Can’t say I was surprised by Ryan’s nervousness. He was one of those students that almost always brought their homework late, making his grades suffer some pretty big consequences.

“What? Forgot it once again?” I asked quietly, and he looked at me with anger.

“If you knew something like that would happen, you could warn me.”

“Didn’t want to disturb your date.” I responded, and smiled.

Did I know that something like that would happen? Probably… You could say that I was too lazy to take care of things like this. Or maybe it was something totally different.

“I’ll walk through the class, and I will take your assignments. If you didn’t do it, you will need to make one for our next lesson, and you grade will be lowered.” professor said, as he stood up from the chair. His words made Ryan even more anxious, which was a little funny.

Of course, I wasn’t happy because my friend was suffering… I wasn’t this kind of person.

As the teacher slowly walked through class, I took my assignment from my bag. A one sheet of paper folded in half, with a messy handwriting and many parts that were crossed out. It was made in a hurry, which could be seen without any problems.

My homework looked like nothing, compared to some that were given to him by other students. Most of them looked clean and had many pages of content in them, that was carefully chosen. Some of them were probably even made with the help of books that were published by professor Arras, to gain his sympathy.

I didn’t have money to buy books only because my teachers wrote them, and even if I had I wouldn’t do it.

Oh, it’s not because of my morals. I simply didn’t need them.

“And where is yours?” professor Arras finally asked, when he approached Ryan “I hope you wrote it. Being late for the class, and then not having your homework… I’m sure you wouldn’t do something like this.”

Did he know? I heard that some of the teachers had a special ability to see if a student forgot their homework, but I never thought that it was true. Maybe I was mistaken?

“I f-forgot.” Ryan replied, while avoiding the teacher’s eyes.

“You forgot? That’s bad, don’t you think? Really bad.” which each word that came from professor Arras mouth, Ryan looked even more nervous than before “You aspire to be a mage; you can’t forget to do things like this. Do you understand?”

“Y-Yes sir!”

From my perspective it almost looked like a comedy sketch. Professor Arras was a kind person, but he took his job really seriously. Well, he probably needed some rigor to educate the elite, and make sure that they would grow up to lead the country.

As I thought about those things, the professor approached my desk and looked at me.

“What about your friend? He forgot his too?” he said those words, and then looked at the paper that I had in my hands “Oh, it seems he didn’t.”

I didn’t wait, and just handed it to him without saying anything. I didn’t want to irritate him more than he already was, so there was no reason to talk to him. As he took it from my hand he looked at it for a moment, and then at me.

“It looks rather… messy.”

I couldn’t deny, it did look bad. I didn’t really care that much about the homework that they were giving us, so I didn’t spend too much time on them.

“I’m not judging your work based on how it looks, but rather based on what’s in it. That is a normal thing to do, but this looks like something made in a few moments during your break. It shows how much respect you have for the subject, don’t you think?” as professor said those words, some of the students started smiling and pointing at me.

Well, I was only a commoner so they probably thought that I made a stupid mistake or something. The truth was different; I simply didn’t care. Who has the time to spend hours on a simple homework, only because they want it to look good? Who even cares about the way your handwriting looks anyway?

“I understand.” I replied slowly, while looking at the teacher. It’s not like I was going to argue with him about it. That would be stupid.

“That’s good. I’m not going to ask you to rewrite it, but have that in mind when you will be writing your next assignments.” he said, and started walking towards his desk. Some of the students were talking among themselves, so he just silenced them with his stare, and then he approached his bag. From it he took a small piece of white chalk while placing our homeworks on the desk, and then he smiled.

“Now that we have this out of the way, we can start our lesson. As most of you probably know, offensive spells can be divided into three categories.” Professor started explaining, while writing on the blackboard “Elemental spell, that draw their strength from four basic elements - fire, water, air and earth. Dark spells, that by some are called evil spells. They draw their strength from the bad emotions of the caster. Anger, sadness, envy, hate… Their mana is feeding on them, changing into disgusting spells that are able to even raise the dead. Finally, old magic that isn’t really used that much today. It allows you to take the mana directly from the stars, and shape it into missiles of energy.”

When he was done writing, he looked around and looked at the class. Most of the people were copying everything he wrote to their notebooks, with a few exceptions. I was one of them.

“Of course, those three schools of casting offensive spells aren’t the only ones, but they are the ones that are used the most. We don’t know everything about the mana, and there are cases of healers casting things that could be described as a “holy missiles”. But those cases are rare, and those spells are rather weak in comparison to the things that can be done using normal methods.”

As he was explaining, I looked at the things he wrote on the blackboard. They were mostly names of spells, and the years they were created in. Nothing worthy of taking notes.

“Now, you might ask yourself which spells are the most powerful ones? The answer to that is simple - it depends. I wouldn’t want to fight with a caster than can use water magic while standing near the ocean. The closer you are to the element of your choosing, the stronger you can become.”

Some of the students raised their hands after his words, and he looked at them.

“What is it?”

“But professor, if the magicians become stronger while being near the element that they specialize in, wouldn’t it be better to be good at air or earth magic? They are always around us.” one of the students that were sitting in the first row asked, and the teacher smiled.

That’s a naive way of thinking…

“That’s a naive way to think about it. Of course, it is true that those elements are everywhere and they can be used without much problems, but…” as he said those words he casted an air spell, and pointed it at the students in the first rows, blowing their hair a little “If this was a fire spell, you would be burning right now.”

It shocked some of them, making them look at him with scared eyes. Maybe they didn’t appreciate being told, that their teacher could kill them in a few seconds? Well, I could understand them. If I were a teacher I wouldn’t do things like this, but I’m not one.

“Fire is the easiest element to shape, and it can deal the most damage with the smallest amount of mana. In the time that it would take me to cast one air missile, I could cast ten fireballs.” as he explained this, the looks of fear from students changed into the looks of admiration “Of course, it would be stupid to specialise in only one element. If I were to explain it to you, everyone that wants to even think about fighting with another spell caster needs to know air and earth magic. Even if only to defend themselves from spells of those types. For example, earth magic is slow, but everyone stands on earth. That’s why it is good for traps, and surprise attacks. Air magic burns quickly through your mana, and it’s hard to mold, but it can be used for creating barriers and deflecting spells.”

A good enough explanation? It is easy to imagine why fire magic can be deadly, but water magic can be as scary. Many of the massacres performed with the use of magic were done in the rain.

“Availability of the element also becomes less important in time, because powerful mages can summon rain, or burn whole forests to gain easy access to their element. But I wouldn’t worry about those things too much. You can’t cast spells in the school grounds without the permission of the teacher anyway, and I don’t intend to teach you anything dangerous in your first years of study.”

That was to be expected. I just couldn’t imagine young students casting fire spells, in classes with so much wood. Not that it wouldn’t be interesting… Well, most of the magicians don’t really study offensive spells that much. It’s true that it can be deadly, and the army pays well the people that took those courses seriously, but most of students just don’t do it.

Offensive spells are good for one thing - fighting. Fighting means war, and war means death.

“Now that we talked about this, let’s start you on the easiest air spells that even you can…”

“Teacher, I have a question.” a weak, and beautiful voice echoed in the class. A voice of a girl I knew “What about the dark spells? How strong are they, compared to the other ones?”

Sitting somewhat in the middle of the class was Emily, and for some reason she was now looking at me.