Chapter 007

Genius

Alevier was not great at defence magic - something which was caused by his innately low spiritual aptitude. Which meant that his spell casting speed was depressing. Coupled with his low Mana capacity, his spells were also weak.

Alevier glanced at professor Jarkiso - a six-foot-three-inch tall muscle mountain of a man. He was a veteran battlemage who had lost an ear in the Third Great Magus war eight years ago. Under those short spiky grey hair was a stern face on which a long white scar ran down from his cheek to his neck. He wore a loose white shirt and a pair of black baggy pants. This attire was unusual for a teacher, but which student would argue with their teacher of Combat/Defense magic? If they wanted their asses blown off, it was a different matter altogether.

Nothing like a student being blasted out of the arena for asking about Professor’s attire had happened. It definitely did not happen, or that is what the students told.

“Okay, students,” he said in a deep voice. “Get ready for a round of ‘whose-shield-breaks-first’.”

Oh, it was great, this was Alevier’s favourite game - he’d usually get knocked out first so he wouldn’t have to bear with the insults directed at him. Alevier shook his head and readied himself. All the students of class 3Q were standing side-by-side facing their teacher.

Soon, all of them cast a generic mana shield - a glowing translucent wall of force. In theory, if a mana shield was cast perfectly, it would be totally transparent much like a piece of glass. However, most of the students here couldn't perfectly execute the creation of the spell-model; a pity they could not buy talent. The faults in the spell-model caused mana to leak out or cause side effects and hence caused it to glow and become translucent.

“You all know the drill, whoever's shield breaks will join the beta group while whoever remains standing will join the alpha group,” announced Jarkiso. Despite his appearance and his previous job, he was rather kind to his students.

“These attacks will be stronger than what you all faced last year, so don’t blame me if you get a bruise or two while being knocked into the beta group!”

Well, mostly.

“Brace yourselves!” he exclaimed as he fired numerous mana missiles out of his wand. With loud bams, those missiles struck the shields. Cracks spiderwebbed across numerous students' shields as the barrage increased; after another ten seconds, a student was blown off their feet. To everyone’s surprise, it was not the usual person.

Alevier just stood there dumbly staring at the student who slowly picked himself up, then he looked at his own mana shield - there were scratches on it but not a single crack. So did the teacher purposely not hit him with strong missiles? Well, Jarkiso had spent a lot of time working on him, last year. But no, that person was impartial to everyone; Alevier could tell this much from his experience. So was his shield too strong? He was too terrified to believe such a thing.

He glanced over to shields of other students - some of the shields which had been cast almost perfectly by some students had fine cracks on them, while the shields of everyone else were either falling apart or had large fractures in them.

Alevier made a mental note to himself: ask professor Jarkiso if he had changed his policy of being impartial.

Alevier internally debated the possibility of someone else reinforcing his shield as he watched more of his peer fall on their butts and bite the dust. Well, the arena’s floor was certainly dusty.

After another minute of the merciless barrage, only ten students were left standing. And to Jaysaun’s delight, the infamous perdant was one of them. And looking at the shields of everyone present, it seemed as if Alevier’s had suffered the least damage.

The standing students looked at each other, then they looked at Alevier. He felt really uncomfortable at the moment, so he looked at the students who had failed and were standing as a separate group. They looked back with confused yet contemptuous gazes. There was a moment of awkward silence. After a long time, he felt embarrassed; heck, he thought he had become immune to embarrassment after two years of being shunned.

Suddenly a student protested, “Professor, are you sure you hit the perdant’s shield with the same number of attacks?”

“Could you repeat that?” said Jarkiso in a hostile tone and directed an angry glare at the speaker. The student jumped in fright and quickly hid in the crowd.

“However, it seems that his shield is the strongest here,” Jarkiso said thoughtfully, he was slightly surprised.

“That is impossible!” whispered a student from the group failures.

“Yeah.”

“I bet he cheated - somehow!”

