Every part of my body was showing signs of healthy development and defined muscles.

Nothing that hindered my mobility, giving me enough agility and strength for me.

This rapid development was only possible because of the Optimized [Nutrire Vitae].

With the spell's branches and leaves optimized to the maximum, I was now able to nourish my body with a total focus on physical and magical development, completely ignoring the recuperative and energy-conserving part that the original spell had.

This came at the cost that I needed to eat even more meat to improve the effect of the spell, but this made the efficiency of it skyrocket several times more.

Without this optimized spell, depending only on my normal diet I'm sure I wouldn't have developed to even a third of my current condition, which excited me even more about the possibilities of magic.

In addition to these external changes, my biggest change was internally, as my Mana core was now 20% larger than it was when I first came to this world more than five months ago.

Adding this 20% increase in the size of my Mana core to the 20% Mana I had available, this left me with twice the Mana capacity for spells that I had when I first came to this world!

Mana recovery speed was also 20% faster, but this improvement wasn't as marked as the increase in my Mana capacity.

With twice as much Mana available, I was already able to use spells of more than 10 branches without being completely exhausted afterwards, as well as being able to heal a patient and not run out of Mana completely in case of an emergency.

I wasn't the only one in our family who experienced big changes like these.

With more Mana available in my body, I also used [Nutrire Vitae] on Finn and Milla, speeding up their recovery so that Milla would already have a completely healthy and recovered body, and Finn would be much better off than my own body was when I came to this world.

He would still need a few more months to recover 100%, but his current condition already allowed him to live a normal life like any other child.

This made him open up more to our family and start talking more, greatly improving everyone's mood at home.

A mood that used to be so depressing when I first came into this world, but which is now much more pleasant.

Too bad poor people's happiness is short-lived...

When my father and I got home from work, a letter delivered by a courier from Avaloria Magic School was on the living room table, bringing heavy thoughts and bad memories to everyone in the family apart from me, who was slow to understand why I was so worried.