The sun had risen already, making the world a brighter place. The sun rays illuminated Aethruni, including the forest surrounding it.

A young boy was sleeping peacefully at the edges of the forest. He awoke suddenly, taking in his surroundings. Keith was still a bit groggy and he wasn’t sure where he was. It was a pretty unfamiliar experience to wake up in a forest instead of your bed. Keith stood up and shook his head. He saw that the sun had risen quite high already and it was almost time for his elemental lessons.

When he thought about his elemental lessons, a jolt passed through his body, suddenly shaking him awake immediately. He remembered what had happened that night and a wry smile appeared on his face. He had no idea why or how it had happened, but he was still glad that he could at least accumulate magic. The first thing he had to do was to find someone who could check on his condition and might know what was going on. The person that came to his mind first was Dillim. He had always been there for him and Keith normally consulted him with all his problems. But he soon rejected that notion, Dillim wasn’t that familiar with the ways of magic.

He then thought of Elena, she had helped him with all his lightning classes and clearly knew a lot as a mana master. It might also be that what had happened was something unique for his lightning element, but he doubted that. Either way, it felt right to visit Elena first. If that didn’t yield any results, it wouldn’t be too late to visit Lloyd, the teacher of the darkness element.

Keith walked towards his sword that was still stuck in the ground and pulled it out. He then proceeded to move towards the academy. Even though his face didn’t display a lot, his pace seemed to be faster than normal, showing his anxiety.

A few of the students that were walking around threw Keith a quick look. Most of them simply frowned and walked on, while some others even stared. Keith had slept on the ground the whole night, so his backside was stained with dirt. He didn’t really notice it because of his anxiety to figure out his situation. But even if he had, he wouldn’t have cared.

He quickened his pace as he reached the classroom. As he quickly opened the door, he stood still for a moment. An empty room had appeared in front of him. In his haste, he forgot that Elena almost always took her students outside. He walked outside and went looking for the sight of Elena, or irregular sounds of thunder.

It wasn’t that hard for him to notice Elena and her students. The sound of thunder wasn’t that hard to miss and the occasional bursts of lightning could be seen from pretty far away. Keith made his way over and joined the rest of the students while Elena was explaining something.

When Elena noticed that Keith joined the class slightly late, she just nodded and didn’t really mind it. The other students were also already used to people joining the class late. Elena never really bothered enforcing people to come early or on time. It was their own responsibility to learn.

Keith kept to the back of the group of students and waited for the class to end. He was slightly anxious and was figuring out how to word everything when he would confront Elena, it was quite the situation to explain after all. It helped that he managed to cast the lightning magic the day before, that took away a part of his anxiety.

When Elena ended her class like usual –with a boom, the students slowly scattered. Keith kept standing at the same spot, which Elena keenly noticed, resulting in neither of them leaving like usual. When most of the children had left, Elena approached the different from usual Keith and crouched down to one knee.

“Is there something you want to tell me, Keith?” Elena amiably smiled towards Keith.

Keith hesitated for a second, which could be seen on his face. Elena didn’t seem to mind and kept smiling, waiting for Keith to speak up. Seeing her smile, Keith managed to steel his mind and opened up: “Well…” he started, “As you know, tonight I finished forming my mana core, but I ran into some troubles when converting elemental energy…”

“Oh, that’s nothing to worry about! A lot of students encounter problems during their first elemental conversion!” Elena was slightly relieved after hearing Keith speak up. She figured that Keith was probably embarrassed to come to her with his problems. When she saw Keith hesitate like that, she thought a more serious problem was at hand, but it seemed to be a minor issue. “So, what happened? I’ve heard a lot of things and I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to help, you’ve come to the right person!” Elena said with a smile.

Keith felt slightly better seeing Elena’s confident attitude. He relaxed a little and started to think how he would convey what happened that night. He figured that the best way to explain everything was just to relay everything as it happened and then show her the results.

Elena listened attentively with a thoughtful expression on her face when Keith told her of his actions. When he reached the end of what happened he took a few steps back and raised his arm. “But even after all that, I’m still able to somehow store elemental energy. Look, I can still call it forth from my body,” Keith explained.

He then closed his eyes and tried to visualize a storm of lightning bursting from his body to his right arm. The next instant, he felt a huge amount of energy leaving him, instantly paling his face. When he opened his eyes, the scene that greeted him was quite satisfying. More lightning than the previous time had appeared around his arm, bathing the surroundings in a blueish hue. Keith barely resisted dropping to his knees, and managed to maintain the energy around his arm.

“Well, this looks just like normal, except that the energy seems to be a bit more than the usual first time elemental conversion,” Elena remarked. She then continued; “It also seems like you visualize something too grand when releasing your elemental energy. Looking at your buckling knees, it looks like you expended almost all of your elemental energy?”

Keith nodded –seemingly too tired to answer. He released his mental control over the elemental energy surrounding his arm and instantly, the crackling sounds of lightning disappeared together with snakes of lightning scattering­ into the surroundings.

“Alright,” Elena nodded to herself. “This still seems normal, so the root of the problem should be in how you store your elemental energy.”

Keith simply nodded in response, waiting for Elena to continue. “We can keep talking all day, but it might be faster to just show me how you store your elemental energy. The stronger you get, the more sensitive you become towards mana, especially your own elemental energy. If you allow me to place my hand on your back, I’ll be able to sense some things about how you manage your elemental energy,” Elena explained. “It’s a good thing you came to me, because I’ll be able to sense how you manage your lightning energy the best in the academy!”

