Aside from my groggy appearance and mood, I managed to make it to class on time.
Today marked the start of our second year of education and a kind of 14th birthday for all of us. Not because it was a celebration or anything like that, just because the new year denoted the passage of a full year.
All the children the mist raised were war orphans, brought to the island before they were old enough to remember. As such, nobody knew their true names or birthdays.
All we knew was that we were roughly 13 at the start of Phase 2 and we were now about 14 as a year had passed.
We all gathered ourselves in the sundered courtyard as usual, save for the boy who haunted my dreams and the only other girl in our class whose name I had not known.
The mood was somber and the tension in the air could be felt. There were many inquisitive gazes cast at each other, but no one dared speak a word.
I had planned to confess to Mara and Austin today about the killing, but something stopped me. Perhaps it was a fear or I simply no longer saw any benefit from confessing.
The matter of fact was that they were gone. Both the boy I killed and the loner girl would never return to class. No one would know what happened to them, but their absence would be a stark reminder of the sword of Damocles that hung over our heads.
The Mist Assassins had no need for failure and our incompetence would only be tolerated for so long. At least that was the moral of the story that I had gathered.
Master Korbyn arrived at the courtyard in due time and addressed the class to shatter the silence.
“Congratulations on making it to year 2 of your studies. The primary focus of this year’s physical combat class will be on the integration of infusion magic and the study of various schools of infusion based combat. From here on out you will begin to see the lines between magic class and combat class blur as we shift to focusing on infusion magic during combat classes and conjuring during magic class.” Master Korbyn explained.
It looked like we were finally going to learn other forms of infusion magic besides quick feet. Infusion magic is troublesome to learn for two main reasons:
- Mana needed to be applied carefully to all parts of the body involved in the enhancement. That included muscles, ligaments, bones, skin, and more. Without a proper distribution, the caster could end up seriously injuring themselves.
- In order to infuse the proper parts of one’s body, the caster must have a good enough understanding of their own anatomy to visualize the flow of mana.
The first reason was why we only learned infusion spells from tried and tested schools of infusion magic. Infusion spells could only be crafted by a mage who held great knowledge of anatomy.
On top of that, Simply knowing the location of your body parts did not necessarily offer an easy visualization to infuse them.
Sure you could just try to infuse mana into your entire body, but the first step to any spell was visualization and without proper visualization of the fine details, you would only end up wasting your mana.
We spent the next few weeks diligently practicing the infusion spell ‘quick hands’. Despite the name, the spell actually infused mana all the way up to your shoulder joints which would allow the caster to throw objects without ripping their arm out of its socket.
At the same time, we were learning the grade 2 spell ‘body vision’ during conjuring classes. Body vision was a grade 2 light spell that allowed a caster to peer through skin. The spell was originally intended for use in the field of medical magic, but it was soon found to be a great aid for studying infusion magic.
Once the spell was activated, it only required a steady flow of mana to use and allowed the caster to divert nearly all their focus to their infusion magic.
And so another 6 months passed rather uneventfully, the entire class had been able to master the quick hands spell and magic class had finally broken into the subject of 3rd grade spells.
I had already mastered 3rd grade spells by this point and Mara and Austin were close behind me. Master Korbyn was impressed by our apparent precocity and soon began to accelerate our instruction to the dismay of our other two classmates.
With no intention of falling behind, I once again found myself in the library but this time I would work on 4th grade spell casting. There are several types of 4th grade spells but only two that had any practical applications:
1. A dual elemental spell that resided on a 2 dimensional matrix
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2. A 3 dimensional spell that used only 1 elemental attribute
Having already mastered shaping 2 dimensional matrices, I decided that the first option would be easiest to learn so I would start there.
Elemental attributes in a spell were typically summoned from a set of runes. Each elemental attribute has a set of runes that are able to conjure its various effects.
For example, the water family of runes is not a single rune but a set of runes that produce the properties associated with the element. There was a rune to summon plain water just as there was one to summon ice and one to apply momentum to the matter.
Energy can not be created or destroyed in this world just like on earth. Mana is converted into the elements which fall to the earth and are pressed back into mana deep within the planet's mantle. This is why precious metals and mana crystals are commonly found underground.
The darkness element does not actually destroy but simply converts the matter back into mana. By the same process, A mana core within a living being will convert consumed matter into mana.
In these ways many of the runes serve as a sort of factory to channel and manufacture mana into the elements.
In other words, the primary challenge of a dual elemental 4th grade spell is that they require separate circuitry on the matrix in order to prevent the elements from crashing.
In addition, in order to bring out the maximum potential of a 4th grade spell the caster would need to include two sources to fully fuel each circuit lest the mana be split between the two and the flow reduced.
Luckily, I found a grimoire on 4th grade spells that contained a 3rd grade spell with two separate sources so I could practice channeling mana to two sources simultaneously.
