Finally! The Secrets to a Hot Bath

I kept the same excitement I had when falling asleep as I woke. I quickly threw the blanket off my warm body, freeing it from the warm confines it was in. The immediate shift in temperature caused me to shiver. Shaking it off, I quickly got up and started preparing for the day. First, a bath was in order.

I stepped out of the room in which I was sleeping in and made my way towards the bathroom. A puff of steam came billowing out of the room as soon as I opened the door. There was a fairly sized, rectangular hole in the floor of the bathroom. Inside the hole was the source of all this steam.

“Could this be hot water?!” I squealed aloud in anticipation.

I put my arm into the water, beginning to feel if I had been tricked or not. As my hand made contact with the water, the feeling of heat quickly warmed my arm, making the rest of my body feel cold. Shocked, I quickly got into the bath, feeling a heat I’ve never enjoyed while being in one.

“Ah, this is great!” I spoke to myself, taking in all the greatness of this bath. “I wonder how they keep this so warm.”

I began looking around trying to figure it out. Inside the tub laid something suspicious. Just above my feet, there had been a cloudy, lava coloured crystal. Confused at the discovery, I moved my toe towards the crystal. As I did, my toe began getting warmer and warmer. Finally, as my toe touched the crystal, a burning pain in the water forced me to move my toe away from the crystal. I guess I found the culprit. Here I was hoping the system would be different from the simple magic crystal system, but oh well.

After spending what felt like hours in the bath, I finally decided to get out. As I stepped out of the bath, I began feeling colder than I had ever before. The extreme temperature shift caused me to feel as though I was freezing all the way to my bones. I quickly dried myself off in a desperate attempt to mitigate the coldness.

It took a while before I started to feel a little bit warmer. I cleaned my teeth, making sure they don’t get yellow. Thanks to the light meal I had yesterday, there wasn’t a lot which could be stuck to my teeth. I exited the bathroom to find my dress.

To my surprise, the dress had been moved from where I originally put it, which was my room, to the main room beside the kitchen. It seems as though it had also been thoroughly washed as well. The hospitality of the village makes me want to leave less and less.

I prepared myself a quick meal using the bread I was given by my parents and some leftover vegetation found in the kitchen. I quickly scarfed it down, as spending time in the bath seemed to have made me very hungry. Even the usually bland lettuce made my mouth water.

I finished up my meal and began to make my way outside where I saw the village leader enjoying a beverage. She watched the children of the village try to cast and learn fire magic. She looked over in my direction, and with a great big smile, waved me over to come join them.

I stood next to the line up of children, feeling a little disgruntled at having to learn with people far younger than me. Nevertheless, the resolve of wanting to learn fire magic triumphed over my desire to complain about the current circumstances.

“Alright. Let’s go back to the basics, since some of you are obviously lacking them.” The leader mocked while eying her grandchild.

“Why are you looking at me? I already know the basics! It’s her that needs to learn!” He complained while trying to take a jab at me, which caused the other children to begin snickering.

“I’m ready!” I exclaimed, gracefully brushing off the rude child’s statement.

My excellence of ignoring him paid off, as it caused the other children to begin laughing at him. His face turned beet-red. I couldn’t hide the small and smug smile that I had.

“Let’s begin. Imagine fire hovering in your hand, as though you had lit a piece of wood on fire right on your palm.” The old lady instructed.

Almost immediately at her instruction, I brought the image she described to life in front of her very eyes. I did it much faster than even the more experienced children of the village. Everyone looked at me a gasp, except for the elder, who nodded as though she expected this result.

“Alright. Now only for you—uh—what was your name?” The leader asked.

“Celestia.” I responded quickly, with a greater confidence than before after showing off my spectacular talent.

“Ok. Now Celestia, if you can do this, you should be fine to learn the rest of fire magic on your own.”

“All of it?”

