Lunch was a simple affair; I had instructed the chefs quite well on the preparation of my meals. Today I was having a wrap filled with grilled chicken and fresh vegetables with a sauce quite similar to harissa from my old life. This world having proper seasoning in their food is one of my greatest reliefs. Even magic may not be enough if I had to endure the torment that is plain unseasoned food. Magic is unsurprisingly quite demanding and requires me to ensure proper nutrition for my reserves to grow, which led grandfather to commission a proper meal plan from the Academy.
I had 2 hours reserved for my lunch break, eating my food only took like 10 minutes out of it, the rest of the time I either read some books or wrote in my journals. Magic has made me into a workaholic of the highest order; I am obsessed to the extreme and most of my free time just goes into experimentation with it. Given that I was quite lazy as a person previously, it was a bit of a surprise to me. I lay down on my bed with my journal and started to think.
Today, by orders of dear grandfather, I had to put up a demonstration of my talents in front of the family. It has dawned upon me that till now I have failed to introduce my family by their actual names, one of the many issues that comes with never actually referring to elders by their names. My grandfather bore the name of Articus Note, named after his great grandfather, my mom was named Irene, my granduncle was named Nolan, and his son Samael. Now, before you lynch me for going about my life without even telling you of my family, might I remind you that none of us truly think of our parents and relatives with their names in our head, mom is always mom not Irene, which is why my non-introduction should be excused.
While my immediate family thankfully has been quite unproblematic, the same could not be said about the extended one. Suffice to say that while there are a few notable exceptions, most of them can only be described as a bunch of chittering imbeciles, they are conceited, vain and greedy. Constantly since my mother's elopement, they have been filling my grandfather's head with their nonsense, it only got worse after my birth. Tonight was not a family gathering honestly, it was more of a show that grandfather wanted me to perform, he has been rather tired of this bunch for a while now and wanted to use this gathering to once and for all shut them up. At this point I got up again, pacing around my room, I really should introduce the concept of a treadmill around here, but I digress.
This meant that poor me had to think of ways that I am supposed to do this. They are no mages, so any feat of magic will go over their head unless equally flashy, techniques which are merely flashy with no substance are also out for it will give the wrong impression to any person sharing the braincell of the day. It also had to send out the right message, a message to ward off the vultures and keep the authority of my grandfather to not suffer any damages.
I got to making plans for the demonstration. My desk filled with esoteric ideas some of which may see some use today. Journals were dug up, and a chart for today's planning prepared. My grasp on tier 0 magic was complete by now and basic applications of mana were quite solid. Tier 1 magic on the other hand required one to weave their mana in order to generate the intended effect, most mages at this stage go straight to learning spells as that allow them to have what essentially is a stencil. I took a different approach, foregoing learning actual spells in favor of learning theory and the foundations of spell weaving itself. My approach is quite time taking, but by the time I am finished would allow me to theoretically do anything within the realms of what is considered tier one magic.
This approach is quite unpopular as most people who start learning tier one magic are quite older than me and following a set path allows for quicker progress. It is not like they cannot later revisit the foundations when they are farther ahead. I also have tried a few spells to understand the shift between the tiers but, just did not have much use for most spells right now and have enough time to not have to rush things. Today's demonstration though, was somewhat of a challenge. I needed something with the kind of subtle dramatic flair that leaves people thinking, the kind of quite power play that remains in your mind, and as I reached on of my earlier journals about the stories of my previous world, I think I found just the thing for the job.
If this will not shut them up, I doubt anything short of actual threats will.