Chapter 4: Awakening

“Well then, before we start the awakening ceremony you probably want to hear my name. Too bad, I won’t tell you ha ha ha. Anyway, before we begin with awakening, I will tell you a few things about magic and a little something that you mustn’t never ever forget and break. It’s oath of all magicians.”

This looks interesting. I must pay careful attention.

“So, what is magic? In simple terms, it is power to create miracles, but that’s not all of it. Magic does not create just miracles but destruction, creation, despair and hope. It all comes to, how you will use it. And because of these reasons it is forbidden to talk with those under age of 10 about magic. You probably think that I am talking about stupid thinks that you do not need to pay much care but it's complete opposite. It not so far past there were many boys and girls like you that that before age of 10 learnt magic by themselves and started to practice it.”

So that’s the reason I never heard anything about magic. But that still does not explain why the law is in place.

“Most of such kids ended with cruel type of death. Some had they bodies slowly disintegrated and such death is extremely slow and agonizing but that’s not the worst of it. Those that did not die by they own hand died by they own consequences. There were many cases of such kids destroying whole cities and killing thousands of people in the process and so it was acknowledge by all rulers and magic council that it will be forbidden to teach anyone below age of 10 and outside of academies.”

“All of you need to never forget what I just told you and if you break this rule you will be hunted and publicly killed. And don’t you dare say that it is too hard of a punishment. You don’t know how cruel those times were. Even your own family could die by such a mistake. Heed my words.”

“But let’s stop with such a talk and let’s start preparing for awakening.”

“Before we can start, let me elaborate a bit. So there are 5 elements. They are Fire, Water, Earth, Wind and Void. These are the 5 basic powers of the world. They all have a certain aspects. Fire is more offensive, water is used to heal, earth is great for defense and wind for support. Void does not have any special aspect to it. You would think that that’s it but it’s not. Even though they are better in a certain regard it does not mean they cannot be used in different way.”

“Let’s take fire for example. Fire as I said is offensive based. It can destroy everything that stands in its path. But it can be used to heal someone too. By focusing your flame to a wound you can destroy infection and close the wound but this is just basic type of healing. There is much better and higher leveled healing but you must find on your own. Let’s continue. Fire can be used as support too. You can concentrate you fire mana to your legs to increase your speed and for defense you just need to condense your fire to a certain shape. The same goes with other elements. The exception is void.”

“So it does not matter which element you choose if you want to become a certain profession. To be a healer you don’t need to be a water mage, or if you want to be a tank you don’t need to have earth affinity. It all depends just on how you use your affinity.”

“So now you know basic about affinities. But it’s hardly over. Now let’s talk about derivations from elements.”

“I will tell you 2 basic derivation from each element. So fire with enough understanding can be used as a different kind of element that derives from itself. From fire you can create ash element that is great with blocking your opponent’s vision and suffocating. Or you can create liquid flame. It’s like magma but it does not use earth element. How to create magma element is too hard for you to understand so let’s move on. “

“Water. Water is one of the hardest to create derivation, but one of the easiest too. Most that choose water affinity learn ice element as derivation. It’s relatively easy to learn but even so it takes around 2 years and that’s really easy derivation. There are some derivations that take decades and sometime whole lifetimes to learn. The reason why it’s one of the hardest is because there’s not much to do with water else than create ice. You can change density of water to create a different substance. One of such is called gel water. It immobilizes opponent and can easily take a life.”

“Earth is in terms of difficulty second just behind flame. The reason is, because it is hard to mold earth if it is changed to different element. One of such derivation is iron element. It’s easy to change earth to iron well for you it is like wanting to move heavens but still, easy. But to use earth in such way is not so easy because it slow your use of magic. Another derivation is hard to learn but easy to use. It is called golemancy. Using clay dolls made of earth and if you could user iron element you can create iron dolls.”

“Wind is the hardest when it comes to derivations. The reason is simple. Wind is in itself free. It does not want to be changed. It seeks freedom so to change its stage is hard but not impossible and not really even necessary. 2 basic derivations is using hot and cold air. With hot air you can create element called Fire Wind and with cold you can use Cold Wind and yes it really is called such. I know those are stupid names but they creators named them such so deal with it. In itself the two are not really weak but not strong either. But if you could use them and combine them, then you can use Storm element and it’s really powerful.”

