I took a deep breath, trying to calm my fraying nerves, but it did nothing. I didn't even know why I was nervous. I had long since lost any fear of pain. With the amount of beatings I received over the course of my school life, it would be a wonder if I hadn't. It was probably just another form of social anxiety, I was afraid of embarrassing myself.
As instructor Carmelia signaled the start of the spar, we both immediately shot into action. A small ball of fire formed over my hand, growing steadily until I felt it reach its limit. On the other side, Dahlia did something that looked incredibly similar. The only difference was that hers looked bigger than mine. She couldn't possibly have [Fireball] instead of my [Minor Fireball], could she?
As I soon found out, she probably did. Or something else that created something similar. When we both threw our fireballs at each other, they collided in mid-air, slightly towards my side of the field because I threw mine out a second later than she did. To my horror, however, they didn't explode or destruct in some other way. They just passed through each other, seemingly not interacting at all.
While that meant that Dahlia had my fireball shooting straight at her, it also meant that her fireball was shooting straight at me. In a fit of desperation, I threw myself to the side, just narrowly dodging the flaming ball of death. While quickly getting off of the ground, I could see that Dahlia had managed to dodge or defend in some other way as well. She did it better than me, though. I could already see her charging up a second fireball in her hand. Did she know that she had a manic grin on her face as she did so? Maniacs were always the scariest kind of people to face. Wasn't anyone out there normal?
I grit my teeth, running forward while also charging up another [Minor Fireball]. The skill was okay, better suited for offense than [Candlelight] or [Flash] were, but still not that powerful. If I wanted to win, I'd need to gamble. Since casting [Flash] always affected me as well due to the point-blank cast, I needed to get close for it to have any effect on her.
She threw her second fireball before mine was ready. Her aim wasn't all that great though, and I barely had to dodge. However, I can't say that mine was better either. Since I threw it while running, it only headed in her general direction. As I wasn't fumbling around on the ground like I did when avoiding her first attack, I could see how she dealt with it this time. Even though it wouldn't have hit her even if she did nothing, she created some kind of translucent flaming barrier in front of it, which dispersed my small fireball without any real problems.
I was a lot closer to her now than I was at the start of the spar. Not sure if that is a good thing, though. Instead of continuing our back and forth of fireballs, she suddenly started charging up two fireballs, one for each hand. Could I do that as well? I didn't think so, and I wasn't willing to find out in the middle of fighting.
From how close we were to each other, I couldn't dodge. With a desperate last attempt, I used [Candlelight] to try and block one of the fireballs, which, to my surprise, actually worked. The fireball impacted the disk-shaped shield I had formed from the malleable fire and dispersed. However, while I had blocked one of the fireballs, I wasn't so lucky with the other one. If instructor Carmelia hadn't intervened, it would have hit me right in the face. While this means that I lost this spar, I'd rather lose the fight than get nasty burn marks on my face or, worse, somehow end up getting my head blown off. All in all, I didn't do that badly, I think. While the first dodge was messy, I didn't get hit, and that is what counts.
"Great fight, both of you. While there were some mistakes, it was a fine showing for your first. However, when your opponent throws an attack at you, you have to be prepared for the case that your defense won't work quite as you expect it to. Fireballs aren't made to defend against other fireballs. While it technically is very possible to do so, in this case, and for you specifically, it wasn't. Because you, Miss Firefly, didn't even think about this possible result of the collision of the fireballs, the fight almost ended right then and there. While you still somehow managed to scramble out of the way afterwards, it was far from a clean dodge. All that could have been avoided if you had just moved out of the way after you saw Dahlia fire her fireball at you. Since Dahlia did just that, she was in the superior position and could immediately continue her offense."
During this, she looked at me with quite the intense gaze, to which I just stared back awkwardly. Message received, I guess. Don't remain motionless when an attack comes flying at you.
"Apart from that, there isn't much advice I can give you here. It will be more useful after you have grown into your classes a bit more and gained some levels. You have to develop a fighting style before you can refine it, after all."
At her speaking of levels, I peeked at my status screen. [Minor Fireball] had leveled up to level two, even though I only managed to cast it twice. Maybe skills level up faster if you actually use them in combat like they were intended to be? I didn't get to use anything else in the short fight, so nothing else leveled up. It was expected but still disappointing somehow. I had barely even scratched my mana reserves, there was still almost ninety percent left.
After this spar, we sadly didn't get to see Eric fight. While I was interested in his abilities, instructor Carmelia didn't want us to see for some reason, and dismissed us after some further general advice on how mages and other archetypes typically fight. She also said, however, that fighting styles depend extremely heavily on your class and skillset, and any general advice she gave should be taken with a grain of salt. While general theory was mostly applicable to tier one and two fights, individual skill sets grow too specialized at higher tiers for any general combat theory. The only thing that really helped at that point was practical combat experience.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
---
It's now been over a week since we've arrived in this world. While I wouldn't say that I have already gotten used to it, it didn't feel so unreal or out of place anymore. I have really come to like it here. The technology is still a bit medieval, though not nearly as bad as I had feared when we first got here. I think that those heroes of the past the king was talking about had a way bigger impact on this world than I first thought.
