Camila had to redo the start of her class two more times. During her first retry, she went on a tangent about monsters that looked like elemental spirits but were not quite right that lasted for half an hour, everyone tried to ask her to stop or to let her know that she was going off, but Camila was in the zone and didn't listen to any of their calls. Thankfully, the pizzas they ordered arrived, giving the group a chance to stop the clerk before she went even deeper in that rabbit hole. Her third and final attempt was better. Camila gave some pieces of paper to everyone with 'slow down' and 'off topic' written on them and asked the group to just raise them like signs every time she messed up. She also cast a light spell that would change colors every time one of the signs was raised. That way, she would notice when someone was trying to get her attention. With that preparation, the third attempt to explain why elemental spirits were different than other monsters was a success. In reality, the reason was much simpler than Hera expected. They were creatures made out of mana and only mana.

"Ok, now I understand what those things are, but I'm still not sure how you make a contract. Do you have to actually make them sign something?" Alex asked.

"No, no. We call it a contract, but it's more of a bond. Once you are friendly enough with an elemental spirit, they might offer to share their mana with you. It's a bit weird because even if we can't communicate through language, you will know when they want to do that. I wish I could explain that better, but I can't. That's really all that there is to it. If they want to share their mana, you will know," Camila sighed.

"Really? We don't even get a skill or a message from the system saying something like 'you have acquired an elemental spirit partner?'" Blue turned to the temporary teacher.

"Not when they want to share their mana. You do get a message like that when your bond is complete though, and a skill, and a way to keep track of your spirit. You see, even if you make a contract with one of them, it doesn't mean they will follow you around. They will stay in their rooms and keep living their lives. But you can call them every now and then to help you. It's also a good idea to visit them from time to time to keep a good relationship. We still don't have a way to confirm that, but we believe that this might be one of the ways you can stop an elemental spirit from turning into a demonic one," Camila explained between bites of her pepperoni slice.

"Right, but what exactly is a demonic spirit? Like why do they turn into that?" Hera asked.

"This was supposed to come a bit later, but I can skip to that part," Camila turned around and flipped through a few slides stopping at one with a video showing two creatures. One looked like an anthropomorphic wave made out of clear blue water, with arms but no legs. That one was called Water Elemental. To the right, the second monster had some similar features, but the water was inky black, and there were several whirlpools in its form. Looking at it already gave an eerie feeling. It was almost as if you were staring at something that shouldn't exist, but the worst part was its face. Unlike the Water Elemental, where it took some effort to discern where its eyes or mouth were located, this version had a perfect human face that was screaming in a mix of terror and rage, even showing some of the muscles and bones from a humanoid head beneath all that water. It wasn't a normal structure either. The bones seemed to be cracked, and being constantly put back together, the muscles would rip and snap only to be bound once more by the force of the waves. The monster was called Water Demon.

"Fuck me, that's disturbing," Blue gasped.

"You can say that again. It only makes it worse when you find out that the face it's showing belongs to the person who made the contract with the Water Elemental," Camila stared at the picture.

"Wait, are you telling me that the person who is bonded to is inside it?" Blue asked.

"Sort of. You see, elemental spirits are more susceptible to our emotions. We believe it's because we let out small bursts of mana depending on what we are feeling. It's an unconscious thing, and we don't control the type of mana. Mages have a bit of an advantage since they only have one type of mana, so if they find an elemental spirit that matches their element, the odds of having those issues are much much lower. "

"OK... But what are they? Like, why are they like that? It's just a psychological thing?" Alex turned to Camila.

"No, the spirits become like that when they are forced to absorb mana that doesn't match with their own. We believe that is something similar to an autoimmune disease. Well… sort of. The reason the body is rejecting is fair, in this case, because the mana that the spirit has shouldn't be there, and since their bodies can't understand other types of mana, it goes into a frenzy trying to equalize everything. The process seems to be extremely painful and will drive the spirit mad with the pain. Because of the bond, that madness will seep to the person who is bonded to the spirit, and they will become more erratic and influenced by demonic power. That doesn't mean that the person will die though. There are many cases where the people infected by the demonic power survive after the spirits die, but if they try to break the contract or kill the spirit themselves, it only gets worse. Even so, in some desperate situations, there are those who try to force their bonded spirit to become demonic."

"Why would they do that?" Hera asked. She couldn't understand the reason for hurting the spirit and themselves so much.

