I followed Athena up the flight of stairs all the way to the highest level of the East Spine.

Which genius in the bloody name of god designed this place? Was he high? Who wants to climb forty flight of stairs to reach the bloody headmaster’s office?!

After what seemed like eternity, we finally reached.

“It seems like your mana and ki levels are quite decent. Usually first years are panting by the time they reach the top of the East Tower.” Athena said.

Stamina and vitality were things that would improve as your ki and mana levels rise. Since I was ranked as a 7 for both ki and mana, it was sufficient. Usually the mages are unable to climb because their mana might be at 7,8 or 9 but they had weak physical bodies, thus unable to produce even a 4 or 5 for ki. Also, ki was also noticeably stronger than mana in enhancing physical stamina and vitality.

*Knock knock*

“Come in.” A gentle voice came from inside the room.

Athena opened the door and I went in with her.

Kirin Academy has 4 headmasters. One for each class. Obviously the one I was looking at was the mage headmaster. He was old, had white, long hair and a beard as well. He looked to be about 70 but his skin was still glowing and he had a very good complexion. His name was Headmaster Dumblemore.

“Good Evening, Athena, Jinx. Please take a seat.” He signalled for us to take a seat. We went towards the huge red couch opposite his long and grand study table.

“Jinx, the reason why I had Athena to bring you here today is because I want to let you know exactly what it means to be someone who is likely to be the child of the prophecy. I heard Athena has already showed you the prophecy. You should realise why it is highly likely that the child of prophecy is you. The thing is, Claire’s predictions are 100% right. This means that there will be a saviour of the human race and you are very likely to be that saviour. Of course this applies to the whole of Xector so someone out there might also match the prophecy. However, this is a huge burden as the role of a protector and saviour of the entire human race is not something that can come without many trials and tribulations. I need you to understand that despite you being so young.” Headmaster Dumblemore said.

I nodded, understanding what he was trying to get at.

“The reason I called you here is to aid in your growth. I understand that you are currently walking down the path of being a spellblade. I got feedback from the teachers from your first 2 days of school. It seems like you are good at both mana and ki. However, of course you are only above average to good. They only labelled your ability to sense and use the elements as genius. Thus I’m here to give you some.. Resources, to make your training more efficient.” Dumblemore started.

“The fastest way for you to improve both your magical and physical fighting prowess is to heighten your elemental understanding even more. This is because both ki and mana can be elementally recomposed. I trust that you have realised that yourself. Thus, I am giving you permission as a first year to enter one of the elemental rooms situated just below this floor, once a week. The elemental rooms were designed and left behind by Xantos, an alumni of our school, one of the most influential and respected mages in the whole history of mankind. Usually, we only give students who are year 3 and above access to it because the rooms are extremely profound and hard to understand. Furthermore, we have to charge it with a huge amount of mana before it can work. Each session lasts for an hour as well. So I’m making an exception just for you. Once you enter the room, you’ll know why I say it will be able to help in your understanding.” He finished.

I slowly realised what a privilege he has given me and I immediately gave my thanks.

“Of course, I also have another request of you. That’s why I called you here. Jinx, you need to fight in the ranking tournaments our school hosts biannually at the end of June. Everyone knows that. However, you need to get first. You MUST get first. As the way you are now, I can confidently tell you that it is not going to happen. Our school has the top geniuses from Zeta gathering here every year and within this batch itself, the quality of students are insane. I heard about that little feat you did in Freya the other day. It was good but trust me. It is extremely hard to advance from level 2 to level 3 of elemental recomposition. By half a year, the other students would easily catch up to you already. I have prepared a first prize which is extremely useful for you. But you need to come in first, if not I cannot give it to you. This is because it is something that can only be attained by using the school’s budget so in order to be fair, we need to give it to the winner of the ranking battles. Don’t worry you will only fight against other first years. But yes, as you are now, you have an advantage over a lot of them but once 6 months is over, it is highly unlikely that you are able to reach level 3 elemental recomposition. Even if you do, if your raw power is a lot higher but your fighting skills are not polished, you will still not be able to win.” Dumblemore concluded.

I know that whatever Dumblemore was doing was just for me, showing me how important he really valued me but it wasn’t going to be worth shit unless I prove myself.

“Alright headmaster. I understand.”

“Good. That’s all I’m going to say today. Go to the elemental room then, you already came all this way. Why not just enter a room for an hour and you’ll get what I mean.” He suggested.

I took on the offer.

