"Charlotte, what time is it now?" Ralth asked, his voice still groggy from meditation.
Charlotte looked up from her book. "Eight o'clock. It will be time for breakfast in a little while."
It was eight o'clock now, and Ralth had started meditating around five o'clock in the morning. This meant that although Ralth felt like he had only been in the sea of soul for a few minutes, he had actually been meditating for three whole hours.
"It seems meditation distorts my sense of time," Ralth muttered to himself, running a hand through his messy hair. The morning light streaming through the small window of their room cast long shadows across the floor, making the cramped space feel somehow both smaller and more peaceful at the same time.
As Ralth was thinking about this strange time difference, his stomach let out a loud growl.
"Ralth, aren't you afraid?" Charlotte's soft voice drifted up from the lower bunk. From the sound of it, her emotions had stabilized compared to her tears from before.
"Afraid?" Ralth repeated, considering the question.
Ralth lay on the bed, curling up his skinny body to try to ease the empty feeling in his belly. His mind wandered through the memories of the past month - memories that felt like they belonged to another lifetime.
He had spent every single day of that month living in fear, with his thin body growing thinner, food becoming scarcer, and his temper growing worse. Every morning when Ralth woke up, his first thought was always hope - hope that somehow all of this had just been a terrible dream.
The current situation, even with its dangers, was many times better than what he had endured only weeks ago.
"I've been through worse than this," Ralth finally answered, his voice steady. "It's nothing to be afraid of."
"..."
The room fell silent. The only sounds were the distant hum of the airship's engines and the occasional creak of the wooden bunks.
Before being chosen for the academy, Charlotte had been the daughter of a wealthy businessman. For her, the pressure of survival had been like clouds in the sky - something she could see in the distance but never had to touch or feel directly.
It was hard for her to imagine what Ralth had gone through to remain so calm when facing the possibility of fighting for his life. He was so skinny that he looked like he could be knocked over by a strong breeze.
"So what are you going to do?" Charlotte asked after a long pause. "We can't defeat those nobles. They're too strong."
Charlotte thought about the knights she had seen before in her hometown - those armored monsters who could cut through a group of a hundred regular soldiers on the battlefield with just a few knight squires supporting them.
Charlotte couldn't imagine how she would handle meeting someone like that face to face. The very thought made her hands tremble slightly.
"Charlotte," Ralth said, staring up at the ceiling, "who do you think is stronger, a magus apprentice or a knight?"
"Of course..."
Charlotte automatically wanted to answer that the magus apprentice was stronger. Even if a magus was only an apprentice, they still controlled magical powers that no knight could stand against.
But before she could finish her sentence, her eyes fell on the book in her bag - "How to Become a Magus's Apprentice."
She had been so overwhelmed by fear that she had completely forgotten that the academy had already given them a way to defend themselves.
"Ralth, you are a genius!" Charlotte exclaimed, her face lighting up with sudden understanding.
She threw off her quilt and jumped out of bed with newfound energy. She rushed to the small wooden table where she had placed the magus dictionary and "How to Become a Magus's Apprentice."
Although she hadn't trained in fighting since childhood like those noble-born students, Charlotte knew they were definitely no match for her when it came to reading and learning from books.
Ralth simply ignored Charlotte's excited reaction. His mind was focused on only one thing at the moment - eating breakfast as quickly as possible.
After a little while, there was a firm knock on the door of their room.
Ralth immediately got out of bed when he heard the sound, his feet hitting the floor with a soft thud.
Breakfast time had arrived!
After opening the door, Ralth saw a strange puppet-like thing pushing a food cart. Dozens of neatly arranged breakfast portions were placed on the cart, each one identical to the next.
"Room 225, breakfast for two," announced a strange, mechanical voice that came from somewhere inside the puppet's body. The sound was sharp and piercing, almost painful to hear.
Ralth carefully took two plates into the room and handed last night's empty plates back to the puppet.
The puppet took the tray without a word and then wobbled away with the food cart, heading toward the next room down the hallway.
"This is magic," Ralth whispered in awe, watching the puppet's jerky movements. A hint of excitement flashed in his eyes, briefly replacing the usual dullness that hunger had placed there.