Even if we don't find a way back to our own world, I don't think I would mind it. Actually, the longer we're here, the more I start to think that I don't want to go back. I know that Mom is most likely either extremely sad or extremely worried about me. While we will probably only be declared dead officially in seven years or so, they must be combing the land for us by now. An entire classroom full of people doesn't just simply vanish off the face of the earth, we were in school when it happened after all. People had seen some of us just minutes before we were gone, completely without a trace. There had to be a million conspiracy theories flying around by now.
During the time that passed here, nothing major happened in terms of levels or skills. We had lessons every day. At first only with instructor Carmelia, but we also received some further input from instructor Wyn and instructor Austen as well. On top of that, we also had some mixed lessons where we fought against the physical classes in spars to learn how to deal with physical attackers as a mage. For our opponents, obviously, the inverse was the case.
All of this served to level up our skills. During this time I invested some further time, mostly while lying in bed before trying to fall asleep, trying to gain some insight into [Mana Sense], but the elusive mana still evaded my senses. There was one instance where I thought I had it, but that was probably more of a dream, as I actually fell asleep during the evening meditation and not after I was done.
Still, none of us had gained a class level yet. Well, not entirely true. I've heard that Whitney, the healer among us, was taken away for some specialized healer training. When she came back visiting us at some point in time, I identified her as [Human, Lv. 6]. She had evidently made some progress as well. From what I understood, healers could level up by healing after all.
Finishing that thought, I took another look at my status page. That process had also become routine by now. It didn't alert you of any skills leveling up, so you had to check by yourself if you wanted to know.
[Name: Hanah Mayflower
Race: Human
Level: 1
Mana: 100/100
Achievements: [Hero Candidate]
Class: Firefly (Uncommon)
Active Skills:
[Candlelight Lv. 4]
[Flash Lv. 2]
[Minor Fireball Lv. 5]
Passive Skills:
[Photo-Thermic Synthesis Lv. 1]
[Minor Fire Affinity]
[Minor Light Affinity]
General Skills:
[Identify]
[Heightened Senses Lv. 3]]
The most improvement could be seen in my active skills. [Flash] mostly remained where it was. After all, I rarely, if ever, used it. My other two active skills, however, progressed rapidly. The levels mostly came from the fact that I figured out how to make my fire denser.
It all started from trying to improve [Candlelight]. The skill was cool and all, but a bit useless if I couldn't make more of it. While I didn't quite yet figure out how to do just that or how to make it burn brighter or hotter, I could apparently compress the fire, which increased its density or something like that. I'm not an expert in advanced physics or chemistry. It didn't increase its temperature though, which was quite counterintuitive in my opinion. But what do I know? Instead, it marginally shifted its color to be ever so slightly more yellowish. It was quite faint though, so it might just be a figment of my imagination.
With higher density, the whole thing also had a stronger heft to it. It felt weightier to me and was harder mentally to shape and deform. From my own tests and experiments in the mixed spars, a disk made of the compressed fire could even defend against some light hits from physical weapons. However, Piercing projectiles like arrows and weapons like spears pierced right through.
During all this fighting, I was far from having the best win rate. In fact, I rarely won at all. At extremely early stages of development, mages are simply weaker than the equivalent physical classes. I didn't fight just to win though, so I didn't care much. I just wanted to learn as much as possible to avoid falling behind. From what I've eavesdropped, I'm really the only uncommon class among all of us, including all physically classed classmates. Sucks to be me, I guess.
Blake and his friends were present, of course, but they seemed a bit too busy with themselves to really care about me. They couldn't avoid some snide remarks when they found out about my class' rarity and my unfortunate nickname given to me by instructor Carmelia, but they didn't do much. After that fateful day in the alleyway where they almost killed me, they drastically toned down their active bullying, resorting more to some rumors and other stuff to cause me isolation and general avoidance.
The world-hop to here seems to have lowered their activities even further. Well, it didn't quite matter anyways. I was already estranged from my classmates as far as possible to begin with, so they had long since achieved that with what they did. My other classmates didn't particularly mind me, but none of them went out of their way to speak or otherwise try to make friends with me.
For that I was actually rather grateful. Being alone didn't bother me anymore, and social interactions were also incredibly exhausting. Now in this world, I was basically free. Except for the looming deadly threat to this world, of course, but for all I cared, Blake the stupid [Hero] could go deal with that. If it looks like I'm dangerously falling behind in strength or the lessons with the instructors cease to be beneficial, I'll probably leave the class behind and go explore a bit on my own. I didn't want to needlessly die right away though, so I stayed for now. Let's see what the future actually holds for me.