Within a few hours I was able to grasp a visualization technique that allowed me to fuel both sources.
Next I focused on conjuring a 4th grade spell without infusing mana into the sources. It was akin to building a plumbing system but closing the source valve.
This step was significantly harder because I needed to generate two separate mana circuits which differed in syntax.
It was like trying to write two different programs in two different languages, the languages being the rune sets of the different elements. The runes set shared the same fundamental system of logic, but just enough differences to be distinct.
Of Course I could just craft the circuits separately, but the spell would then take twice as long to cast and consume twice as much mana.
I soon began to realize why this world’s mages would become frustrated and pick an element to specialize in. You could still cast higher grade spells by increasing the dimensions and although you could only theoretically reach 4th grade spells this way, most mages would never break into the realm of 5th grade casting anyway.
And so I spent the next few weeks trying to find a solution to this conundrum.
After a while, Austin and I were able to make a breakthrough. We noticed that although the rune sets were dictated by their own language, there were certain parts of each circuitry that were identical.
This was possible because there existed a set of ‘neutral runes’ which were used in the circuitry for both elements.
By generating templates of these segments we could rapidly produce large sections of each circuitry greatly reducing the casting speed.
The only downside to this method was that it required a great deal of practice and although many spells contain similar instruction blocks, it still required deep knowledge of each spell’s circuitry on an individual level.
This meant that I would be unable to acquire 4th grade spells as quickly as I was able to for 3rd grade spells.
It wasn’t an ideal solution but it was the best one we had found so far.
Before we knew it, we found ourselves back in the sundered courtyard which had become our favorite testing grounds.
“Are you sure it’s gonna work?” Mara raised an eyebrow and asked.
“Of course it’ll work. I’ve triple checked the calculations and I meticulously inspected the spell form to ensure I made no errors, it looks just like the book.” I explained to Mara confidently.
In truth, I was worried as well. I was sure the calculations were right, but it only required one mistake to end in disaster.
Unlike the lower grade spells I had used up until now, ‘dragon’s breath’ was a full fledged 4th grade spell and wielded a much larger portion of mana. If the spell form was to explode, then I would almost certainly die.
Austin and Mara backed up to a safe distance just in case things turned for the worst. “I’ll miss you, what should we put on your gravestone?” Mara teased as she wept fake tears.
“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” I replied. The two looked at me puzzled as I began to cast the spell.
Dragon’s breath was a dual elemental 4th grade spell that consisted of the wind and fire element.
The fire would be spewed forth much like a dragon’s breath, but the size would not compare. The spell’s name really came from what the wind element would do to the pillar of flame.
An oxygen rich pillar of wind would be channeled into the same path as the fire and when combined the pillar would reach a great brilliance that would rival a dragon’s breath, or so they say.
I aimed the spell toward the sky and began to shape the spell. The circle took but an instant to form as I quickly moved on to creating my set of templates. When the templates were complete, I used but a fraction of my focus to duplicate them while the remainder of my focus was used to construct the missing parts of the spells.
All together it took me about 10 seconds to complete. That was a lifetime on the battlefield, but I was hopeful with more practice I would be able to reduce the casting time.
‘This spell better be worth all this trouble.’ I thought to myself as I began fueling both sources of the spell with a steady flow of mana.
A loud gust of wind accompanied a brilliant pillar of flame which reached toward the sky as if the sky had owed it money.
Austin had a fat smile on his face while Mara just stood there with her jaw dropped and eyes wide opened as her long hair flapped in the strong gust of wind emanating from the spell.
I terminated the spell prematurely and it diffused safely. I had already proven it worked, so there was no need to continue.
On top of that my mana pool was still too small to hold the spell for a prolonged period of time. I had started regularly bottoming out my mana since the end of the last exam in an effort to increase my mana pool, but it was an endeavour that could not be rushed.
I was only 14 years old in this world and my mana pool still had plenty of room to grow.
“Holy shit, We did it!” Austin declared as he jumped with joy. I gave him a high five as Mara took a second to recover from her shock.
“You know, I’ve never once been jealous of all the time you spend cooped up in that library, but after that performance I’m not sure anymore.” Mara addressed me in a relaxed but serious tone.
It was the best compliment anybody has ever received from her by my metrics. There was no ‘buts’ or playful tone that had become so characteristic of her compliments. It was a genuine moment of praise which I had not seen before.
Ever since that day Mara began to spend more time in the library with Austin and me. She became more serious about studying magic as well. It was as if that spell had awoken something inside of her. A more serious side of her nature that hid under her facade of the joker.
The remainder of that year were some of the best moments I had at the Mist academy up until then. I still intended to escape the damned island, but I began to see Mara and Austin as more than a means to escape the island.
I no longer considered their deaths an acceptable outcome. They had become a presence which I sorely missed when we were apart.
And so the days passed as merrily as they could at an assassin academy until the date of the second exam.