As Athena and I left the room, Dumblemore looked over to a picture on his long study table. It was a picture of him and his granddaughter.

“You need to get stronger…” He muttered.

I went down a flight of stairs. I reached a portion of the building where there were 7 doors, each door emitting a strong aura, each with a different colour.

“So.. Which element would you like to try?” Athena asked.

Since I was only allowed to use light element skills in school because I wanted to keep my other affinities hidden, the logical way was to increase my light element skills. However, light element specialised in healing in particular and was good at defence. It was horrible at offence. And I did not want to heavily rely on sheer power so I decided that I needed to increase my understanding for an offense-related element. This meant that my choices were narrowed down to wind, fire and lightning.

I tried recomposing my mana arrow into level 2 mana arrows for wind and fire. Even after reading the books, I was only able to elementally recompose my light mana arrow, wind mana arrow and lightning mana arrow and water mana arrow to level 2. I was unable to make the fire, darkness or earth arrows appear as their respective elements. This meant that my understanding was too shallow.

“The fire room.” I chose.

I went into the first door on the left which was glowing red. When I entered, I was immediately shocked. It was not a big room. It was about the size of a normal toilet you see in school. However, the interior of the room was entirely covered in flames. There was fire everywhere. It felt like I was in hell. Suddenly, someone spoke to me.

“Jinx! Don’t be scared!! Go to the centre of the room and sit down!” The red phoenix within my elemental room suddenly spoke to me.

“Oh. Hi! It’s my first time talking to you.”

“Yes. My name is Suzaku. Quick! Sit down in the centre! I know how to make good use of this room for you. Time is precious!” She squealed.

I immediately went to the centre of the room and sat down.

“Okay Master, this room is not just a room randomly set on fire. It was carefully designed to guide people to develop insights to the fire element. For your level now, you must understand how fire works. Embrace the flames. Do not be afraid of them. Slowly use some fire mana and merge them with one of the flames on any wall.” Suzaku guided me.

I did as she instructed. I elementally recomposed some mana into fire mana and pushed it through to one of the flames. As soon as I made contact, the fire rushed into my mana channels, into my body. I was shocked. However, the flames did not damage me in any way. I also did not feel super hot anymore. On the contrary, I felt like the intense, blazing room became something warm. Something that actually felt comfortable. It wasn’t like a sauna. It was more of like a fireplace which gives you warmth on a cold winter’s night.

I sat there and meditated about the properties of fire which I have read. Fire is an intense blaze, a force that grinds and chars everything before it to nothing. It is explosive, hot and powerful. I remembered the feeling I got when my mana channels were suddenly flooded with the fire mana that rushed into me when I touched the flames using my mana. It felt like my mana channels were ignited, like a spark lit from somewhere outside of me and fire just rushed out from the source, blazing a trail right into my mana room. I tried doing the opposite. I tried igniting a spark inside my mana room using elemental recomposition and blazed my mana out from my channels into my hand. A huge fireball emerged from my very hand in the shape of a ball. Not only did I successfully manage to elementally recompose my fire mana to level 2, the flames I’ve witnessed in this room led me to unknowingly spatially recompose my mana to a suitable shape that allowed a fireball to appear in my own hand. I basically just learnt a new spell directly from insight and not through any guidance. It was crazy. I spent the remaining time in the room absorbing more and more flames from the walls, concentrating on them entirely before all of the flames suddenly went off at the same time.

Time must be up.

I went out of the room. Athena wasn’t there anymore. Figures. Who would wait one hour just for a student to train?

I went back to hall. I arrived just in time for dinner because dinner with Chippy and Draco. Puggy and Jenny was already there before I arrived. It seemed like the five of us were now a regular dining group who would always eat together. I was over the moon.

I get to see Jenny every day without fail like this!

I did not tell them about my additional privilege now and the ranking battles because I figured that they did not need to know about this.

After dinner, I went straight up to my room and did my Heaven and Earth training. This time, I went into starting position quickly and before I could start on my second attempt, Seiryu interrupted me.

“Jinx. Today, you managed to gain many insights to the element of fire. However, insights can never ever reach a maximum level. Now, you should use the full Heaven and Earth technique to train. You should elementally recompose your two swords of ki and mana to different elements. Since you are able to go to the starting position without any difficulty now, you should add this step in to not only increase the difficulty level but also to strengthen your insights.” Seiryu suggested before going back to sleep.

Alright then. Fire shall be one and… Wind shall be the other.

