The second clone did not take nearly as much time as the first had. It only took a few hours with Thalor and his copy working together to make the clone. It sped up even more when the clone gained conciseness and was able to help create the rest of the body.

  With an upbeat tone, the two greeted the third. ‘’Pretty trippy how it’s seamless, right? Like just one moment you're him, then you are separate.’’ The first clone joked. ‘’Ya, I mean I was building myself as both of you, which was trippy, but then all of a sudden I’m one again. Gotta say, guys, it felt weird.’’ He chuckled.

  Thalor, looking at his two naked clones, said, ‘’So no pants either, huh? I never thought of myself as a nudist, but here you are.’’ He chuckled as he began to try and make some clothing for his naked copies.

  It took a bit, but eventually, they were able to put together a set of plain grey clothes for the both of them.

  ‘’So what should we do now?’’ the second clone asked Thalor.

  ‘’Well, let’s hold off on making more for now until we know more about what exactly the difference between us is. Also, check to see if both of you have a mana core. I think you should, as the mind is what makes mana, but who knows.’’

  Both checked their cores only to see that, yes, they did have cores; it was just as if neither had practiced magic.

  ‘’I was hoping that you would get a tier one core.’’ Thalor sighed with disappointment. ‘’It’s not a big issue; you are only tier one, so it should only take a month or so of practice to get back to tier one for us.’’

  ‘’Ya, that should be fine, as we’re not really going anywhere.’’ The second clone said. Looking at his clones, Thalor said, ‘’You may not have my core, but you can still use fungal manipulation, so you two should try altering your bodies to be more melee capable. I mean, I don’t really know any martial arts, but I’m sure we can manage to sling the sharp end in most enemies' direction.’’

  With that, both of the clones gathered half of the fungal mass that remained and tried to alter their bodies. The first thing they focused on was to harden their skin; it worked, but the harder they made their skin, the less they could move. Next, they tried to form plates of hardened fungus on top of their skin. They left their joints flexible by not covering them, and after a bit of experimenting, their grey skin now had darker plates covering their bodies.

  Next, they were able to elongate their fingers and make claw-like appendages that they could sharpen as needed. Thalor watched as his two clones altered their bodies and thought that they might be able to change others' faces as they could look at what they were doing. Reverting back to normal did not take long, and they were able to go back to that state if needed without much effort.

  Tapping the clones on the shoulder, Thalor synced his thought with the clones. It was easier for him to do it this way than explain. All three smiling at the thought, Thalor had his doubles alter his face to look as it had before his change. It wasn’t a perfect copy, but it was as close as he could get. His jaw was a little sharper than before, and he had a less bloated face. Noticeable, but he would just play it off as weight loss if asked.

  Sighing as he felt he would be able to return to his normal life sooner than he had initially thought, he began to cry. Having the same mind, the other two joined in on the tears.

  After emptying his emotional burden with his two clones, Thalor decided that he would have one of them join as a student as well. He decided to do this so he could learn multiple things at once. Thalor originally decided to specialize in force magic because it had no real natural counters, but with his clones, he could focus on other things and not lose focus.

  ‘’What do you think that we should get you to specialize in?’’ Thalor asked his first clone.

  ‘’Well, you took force magic as your main area of study because of versatility and the no natural counters. So I should specialize in something, offense maybe, no force is ok at that. Maybe something to supplement our fungal nature. How about plant-based magic? We could grow plants to turn into fungi.’’ The first explained.

  Thalor agreed with his copy and went to work making his copies' faces more human. They also did seconds while they were at it.

  At the academy Thalor attended, one needed to be either a tier one mage or better in order to be accepted. So with their faces normal and starting first's mana training, Thalor and second discussed how they could speed up the process of making it to a tier one mage.

  ‘’I never took an alchemy class, but I did see that there were herbs that could help improve the speed of getting through tiers in my general magics class.’’ Even though they both knew this, Thalor explained anyway.

  ‘’I bet there is at least a few in this forest.’’ Second said.

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  Mutually agreeing that this was the best course of action for them to try and find one of these plants, the two set out. They walked through the forest in what they thought was the core of the forest. It didn’t take too long for them to find a beast.

  Pushing some branches aside and walking through a small gap in the tree, the two were immediately spotted by a giant stag beetle who had previously been munching on a mushy log.

  Both Thalor and second quickly changed into their armored state and sharpened their fingers. The beetle didn’t move at the sight of the two of them; it just stared at them, clearly not overly concerned with the two.

  Thinking that they might be able to just walk around it, they tried and failed. After they took a couple of steps, the beetle charged at the two of them with its pincers open. Half expecting this, the two split one to the left and to the right. The beetle followed second, narrowly missing crushing him with its two giant pincers.

