One student, the same one with the glasses, raised a hand.

“Professor Michael, may I answer your question.” With a nod, the glasses kid started talking.

“Mana is a phenomenon that can occur nearly everywhere in the world, regardless of where that might be. And soul is similar, but a soul is what gives a creature it's ability to express itself emotionally. But by using the soul to manipulate the latent mana in the surrounding area, or mana from inside your own body, you can create and use different spells.” Glasses sat back down again, but Vita did notice him sneaking a peek towards themselves and Diana with a hateful glare for just a split second.

Professor Micheal nodded and used a piece of chalk to draw on the blackboard. A simple and crude drawing, but a drawing nonetheless. It was a drawing of the ground, a rock, a plant and different creatures.

“Good explanation, student…?”

“It's Robert, sir.” Micheal and gestured back to the blackboard.

“Everything is coated in mana. The ground we walk upon contains faint traces of mana and there are different resources that can be mined that contains vast amounts of mana as well. Before the proper study of the soul, it was believed by most in the past that only humanoid creatures such as ourselves and our neighbors in the south had proper souls. Now with better understanding of the characteristics of the soul, we now know that anything can have a soul. Or a proto-soul at least.” He wrote a couple of keynotes with arrows pointing to the ground, the rock, and the plant. Looking around for any hands in the air, he saw one and gestured for them to speak.

“When you say that it was believed only humanoids had proper souls in the past, are you referring to the Wuxia Dynasty in the east?” A student asked.

“Have correct. It's not only because of the Wuxia Dynasty, it's also because of the other three nations that exists to the east. But this isn't international studies, so we won't stay any longer on that topic.”

Woah, woah, hold on a second. What the hell do you mean by wuxia, I am sure as hell that wuxia is a genre of fiction. What the hell is it doing in here? Don't tell me this Akitio fellow did more than playing hero… For some reason, that felt wrong to say. Either way, that's another strike on the 'I am not from here' bingo card. And it's not healthy to linger on things you don't know, so what's the kid doing?

A singular eye moved to look towards Diana. She was multitasking between reading, writing and looking at the blackboard. Apparently, Professor Micheal had been talking for a while, and now everyone were to write down what they understood before he continued class. Of course, Diana was doing her best to understand everything that was told so far, but she did talk with her friends now and then.

Well shit. I don't really want to do anything right now that catches too much attention. I send out some spores, but then what? Even if I try, I can't do any massive changes to their bodies without anyone noticing, and some of these guys have crazy strong immune systems.

Or it's magic. Man, fuck magic. But wait a second, isn't there a book I could read right now? Yeah, yeah, that evil looking book! Let's see here.

Vita manipulated the cells around to create an empty space big enough to read the first couple pages. Usually, opening something that absorbs moisture inside of something moist isn't a bright idea. But that doesn't matter when you can literally control every single cell, and to some extent bacteria too. Hell, some large viruses are effected by the strange abilities of Vita.

Countless Vita cells flipped through a couple of pages of nonsense and came to a stop. The first page of actual information that could be useful. Attempting to translate a language you understand on a surface level while it looks like shit is quite the challenge, and took the entire class to complete the one page.

And to Vita's understanding, this page was borderline useless.

Apparently, this book is a translation of a journal that was found deep in somewhere, that the original had strange symbols drawn on its surface, and was difficult to translate. This, however, doesn't explain why the translation looked so horrible. There isn't even a mention of any spells or anything like that which could benefit Vita in any way.

Except for one single line;

The crystals seem to fuse with their bodies.

Why this line was written down at the start while it sounds so important, Vita had no idea. Maybe it was related to something else? Was it a puzzle that needed to be solved by a genius of some sorts. Whatever it was, when the sentence was broken down, it seems to be related to three things. Bodies, crystals and the word 'fuse' in the middle.

... Dafaq? What do you mean fuse? Fuse like a 'taking over' or fuse as in the fusion dance from dragon balls? And what crystals are we talking about? Rock-crystal, drug crystals or something new like mana crystals? Because mana crystals fused with flesh sounds interesting, and potentially it is related to that big ugly bastard with the crystal inside him?

Hmmmm, I should read more. Is class over yet?

Yes it has. Diana and her friends were walking at a relaxed pace towards what seemed to be an outside area. There were already a few students already walking around, but once again they kept their distance.

The team found a nice bench to sit on, while Diana sat in Vita's hands like a doll. But as they were getting comfortable, someone let out a shriek and ran over and nearly tackled Beatrice. She was picked up into a bear hug, and the stranger seemed oddly happy to see her. Everyone, confused, got up without knowing what to do.

The stranger let go of Beatrice, still smiling, and started to introduce himself with a polite bow.

"Oh, hello everyone, I assume you are Flowers friends? Oh, how wonderful this is, my name is Johnny Appleseed. How has Beatrice been with y'all. Good, I hope?" With striking yellow eyes, green hair and red cheeks, this Johnny Appleseed was an easy to notice fellow.