A number of objections sounded across the arena. Jarkiso let out a sigh, sometimes it even gets difficult for teachers to deal with these ambitious young adults - what will one gain from cheating in such a small test?

“Mister Tuwymir, erect that mana shield again,” shouted Jarkiso.

A stunned Alevier snapped into the present and hurriedly erected a mana shield. He had never put too much mind in casting a spell when he was not practising, it was a subconscious action for him just like writing a word. But consciously focusing on spell casting, he noticed something peculiar: he had cast it too fast and with much ease, and it was near perfect - something which he and his teacher had failed to discern the previous time.

Jarkiso raised a brow, he remembered, Alevier Tuwymir has struggled a lot in his classes last year and had attended a lot of extra classes to catch up to the required standards.

“Okay, brace yourself,” Jarkiso waved his wand and this time he increased the power of his mana missiles. In a blink of an eye, about twelve mana missiles came flying towards Alevier who closed his eyes and prepared for the worst. But the expected blow never arrived. After twelve loud crashes, he opened his eyes to see that his mana shield had not suffered much damage - a few cracks here and there, but that was it.

Everyone looked at Alevier, who seemed more surprised than anyone else. The sun did not rise from the west, did it? There was a moment of thoughtful silence where everyone was struggling to believe the truth.

Then Jarkiso broke the silence - with applause, “Well done boy, well done. Although imperfect, that defensive power is already much more than what a better 2nd star Magus can muster.”

Alevier did not find this joke funny, he had recently become a 2nd star Magus, that too with much difficulty! He tried to keep calm but could feel some excitement boil in him.

“What?” shouted a boy. “What the fuck?”

“Hey, keep that profanity out of my class,” snapped Jarkiso as he fired a casual mana missile at that boy: which ended up breaking his nose.

Jarkiso was being serious about Alevier over here, that shield was quite strong - something which can be done only by a year or two of hard work coupled with a considerable amount of talent. He will ask the boy personally about it after the class.

“The perdant is stronger than 2nd Star? What kind of joke is this?!”

Murmurs of students created a buzz in the arena. It was quite unbelievable, after all, Alevier was nicknamed perdant for a reason - not including the fact that he was from a rather humble birth.

“Professor Jarkiso, may I challenge Alevier to a duel?” a girl wearing robes walked out of the line. She had a rather cute yet confident face with dark flowing hair and piercing green eyes. She was Lueirby - the heir of the noble family of Edeye. A talented, diligent student in the eyes of every teacher, however, Alevier knew her true colours. She was a haughty individual who had secretly bullied Alevier the most.

He narrowed his eyes, this was not good for him.

“Miss Edeye, I cannot permit that,” Jarkiso flat out rejected her request.

“Oh, it is alright Professor,” she said with a smile and went back in her line.

“Now shut up you all, else I will send you all to the hospital,” bellowed Jarkiso and there was silence. “All of you who are in the beta group, go and stand at that end of the arena, I will address you all shortly.”

The surprise and tension had not dissipated yet, but Jarkiso though that he’d better not waste his class for something so trivial, maybe Alevier had worked a lot during summers - that boy was a natural hard worker after all.

He gestured the alpha group to assemble in front of him. There was always a group of students who had much more skill and might not be able to perform to their full potential because of their peers. Thus, most professors (especially those who taught practical magic) divided the class into the alpha group and the beta group in their first class of every year.

The beta group would adhere to the curriculum and practice while the alpha group would dwell into a more advanced level. Alevier had been in the beta group last year at all times.

“Okay, gather around,” said Jarkiso. “Today is our first class so let’s take it slow. Now I will show you how to cast mini mana shields and manipulate their shapes and sizes. I will teach about size adjustments first.”

Despite his shock, Alevier decided to go with the flow - maybe he had turned a wee bit stronger. It was great, but he was still in self-doubt. The situation was in his favour, so he decided to extract all benefits from it.

