Lord of Charm

"You're too strong, Gale. The imperial family will only let you live if they can make you fall in love with one of their descendants and bind you to them."

Valentina said softly as she looked at Gale and told him the reason that they won't be able to be together if he is too talented.

Gale's hand clenched on hers when he heard that. Although he heard before that the imperial family made sure to remain at the top, he never thought it would have anything to do with him. After all, he didn't have any aspirations to become a king or change society's order.

"How do you know it's going to happen? I'm not politically involved in the empire, so they might not care whom I marry."

"You might not be right now, but what if you be in the future? Or what if your son will be and you will support him as a parent?"

Gale nodded as he understood where the imperial family came from. If there would be a revolution, it'd be certain that the new emperor wouldn't spare the former imperial family to stop any chance of them returning to their position.

"So you want to break up now although the imperial family didn't do anything yet?"

"Since we know they will, it's meaningless to wait for them to separate us by force. If they hear you're single, the whole process will be more pleasant for all of us."

Gale leaned down and kissed Valentina on her lips. He caressed her face one last time before getting up.

"All right. I will take my leave then."

However, before he took a step away, he felt a hand grips his, and he stopped moving. He turned around and found Valentina sitting in her bed and holding his palm, stopping him from leaving.

"I love you, Gale. Can you love me one last time?"

----------

Gale was sitting in his room alone and thinking about what transpired between him and Valentina earlier. He remembered the words of Freedom's members when they went on a mission to exterminate them.

'The imperial families and the nobility control our lives, and we only have what they allow us to have, huh. I've killed them all without thinking about whether they might be right, yet now I feel like it might be true. If I can't even choose whom to love, this empire might not be the right place for me.'

Gale went to sleep and stopped thinking about it. He understood that revolting against the empire with his current strength was nothing but a pipe dream. First, he had to get strong enough to face the whole empire, and only then he could become free.

'Then I will have to utilize my strengths and become stronger.'

Was his last thought before falling asleep. Acting on his words, he went to meet with Alice the next morning to get trained.

"You have a lot of potential. Your connection is far higher than any other Advanced Mage's and might be as strong as an Expert Mage's, however, you lack experience and expertise in utilizing your connection and using mana."

Alice explained his biggest weakness while he nodded since he already knew all of that. If not for that weakness, he would be able to defeat Ronda in one on one by a large margin with his superior connection to mana despite her better affinity.

"Is that what we are going to work on for today?"

"No, that's what we are going to work on for the next 3 months. At the end of those 3 months, I'm going to remove you from your age group and place you in the age group for students between 36-45."

He had everything needed to be on the highway to success. His connection was exceptionally powerful, his affinity was one of the highest in the empire, his body and mind were strengthened to the extreme, and he had a magus for a teacher.

He trained under Alice for three months every day without a moment of rest. He would only get time for his meals, which were upgraded to sixth-rank dishes, and free time for sleep.

During the first month he improved his basics of controlling mana in the Mage Phase, and thanks to his high connection to mana, high affinity, and high intelligence, he could easily grasp the right methods in a short time.

"Now that your expertise is finally above the average True Mage of the academy, it's time to teach you about the benefits of the fifth stage. I heard you and Ronda mixed a fire spell and a wind spell together, is that right?"

"It's right. We both created storms and combined them into a huge storm that killed 11 True Mages and severely injured one Advanced mage at once."

"I assume you two could achieve that thanks to your connection as a ruler beast. Normally, only Advanced Mages can combine two spells of different elements, while True Mages can only pour more mana into a single spell to make it more powerful."

Gale remembered the time when he managed to combine spells of the earth and darkness elements together when he trained under Shana, but it was on a much smaller scale than what he achieved with Ronda. Back then, he only applied a simple darkness spell on a simple earth spell.

"First try it with simple spells. For example, try to combine a fireball with a stone bullet, so the bullet will be on fire and get some decaying attributes."

Gale gave it a try but found it harder than he anticipated. On his first try, the fire decayed the stone and made it melt, making it officially a failure.

"You need to remember that mana is one despite having many types. One magic shouldn't affect the other."

Gale concentrated again and tried to request the Fire mana and the Earth mana to co-exist with each other. This time, the fire-stone bullet was completed successfully, and he shot it at the target Alice pointed at.

"Better, you're getting it fast. Again."

Alice remarked when she saw his face falls as the stone crumbled and decayed in the middle of its trip to the target. When the spell hit the target, there was only fire with some ashes left inside the spell.

He could finally perform a legitimate fire-stone bullet after a whole day of practice, and Alice nodded in contentment.

"But this is only half a step. The bigger the spell, the harder it gets. This month you will practice combining your spells until you can easily combine different spells without any lag. Although you succeeded in creating one simple spell, you take way too long to charge it."

He spent the next 6 weeks combining spells. Every time he started to combine two spells, Alice would show him an example of how she combined them and let him try himself after he sensed the mana's movements around her. She also showed him again whenever he asked her and helped him as much as she could.

"Is it really necessary to combine spells? Why not just use two spells separately?"

Gale complained despite knowing he and Ronda couldn't achieve as much destruction as they did if they cast their spells separately.

"It's simple, use stone bullets and fireballs against this wall separately."

Alice summoned a stone wall in the training room in front of Gale. Gale did as she said and bombarded the wall with fireballs and stone bullets, yet nothing happened except for some small marks on the wall.

"Now combine them."

Gale already mastered combining fireballs and stone bullets at that point, so he just had to do it on a larger scale. When the barrage hit the wall, more and more holes appeared on it until it finally crumbled and decayed from the attack.

"One combined spell is far stronger than a few separate spells, that's why. By combining mana, you use a better form of mana for your spells."

Gale sighed and continued his training. 6 weeks later, he could pretty much combine any spell he wanted, making him a full-fledged Advanced Mage.

"Next is your mental strength. I didn't plan to tell you before you became an Expert Mage, but I think it's necessary given your high mental strength. When your mental strength reaches 100 MSU, after some training, you should be able to start using a third spell simultaneously."

"What's the normal mental strength of a magus?"

Gale was wondering about it for a while. He noticed the magi had no problem making him fall to his knees with their mental pressure without breaking a sweat, making him think that his mental strength wasn't that special after all.

"Do you know the basic requirements to become a magus?"

"Yes, an affinity of S-67 or higher."

"Although true, out of the known magi in the empire, maybe 10 of them have an affinity under SS-1. Those with lower affinity only have a chance if they have a great potion brewer behind them to support them with the best potions of the seventh grade."

Gale shrugged as he didn't care much about that. He already had 2 SS affinities and one was even SSS, and he didn't need any potions to advance. He only needed a stronger woman.

"More importantly, one's mental strength must be above 150 MSU, or else their mind will break during the breakthrough. However, since the mental strength enhances by an average of three times, depending on how young one advanced, most people try to get as close as they can to 300 MSU before advancing."