“I… I just heard a voice within me asking me to help release it through my mana. Did I do something wrong?” I asked.

“You heard a voice?! Do you know who or what did you talk to????” Scarlet Witch questioned me further

.

“Yes… A golden Pegasus somewhere within my mana pool. He was in a weird room that existed within my mana pool.” I answered.

“PEGASUS?! Ohhhhhh boy I can’t wait to see what more will you manage to do. I’m glad I chose this class to teach.” Athena smiled and announced. “What’s your name kid?”

“Jinx.” I said, still clueless to whatever I just did.

“Jinx.. I’ll remember that. Let me explain to you what you did. From your puzzled face it seems like you have no idea what you just did. Remember I mentioned that you can spatially and elementally recompose your mana to cast your spells? What you just subconsciously did was to elementally recompose your mana arrow to a light-element mana arrow. As for the process of elemental recomposition, usually it involves linking up with the elemental spirit within your consciousness to draw out the powers of that element. Everyone will have 7 different elemental spirits within one’s consciousness. However, they are usually very different in terms of strength.” She explained.

“When you all did your magical examination, all of you would have found out which element you all are most proficient in right? The stronger the elemental spirit within your consciousness, the higher your affinity to that particular element. Also, the stronger your affinity to elements, the easier it is to draw out elemental power. The Pegasus that you have, is a top tier elemental spirit. It is without a doubt one of the best elemental spirits for light one can hope for. I assume your strongest elemental affinity is that of light then?” She asked.

Should I tell her the truth? That I have all seven affinities of the same strength? But if my Pegasus is an extremely good light elemental spirit, doesn’t mean that my other 6 spirits are also equally good? What should I do?? I’m pretty sure this is the first time I have shown a talent for something. I don’t want the whole class to know as well. I think I will just lie to her and agree, but find her privately after class in order to ask inform her personally and seek her guidance. I don’t want to make too many enemies on my first day in class when I accidentally showed off already.

“Yes Professor Athena. My strongest affinity is for the light element.” I replied.

“Good good. The light element is very useful. It is low on the offensive side but it has the highest healing capabilities, support capabilities and high defensive capabilities. It is extremely useful and many people love having a light mage by their side.” She said.

Everyone in class was now giving me different kind of stares. Some were looks of amazement, which thankfully Jenny was giving me. Some were looks of contempt. I think they hated me for showing off. But it was accidental. I was just following whatever the Pegasus within me wanted! Then there were people who just gave me curious looks. I just decided to stop displaying my light mana arrow and cut off the mana supply to my arm. The arrow instantly vanished.

By the end of the three hour lesson, everyone could conjour a mana arrow. It was time for lunch. There was only an hour for lunch so Chippy and I already decided that we were not going to eat lunch together everyday because it took too much time to walk from the different spines to eat at a common location. I naturally did not mind eating alone but I thought of something I’d rather very much be doing and I gathered my courage.

“Jenny, do you want to eat lunch together??” I asked.

“Sure!” It was music to my ears.

We went to the cafeteria located within the East spine. It was quite a normal cafeteria. You just had to take a tray and join the queue towards the food counter. There, you would be able to scoop how much and what food you wanted.

Jenny and I quickly took our food and went to a table to enjoy our meal. It was delicious. Looks like Kirin Academy did not scrimp on providing its students with good food.

We sat down and began to eat and talk at the same time. I wanted to find out more about her and it seemed like the feeling was mutual. I was dying to get to know her better. In that one hour, I learned that she was someone who was from a well-to-do family. Thankfully she was not from a noble family or it would’ve been even more complicated. She was in the choir when she was in primary school and she had always wanted to cast magic since she was young. She also liked to read and watch movies.

She also asked about me and I told her a great deal of things about myself. She now also knew about my slightly above-average family background, my great ambition to be a successful Legionnaire, my hobbies which included sports, playing games, reading and learning more about the vast world. I was someone who was genuinely interested in learning more about the world we live in. I hated studying though because I felt like it was mindless memorising and applying basic things we learn into every single scenario which just didn’t make sense to me.

We also talked a bit about our Qualifying Examinations because that was the only common experience we shared so far. It seemed like we had the same total score, but her score for magic was a lot higher than mine. She barely passed the physical examination but she did very well for the magical one. I told her my QE report card just had one number, 7 for all ten categories and she immediately laughed at me, saying I must have done it on purpose to get a nice report card. I liked hearing her laugh.

Her elemental affinity was for fire and she said she was extremely impressed by my elemental magic “showcase” I did today. I quickly explained to her what I felt was going on when I tapped into my light magic because I did not want her to misunderstand that I was someone who liked to show off. She listened carefully because she also wanted to know how to tap into her elemental powers.

