Chapter 21: Magic lessons

“You are useless.” was the first thing the instructor said when we started class. “No matter how talented you are, no matter how good your cultivation is, it is absolutely useless if you don’t know how to control your power. Magic is dangerous but at the same time has so many uses. But as i said if you lack control, you will stay useless no matter how much power you have. You think I am repeating myself? Of course I am. Because it is a fact. So in order for you to control your magic we will today start from the very basics. So, how do spells activate?”

He looked around the room. Obviously expecting someone to answer his question. A young student in the front row stood up and said: “Sir, we use our mana, combine it with the elemental power and guide the resulting power through spells. That way we can activate elemental spells.”

The teacher was obviously pleased. With a slight smile he continued: “Thank you, yes that is correct, you can sit back down. Not very detailed but in its essence it is what mages do.” He looked around the room again:

“Can anyone tell me why we need spells?” A girl in the third row stood up: “Sir, it is to guide the gathered magic power to do our bidding.” The instructor frowned. “Well at least it is not completely incorrect. In theory we don’t need spells at all. There is a theory that if you completely understand what a spell does you can use it without any incarnation. But it has yet to be done. With the spells we ask the various existing elemental spirits to guide our magic in order to do what we want it to do. The most powerful mages can summon their own spirit and then use the spirits power to preinvoke spells.

But that is incredibly difficult to do and in the human empire only our principal is able to do it. The amount of preinvoked spells someone can hold depends on their magic power. Or mana reserve depending on how you want to look at it. Normally when you use a spell your mana is depleted by the amount the spell needs. With time that mana will be regained. Preinvoked spells on the other hand require you to give up a portion of your mana until the spell is activated. So as useful as preinvoked spells are, there are risks involved!”

Now that is some useful information. So that’s why that principal could throw one spell after another at me. Good to know. That limitation did not concern me though. Because Caro and me came up with something that got rid of most of my weaknesses. We had Tempest fuse with me! Yes at the moment i was housing Tempest within my body and that meant i had full access to his abilities. All I had to do to cast magic was supply Tempest with mana.

And if I had something to spare, it was mana. Caro came up with the idea as well to have Kam’ya and Tempest teach me magic in case they are not fused with me. Kam’ya for example I left behind with Mia and Caro for protection. That meant i could use darkness magic but i had to do it the classic way: Understand what i am doing and then guiding the magic with my imagination to do it. Meaning?

I could at the moment only use a single darkness spell: I called it dissolving. The spell I used to dissolve the body of the guard. But wind magic i could use freely at the moment. Tempest was the one as well who handled the affinity stone. How could a simple stone compare to a spirit emperor? Answer: It couldn’t! He basically told the stone what he was supposed to display and seeing that i had no affinity there was nothing more to detect but Tempest.

Anyway listening to more lectures like this was pretty useless for me because I had Tempest teach me. How could mere humans compare to him? They can’t! While thinking i heard the instructor: “Young man, did you listen to me?” I looked at the instructor and answered: “Nope.” That made the entire room speechless. “I stopped listening after the preinvoked spells. That was the only interesting thing until now.” The teacher was dumbfounded. But he caught himself:

“If you are so sure of your abilities, how about a demonstration? Because as i was just saying everyone should introduce themselves and try a simple spell. The spell i just taught everyone.” Ah i understand. He wanted to punish me for not listening so he thought if i didn’t listen to the spell I won’t be able to do magic. Hence my answer was: “Sure what do you want me to do?”

While Asura had his first magic lesson Argus von Hohenturm had a very different problem. “Sir, we cannot determine how that Dryad got out of prison. And Galvin is nowhere to be found. We detected some remnants of darkness magic but nothing conclusive.” It was very very worrisome. He at first had assumed that his attacker was a demon assassin but why would a demon assassin free a Dryad? That did not make any sense.

Argus had no doubt that it was that mysterious cloaked figure that had freed the Dryad because it would be too much of a coincidence that two darkness mages were in the capital at the same time. Especially two dark mages that were able to hide their presence from him. He could no he would not believe that that was possible. Hence the only conclusion was that his attacker freed the Dryad before coming to him. Which could only lead to one conclusion: That old cat they had killed was more than he seemed at first.

At this moment in time he was pretty sure that the four mages he sent back then were dead. It was quiet clear as well that the one living with that old beast man was that dark mage that had assaulted him. But who brought the Dryad out of town while he was attacked? Obviously he could have done that before attacking but Argus had this feeling there was more to it than he could see at the moment.

He turned to the figure cloaked in grey that was kneeling before his desk. His most trustworthy spy. “Investigate further. Something is telling me that this will turn into a disaster if we can not find out what actually happened.” “Yes Sir.” With that the man vanished. Argus turned around to look out of the freshly repaired window. He felt it in his bones: Trouble was brewing on the horizon.

There we go, 21 second chapter of the day. I will absolutely release 22 later on as well and the rate it is going atm i might as well get to finish 23! Anyway enjoy the chapter!