“That’s right. Learning magic is pretty straightforward for a mage who has already learned one type of magic. After learning an advanced version of the magic, you are treated as able to learn the rest on your own.”

“I see.”

“Anyways. I want you to imagine a wall of fire out in the distance there. Imagine it covering all around the village and reaching high into the sky.”

Taking a deep breath, I prepare the idea the elder had placed into the back of my mind and bring it to the forefront. As I hold out my hand, a raging red hue emits from my hands along with a wall of fire which towers high above the village surrounding. Nothing but fire could be seen inside the village.

Quickly seeing the amazing feat I had casted in front of everyone's eyes, the elder signals for me to end the light show. While the spectacular sight made me not want to end it yet, I decided to abide by what the elder had wanted and stopped the wall of fire by closing my hand. Instantly, the wall of fire disappeared, leaving only slight sparks which were disappearing on their own.

I looked around to see all the people who had gathered here to witness the source of that radiant display of fire magic. All their mouths hung open at the sight. The stranger who had only started learning fire magic moments ago had in no time mastered it as well. Some of those in shock also showed a great envy on their faces.

“Great work Celestia.” The leader commended me. “Now if you keep practicing on your own, you’ll be able to manipulate the fire magic in any way you want. It’ll be just like how you used your ice magic yesterday.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, confused.

“Oh. I guess no one told you. Essentially, when you have mastered magic to a certain extent, you are able to manipulate it into any form you want. You can do whatever you want with it, instead of using a standardized image.”

“I think I understand. My teacher had called those ‘feelings’ and explained it a while back. I guess I was too young to understand it before though.” I responded to her explanation, laughing at my ability to forget something so important.

“Just you wait. I’ll do something so much more impressive than that!” The grandson of the elder yelled aloud, puffing out his chest.

After that, he quickly stormed off, dragging two other kids with him. One of them I recognized as the little girl who had called fire last night. The other boy I hadn’t seen before. Both had looked fairly worried about being dragged off with the boy. What’s the worst that could happen?

After that display, everyone in the village who were amazed at my power started to approach me with questions. Most ranged from, “where did you come from?”, “where are you going?”. Overall pretty standard stuff.

One of the men who approached me had a noticeable scar on the top right of his forehead. The deep gash stuck out to me, causing me to constantly look at it as we were speaking. It looked as though it was caused by an arrowhead, but if it had hit there, he would’ve been dead.

“Would you like me to heal the scar for you sir?” I asked him, wondering if it would be a bother to remove.

“Huh? How would you do that?” He responded with another question, paired with shock and confusion.

“Healing magic, obviously.”

“You can use healing magic?”

“Yeah. It’s pretty easy.”

“Um, go ahead then.” The shock in his voice had slowly become pretty apparent.

He kneeled down so I could easily reach my hand to his forehead. With a quick wave of my hand his skin had returned and he had been fully restored. This had caused everyone in the village to scream in excitement at the miracle they had witnessed in front of them.

“What’s going on?” I asked the old lady.

“People who know healing magic are so rare nowadays. Normally people only focus on refining one type of magic, so no one really chooses to focus on healing. For a mage of your caliber, you must be a godsend.” The elder responded to my question, struggling to contain herself.

While what she had told me was very interesting, it seemed a large line up of people had started to form in front of me. All of them seemed to be showing off their scars in a manner where they were asking me to heal them without words.

I let out a big sigh before saying “First person please come forward.”

One by one I healed all the people’s scars and they all jumped in joy. After the tiring event that was, I was offered a large amount of food. I was happy to accept, but it started piling up a little too high and before I realized it, I wouldn’t be able to finish all of it. Not to mention after all that, it would seem the sun was once again setting.

I ate as much as I could, and brought the rest of the food with me into the guest house. Exhausted from the busy day of learning and healing I had just had, I had decided to turn in for the night.

I may need to leave tomorrow, before their appreciation of me gets out of hand. This was the last thought I had before I drifted off to sleep.