One man.

  One book.

  One gas mp.

  One night.

  One miracle.

  Ethan felt like he had been thrown back into the days of studying te into the night in his previous life.

  By the time he finished reading the entire book once through, his eyes were already starting to ache. The book was highly technical, and almost all of it was broad expnation with barely any practical examples. Worse, it covered a field he had never touched before. The second his focus slipped, his mind lost the thread and he had to flip back several pages and start over.

  Comparison really did make everything hurt more.

  He could not help admiring the famous Mr. Anonymous, the author of Fireball and Ice Arrow Fundamentals. Somehow, that man had managed to expin the deep principles of elemental casting in a way even a total beginner with no magical background could understand.

  Still, Ethan had survived years of cram-school style education.

  He had even been one of the best at it.

  Looking at the Empire's current learning culture, he genuinely believed no one understood how to chew through a book better than he did.

  Anyone else probably would have given up halfway through.

  Ethan was different.

  If he had not finished chewing through the whole thing, he was not going to sleep.

  That was the composure of a man brave enough to leave all his winter-break homework until the st three days.

  In the end, effort did pay off.

  When Ethan finally closed the book, a new skill had appeared in his proficiency panel.

  [Elemental Inscription, Beginner. Proficiency, 1/45.]

  He spread the charged parchment neatly across the desk, then propped his cheek in one hand and covered his tired, aching eyes.

  In the end, he really had learned the craft of Elemental Inscription.

  But even so, he still had to say it. The craftsmen hired by Juneflower Press in the Capital had no idea how to expin things like human beings. They had almost zero ability to summarize. They could take a simple concept and yer so much needless complexity onto it that any nonprofessional reader would be left completely lost.

  No wonder people in this era generally believed the only way to learn a trade was by becoming an apprentice in person.

  The teaching quality was abysmal.

  In Year 171 of the Sixth Epoch, schor Ethan of Willowbrook hereby offered the above criticism of the Capital's educational environment.

  In truth, Elemental Inscription was nowhere near as profound as the book made it sound.

  At its core, it was simply a test of the inscriber’s control over their own mana. To put it even more simply, you used mana to draw an Ice Arrow onto a sheet of charged parchment, and that gave you a magic scroll.

  That was it.

  There was nothing hard about it at all.

  Ethan could do far more than just draw a pin Ice Arrow on the parchment.

  He could also alter its form and let it take on different shapes.

  He honestly could not understand how these so-called master craftsmen had managed to link something this straightforward to unreted concepts like meditation, spiritual harmony, and sensory attunement.

  If Mr. Anonymous had written this book, Ethan would have mastered the skill hours ago.

  He could feel it.

  Mr. Anonymous was an educator with truly advanced ideas.

  If it were possible, Ethan would actually have liked to meet the man.

  Still, better te than never.

  If all went well, he could finish making twenty Ice Arrow scrolls before sunrise, then head to Hearthbay and sell them all, marking the very first batch of orders for Ethan's Magic Scroll Shop.

  And since Ice Arrow was now at tier two proficiency, he intended to make full use of that to create scrolls that had a style all their own.

  What about combining three Ice Arrow scrolls into one especially powerful Ice Arrow?

  Or maybe adding the hailstorm effect he had used to bury Betsy and her seven elderly stewards into the product line too?

  He had already worked out the business side of things.

  There was a magic scroll shop on Ship One near the docks in Hearthbay. The cost of making one scroll was fifty silver gazelles. Ethan pnned to price his at one gold lion and fifty silver gazelles. Since they were only beginner-tier spells, he could not really charge too high. The goal was steady, long-term business.

  That way, he could avoid paying for a stall on the ship.

  The first batch of magic scrolls would bring in thirty gold lions.

  After subtracting the four gold lions and fifty silver gazelles he still owed Ivy...

  One deal, and he would already have earned back the money he spent on the book.

  Ethan was energized.

  As expected, anything connected to the occult was one of the fastest ways to make money.

