Four years later:
During the last four years, his long and uneventful routine—reading, meditating, eating, and sleeping—continued without change. Alger's life was peaceful... and for now, that was all he wanted.
He was sitting in the dark and cozy library, all alone.
Alger didn't look like the boy he was four years ago, he is about to turn twelve in a few days... He was taller now, and his white hair had grown a lot longer. Though only eleven, he looked closer to fifteen because of his messy hairstyle and the dark circles that lay under his eyes.
Alger crossed his legs, closing his eyes and focusing on his center of mass... just below his abdomen.
Silence.
Darkness.
When he opened his eyes, he stood in the void...
A single door stood before him.
He reached out, slowly, and was about to touch the knob, but before he could—the door creaked, opening slightly on its own.
Just a sliver.
Enough for Alger to see through to the same darkness beyond.
Alger had an Awakened Tempest gate now.
He had become a Tempest Awakened.
At age eleven.
Most humans didn't even sense their gate until this age, and Awakening came between fourteen and sixteen, if they were lucky. And Alger did all of that without the help of books and tutors.
Alger had done it all on his own before his body fully matured.
But Alger was sure he could do it quicker. If his body had fully matured, he could have done it a lot sooner.
During the last few years, he learned a lot about gates.... Each tier of a gate was a complete level above the previous one, Apart from increasing the capacity of Elemental energy you could store, they open a whole new world for you....
He opened his eyes and looked down at his hands. He didn't feel different... but something had shifted.
The air around him whispered.
Alger tried to understand what it was saying... but his head would start to hurt before he could fully understand the murmurs....
He closed the book, put it in its respective place, rushed out of the library, down the stairs, and finally outside of the orphanage.
The orphanage itself resembled a small cathedral, with tall rusted iron gates and stone walls enclosing it.
Behind the building, a vast field stretched toward the edge of the forest. The field was where the children played. Trees with swings, flowers in scattered patches—idyllic, peaceful.
Alger stood in the grassy field while kids were playing around him, and he was able to feel the wind differently. He could bring forth a gust of wind, or he could slow it down. He could make it wrap around him. There were so many little things he could do. But it wasn't enough. Nowhere near enough to survive in the wild. He knew he had to get stronger. It was time....
Time to learn a weapon. Now that he was an Awakened, he had no reason to stall his progress on learning a weapon. So today he was going to ask the headmaster to teach him, the dusty katana that lay in his room was proof that he was once a swordsman.
***
'Just how many damn times is it going to skip forward..... curse it all'
The echo of his voice slowly faded away.
***
Four years later :
Alger is about to turn 16 in a few days.
After he became an Awakened. He asked the headmaster to teach him the katana, but was refused. After trying again and again for a month, the headmaster finally gave in.
Ever since that day, the headmaster has been teaching Alger how to use a katana. During the first two years, the headmaster only demonstrated basic movements, stances, footwork, grip, and control. Nothing fancy. And told him to repeat them until exhaustion. But once Alger had internalized the fundamentals, the headmaster began sparring with him personally. And to this day, Alger had never managed to land a proper blow on him.
The headmaster wasn't even using his gate... Alger didn't even know what Element affinity he had.
The headmaster was no ordinary mage. He was different...
Apart from training, Alger has been exploring. After you turn 14, you get the permission to leave the orphanage—as long as you return by dusk, that is.
Zephyr wasn't a large city; it was surrounded by forests. The forests were not that dangerous, as long as you didn't venture too deep. And for the last two years, Alger has been doing exactly that.
There are a lot of reasons why Alger is doing what he is doing.
The first was simple: he wanted to become a Conjuror. And for that, he needed to put his life on the line.
The second was to test his swordsmanship skills. He has to get real-world experience in order to truly get stronger. One encounter with true danger was worth far more than a hundred sparring sessions.
And finally... he needs money. Alger has been hunting down all kinds of animals to sell their parts—fur, meat, bones, even the occasional rare antlers. Yet, despite nearly two years of trudging through the forest, chasing beasts and dodging danger, he had barely managed to save a single pound.
In the country of Mytherra, there were three forms of currency—or more precisely, three denominations of a single currency: Cents, Coins, and Pounds. Ten cents made a coin, and one hundred coins made a pound.
Cents were small, brown, circular pieces made of something were made out of something resembling copper. They were only a few centimeters wide, rough to the touch, and irregularly shaped. They had no design—just jagged edges and a dull, worn surface.
Coins were the primary currency used across Mytherra. Round and metallic, about twice as wide as cents, they each bore an image of a tree trunk in the center, framed by ridged edges. The word Mytherra was inscribed above the trunk, and the year of minting below it.
And then there were Pounds. Unlike the others, a Pound wasn't meant for daily transactions. It was for those who found it too troublesome to carry hundreds of coins at once. A Pound was rectangular, made from a strange metal that shimmered with a holographic glow. On its surface stood a tall, vertical oak tree, which looked elegant.
Alger needed the money to buy an Elemental katana...
The quality of a weapon depends on the tier of the Elemental Ore used in crafting it. If none was used, the weapon would be of the broken tier.
Elemental Ore could differ in two ways: Its purity and its affinity.
The purity was divided into 9 tiers, starting from Awakened and ending at Celestial. Whereas, the affinity could vary in 10 ways, each corresponding to an Element.
On Terra, Elemental energy in nature isn't equally distributed. Some places might have an abundance of Elemental Energy, while others might not even have a single drop. Places with high Elemental energy have high chances of 'Elemental Ore' forming in them.
Creatures that live in high-element zones have a high chance of forming Elemental Ore within them. The tier and affinity of the Ore formed within the creature depend upon the creature itself.
Of course, the second method meant cutting open a creature's guts and hoping you struck gold—something Alger had no interest in doing. And the first? Digging kilometers below the surface for years, hoping to find something? Yeah, that was even worse.
By Mining, you could get ore up to the Bound tier. But by hunting, you could get up to Celestial... of course, that meant killing a Celestial being.
You can only get Terra, Aqua, and Inferno affinity Ore by mining. To get the others, you had to hunt.... no other choice.
You didn't even need much ore to make an elemental object. It wasn't the primary material—just the part that gave the object its affinity. Alger didn't know the exact crafting process, but he did know that just about anything could be imbued—armor, weapons, even clothes.
Elemental Ore wasn't only used to craft objects; it could also be used as a container to store Elemental Energy itself.
Alger recalled how, as an infant, Sister Twilight had lit a lamp filled with Elemental ore—those crystals inside.
An Elemental katana was not cheap; it would cost him anywhere between 7-2 pounds. He had hoped to buy one before he left the orphanage to attend a school. And unfortunately, he only had half of what he needed to buy it.
So today was going to be his last day hunting in the forest.