I elementally recomposed my ki sword on the right to be like the wind. My ki sword suddenly became a sword made up of wind instead. My mana sword on the left suddenly disappeared.

WHAT?!

“Don’t rush. Did you think it would be easy? Elementally recomposing two different elements onto your different hands at the same time. This requires even more concentration than any step in the heaven and earth technique you tried before! Don’t just jump straight to level 2 as well! Try level 1 first. Then the moment you can do level 1 with both hands, try level 2. If you can’t do level 2 by tonight, just stick to level 1.” Seiryu said.

I immediately changed my elemental recomposition to level 1 and tried again. It was definitely easier but still hard. When I tried level 1 elemental recomposition, I managed to imbued both my swords with different elements but once I did that, the shape of the sword was distorted. One looked like a fat toothpick and the other one looked like a round-ish sword. I had to grit my teeth and slowly try to picture two upright, gleaming swords while channelling the appropriate element to the two different swords. My wind roc was being emitted through my room towards the right and the red phoenix towards the left. My sword being sharp, solid and upright. I also had to condense the mana and ki tightly into the sword to make sure the quality was not compromised. After about 1 hour, I finally got it.

“Level 2.” Seiryu said.

The moment I tried to ignite the spark within my elemental room to channel my mana in an explosive blaze, this process that I tried to concentrate on immediately resulted in chaos. It was too much for me to handle. My left mana sword instantly became level 2 but my sword on the right instantly lost its shape and wind nature. I tried for another hour but it was just an insane amount of difficulty. It was already 11pm so I decided to stop here. I just went with level 1 for both swords and brought them together.

This time, the sensation was different and I could clearly feel it. The wind sword on my right was not really draining the fire sword on my left. However, the fire sword on my left was rapidly sucking out power from the wind sword on my right and was becoming more and more powerful. I could feel the left sword increasing in power, with the fire mana suddenly gleaming brighter and brighter while the wind ki was being sucked out. I realised what was happening. It was exactly what would happen if you fan a fire. Wind helps to make a blaze bigger. My fire sword was becoming stronger at the expense of my wind sword. If this keeps up, the fire sword will totally absorb the wind sword and the technique would end!

I quickly redistributed my ki to concentrate on channelling more ki towards the fire sword, making sure that it stays compact and solid. I did not have to channel that much mana towards the fire sword because it was already leveraging on wind ki to become even stronger and it needed less mana for it to sustain itself. I understood a bit more about how fire and wind interacted with each other as I did this. Suddenly, I felt my limit and I had no choice but to end off the technique as I had no more ki to sustain the wind sword. I felt my strength slowly return back to me but I was extremely worn out. The amount of multi-tasking I had to do, to independently channel two different types of energies, and recompose both elementally and spatially the two different energies to two different types of elements took too much out of me. I crashed onto the bed.

-The next day-

Fuck my life fuck my life fuck my life

I thought to myself as I ran out of my room straight to West spine for lessons. I woke up late because I was too tired and I literally flew straight to class. I had to miss breakfast with the 4 of them today because I woke up late. I wouldn’t be seeing Jenny until dinner time I guess.

Whitebeard was already in class when I reached but thankfully he was in a good mood and I was only five minutes late so he just gave me a stern warning. Today, warrior class was about footwork. Not weapon techniques. The whole class had to learn footwork together. This was an extremely important aspect of fighting. If your footwork was significantly better than your opponent’s, you would always be able to get yourself in range for an attack and then dart out to avoid any potential attacks. You would also be able to link up your attacks together more efficiently and draw out the full potential of your offensive and defensive capabilities.

The footwork stances had to be learnt and there were many different steps needed. A wide step, side step, lunge, criss crosses and many variations. There were also different footwork techniques that existed in the world of martial arts. As a warrior, we needed to find one that we had affinity to and train our proficiency in that one technique. Therefore, our homework for the weekend, (Today is Friday TGIFFFFFF) was to find a footwork technique to practice on from the library.

However, the basic steps like the side step, lunge, back step and criss crosses were usually present in every type of footwork technique.

Suddenly, the Wind Roc within my elemental room spoke to me.

“Master, my name is Garuda. I have a technique that has been passed to many generations of my kind and it is a footwork technique. It allows you to become as graceful as a Roc during flight and allow you to move almost instantaneously throughout any battlefield. It is called Graceful Flight.” Garuda said.