“Void is a mystery in this way. Noone was able to create any derivation and there wasn’t even any reason because of what this affinity is used for, but more of that later.”

“So these are 5 basic affinities. Think carefully about each of them and try to find one that calls for you.”

“Now, finally we have affinities out of our way so let’s continue. Next thing that is extremely important are attributes.”

“There are 2 attributes. They are called Light and Dark. In the past it was believed that those with light attribute were good person and those with dark were evil that needed to be killed. But that was a lie. Many of those that wielded light attribute did unforgivable things and many of those that wielded dark attribute did good things. Nobody knows how attributes are determined. We only know that person is born with his attribute. It is literally in his soul and cannot be changed or used and none can have both of them because they negate each other and if someone had both of them then he would most definitely been mentally unstable and he would be a monster to be killed.”

“So why am I talking about attributes? Simple. If you don’t know how to use your attribute, then you are useless. Without using your attribute with spell, you can never be called magus, also known as masters of magic.”

“So how is attribute used? You will take your attribute and fuse it with your affinity to create stronger spells with effect of your attribute. I will give examples again.”

“Fire with light attribute can create Holy Flame. The color of the flame depends on person and so it’s effect but most of the time holy flame will damage only those that caster thinks of as enemy and will heal allies. It can’t be compared with normal fire. With dark attribute you can create Hell Flame. This flame will burn everything in its path. Even other flames.”

“But these are just example. If you will infuse your attribute to a different spell or in a different way than you will create something different than just Holy or Hell flame. Only when you are using pure element will it become Holy or Hell type. Same goes with other elements.”

“Water with light attribute will create Holy water that has damaging properties to undead creature and healing for allies. With dark attribute it will create poisonous or corrosive type of water. I don’t need to speak about damage, right?”

“Earth with light attribute has self-repair abilities. It’s insanely useful with golemancy. With dark attribute you can raise the dead, but it takes a while but masters can do it quite fast. These types of spells are called Necromancy and are a type of affinity-attribute derivation. It’s too hard of subject for you for now so more in your higher leveled classes.”

“Wind with light can create something that can be called sword of light. They are small wind currents enhanced with light and have quite devastating effects. With dark element you can create Dark Wind. Everyone who is caught in Dark Wind will be slowly ripped apart. Both of these have devastating effects but can heal too.”

“Void is different. Even if you fuse attribute to it, it won’t change properties or anything. It will just strengthen the effect and nothing more.”

“So that’s all about attributes. I will give you 10 minutes to think about affinities so you could choose. Before we start, I will explain how it will go.”

So, that was nice, confusing and hard explanation but at least now I know few things about magic. 10 minute is not long so I need to think about which to choose. This guy said, choose the one that calls to you. When I think about fire, it’s like it wants to devour me. Like in my mind was a burning flame that tells me to come and be enveloped by him. The same goes with other elements. They all call to me, but the Void. It’s like it was coming to me instead, like it was meant to be mine. I think I know which I will choose now.

“Oh I almost forgot to talk to you about Void. Because it’s so useless I completely forgot, ha ha ha. Well anyway, as I said, Void is useless. It does not have any offensive, defensive or support capabilities to speak of. The only reason why someone chooses Void is for money, because it pays a lot to create magical bags. Magical bags use void element to mitigate weight and space of the bag, so you could have bigger storage space or to create teleportation gates also known as portals, but to create 1 it costs insane amount of money and you need 10 void magicians to power it. So that’s why it is called useless affinity.”

Well, what a bummer. But still, I will choose it. I know there’s something more to it.

“I think you all already chose one so let me explain how awakening works. It’s quite simple really. I have with me 5 transparent orbs. From left to right they are Fire, Water, Earth, Wind and Void orb. When you touch the orb with affinity you want, it will imprint the affinity to your mana crystal and your mana core will start to produce mana. The orb will after imprinting change color to white or black depending on your attribute. So let’s start then. We will go in order from front seat to back seats.”