  He could already see the gates of wealth swinging open before him.

  To this, the owner of Archmage’s Magic Scroll Shop, a man with seven years of experience selling magic scrolls, had only one response.

  "Why the hell don’t you go rob somebody?"

  When Ethan arrived in front of the old man, arms full of twenty Ice Arrow scrolls and bright with enthusiasm, and expined why he had come, the man was so shocked the cigarette nearly dropped from his mouth.

  "One gold lion and fifty silver gazelles for a single Ice Arrow scroll? Have you lost your damn mind?"

  The reaction caught Ethan completely off guard.

  He reflexively looked over at the shelves lined with all kinds of magic scrolls.

  "But... these are Ice Arrow scrolls."

  The old man could not even be bothered to expin properly.

  "Basic elemental scrolls are on the third shelf. Go look."

  Ethan hurried over in three quick steps.

  A bright sign next to the shelf read:

  Beginner Elemental Spells. Crafted by masters. True artisan work. Unit price, 60 silver gazelles.

  A bolt of lightning seemed to go off inside Ethan’s head.

  The blow hit so hard his hands and feet turned cold.

  As a first-time shop owner, he suddenly realized he had paid dearly for the privilege of being young and na?ve. He had heard magic scrolls made money and thrown himself straight into the business without doing the most basic market research.

  That was entirely on him.

  But still...

  Why not just give them away?

  He wanted to throw the words right back at the shop owner.

  After all, a single sheet of charged parchment already cost fifty silver gazelles to make.

  Then he looked closer at the sign again.

  They really were practically giving them away.

  Buy ten, get one free.

  By the time Ethan returned to the counter, the old man had already hung out a figurative Do Not Disturb sign.

  A new line had appeared on the board beside the register.

  We do not buy back beginner elemental spell scrolls.

  "But mine are specially designed," Ethan tried. "If you use three Ice Arrow scrolls together, they produce a little surprise. They work even better in the rain, or anywhere there’s water."

  "I don’t care what little gimmick you stuck on them. Every scroll on those shelves was made by academy instructors. Textbook-quality stuff. And they still barely sell."

  The owner waved him off impatiently.

  "The age of elemental casters is long gone. If I’ve got money to spend, why wouldn’t I just buy a gun? What do I need your one-use magic scrolls for? If you really want to make money with scrolls, go learn something no one else can do."

  So that path was blocked too.

  At this rate, it seemed Ethan would not even get the ten silver gazelles' worth of basic dignity.

  But he genuinely did not understand.

  Sure, guns and gunpowder were useful.

  But elemental spells were not nearly as worthless as the shop owner made them sound.

  Ethan had seen what Ice Arrow could do. Its power was not far off from a modern anti-materiel sniper round, and it was way beyond anything firearms of this era could produce. The only real problem was that a magic scroll was single-use. Once you used it, you had to buy another.

  But guns needed ammunition too, didn’t they?

  Ethan drifted out of the magic scroll shop in a daze.

  In the version of events he had pictured, he should have had thirty gold lions in his pocket by now.

  Instead, he still had every single one of his Ice Arrow scrolls.

  Could it be that Ethan’s Magic Scroll Shop was going to sink before it had even properly set sail?

  He thought about the st of his savings that he had thrown into this yesterday.

  Now he was still in debt by four and a half gold lions.

  If you thought about it carefully, that was a kind of all-in too.

  A sea breeze blew in from the harbor, carrying the sharp salty smell of the ocean.

  It felt cold.

  "Mr. Elemental Caster, one moment."

  Someone called out behind him.

  A man had come hurrying out of the scroll shop after him. The voice sounded familiar. He wore a masquerade mask, but the golden glow around him made him easy to recognize at once.

  It was the noble champion of true love.

  The young noble pced a hand on Ethan’s shoulder.

  "I heard you say that using three Ice Arrow scrolls together creates a little surprise. Could you expin that to me in more detail?"