SEP 1 Monday.

I write another line of text and move to the next page, it's been a few weeks since the Gala and I've been going through my days like before, that's not to say I've been doing nothing this whole time.

I've kept up with my practice and training with both Stone and Caelum, and I've made progress in all the other things I do, but what I want to hopefully work on right now is my first healing spell, well kind of, it depends on how you define a healing spell, I personally see any spell that helps with the healing process as a healing spell.

Also, I'm not going to be making a new spell just modifying an existing one to make it better, The Cleansing spell is just what you think it is a spell made to magic away dirt and grime, there are a few spells like this but the ones used in healing are much more complex.

They are used to clean wounds and medical equipment, but as you can imagine having a spell clean a wound without it accidentally harming the patient can be hard, this is a large part of why the spell is so complex and uses five different runes.

The spell also takes a while to fully clean a wound and takes a decent amount of magic to cast, I plan to try and simplify the spell, make it work faster, and use less magic, and having looked at the spell I've found a good amount of room for improvement.

But doing this will take several weeks to breakdown the spell and build it back up again, but even with the time investment I think it will be worth it, I won't be doing this today though as I have a few things I need to do, and the first is to finish my work.

Recently a pony made a new spell, and this pony isn't me this time, I don't know all the details but apparently some researcher got tired of copying out text from books, so they took a spell and modified it over the past few months to remove the glue binding most books together.

The spell is a little complicated for my tastes and could use some modifications, but it does what it needs to and does it well, it lets both me and others remove the binding on a book and just copy the pages without writing them out, and it's something I never really thought of.

And honestly I'm kind of mad I never thought of that, not that mad though as the spell has made me and Blaz's work go much faster, although after we got the spell we've had much more free time so the library decided to give us more work to fill that time.

So now I'm not sure if I should thank this pony or kick them, as for what the new work is? Well many old and untranslated books find their way to the library, so now the library head is having more of us proofread these books or translate the older books slowly.

As both of these things still need to be done slowly so I don't think we'll run out of work anytime soon, I finish the book I have in front of me and place the stack of paper to the side to be rebound later, I look at a list to see the next book I need to work on.

And after finding the book I look through it and see it's an exploration journal, the books we get are inspected before we get them so we are given a rough idea of what needs to be done with them, I look at the notes on this book and see it needs to be proofread and some parts need to be removed, and several pages are missing.

A few of its pages were torn out at some point and I'll need to count how many pages are missing and add a note to the book explaining how many are missing and where they fit in the book, then when I'm done copying it I'll add an extra page with all this information on it at the end of the book.

Many old books come to us like this, but not all are added to the library as space isn't infinite, so the ponies I mentioned a bit ago have to check the book and see if its contents are worth the work and time needed to make the book as readable as we can

This book is being kept as while it is damaged it also contains several accounts of different types of animals that are rarely documented, I take the book and gently flip it open to see that the writing is not the best and several important pages are missing from it.

I skim it a little and see that most of it is about different kinds of birds, it's a little interesting as there is even a bird that has some form of bioluminescence in its feathers that glow at night, but after a little looking I start copying the pages and cleaning up the text while noting any missing pages.

I don't finish this book by the time my shift ends, so I organize all the pages and leave them on my desk before leaving the library and heading home, but when I get home I don't stay long, I just feed Entropy and grab my saddlebags before leaving again.

It's a Monday so I have language practice today, I make my way through the streets and easily find the right shop, and when I enter the small shop I see Caelum reading like normal, she looks up and sees me "Hello Shade."

"Hello to you too Caelum," Caelum Isn't the type to do small talk so we get right into my lesson.

At this point I don't need to learn much about the written part of the language and we are focusing on communication right now, I'm not sure when I'll be done but I don't think it will take more than a few months at this rate, although I don't know and Caelum won't tell me, every time I ask she just smiles at me and says nothing, I think she just enjoys fucking with me a little.

Our lesson went as normal and I learned a little more of the language like every time we do this, I've also asked her many things as we've talked and today is no different, "I have a question for you if you don't care?" I always ask if we are still in the middle of a lesson.

She nods, "The last word is mind not care, and no ask away."

I take a moment to remember the right word and note it down, "This might sound personal but where were you born? I'm curious as I don't think you ever say."

"Said not say, and no I don't think I ever did, I grew up in a smaller griffin city, not anywhere really important just a fishing city on the coast, the city's name is Crossis, honestly it's a boring place to live as most just fish, or trade, that's one of the main reason I came to Equestria."

I make a note of the cities name as she continues, "You ponies might be a bit emotional for my tastes but you know how to make things interesting, no offense intended," She adds the last part in the same dry manner she always does.

"None taken," I check the clock on the wall nearby, "Seems we're out of time today, take mind Caelum."

She just smiles at me, "You mixed them up, and same to you Shade" I stare for a moment before chuckling at my mistake, and after leaving I head home again.

