Neo sat up looking for the one responsible for washing him away. Once the mist had finally dissipated so had his anger as he got time to reflect. He saw that Alec was sitting up, no longer on fire and acting a little sheepish as he looked through the mist, obviously seeing something that Neo couldn't.

He could listen, however. He heard the students whisper excitedly, but, a little quieter than the whispers, was the sound of splashing as someone walked towards them.

Through the mist he saw a feminine figure in a white lab coat, it was Jane who walked passed Neo and stopped in front of Alec. With her hand on her hips, she spoke, "Master Alec, what was that about! You know he's got little magical experience. You could have caused him some serious damage, what do you have to say for yourself?"

Alec shivered, whether from the water or her presence, before he replied,"I just wanted to turn the heat up on him, to see how he'd react."

Jane replied curtly, "There is a difference between heat and crispy. What about the last attack? That is not an appropriate level of force to use in a simple test. You obviously know that his skills are better than your own. There was no need to continue it once you realised that. Just put him in the advanced course for those in it to learn from him."

Alec was crestfallen for a bit, but with Jane's suggestion of putting Neo into the advanced classes, he seemed to brighten significantly as an idea seemed to pop into his head.

He looked over to Neo and, seeing the slightly confused look on his face, he grinned. "My apologies, Master Jane, I got a little carried away again, he'll definitely be put into the advanced combat classes. Thank you for your assistance."

Jane sighed and whispered something under her breath before walking away without even look at Neo. 'Bit cold-hearted?' he thought.

The mist dissipated entirely by the time Jane’s conversation was finished. Everyone one in the crowd was slowly fading away with excited conversations as they went over what they had seen. Bethany came trooping over. "What you doing lying there? You have classes in a bit, hurry back to the dorms and get changed into your class uniform. I'll go get you a timetable and meet you outside the main building where you met with the headmaster."

Before he could reply or ask for a hand up, she was already jogging off away from him. "Is she ok?" He asked the ever silent Gie, who had walked up after Bethany. "Could you give me a hand up, Gie?" The piece of rock didn't move to help him. "Thank you, so much, Gie!"

Neo got up from the floor with his weak legs. All of his adrenaline had drained out of his limbs. Once he'd gotten up, he slowly moved away from the soaking wet field, sloshing back and forth towards the dorms.

After closing the door on Gie, while he stood right outside of the door stoic and unmovable, Neo changed out of his soaking clothes. After drying himself off he hung up his wet training uniform, not sure what to do with it. He put on the school uniform, a simple pair of trousers with a shirt and jacket. It had a grey and white colouring and as he tugged at it he thought, 'It feels nice and comfortable. 'He walked to the door and opened it, looking at the imposing figure he asked, "What do you think?" Neo waited patiently for any reaction from it, alas, sadly, nothing came. "Yeah, that's what I thought. It does look good, thank you."

Neo slid past Gie and walked out of the dorm feeling refreshed. With Gie following behind him, he headed towards the canteen to grab some food for the go.

Having finished his food before arriving outside the main building, he saw Bethany there. She was with another man who seemed familiar, but who, Neo had trouble recognising. The man stood tall, with black hair andhad a burn scar covering a large part of his face with a Hood slightly obscuring them.

Walking up to them Neo spoke cheerfully, "Hello! Bethany, all fresh and awake, so what classes do I have and who's this?"

Bethany turned to him, her eyes were slightly red, but she did have a smile on her face. "This is Conway, he's Jane's assistant."

Neo was glaring holes through Conway, as he'd been the one to make her cry. The information circled through his mind, "Ow, the tent when that evil… Jane examined me and took samples, you were the one helping her. That's where I've seen you before. So, how did you become a student and assistant for Jane?"

Conway smiled as he seemed to remember, "She found me when I was younger and saw some talent, so she took me under her tutelage, which I'm forever grateful for. Been here ever since."

Bethany smiled also and reinforced Conway's statement, "He was here when I attended, however, he wasn't an assistant but a student in the last years of his studies. Where did you go after you finished anyway?"

Conway answered, "I just went on a hiatus for a year or two. Exploring, learning, you know, enjoying life while I'm still young and able to run away."

Bethany laughed. After hearing her laugh Conway continued talking, "I'd love to tell you about sometime, if you want?"