The students nodded. Jarkiso stretched out his palm and spell-model emerged out of it. Alevier could identify by its structure that it was a mana shield spell-model - just like the one he had cast, with a few minor tweaks.

“Miss Edeye, state Jeze’s law,” said Jarkiso.

Lueirby stared at the spell-model and said, “Jeze’s law states that - ‘To modify a more structured spell more spiritual force is needed’.”

“Yes, as you can see, the mana shield is not a very structured spell: the mana pathways or channels are less, and the same goes for the nodes. The spell-model does not restrict the movement of mana much and lets it flow with much freedom ‘inside’ the model. Hence, it is comparatively easier to modify a mana shield structure, however, the more you modify it, the more difficult it becomes to modify it.”

It was just like folding a piece of paper - with successive folds, the effort required to increase the number of folds increases.

Jarkiso willed his spiritual force, and some more channels and nodes were added to the spell-model.

“I have structured it further now. If you all can see this node over here,” Jarkiso pointed to a small, pea-sized ball of mana in the spell-model. “Adjusting its distance from the four nodes surrounding it will increase or decrease the shield’s size.”

Everyone looked at that node with eyes of curiosity. It was quite fascinating how a slight change in a spell-model can change the spell completely.

“Now, someone state Dervent’s Law of Efficiency,” said Jarkiso.

“Professor, the law is, ‘The efficiency of a more structured spell is always more than that of its unstructured counterpart’,” said a student.

“Correct. This is why we modify this spell and cast smaller shields. The ignition mana or the mana we use to activate a spell-model is much lesser in this case. Moreover, the small shields formed are more powerful. Not to mention, though it seems that adding more nodes and channels increases the mana required to form the spell-model, this is not the case. Because of the compactness of this spell-model, it is usually formed with less mana. Unless you want a very strong shield, a small model should suffice. The only problem with this is that without practice you will make a lot of mistakes in the spell-model. And you require enough spiritual force to modify it; meaning that the casting time is increased.”

He activated the spell-model, and it morphed into a rectangular transparent shield the size of Jarkiso’s upper body.

“See? Now you all get to practising while I help out the beta group students. You all can use your spellcasting mediums if you wish. Practice until you are able to cast it statically - don’t go for dynamic casting just yet,” with that Jarkiso walked off to the other end of the arena.

The students stood there thinking for a moment and then dispersed, each one taking a secluded corner to practice. Alevier was still new to this so he decided to approach a veteran - well, the veteran came hopping towards him.

“Ah! Well done Alevier!” exclaimed Jaysaun as he approached him.

“Jay, can we practice alone?” Sinchiya popped up from behind him, her green locks waving with her head.

“Ah, my sweetheart, just wait for me. Let me congratulate my friend here,” laughed Jaysaun.

“Fine,” Sinchiya clicked her tongue and walked away.

Alevier stood there with an unsuppressible grin.

“What? Is there something on my face,” he asked.

“No, I am a slightly happy today,” said Alevier. Something miraculous had happened with him, so he was quite happy, but a bit frustrated on the inside - he did not dare to question what had happened to him.

“You better be,” Jaysaun patted his back.

“Anyway, what do we have to do?” asked Alevier.

“Ah, we just need to practice whatever Professor told us.”

“Okay.”

“If I were you-”

“-you would approach a girl and seduce her? No thank you,” deadpanned Alevier with his dry humour. He hardly ever joked with people, but he was joyous right now, with Jaysaun being his friend.

“...Probably since I would have no girlfriend then,” laughed Jaysaun. “Just find some area and begin practising.”

“Okay,” Alevier nodded.

“Well then, I will be with Sinchiya - it is tough to be so popular.”

Alevier walked to a secluded area in the arena. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He stretched out his hands and began preparing a summoning spell-model; the very same model he used in his battle with the Nightstalker the other night. Unlike a generic summoning spell, the one he uses to summon his grimoire is quite different. He did not remember where he picked it but, it was the only summoning spell that could summon his grimoire.