Great, so I will be the last one.

And so it went like he said. Until a while it was Irel’s turn. He chose Fire affinity and his attribute was dark. I think it suits him quite well with that temper of his.

After a while it was Lilian’s turn. She chose wind and her attribute was light. Again, that suits her too. If she will be able to fly, she will look like a goddess.

And after a long wait it was my turn. Everyone was looking at me with curious eyes because they heard my score. They probably think ‘Let’s look what that genius takes.’ They will be surprised.

I came close to the table with orbs and that guy said

“Come on, choose already. I want to take a break.”

Really easy going guy. But his explanations are so freaking long. Oh well.

And so I chose Void orb. He was looking at me with stupefied gaze. Well it doesn’t matter. While I was holding that orb, hot feeling penetrated my chest and I could feel something change. It was really comforting, like something came back and so I closed my eyes to feel it more clearly. After a while I opened my eyes and looked at the orb. It did not change color. I looked at that guy and he just said.

“It’s probably broken, but I could feel that it imprinted you. Now take a seat so I can finish this already. You will find out your attribute soon enough anyway.”

And so I took my seat. For some reason I knew I can trust his words. I wonder why I feel similarity with him.

While I took my seat, he started to explain again. Oh again, long explanation.

“Well then, now you all have been imprinted you need to learn one last thing. It’s called Status. It’s really easy to use and every magician use it to see they growth. You need to close your eyes and feel new feeling in your chest. It should be like a something was burning inside your chest. Then just will that how feeling to go to your head with a meaning of knowing yourself. And that’s it.”

I could clearly feel that hot feeling and so I just willed it to go to my head. It went there instantly and while it was doing so I did as he told and wanted to know about myself. After a while, something appeared in my mind. When I saw that I opened my eyes. It was still there. Right before me.

NameRisielAge10AffinityVoidAttributeChaos and OrderHealth???Mana???Title???Stats: Inaccessible

“It will probably take you a while to get it so until the last parson gets it, we will wait.”

I looked around me and saw that no one else did it. Is it really so hard? After a while I could see others looking stupefied too so I knew they did it. It took a while but finally last person did it too.

“So, let me elaborate about it.”

Not again. But information is always appreciated.

“This magic was created by Arthur Blake some 200 years ago. It was the greatest discovery in magic field because it allowed us to understand magic in bigger depth and how it affects us.”

“From what we understood, your mana affects your lifespan. Same goes with vitality. We humans can live up to 300years. Elves are almost immortal due to their connection to mana and beastmen around 120 years because their mana is concentrated to their physical attributes.”

“As you probably saw, in some places there are ???. That is because your awakening did not stabilize and your mana did not penetrate your whole being to asses you. This takes roughly 24 hours but it depends on the individual. The reason of your stats being inaccessible is the name. Only after your mana will flow through your every part and soul you will see it.”

“Name and age are self-explaining. Title is only shown to those, who have some title granted to them. How this works is not known, because there are sometimes titles you did not even hear of. So, some of you won’t have title shown. ”

“Affinities and attributes are what you chose so no meaning to explain. One of the 5 and light or dark. Geez.”

“Well that summaries it. Before I forget, you are forbidden from using magic in any way expect for meditation, if you can get inside meditation in the first place. Those of you who won’t obey will be expelled.”

“And those of you who did not choose your secondary subjects should head to the faculty room, because today is the last day to choose. That’s it. You are dismissed.”

With all of the new information in my head I stood up and went to the door. I wonder what is that attribute? He said there should be Light or Dark but mine is Chaos and Order. What does that even mean? I don’t think I should tell anyone. Well I will understand it in the future.

And so I went to sign up my secondary subjects.

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Again, not even close to what I wanted to write. But finally, it starts. Training, personalization with characters and no hunting, but it won’t be boring (I hope :D). Next chapter I won’t guess anymore. Hope you enjoyed it. Oh and the one who chose Earth element as his favorite will have fun in the future. And those of you who chose Void, well tough luck with that useless affinity that can be used to create just bags. Ha ha ha. See you soon.