Neo was suddenly imagining throwing Conway's burning body into the corona of the sun. Or just gouging out his eyes and then roasting them over a fire and eating them and many more horrible ideas which each felt right. Interrupting Bethany, using some of his manners, he asked, "Sorry Conway, but Bethany you have my timetable. I believe I might have classes or something?"

Bethany looked at Neo with faintly red cheeks and a slightly confused look before she snapped back to attention and spoke, "Yeah, sorry Conway we'd best be off, I'd think it be nice to hear about your adventures, sometime soon."

Once they had entered the main building, Neo asked again what his timetable was like and Bethany replied, "Today you have your first class in about ten minutes. History, , basics of magic, and then magic practice. Then you have the rest of the day to yourself, where you can join a club or just study, but your expected to do something."

Neo kicked the floor, damn it 'all I want to is relax after studying so much.' "Hey, Bethany could you please lead the way, also are there any pubs or nightlife in the academy?"

Bethany laughed at his question as she headed toward a plain looking corridor where she continued talking. "Nope, there isn't any sort of nightlife in the academy. It tends to be a bad idea to mix alcohol and mages. It's actually banned for magic users to drink or use recreational drugs for obvious reasons, so count yourself as warned."

Neo’s life was just getting worse and worse. No alcohol and no drugs, not that he'd ever taken any, all taken from him by law. And, to add to that, he was theoretically stuck in the bubbles now that he had magic.

He hoped he wasn't since it would make things very difficult, like reaping the souls of thousands of humans.

"The problems of power, so…." Neo started, but thought about what he was going to say and thought better of it.

They turned a corner and walk past two doors before Bethany stopped outside another simple door, "Here's your classroom, we'll be waiting outside once you've finished the class."

He opened the door and strolled in, finding about twenty students split up into their different groups and spread out into different corners. 'Just how I remember school. Everyone had their own little groups with a few outliers, hmm I know her.' He strutted over to the student in question, who wasn't paying attention to anyone. Neo got a few glances from the other students, who went back to talking about him.

As he waved a hand in front of the student’s book, she looked up obviously annoyed that he was distracting her. But as Elisa Eldertree looked him in the eyes, her annoyance fled and was suddenly was replaced with a scarecrow imitation of herself. Even the room around him had changed into a beautiful meadow complete with the chirring of grasshoppers and an endless, sapphire sky. All of this created a perfect image, he could have readily believed everything he'd seen. Even the air around him smelt of cherry blossoms, everything was excellently real. If he hadn't been in a classroom just a few seconds ago, he might have believed what he was experiencing.

Instead, he pinched himself, but nothing happened. He punched himself, but nothing… after a short while, the image shattered and the classroom was back with the other students stuck looking into empty space.

Unsurprisingly, Elisa had disappeared from her seat, but hearing a conversation he turned to see Elisa had been stopped by the teacher, who was entering as she was leaving. The teacher staring spoke, "Where do you think you're going Elisa, you can't miss anymore class then you have already."

Neo grinned and walked around the desks to sit against the window right next to where Elisa would sit. She now had a bowed head, as she walked back to her seat without looking up in order to avoid eye contact with the other students, who were now glaring at her.

It wasn't until she had sat down that she looked up and found Neo there grinning at her, which give her the shivers again.

Neo watched her minor confusion and her shaking like a leaf before she sat down and ignored him. It was then the teacher spoke to Neo. He was standing right in front of his desk with a small pile of books which he placed on the table. "These are yours, treat them well," the teacher said to Neo before looking at the class. "This is Neo, our newest student."

"Thank you," Neo said while taking the books and equipment and intensely looking through them while the teacher was staring at him. The teacher shrugged and went to his desk, "Right then class, we'll be going through the Natural War today."

'Boring,' Neo thought before ignoring the teacher for the rest of the class. Neo kind of wished that he didn't have to do these classes since he didn't find it very interesting, considering he was missing some considerable gaps in his magical history. However, the class did have some upsides, primarily due to the entertainment that was brought on by Elisa. He merely poked her and she reacted wonderfully, giving him new illusions and he noticed that none of them were the same.

Not that Neo knew what that could mean, it was just a fascinating insight. She now only seemed to aim them at Neo, so he spent a vast majority of the time staring into empty space.

