June 3 Tuesday. I finish my morning exercises and head home for a quick shower, after that I make my way to the library as always and head for the sorting room, but before I can I'm stopped by Daisy in one of the hallways "hey shade I need you for a while."

I don't ask why as she wouldn't ask without a reason, so I just nod and we walk over to her office and sit down inside, "so what do you need?"

"Well you've been an apprentice at the library for a little over a year now, that means it's time for you to do more then just sort books endlessly", she pauses to place a piece of paper on top her desk, "but there are several things you can do, so you'll be choosing a mentor to learn under."

"This list is filled with anypony willing to teach you, you'll be shadowing them and learning their job for the next year, so choose carefully", I'm a little excited, sorting books may be easy but it's also as boring as dry sand.

I look through the list and see both Daisy and Blaz on it, along with several other ponies I've met while working at the library, I spend some time thinking over my choices.

Most at the library treat me like a colt, which is fair as I am a colt, but it doesn't make it less annoying when they talk to me like I'm stupid, in contrast Blaz, Daisy, and Maple treat me more like a friend and equal, they basically don't talk down to me, so I rather apprentice under one of them.

Out of the two Daisy works as an administrator, she's not in charge of the library just the employees and their pay, I've seen the library head a few time but they are rather hooves off in running the library, back to the point though, I don't think I'm going to apprentice under Daisy.

I don't have any interest in administration or paperwork so that only leaves me with Blaz, the library is public so often books are either lost or damaged beyond repair, this is why the library has at least two copies of every book, and also why you can't check out a book if it's the last copy in the library.

Blaz's job is to copy books to either be added to the library or replacing lost books, so If I apprentice under him I'll be copying a lot of books, interestingly enough Blaz's told me his job became easier because somepony made a copying spell, It doesn't help him copy a single book as the copy spell has a limit, but if he needs to make multiple copies he doesn't need to write the same pages again and again.

With this in mind and after looking through the rest of the list, I eventually decide "I'll go with Blaz."

Daisy looks up from some paperwork she was doing while I was deciding, she gives me a smile "good choice paperwork isn't fun, and thanks for winning me ten bits."

I give her a deadpan look "you both bet on who I would pick, didn't you?"

"Wrong, all three of us, Maple pitched in."

I let out a long sigh "is Blaz at his work area right now?"

Her smile grows "yup, do you remember the way?"

"Yes, thanks Daisy", she nods to me as I leave her office and head down the hallway, I move through a few hallways before stopping at a door and knocking on it.

"Come in" I open the door and enter the room and look around, the room has three desks, two are covered in stacks of loose paper, and the last one is empty, there are also several bookshelves lining the walls, and sitting at a desk is Blaz looking back at me, "well looks like I just lost twenty bits, thanks colt, well come on in we got work to do", I close the door and move over to him.

"You know my job pretty well from hearing me complain about it so I don't need to explain much", he places a stack of papers to the side "considering how much you take notes you probably know the new copying spell by now, right?"

"Yes I know it well."

"Good then lets get you set up" he motions over to the empty desk, "you'll work there, here this is what we'll start on", he passes me a small history book, "a few of these were destroyed in the last year so we need to make three new copies, I'll be writing down the first half, and you'll do the second half, we'll then take turns resting and copying the pages we made, sound good?"

"Sounds good", I sit at the desk and get to work, and as I start writing I let my thoughts wander on an internal rant.

I eventually want a copy spell that will copy full books, but the current one can only copy a few pages and also can't copy from books, as adding a part to the spell that lets it target specific words or pages would make it use too much magic for most ponies to cast, this is why me and Blaz still have to copy out pages by hoof and them copy them to assemble a new book.

Moving on from work, Entropy's training has been going well, I have her teleport me to the storage room I rented and back twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening round trips, this lets her get tired but not exhausted.

And it's been working well as while she still gets tired, she can now teleport the distance much faster, I've started timing her with my watch and when we started a few days ago it would take her almost thirty seconds of concentration before teleporting, now it only takes twenty five seconds, a large improvement for such a small time frame.

As for the flasks I got a thank you letter back the next day, Celestia seems happy with them and I was told that I would be getting a cut of the profits, I don't think she would take no for an answer, so I guess I'll have more bits and nothing to do with them, hell I have enough at this point to not work for the next few decades.