Back in the room, Charlotte was translating non-stop, holding the thick dictionary in one hand and the instruction book in the other. Her forehead was wrinkled in concentration, and she barely blinked as her eyes moved rapidly between the two texts.
"Charlotte, your breakfast," Ralth said, holding out one of the plates toward her.
"Just put it there," Charlotte replied without even looking up. At this moment, she had already begun exploring the vast ocean of knowledge before her and had no interest in eating at all.
Ralth scratched his head, thinking that being young was good - it meant you could be full of energy even without eating. The thought made him smile slightly, even though his current body didn't seem to be much bigger than Charlotte's. He placed her breakfast on the corner of the table, careful not to disturb her work, and then sat down to eat his own food, savoring each bite slowly.
---
Seven days later, Ralth sat cross-legged on the bed with his eyes closed tight. His breathing was slow and steady, almost imperceptible.
At this moment, his mental power was observing the world instead of his eyes. The sensation was strange - like seeing everything and nothing all at once.
This was the seventh day since he had successfully connected to the Sea of Soul.
During these seven days, everything on the airship had remained stable and peaceful. The daily routine of meals delivered by puppets, the gentle hum of the engines, and the ever-changing view of clouds outside their small window had become familiar.
Ralth had followed the instructions in the book carefully, constructing his own Mana Reflux step by step. The process wasn't as quick as connecting to the Sea of Souls had been, but it also wasn't particularly difficult. It just required patience and focus, two things that Ralth had learned to master during his hard life.
Also during these seven days, Charlotte, who shared the room with Ralth, had been working day and night to translate "How to Become a Magus's Apprentice." Her diligence and determination even surprised Ralth, who had quickly come to respect her work ethic. She barely stopped to eat or sleep, driven by a mixture of fear and determination that Ralth understood all too well.
"Sure enough," Ralth thought to himself, "when faced with a life-and-death crisis, everyone will unleash their inner potential."
Linking to the Sea of Souls had freed Ralth's mental power from the constraints of his physical body, allowing him to use that power to sense the magic floating between worlds. This was the first crucial step to becoming a true magus.
In Ralth's perception, the magic power floating between heaven and earth looked like thousands of tiny fireflies, each one flashing with bright and faint light. Some glowed steadily while others pulsed with rhythms he couldn't quite understand yet.
Ralth's mental power transformed into something like invisible tentacles, reaching out into the space around him. All the magical light spots were absorbed by these tentacles wherever they passed, drawn in like moths to a flame.
Then he carefully pulled his mental tentacles back toward himself, and all those magical light spots were drawn into Ralth's body, filling him with a warm, tingling sensation that was unlike anything he had ever felt before.
If connecting to the Sea of Souls was the foundation of becoming a magus apprentice, then building the return flow of magic was like constructing the walls and roof of a house. Both were essential parts of the whole.
When a magus cast a spell, they needed to use their mental power to control magic power. However, using mental power to temporarily control the magic power floating freely between heaven and earth was not only time-consuming and tiring, but also very inefficient.
The reflux of magic power was a way to store magic power inside the magus's own body in advance, stabilizing it with mental power. This meant that when necessary, the magus wouldn't need to rely on gathering magic power from their surroundings - they would have a reserve ready to use immediately.
However, the magic power stored in the Mana Reflux wasn't infinite. The capacity of a magus's Mana Reflux depended on the upper limit of their mental power. If a spell required more Mana than the upper limit of their reflux could hold, the magus would have to either gather power the old-fashioned way or find another solution entirely.
With the entry of the last magical light spot, the mana that had been slowly accumulating in Ralth's body for days finally reached a critical point. What had been a gradual, quantitative change suddenly became a qualitative transformation. The scattered points of light merged and turned into a small stream of power starting from Ralth's heart, flowing through all his internal organs, and finally returning to the heart again to form a complete circuit.
"It's done," Ralth said quietly as he opened his eyes, unable to hide the excitement in his voice. Even the constant hunger that gnawed at him seemed less important now.
The successful construction of the magic reflux meant that he could now quickly release the zero-ring spells recorded in the instruction book. This was real progress.
The so-called zero-ring spells referred to low-level spells that could be used directly without needing to establish a spell mark in the soul. They were the simplest form of magic, but still incredibly useful.