Thus, during the warrior lesson, while everyone was learning basic moves, I conversed with Garuda to learn the basic steps for Graceful Flight and the secret of the technique lies in the Ki you had to channel to specific parts of your legs during the technique. Wind Ki was one of the fastest types of Ki. With the help of the technique, sometimes you need to focus it onto your toes, sometimes your heel and maybe even your thighs when you need to jump. It requires skilful channelling of ki to specific parts of the body coupled with the depth and insight of the footwork technique.

Whitebeard was supervising the students who were trying out footwork techniques and he saw that what I was doing was clearly different from what he taught. However, he watched me for a short while and told me to continue doing what I was doing. He seemed to have realised that I already have a technique. Draco obviously had his own technique as well. He was not practicing the basics and his footwork was on a whole different level. I could not even describe it. It was smooth flowing instead of fast and it seemed to flow like water instead.

After several hours, I had finally reached the level where I could dodge, move quickly to attack and defend using the basics of Graceful Flight. However, Garuda told me that when mastered, this ability would enable me to walk through an entire crowd of 100 monsters trying to attack me without them being able to even land a scratch on me. It was a very high level technique that I would be unable to find through normal means. I was very grateful.

It was then time for gladiator fights again. This time, Draco was up and in a flash, he had already beat 8 people. I was number 9. I was still currently the top scorer so I had to stop Draco here, if not, I would’ve lost my ranking and Draco would be able to overtake me.

“Begin!” Whitebeard shouted.

I immediately wasted no time. I enveloped my feet with wind ki. Whitebeard already saw this previously and said nothing. Even though it was wind ki, it was hard to detect because wind is transparent by nature and so is high quality ki. You could not see anything amiss beside me and I went to envelope my sword with light element ki. Ki in nature is always transparent and can only be sensed. However, because my quality of ki was lacking, you could see a faint golden glow emitted from my wooden sword. However, it was just a faint glow and everyone already knew I had an affinity to light. The affinity to wind is what I had to disguise. I thought of whether I should use Graceful Flight but because light and wind elements have similar properties and they are both fast, I figured that they would just assume it was light ki I was using anyway.

I dashed straight towards Draco and took a huge swipe at him. His graceful broadsword skilfully parried my attack but by the time he did, I was already behind him using a technique from Graceful Flight. Whitebeard whistled. I thrust my sword out at Draco’s back. Suddenly, as if eyes appeared at the back of his head, draco turned sideways, bent his back to dodge the sword as mine flew past where his torse had once been and swung his huge broadsword from horizontally. It crashed directly into my ribcage. It was a counter which I could not even imagine was possible let alone forsee it coming. I flew across the room into the wall and felt the now familiar pain of broken ribs. I could not even grasp my sword with strength anymore. In yet another single exchange, Draco took me down. It seemed like I still had a lot to work on. I sighed.

“I yield.” I said as the granny rushed over again to heal me.

“Jinx, that was some good stuff. It’s a pity that Draco’s mastery of footwork has by far surpassed that of a year 1. His steps are extremely profound. I guess even you can tell the nature of his ki that he was using just by the steps alone.” Whitebeard came over to help me up.

“Water?” I asked. Draco seemed to flow around with ease. Especially from that counter he did against me. He merely took one sidestep, arched his body and swung his sword, flowing around my attempted attack which was already from an ideal position.

“Indeed.” Whitebeard nodded. “You must strive to be like him in terms of understanding your sword and your footwork. The more you can incorporate the properties of elements into your techniques, the faster you’ll become strong. Look at Draco. You can clearly see him flowing around any obstruction like water. From your step just now, you seemed to have moved quickly to his back through the means of a crazy, high speed side step which I believe is consistent with your light element ki. However, it could also have been a wind element movement because of the amount of gracefulness you did it with… “ Whitebeard said it like he meant it more like a question than a statement.

I sheepishly looked down and admitted that I used wind element ki but to keep it a secret from the other students.

“The other students definitely will be unable to tell. I think they would not even understand what Draco is doing is actually a water based technique even though it is so obvious. Warriors just want to be strong. Elemental understanding is one way but it is much rarer for warriors to do it than mages who value intelligence more highly. However… Draco might have realised. You 2 are friends anyway right so there should be no issue!” Whitebeard told me as he left to take care of yet another injured student knocked down by Draco.

Soon, gladiator concluded and we had a new record. Draco, who beat 19 other people and suffered no losses. It was crazy.

Class ended after Draco’s attempt and it was finally the end of the day. As Draco and I were walking back to hall, he suddenly turned around and asked me: “Jinx, isn’t your elemental affinity light? How come you used wind based footwork against me?”

SHIT HE REALISED!