As for my other projects, the wheat is doing just fine and should definitely be done by mid August or early September, my other plants have been growing well and haven't had any problems.

My small planet is almost done now, it looks decent and just needs a few detail tweaks before it's finished, I'm not sure what I'll do with it when it's done, but It does look nice.

The endless quill has also seen much progress, I was able to get the quill to draw with carbon much like a pencell, but I still need to finish the part that will gather carbon from the air, although I think I can just get the purifying rune to filter it, but I don't want it sucking in a bunch of air all at once so I'll have to slow the process down.

Beyond my projects I've kept up with Stone's training, It's still rough but I'm making progress, I've gained some muscle and have lost weight, I've also improved in my magic training, I'm now able to draw a matrix while walking, it still takes a while though.

I continue copying pages for the next few hours until lunch, the book isn't that thick so we are almost able to finish it before lunch, and after lunch we are right back to it, an hour later we are done copying the pages and spend some time going through them.

After making sure everything is correct we start using the spell to create three copies of the book, it takes both of us several turns before we finish, when we are finally done we spend the last bit of the day binding the book and giving them proper covers before finishing for the day.

I spend a few moments cleaning up my desk before leaving, "well colt you seem well suited to this work, not that I would suspect anything different from somepony like you."

I give him a blank look showing how impressed I am at his attempts at humor "have a good day Blaz" I deadpan to him as I leave.

"HA, same to you colt."

When I get home I go through my daily schedule, checking the plants, making food, and trying to keep Entropy entertained enough to work on other things, but when that's all out of the way I sit down and start finishing the small planet, it's now detailed enough to almost look real, if you squint some.

But it looks good enough for me, there are mountains, some rivers and even a wandering tropical storm that moves through the oceans, the clouds look nice and as I still had three slots left when I was done I decided to add a ring around the planet, and the last two I'm going to use to make the planet have a day night cycle.

It takes me a while but I'm able to get the illusions to work right, when I'm finally done I spend a few minutes simply watching it spin slowly, when I'm finally done staring at my small world I place it on a shelf and turn it off with two taps, I grab my other project that needs work.

I've gotten the quill to write properly when covered in a thin layer of loose carbon, but I still need the gem to gather that carbon, and because I don't have anything to start with I'll have to work from scratch, I start by selecting the right runes.

The first rune I need is one for air, after some looking I find I have two that would work well, first a rune of air, and second a rune of wind, after some thought and looking through the runic context for both I decide on the rune of wind, as my spell needs to gather air so having movement as part of the context should help.

After that I need a rune for condensing and I have a perfect rune for that already, so that's covered, the last rune I need is something to separate the carbon from the air, with this I have three options, first a rune of purification, second a rune for filtering, and finally a rune for separation.

All could work but I think I'll go with the filtering rune, as it only filters things instead of destroying or separating them, I spend the next three hours just working out all the different parts of the spell, I wasn't even able to finish it as the math needed is also complex.

I put it back on a shelf when I'm done, I'll work on it more later but for now I'll focus on something else, I grab the bright strain of Moon Glow and place it on my desk along with an extra pot, I'm going to do some breeding and then work on the Moon Glow extract.

I spend a while just breeding them to get a brighter plant before I start harvesting their petals, I gather a decent amount before stopping and putting the plant back, I grind down all the petals and collect their fluids inside a small clay jar.

I want to see if the magical effects of the plant is lost if I extract as much water as I can and then purify it to be pure water, I go through this process and when I'm done I have a very small amount of clear liquid, I try and push magic into the liquid and it gives off a very soft glow.

It's so soft I can barely see it even in this slightly dark room, it seems the processing of the plant has removed almost all of the magic from the fluid, I don't think the effect will last long in this form, a day maybe two at most, so I'll need to find a different way to process the plant.

Still this proves that the Moon Glows magical effects last a long time even with heavy processing, unlike some other magical plants.

I'm also starting to form an idea of what I'll use this extract for, but that's for later, right now it's late and I need sleep, I spend a few minutes having Entropy travel back and forth between the storage room before going to bed.

Author's Note

Thanks for reading and eat cake.