In the eyes of more advanced magi, these kinds of spells weren't even considered proper magic, but just a basic skill in applying magical energy. They were like learning to hold a pencil before attempting to write a novel.
The thoughtful editor of "How to Become a Magus's Apprentice" had prepared four zero-ring spells at the end of the book specifically for apprentices who had completed the construction of their Mana Reflux.
These spells were: Magic Missile, Force Field Barrier, Lightness Spell, and Silencing Spell.
These four zero-ring spells covered attack, defense, escape, and concealment - a very comprehensive set of basic magical tools. With these, an apprentice could at least have a fighting chance against many threats.
And now Ralth was finally no longer a weakling who couldn't even lift a chicken! For the first time in his life, he had power - real power that he could call his own.
Just as Ralth was enjoying this moment of triumph, Charlotte, who had been working tirelessly to translate the books, suddenly threw the dictionary down on the table with a loud thump.
"Tired of translating again?" Ralth thought, looking over at her with concern.
But instead of showing frustration, Charlotte's face was glowing with excitement.
"Haha, Ralth, come down and take a look. I've finished translating!" Charlotte announced proudly, standing up and stretching her arms over her head. A series of crisp popping sounds came from her stiff joints as she moved.
After seven days of hard work, she had finally finished translating the entire book "How to Become a Magus's Apprentice." In the process, she had also learned the magus language almost perfectly, a feat that would normally take months or even years.
"Congratulations, congratulations," Ralth said with genuine warmth in his voice. "It looks like you have already passed the exam halfway."
Ralth got out of bed and gave her a small bow of respect, acknowledging her achievement.
"Whee!" Charlotte exclaimed cheerfully, walking over to Ralth and patting him firmly on the back.
After spending these days together in their small room, Charlotte and Ralth had become much more comfortable with each other. Ralth now knew that Charlotte was the daughter of a wealthy businessman and had been spoiled since childhood, living a life of comfort and privilege. Charlotte, in turn, had learned that Ralth was a farmer's son with a father who had drunk himself to death, leaving Ralth to fend for himself.
The two had completely different backgrounds and completely different attitudes toward their future.
Ralth's surprising calmness and his genuine yearning for a better future had fascinated Charlotte a little. Whenever Charlotte had wanted to give up during the difficult translation work, Ralth had always been able to encourage her with just a few simple words.
Now it was time for her to return the favor.
"Learn the magus language from me in the next two days," she offered, her eyes bright with purpose, "and you can become a proper magus apprentice too."
"Huh?" Ralth was momentarily stunned by the offer, but then felt a warmth spreading through his chest at her kindness.
"Don't worry, the magus language is actually pretty easy to learn," Charlotte continued excitedly. "Many of its words are very similar to our language. As long as you study hard, you should be able to understand this book 'How to Become a Magus's Apprentice' during this time..."
"Charlotte," Ralth interrupted her, a half-smile playing on his face."Have you ever thought that if I become a magus apprentice, you will have one more opponent in the exam? One more opponent means one more danger. Aren't you afraid that I will stab you in the back?"
Ralth's voice was calm, but the meaning of his words made Charlotte pause, a flicker of fear crossing her face.
One more magus apprentice meant one more potential enemy. In this life-or-death test they were facing, any opponent could be a deadly danger.
Was she really going to teach Ralth? Was it the right choice?
"Well..." Charlotte started hesitantly, but then her voice gradually grew louder and her tone became firmer, as if she had suddenly found a flaw in Ralth's argument.
"Ralth, you wouldn't do that. If you were that kind of person, you could have just kept all your knowledge to yourself instead of helping me understand meditation."
Ralth stroked his chin thoughtfully, considering her words."Generally speaking, I won't stab someone in the back," he admitted slowly. "But there is always a small chance..."
"But even if there is one small chance of betrayal, there's still ninety-nine point nine nine percent chance you won't!" Charlotte suddenly punched Ralth lightly on the arm with her left hand.
"You are such a weird person," she said, laughing now. "I'm clearly here trying to help you, but you're still making excuses. If you keep talking like that, I'll really change my mind and not teach you at all."