"If you lean into the demonic power, you can become much stronger. You can force any spell to use the same type of mana that the spirit uses, and that causes some weird effects. You can make liquid fire using the demonic water, and I don't mean just like igniting liquid, actual liquid fire. Think like magma, but without the molten rock. Your stats also get a boost based on your total mana, but it's hard to keep your reason, and what's worse, you become infectious. People around you are also affected by the heightened emotions, and if you get close to other elemental spirits or people who have made a contract, they can also become demonic. It's like a virus, and we try to quarantine those who get like that as soon as we can. Also, a person who gives in to that power becomes little more than a monster," for the first time, Camila's face became somber as if she was talking about some personal experience.

There was a pause where everyone aside from Blue stopped eating. But after she asked for another slice, the tension was broken.

Leo scratched his head, "I still don't get it. It seems like too much of a risk just to have a contract with a spirit. Why would people be willing to go that far?"

"You think so? Well, I guess not everyone thinks that the benefits are worth it," seeing the blank stares from the group, Camilla asked, "I talked about all the benefits, right?"

"Not really. You said what the spirits can do by themselves but not what they can do with us," Hera replied.

"Oh man, hang on," Camila went back in the slides, searching for a specific screen that had a small clip of a Mage casting a spell. First, he made a small wave on the ocean that would barely be enough to surf. Then a Water Elemental appeared beside him, and the small wave turned into a massive 15-meter tall wave that came crashing down on a cliff, breaking large chunks of rock away from the ground, "Here is the thing. Elemental spirits can power up your spells a lot, and they also can give you a secondary mana pool. That mana pool is limited to your own, and you can't stack their mana with yours. So let's say you have 100 maximum mana. The spirit will give you another 100 to spend. This means you can cast 2 spells that require 100 mana instead of just one, but you can't cast a spell that costs 101 mana. You add that with the fact that spirits recover mana much faster than we do, and you can keep some powerful spells up for a long time."

"That's it? Just an extra mana pool?" Alex seemed a bit down with that information.

"Of course not! The spells you case through the spirit are also at least twice as powerful, and they can help you make more spells of that element and improve the ones you have. Take that light spell that I cast earlier. It takes 50 mana per second to keep it up, and it's an intermediate-level spell. With an elemental spirit that could help me with it, the spell could be cheaper to maintain, or the spirit could even show me how to improve it to an advanced level and beyond. They could also show me how to create something new based on it or anything else. It's like having access to a teacher willing to show you how to use an element properly. After a while, you also get elemental mastery skills that make your spells of that element so much stronger. There is even the possibility of letting the spirit possess your equipment so it can act independently while you fight."

"Really? Can it even move around? Like, if I put it on a shield, can it protect me while both my hands are busy?" Hera's eyes were sparkling. A long time ago, she thought about the idea of having her chakram flying around her and attacking her enemies, but she would have to spend too much mana to do that. If she made a contract with a spirit, she would be able to keep a weapon sidekick by her side.

"Yeah. You get a bit limited to what they can do if you ask them to stay in some equipment, though. I'm not sure what are the actual details since there is a lot of variations. From what I can tell, it's like, reduced amount of spells that they can use and make them less flexible in the range of things they can do, but still," Camila explained.

"That does sound really good," Alex nodded, "How do we make a contract? Is there any requirements, or is it like befriending a stray cat?"

"C'mon, it's not going to be that simple," Leo scoffed.

"Actually, that works. Using spells from their element also helps, and having part of your mana matching their element is a plus. If you can understand how the spirits behave, it's even better. Because it varies from spirit to spirit, although each element follows the same trend, more or less. Like water spirits are more flexible and don't like being stuck in the same place, while iron spirits are not that active, so to befriend them, you just have to chill out near one of them," Camila explained.

"How about the sleep spirits? Do you know what they like?" Alex asked.

"I don't know. That's one of the reasons we made this research center. In fact, if you guys want to help, there is something you can do. We have a quest up for anyone who can do a dungeon and give us a report."

"Which dungeon?" Blue perked up.

"There is one called 'A Spirit's Plea,' and it's a weird one. You will be helping the spirits deal with some issues they had with something. The dungeon is weird since it changes every time you go, even if the rewards don't, and you get the first-time completion just once. But essentially, you will be helping the spirits protect the forest."

"OK, that's the first thing you said that got me excited. Protecting a forest means we will be punching stuff, right?" Blue jumped up from her seat.

"Well, yeah, there are other ways to go about it, but you can just punch things," Camila shrugged.

"Then let's go!" Blue started walking towards the exit.

"Sorry about her. Studying is not her forte," Hera turned to Camila.

"That's OK. I know I have to work on teaching this class, and you guys helped a lot, not to mention the pizza. Here, let me at least show you where the dungeon is located."