Lastly, we also talked about our halls. It seemed like she was in Freya hall because her magical examination grades were good. When I said I was from Loki hall, she merely shrugged and said “They must be blind. This is the student which managed to use elemental magic from his first day of school.”

I felt a lot better about myself and was glad to be able to have this one hour of lunch time all alone with a pretty girl like Jenny. However, all good things must come to an end and soon, it was time for our afternoon class, Magic Theory.

We headed back to class and soon, Athena was back in the classroom and gave her first theory lesson for us.

In that lesson, I paid close attention to learn about magic because this was something that was absolutely essential to me if I wished to utilise my talent of elemental affinity because only magic could take on the different elemental forms. Physical attacks did not possess any capacity to be elementally recomposed.

In the 2 hour lesson that was conducted, Scarlet Witch talked about the most basic theories we had to know.

Firstly, she covered about our mana pool. The mana pool that all of us managed to sense earlier was an infinite space that always took up the same area. This meant that if we were to attach numerical values to mana, our capacity to store mana would be able to be trained and increased. However, the area that our mana pool takes up in our body would remain constant. It would always be about the size of half a lung that should be located somewhere beside our heart. Training the quantity of mana was one of the fundamental training techniques in order to become a better mage.

Then, she touched upon the quality of mana which all of us had. Quantity of mana was important but quality was also without a doubt important. For example, let us use numerical values for mana because that was the easiest way to quantify it. A mana arrow made up of 500 mana is not necessarily better and more destructive than one made up of 200. The quality of mana is important. Quality of mana meant how pure the mana you channel is. This also depended on one’s understanding of mana. The better you understand it, the more you’ll be able to compress your mana into high density, purer forms of mana which in turn yield higher magic capabilities. Think of it this way. If someone had extremely high quality mana, this will result in extremely pure, highly packed mana that was extremely solid. Someone with lower quality mana will have mana that was less well-packed so it would be less solid. The more condensed and pure the mana is, the better it is for casting spells. Training to condense your mana into a purer form is also one of the fundamentals in order to become a better mage.

Then, there comes elemental and spatial recomposition. Spatial recomposition depends on visualisation technique and strength of mind. The more firmly you are able to picture your mana, the exact shape and dimension you want the spell to be, the better your spatial recomposition. Elemental recomposition depended on elemental affinity. The higher your elemental affinity, the better one could draw out powers of that element. It is possible to train both spatial and elemental recomposition, by training strength of mind and the strength of your elemental spirits within you. However, elemental spirits are fixed since birth and each spirit has different capacities for training. Spirits that are slightly poorer will be unable to be trained much and their elemental powers that you can tap into will not be great. A good elemental spirit will have a high capacity to be trained. You can train elemental spirits in many different ways. Some examples are ingesting elemental stones, mental sparring with your spirit beast and gathering of items of your spirit beast which will increase its innate strength.

These were the main 3 ways a mage would be able to increase his basic strength. It was what made up the core of trainings for every mage. Of course, learning of spells, strategy, formations, are all important theories which we will also cover throughout our tutelage here at Kirin Academy but Athena made it clear to us that a mage’s basic strength is still the best indicator of how powerful a mage is. Even if someone learns an extremely high-level or forbidden spell, if his basic strength is lacking, he will not be able to draw out the power of that spell to its fullest potential and thus the spell is wasted on him. I immediately understood and shared that opinion.

A good carpenter never blames his tools. Only himself.

We also learnt the basics of mana sensing, using your mana to envelop an object in order to detect something from it.

After learning all the magic theory, we had a 30 minute break before our last lesson. Spell Sparring.

“Since this is just your first spell sparring class and all of you only knows one spell, I will change today’s class a bit. You will not be fighting against other students directly. None of you know any defensive spells anyway and it’s plain stupid to see flying arrows flying at each other because the damage potential of mana arrow is below average at best anyway. I have a more fun way of letting you all compete and understand your spells for today.”

With a wave of her hand, 20 cups appeared on the teachers table in a neat row. Athena instructed us to stand at the very back of the class.

“Your assignment is this. Each cup is unique to one person and because I have all your magic signatures, only you will be able to break your own cup with a basic mana arrow. All of you will have to break your cup in order to pass this round. Only those that pass this round will be able to advance to the next round. It seems easy but trust me, there is quite a high possibility that none of you will be able to even pass this round.” She said.

After she gave us the assignment, everyone immediately conjoured their magic arrows and let them loose at the cups on the table with our names on it. One would expect 20 neat arrows flying straight at the cups in front of us but reality always hurts. When everyone fired for the first time, some arrows went up to the ceiling. Some went towards the floor. Majority of them hit the table but not the cups on the table and no one came even remotely close to hitting their own cup. Everyone tried again and again.