With a small chant, he activated the spell-model and felt something heavy drop in his hands. He opened his eyes and saw his grimoire - as ancient looking as ever. He did not need to connect himself with mana to the grimoire, for some peculiar reason he had always been connected to it, no matter the distance.

Although these things felt rather curious, it was actually quite common in premium and high-class grimoires so Alevier never thought much about it… or something was preventing him from thinking about it.

Alevier let the grimoire float and flipped open a plain page. He channelled his mana into the grimoire and used his spiritual force to mould mana. A glowing spell-model appeared in front of him. To Alevier’s surprise, he was able to construct it and modify it like Professor Jarkiso and with much ease! He silently activated the spell-model, and it morphed into a translucent shield the size of his chest. Wait, wasn't this too quick? What the hell? Did he master the spell in one go?

Unsure of what to do, he decided to cast it one more time. Surely, his luck cannot play out twice.

He created another spell-model and modified it accordingly, not feeling exhausted in the slightest. He shook his head and activated it. Another mana shield appeared in front of him - just above the previous one. It worked!

It worked?

Alevier looked around, Professor Jarkiso was still telling the beta group how to strengthen their mana shields and perfect its spell-model. The students of the alpha group were busy practising the mini mana shields, but none of them seemed to completely succeed in that endeavour: their shields were irregular and weak, moreover, some that their spell-models collapse before they activated it.

Something is wrong. Alevier looked around once again, this can’t be happening! He wanted to believe that he succeeded, but at the same time, he was afraid to do so. What if… what if this was an illusion? His memory harshly reminded him that he never had a good magical aptitude. Such a realization was much depressing. Maybe, this was just a sweet illusion which will disappear like his happiness… damn this reality - that mana shield was probably an illusion too. His self-doubt slowly consumed him.

‘So what?’ said a small voice inside him. ‘If this is an illusion then enjoy it to the fullest while it lasts! It is yours and yours only! Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy...’

Alevier stared dumbly at the shield, and a small whisper left his lips - “Yes.”

A small ember in his heart - something which had refused to be extinguished all those years - rekindled and set ablaze into an inferno of hope. His eyes seemed to have a new spark in them as a small realization rapidly grew into a storm of emotions - he felt light. If this was a dream or an illusion, he was free of their opinions, free of those ‘aptitude-testing’ instruments telling him that he was a loser. Something that had been stopping him was no longer there - he was not afraid to fail. He shall suffer no more, there is hope, and it is real.

He muttered a chant under his breath, and another spell-model appeared in front of him. This might be stupid, but he will try it...

“Okay, so you all see this node?” Jarkiso was teaching his students how to improvise on their spell-models. It was no easy task to teach, but they were smart students, so it was relatively easier. It was at the moment when he was going to show how to strengthen the spell, a student yelled, pointing at the source of the peculiarity.

“Professor what is that?!”

Other students noticed it shortly. It wasn't hard to miss.

“What in the world?!”

“Holy shit!”

The students in the alpha group who were practising noticed the commotion. Although they hardly gave a damn about what others were doing while they were practising, they still spared a glance. A single glance of that sight was enough to dumbfound them.

Jarkiso looked with wide eyes at more than a hundred mana shields of various sizes circling around a single person. Alevier stood there - amidst the soft glowing shields which slowly revolved around him like planets around a star - staring at the wonder he created. It was a beautiful sight which made his eyes tear up. He stared up at all those mana shields which faced him and enclosed him in a crystal dome.

The entire arena was silent, nobody dared to make a sound after seeing such an astounding sight.

Jarkiso stared at Alevier in amazement, such a scene he had seen never but twice in his life when he had taught a duo of prodigies. But this was slightly different, the shields numbered in a hundred or even more, what kind of mad mana capacity did that boy have? In this overwhelming display of talent and skill, only one word managed to leave his astonished lips - “Genius.”