  Taking advantage of the beetle facing away, Thalor tried to jump onto the back of the beast, only being able to stay on because he managed to stick a claw through part of the shell. Pulling himself up and onto the back of the beetle while the thing was still chasing second. Once he was where he hoped the brain was under, he cut a small hole in the shell and flooded it with spores from the mind mushroom.

  The mushroom formed and spread tendrils through its skin and into its brain. It didn’t happen instantly, but after a couple of minutes, the beetle came to a stop as Thalor was able to control the mushroom controlling it.

  Hopping off the beetle, he joked to his clone, ‘’I don’t know why you’re out of breath, I did all the work.’’ Chuckling, they looked at their new mount. ‘’This should make for a good shield at the very least.’’ Second said as they both climbed onto its back and set off in their original direction.

  With a mount, they covered ground much faster and eventually came upon a cave. It wasn’t their eyes that noticed the cave first, but their fungal sense. After they hopped off the beetle, they found that the new fungus they sensed was a glowing mushroom a few feet within.

  The cave was dark besides the occasional glowing mushroom that let off a soft glowing light. Deciding to check the cave for any kind of herb, they went in. Walking was not an issue, as the two could walk side by side; the beetle even fit.

  On the way down, they found white flakes. Not knowing what it was, they continued deeper until the cave eventually opened up into a big circular chamber that had glowing mushrooms lining the walls.

  In the center of the room was a truly giant serpent. The snake’s scales were brown with a slight grey. Not being noticed yet, they stepped back out of the room and pushed their senses in. Unfortunately for them, they felt both with their mana and fungal sense that whatever was in there with the snake was both mana-rich and a fungus.

  ‘’Looks like we have to kill it; we can’t leave that here. It’s perfect for us.’’ Second whispered to Thalor. Nodding his head, he ordered for the beetle to go in first and try to distract the snake.

  The beetle, not nearly as silent as the two, was immediately heard and detected by the snake. Seeing the beetle, the snake was enraged that something would dare barge in its home. Hissing, the snake struck out, only to be caught by the pincers. The strike didn’t connect, but the momentum still pushed the beetle back. Not letting this go to waste, they both ran to opposite sides of the snake. The first one to attack was second; he managed to get a deep gash behind the skull. Thalor wasn’t so lucky, as the snake had shifted its head away and tried to squish him with its tail.

  Being struck and sent back, Thalor decided on a different approach. He cast force push on the top of the head of the snake in order to try and disorient the snake. It worked and allowed second to get another strike in, this time going even deeper and causing a flood of blood to start to gush out.

  Realizing that it was running out of time before it died, the snake started just throwing its body all over to try and crush the small figures. It was then the beetle was no longer able to hold on and was sent skittering back. Now free, the snake glared at second. Knowing it would die soon, it tried to strike him before it died, but was stopped when a wave of force sent its head into the stone mid-strike.

  Out of momentum, the snake’s body slowly stopped as its eyes became lifeless. Both Thalor and the clone took a deep breath. Looking at his beetle, he had it push the corpse of the snake as he and the clone recovered themselves.

  After the snake was moved, they found the source of what they sensed. It was a white mushroom that glowed slightly. Approaching the mushroom, Thalor reached out and touched the cap in order to sense it more closely. Sensing what he hoped, he smiled. ‘’This mushroom gathers ambient mana and stores it. This should be enough for our purposes.’’ He said with joy.

  Taking the mushroom, they filled the cave with decomposing spores to get rid of the snake corpse. After that, they left the cave and headed back home on top of the beetle.

  Making it home after dealing with a couple of wolves, they went inside to share the good news with first. ‘’We got one, and as a bonus, we will be able to grow them as well.’’ He said as he walked in. ‘’I thought it would take a couple of days at least. How did you manage to find one?’’ He said while extending his arm to sync their minds.

  Laughing at how lucky they were, he grabbed the mushroom and popped it into his mouth. ‘’Spicy’’ he joked as he sat down to digest the mana.

  Looking at his focused clone, he went about and made some copies of the mushroom in the four corners of the base so that they could absorb ambient mana so hopefully they could get second to tier one and have all three of them learn magic.

  After an hour of meditating, first was able to reach tier one with the help of the mushroom. ‘’Now all we need to do is wait for the others to absorb enough mana to get you to tier one.’’ Thalor said to second. ‘’I think I’ll go for the earth class when I join. Also, we’ve got to come up with names for ourselves as we all can’t be Thalor at the school.’’

  ‘’Now that I think about it, that makes total sense.’’ He chuckled. ‘’Well, you can be Vaelin, and he can be Orin. Both simple and easy.’’ Thalor said.

  ‘’I didn’t know I was so bad with names.’’ Second, now Vaelin, joked. After making fun of Thalor more for his naming sense, neither one of the clones really cared about the names, as to them, they were still Thalor.