Luckily finding out where Drake Stone was staying was surprisingly easy, even the gossip tabloids would give out the competent information, but the hotel he was staying at was very good at keeping out crazy fans.
It was astonishingly easy to get what I needed from Drake Stone. I don't know if it was a lack of battle experience due to his master leaving him at 15 or it had simply dulled due to a life of luxury, but all I had to do was use the Disillusionment Charm and appear behind him.
One cast of the Imperius Curse and I had the safe opened, the book in my hand and I used the Stunning Charm, stole his ring, and left.
Apparating back to my suitcase was easy and I went inside and found Sun Lok walking through the area.
I had agreed with him that he would be allowed to walk around rather than be tied up or stunned the entire time. He agreed, I suspect it was mostly due to being imprisoned in the doll for all those years unable to do anything.
At least in his current prison, he could walk around and look at things.
Inside the suitcase was a lone cabin surrounded by grass hills and even a meadow of flowers as I thought it'd be a nice place to rest my brain. An artificial wind would blow from runes created to simulate a light breeze, allowing the grass to blow so it looked like the waves of the ocean, and the flowers to blow their scent around.
I brought the book over to Sun Lok and wanted to get started, but with how easy it was to find Drake, I decided to get some sleep and start fresh tomorrow after training with Balthazar.
________________________________________
(A Week later)
A week has gone by and I have made many different discoveries.
First, I discovered that I could replace sleep with Meditation and not only was the effect better than a full night of sleep, but I would also actively increase my strength every night for at least 8 hours.
I focused almost entirely on Merlinean magic as I had a teacher who could physically demonstrate the spells so I learned easier when I could see the process.
I am perfectly able to learn magic relatively quickly while maintaining proficiency even while learning just by myself, but to see the whole process in front of me and being able to have any questions answered by a knowledgeable person, my learning abilities skyrocketed.
In a week, not only have I become insanely proficient in the spells taught l, but I am eclipsing Dave in his learning of magic.
I believe it is partly due to Dave seeing magic as more of a hobby, splitting his learning between also trying to get together with his crush he'd recently reconnected with.
I think the reason he learned so quickly in the movie was due to the looming threat of Horvath trying to free Morgana so it helped to motivate him to learn faster and Balthazar pushed him more due to it as well.
As for me, magic is my whole life, I spend every waking moment learning magic and improving my skills and I am sure if Balthazar were to measure my level again he'd already see marked improvement.
I didn't just learn Merlinean magic, I utilized my Wizard magic to learn quicker, I was able to take the spell for the quick quote quill and the spell that would be used to write the Hogwarts letters, to not only document all my experiences with learning the new magic, but copy down as much of the Encantus as I could.
This let me study on my own time as well as learning from Balthazar. It's part of the reason I made so much improvement in my magic.
I don't know how long it would take to learn everything, but before I get into my magical studies there is something very important that I have to do, and one of the main reasons I was trying to get to this world and get Balthazar as a master, the Babylon Candle.
I needed someone knowledgeable about magic to help me analyze and hopefully improve upon the magic of the candle, although I'd even settle for recreating it just so I'm not stranded here.
I already knew it'd be a gamble to use my only way of traveling between universes, to get to one, but I had no other choice, I just didn't know enough about magic.
After the week was up, and Dave was out hanging with Becky I came up to Balthazar who was reading a book that was new this year, not having read anything from the last 10 years.
"Balthazar, I'd hoped you could assist me with a magical research project of mine." I said as I looked at him seriously so he'd know that it was important.
Seeing my face he quickly understood and focused on me. "What's the issue? I'll help however I can." Balthazar replied.