“Should I just start converting mana like normal then?” Keith inquired.

Elena looked at Keith curiously. “Well, if you slept long enough and you think your mental energy is enough at the moment, we can start immediately.”

Every time mana is converted to elemental energy and then guided to the mana core, a huge amount of concentration is required. This is also the reason why mages don’t just sit around all day converting mana. If someone’s concentration were to slip, huge accidents could occur. Not only would the profits of that conversion period be lost, it might also lead to hidden injuries if a small amount of mana were to be directly stored inside the mana core.

The more one has filled their mana core, the more important a high level of concentration becomes. It gets harder and harder to saturate the mana core because more elemental energy is needed at higher levels. This means longer conversion periods are necessary to be able to see the results after one sitting. This is why mages would pay careful attention to their mental energy before starting with the conversion of their respective elements.

Keith nodded in response at Elena’s remark. He only felt a bit tired because of his previous elemental energy release. Luckily, this didn’t impact his mind at all, and seeing how he lost elemental energy, gathering it back might actually make him feel more energized.

He promptly sat down with his back towards Elena, and closed his eyes. He waited until he felt Elena put her hand on his back and then started with his conversion.

He took a little time to slowly adjust his breathing and sink into a calm state. He then started paying more attention towards his surroundings, sensing the breeze around him, the movements of the grass he was sitting on, and the warmth of Elena’s hand on his back. The more he focused on his surroundings, the clearer the mana around him became. This time, instead of gentle, subtle movements of mana, it was a bit more chaotic. Probably because of all the spells that were being casted on and around the training grounds.

When Keith thought he had a good grasp on the movements of the mana around him, it was time for him to start his visualizations. He started thinking about the destructive force of lightning, using Elena’s example spells as a reference together with big storms he had seen. Slowly but surely, the lightning elemental energy became visible inside the huge waves of mana. When he thought that it was enough, he tried to focus on a few parts of the lightning elemental energy and started to guide it towards his chest.

Keith had unconsciously started to grit his teeth in preparation of what was coming next. He didn’t forget the pain he felt the previous time, but because of his firm determination to become stronger he went through with it.

When the elemental energy came close to his body, it started swirling around him. Keith kept repeating the process, until he wasn’t able to move any more lightning elemental energy around him. He stopped trying to pull more elemental energy towards him and focused on the energy swirling around him. The amount of energy gathered near him seemed to be around the same amount as his previous attempt that night.

Instead of the excitement from that night, a grim look appeared on Keith’s face. He didn’t want to feel that pain again, but he knew he had to go through with it. Somewhere deep down he hoped that the previous try was just because of bad luck and this time everything would go fine.

Having these thoughts, Keith clenched his fists and willed the elemental energy around him to enter his chest, making it move along the paths created by the suction force from his mana core. The process went smoothly, and the energy penetrated through his chest towards the black orb located inside his body.

The moment of truth had arrived, but contrasting to Keith’s hopes, nothing had changed from the previous attempt. The mana core started to make small vibrations again, slightly changing the elemental energy that was circling around it. After a small moment, the gravitational force disappeared and the elemental energy wasn’t restricted any longer. It scattered through Keith’s body, making him feel the same excruciating pain as he felt that night.

“NO! Cast it out right now!”

Keith could vaguely hear a woman shouting, but his mind was too much occupied with the pain to actually process the words that he heard. If he could see Elena’s face, he would have noticed that her expression was full of shock and anxiety.

Keith resisted the urge to throw up the blood that had formed in his throat, while he grabbed his arms to prevent them from making weird movements created by the spasms.

He took a few minutes to calm down and felt the same mix of emotions as last time. He felt filled with more energy than before he started the conversion, but because of the pain and all the spasms, he couldn’t enjoy the feeling of becoming stronger.

When Elena saw that Keith had calmed down a little, and that the spasms had become a lot less, she thought it was a good moment to speak up: “You… do you know how dangerous that was?” she asked, barely containing the shock and anxiety from entering her voice. “I was sure that you would be crippled when the elemental energy scattered through your body…” A frown appeared on her face, but her expression was mainly full of worry. “Are you sure you’re alright? I’ve never heard of a case where someone can just shrug off having elemental energy rampaging through their body. Thank goodness that wasn’t pure mana, but the milder elemental energy. But even then, lightning elemental energy is the most destructive of the elemental energies. Normally, when elemental energy comes into contact with something else than the mana core, it destroys all the blood vessels, the veins, muscles and tendons. I have no idea how you only seem mildly damaged.”

“I… don’t know either,” Keith managed to say. “For some reason, I can’t get the elemental energy to enter my mana core. It only vibrates a little and then stops pulling on the elemental energy.”

“This…” Elena had a face full of confusion. In all her years, she had never encountered something like that before. Not only did the mana core of Keith act strangely, but he also managed to survive having the elemental energy scattered through his body with only minor damages. “I think we should ask the principal or vice-principal for advice.”

Keith’s expression slowly grew full of dejection. When he had been able to release the elemental energy that night, he was full of hope that he’d be able to continue along this path, but now even his most trusted teacher didn’t know what to do. He didn’t think he’d be able to bear so much pain every time he wanted to convert mana. Even though he had strong will for a twelve-year-old, this surpassed his limit.

He could only place his hopes on the principal.