This continued until class ended and she could run from the room. Neo, luckily or unluckily depending which side you fell, ended up in the same maths class, which was pretty much teaching basic algebra and such alike. The only interesting thing he saw was that they used the metric system, and then he spent a lot of the time in illusions. By the end of the class he'd gone cross eyed, and had a bit of a wobble in his walk as he left the class where he found Bethany ready to guide him to the next classroom, where Elisa was again.

But this time he was genuinely interested in the class, which was magic related, even though he still sat by Elisa. He engrossed himself in it, asking a question which got him laughed at, but he didn't mind.

He learnt a lot, like the different types of magic, uses the rune or word users. Neo discovered it didn't matter what language one used as long as the intent was right. The word users, also known as rune users, tended to require a certain amount of time to prepare then, usually on paper or stone with some material being better than others. Inventions and magic items were also created this way but in a much more extended process, usually having to be crafted by the same person until the end, all the while channeling mana into the process wherethey are engraved with the desired outcome.

This was usually used by people with a lower capacity for mana than will users. Though one can use either method, it just usually takes such a long time to learn to do each that most pick one or the other. But this information led Neo to think about Bethany and her stilt-like things and he imagined how much effort went into them if they were enchanted. He then went on to wonder what it could really do and started to smile at the possibilities, he had to ask her about it.

Will users, on the other hand, weren’t as sophisticated. It was the brute force way, massively useful in battle as they could adapt quickly because they control their magic with their will alone. They also have larger mana pools than word users. They also make good batteries to be used for large-scale magic and, sadly, that was really all they were good for. In battle they were tough to defeat but in regular everyday use, they were quite limited.

Well, Neo already knew he wanted to do both, since he already was a will user with his telekinesis. But really, he wanted to make some awesome battle armour, unique weapons and items.

Although, he didn't have a clue what a white mana user would be able to make and how it would be used. Considering what the dragon did, it could possibly be really cool.

Thankfully and informatively the class headed in that direction. When the teacher started describing mana, Neo’s notebook was filling up really quickly. Red mana was used to make fire and heat-based magic. Blue mana could be used for water and magic, and if you got both, then it was possible for you to be able to produce mist or storms, using a lot of mana of course. The same was said for green mana, it was wind-based magic, brown mana was for earth and metals, the yellow mana for energies like lightning, black mana was void and gravity, and white was space and time. Hearing that, Neo went into overdrive at the possibility of controlling space and time. Then finally, grey mana was talked about, but this was considered a category for unique abilities outside of the other mana types. Anything that didn't really fit into those seven types fell into this category.

It was then that someone up apart from himself spoke up, "What about golden mana?"

"Hm, good question. It does exist it is all around us, but the exact reason how it happens is a vast mystery. Golden mana, it is believed, is a mixture of all the other mana types. So as for magical creatures they can be born with oneofthe types of mana in them, but it isn't unusual to get people with more than one. But, the chance of a person having multiple types of mana becomes increasingly rare, so the chance of someone having every type of mana, is well over one in hundreds of millions. However, when it does happen, expect the higher beings to get involved, and then no one wins. Then you have the material golden mana. Although this is a subject of future classes, mages can produce liquid mana or solid mana of their source type, but if you try to combine materials from different people and they don't harmonise, then the result is explosive. Even if it does happen one time, if you got the same mana from the same sources it might not work a second time. So, it is an expensive product, to say the least, making it as hard to get, much like the people born with it."

'Higher beings?' Neo thought, intending to question the teacher. Unfortunately, the class finished and the teacher left. Neo had to go to his next class which was practical magic class, but he bluntly started a conversation with Bethany.

"So, is the reason you're so strong is because of your stilts?"

Her eyebrows rose, "Not entirely, but it's part of it."

"Can you show me?"

"Mm … Nope, got to keep everything I can do a secret, so that you can't use it against me."

"Ow," thinking about it for a few moments Neo understood were she was coming from, but there was a tint of annoyance in him. "Fair enough, I don't suppose you could help me make some cool things then."

"Sure, I'll help you but making such things aren't cheap, you'd better be willing to spend some money. So, what are you thinking of making?" She asked with excitement in her voice. It made Neo grin in happiness as he started to explain some of his crazy ideas. What shocked him was that none of them got shot down by Bethany. Obviously nothing is too crazy for her. Flaming swords and flying cars here we come, but first practical magic classes.