I enter my apartment to Entropy like all days and take off my saddlebags, I spend a little time playing with Entropy before having her take us through the void, as we do this I meditate on the space around me, I still haven't learned much from doing this but it's helped me get better at sensing the space around me.

At this point I can sense the space around me more clearly and without using all my mental effort, it's still not easy but I don't have to try as hard now, I still do as I want to push my limits as always, and I still haven't found a way to use space magic beyond just sensing the area around me.

As we enter my apartment again and stop moving back and forth I give Entropy some treats and make my way into my workroom, something I've been putting off a little to research some other things is my self-scan, the gem finished filling a while ago but I had other things to do.

But today I decided to get it out of the way and I'm rather curious about what the results will be, I grab the strongly glowing amethyst and move it to the center of the room before lying it on the floor and laying next to it, I'll need to stay as still as I can so I'll just spend more time meditating as it works.

Before I start the scan I grab a small piece of paper and keep it with me as I start the scan, the amethyst flashes with magic and starts to work, I calm my breathing and stay still as I start to meditate, while I do so I let my mind wander to the things I've learned about affinities over time.

To use an affinity properly you need to convert your magic into the type you have an affinity for, for my life magic I spent time learning how to do it through observation, but I haven't fully unlocked my space magic yet, so how can I still sense things with it?

Well as long as you have an affinity your natural magic will carry much more of that type of magic than normal, my natural magic has much more life and space magic in it then other ponies this lets me sense these types of magic even if I haven't started converting it yet.

But the downside is that it takes both more magic and much more concentration to get the same results, so why haven't I unlocked my space affinity yet to make it easier? Well when I first unlocked my life magic I chose to not go with the method that was recommended.

I did this as it felt like an easy shortcut to power and I thought it might have downsides that I didn't know about at the time, and I was partly right as if you use the method they recommend it does make it easier but also makes it harder, this is mostly because ponies like structure and order.

And when you form the structure to convert your magic trying to then change that structure can be hard as you have come to rely on it and it has been in that form for a while, this makes everything harder even trying to improve is harder as that also changes the structure of the mental construct you are using to convert your magic.

In contrast I don't have a structure to convert my magic I just observed and felt the life magic around me and willed my magic to change into it, this lets me grow without hitting any problems like others who used the other method would have as they'd have to change the structure or learn the way I did if they want to improve more.

This is why I haven't used the other method as I don't want to trap myself in that mess, so I've just been observing the feel of space magic around me and how it flows and flexes, I don't do this right now though as the scan is still happening and I don't want to use magic while it's working.

And after a while of me meditating and thinking about some spells I want to work on, I feel the magic stop flowing and settle down, I open my eyes to see the amethyst is almost empty and walk over to it, I grab my piece of paper and place it on top the amethyst before waiting a moment.

The result is two hundred and forty-six, I raise a brow at this as that seems high but after thinking about it some I think I know what's going on, a good example is a human, we can exert a lot more force from our muscles then we know but a lot of that strength is locked away to prevent ourselves from being hurt from overexertion.

Most living things are like this, they have a reserve of different resources for the body to use in life or death situations, I think that it's the same for our magic as we need some of it to live so if we used it all we'd die, and like I said in the past using too much magic has side effects.

So the real question becomes how much of my magic is held in reserve? Well this scan was based off of the firebolt spell I made that uses small amounts of magic, and if I had to make a rough guess I'd say I could probably cast the spell one hundred and fifty times before I start feeling side effects.

Keep in mind that I'm not adding magic regeneration to all these numbers, but if I pushed myself and suffered a headache and some nausea I could maybe cast one hundred and eighty firebolts but any more than that I'd start risking my life, and after doing some quick math.

Side effects start at roughly forty percent magic left, and anything past thirty percent and you're risking your life, that may seem like a lot of your magic but considering all things in this world need some type of magic just to live I'd say that it seems about right.

It still doesn't really answer the question of how much magic I have compared to others but it does give me a way to roughly measure my magic against others, the firebolt spell uses about half as much magic as the copying spell so I use that as a base and go from there.

Many at the library use the copy spell and when they first got it a few bragged about how much they could cast it and others wanted to prove them wrong, and if my memory is right I noted the results down somewhere at the time, and after looking through a few notebooks I found it.

Most of these ponies are middle-aged and probably have more magic so I'll need to account for that but after doing the math it seems most of these ponies can cast six hundred firebolts on average, and after some more math I have a rough number to work with.

A young adult unicorn has on average enough magic in them to cast two hundred firebolts, so right now as a colt I have more magic than adults that are around twenty years old, after going through all this and making sure to note down that all this is with rough and imprecise measurements I finish up and place the amethyst on its shelf.

I have work tomorrow and still need to cook dinner so I clean up my work area and start cooking some food.

Author's Note

Thanks for reading. :D