For me, my cup was the rightmost cup in the row of 20 cups but I just could not get my arrow anywhere near it. I tried everything. Aiming with my eye, aiming with my gut feel, using different stances which felt more stable. Nothing worked. I stopped trying and started thinking. What was going on? Spells are usually extremely accurate but here, arrows were flying everywhere but the direction they were supposed to go. What good is a spell if you can’t even hit your target?!

I tried to spatially recompose my arrow but it was only my first time trying to spatially recompose something. I could not make my arrow any much more different. I sat down and tried to think. I looked at Scarlet Witch and she was just standing beside the twenty of us, smiling.

“Son, look carefully at the cups. They are not normal.” My inner conscience spoke to me again. This time, it was a much deeper voice compared to when the Pegasus talked to me. I checked inside to see who it was. The Silver Roc was the one communicating with me now.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Try to use mana sense that you just learnt on the cups located on that table.” He instructed.

I tried exactly as he recommended. It was quite hard, to exert and stretch the mana I had within me about 10 meters in front to touch my cup. However, once I succeeded, I immediately knew what was going on. Scarlet Witch looked at me, nodding her head in approval.

“A distortion enchantment?” I said, not really sure of my answer.

“That’s right son. The moment your mana touched your cup, you could feel it couldn’t you? Your mana instantly gets resisted by some force that triels to repel your mana.” The Roc told me.

“How then should I counter this?” I asked.

“At your level, there is not much you can do. Maybe you can try to use a more powerful spell but you don’t know a more powerful spell right? As long as the raw power of your spell is greater than that of the distortion enchantment, your spell will be able to hit the cup.” He said.

“I may not have a more powerful spell… But I can enhance the spell that I already have.” I said.

I casted my mana arrow again but this time, I drew power from my inner Pegasus who excitedly and willingly gave me a lot of power.

This arrow flew directly towards my cup and this time, it’s aim was true. My gleaming, golden arrow shattered my cup.

Jenny, who was beside me, asked me how I did it and I explained to her that the only way to break a cup was to increase the power output of the mana arrow.

She nodded and suddenly, her already huge arrow became even bigger and she shot that arrow at the cup as well. This arrow also managed to shatter the cup.

Wow. Spatial recompsotion. Look’s like shes a genius in this aspect. I couldn’t even get my arrow to change that much but just one conscious effort and her arrow became 10cm longer and 2cm wider in diameter. Formidable.

After one hour, only three students managed to break their cups and they were Jenny, me, and another male student who was even taller and bigger than me.

“Stop! Okay the three of you pass. May I have your names? Other than Jinx, I don’t know the other 2 of you.” She asked.

“I’m Jenny.”

“I’m Mortred.”

“Okay. Well met. Mortred, Jenny and Jinx, you shall be the only 3 to attempt the next task. The next task is something that measures the exact amount of magic damage your mana arrow does. Just do the same thing you just did to the cup, but this time, onto this magic orb on the table.” Scarlet Witch said with a wave of her hand and the cups disappeared. In place of it was three gleaming silver orbs about 15cm diameter in size.

We stood side by side with each other and fired our arrows at the same time, at the magic orbs in front of us.

Numbers started to appear on the orbs in front of us.

The number on Jenny’s orb read 120.

The number on my orb read 111.

The number on Mortred’s orb was 130.

“Well well, as expected.” Athena said.

“Can anyone tell me what was the key to passing the first stage?” She asked.

“The key was to use mana sense that we just learnt on our cups, in order to find out that there was an enchantment on the cups that were causing all our efforts to miss the cups. Then, we must cast a spell more powerful than the enchantment such that it will be unable to redirect our magical attacks onto the cup.” Mortred answered.

“Well explained. I put an enchantment on each of the 20 cups and it is called a distortion enchantment. It is a low-level, very commonly used enchantment to redirect mana of a certain threshold away from the enchanted object. I used a distortion enchantment of 100 so any magic damage lower than 100 which is directed to the cups will be redirected. Magic attacks are generally accurate because you are using mana to direct your attacks. You don’t even need a clear line of sight. As long as you control the mana within your arrow well, you should not be missing at all. Therefore, the first portion of the assignment required you to practice what you learnt first. To detect that there was something wrong with the cups and not your aim.” Athena elaborated.

“However, the key lies in the second part, the ability to fire a magic arrow that does more than 100 magic damage. It is easy to see what Jinx has done. He repeated what he had shown us in class earlier. Elementally recomposing an attack will lead to an increase in magic attack. However, it is not easily done and it is my first time seeing a first year immediately do it and that is why I was shocked. However, look at his score. He is the lowest among the three. Let me explain to you why.“ She directed the last sentence to me.

“Magic attacks can be strengthened through 4 ways. Quality of mana used, quantity of mana used and elemental or spatial recomposition. The rest of the 17 of you, if you had discovered that the trick was to aim a very powerful arrow instead of trying to fix your aim, there was a way for all of you to pass this assignment. Use all your mana at once to let loose a mana arrow at your cup. However, no one here did that except Mortred. Furthermore, Mortred has quite a good innate quality of mana so he did the most damage. 130. Well done. However, you have reached your theoretical maximum damage for a mana arrow. Jinx and Jenny however, have not.” Athena said.

Mortred looked happy and smug in the beginning but now he looked surprised. Looks like he thought that we used our full strength as well.

“Jenny relied entirely on spatial recomposition, not increasing her mana but changing the shape of her arrow, to make it longer and bigger to cause it to have more momentum and more damage. This type of talent in spatial recomposition is very rare. It is hard to be able to visualise so accurately what you want your mana to do. If you used all your mana in addition to spatial recompsition… Why don’t you try again?” Athena requested.

Jenny took her advice and shot a new arrow, this one even bigger and even more fearsome. However, when she shot it out, her facial expression changed and her face became slightly red and she started panting.

“Anyone recognise these symptoms?” Athena asked.

“Overexertion of mana.” The class replied. We covered this earlier in the theory lesson as well.

“Good.” Athena said.

A new number appeared on the orb. 138.

“Impressive. The highest score I’ve ever seen on the orb on my first day in class is 150 so you already did not bad.” Athena announced.

“Jinx. I saw you try to spatially recompose your arrow first but there were not much changes to it. Don’t worry this is normal. You just need to learn a better visualising technique first. However, how your arrow managed to reach above 100 despite having just a slightly above average quality and quantity of mana lies in elemental recomposition. Try using all your mana on a light arrow and see what happens.” Athena requested.

I did as per instructed. I tried to force out all my remaining mana in my mana pool and willed the Pegasus to go within my arrow as well. A gleaming arrow which was even brighter than before appeared in my hand and I fired it towards the orb. The moment the arrow left me though, I felt extremely tired and fatigued and I could feel the blood rushing from my head to my heart.

So this is what over-exertion of mana feels like..

A number appeared on the orb. 133.

“Hmm. It was a good arrow. However 133 is weak for an elementally recomposed spell. Can anyone tell me why?” She asked.

“Is it because the light element has low offensive capabilities?” I asked immediately.

Athena looked at me and smiled.

“Yes. I’m glad you listened to me explain the properties of your light element. The advantage to an elementally recomposed attack is that the mana gains certain properties. It does not just do additional damage. Light attacks will do more damage on dark monsters. If this arrow has 133 potential damage, if you cast it on a dark monster, it will usually do anywhere from 1.5 to 2 times the damage depending on the monster’s affinity to darkness. The more pure the dark monster is, the more susceptible it is to light damage. This is one of the advantages to elementally recomposed attacks. The next advantage is properties of the element. If your element was fire for example, which has extremely powerful innate offensive abilities, it is not surprising to see the number go up much higher. For example 140+. The purity of your spirit also matters here. For example, if your spirit beast was an ordinary fire lizard, compared to something like a high-class firefox, the damage dealt will be different. If it was a legendary-tier beast like a phoenix or dragon, the fire damage will be even more significant. Don’t worry Jinx, the Pegasus is a very, very good legendary light beast already. It is just not suited for offense.” She concluded.

Legendary-tier phoenix?

I looked into the elemental room within my consciousness. The red creature who was still sleeping on the couch was undoubtedly a phoenix. Not a parrot, not an eagle… A phoenix.

“Alright I believe all of you learnt a lot today and it is only your first day of school! Continue to work hard and soak in the teachings of Kirin Academy for the next 4 years of your life. I am sure that all of you will gain a lot out of it.” Scarlet Witch announced the end of formal class for today.

Everyone began to stream out of class. I turned to Jenny and said “I would love to walk you back to the Medial but I have something I need to ask Professor Athena first. Would you wait for me? I don’t know how long it will take though. Of course you can go back first!” I said.

“Jinx I really want to talk more with you and walk back together but my hall has a welcome party for all the new year 1’s soon so I have to go back and be briefed on the details of the party. Let’s walk back together next time!” She explained.

“Okay!”

At least she said there was a next time.

By now, all the students have left the classroom and just as Professor Athena was preparing to leave, I ran to the front of the class and stopped her.

“Yes Jinx?” She said, surprised.

“Professor. I have something to tell you. I don’t know how best to train because I am… Quite peculiar.”

“Elaborate?” She said with her eyebrows raised.

“In my QE report, my highest elemental affinity is not just light. I lied just now.” I took out my report and showed it to her.

Her eyes went from one eyebrow raised to curiously interested into finally, the two huge gaping circles that were staring with a look that defined disbelief at my report.

“How?.. Could it be?.... You are… The child of the prophecy.” She gasped and whispered the words out at me.