I hummed to myself, tapping my foot on the metal floor.

  The metal floor of my prison cell.

  As it turns out, the Union really doesn’t like it when Lead-ranked projectiles are fired off in the middle of public squares.

  Of course, as a recent Copper, I wouldn’t have even gotten into that much trouble if I hadn’t fired a Brass manifestation before that.

  On the plus side, I was only incarcerated for a night. They took one look at me, then at my stats, before determining I wasn’t much of a threat.

  This wouldn’t take long.

  And hey, the prison itself wasn’t so bad. It was a solid metal building, filled with solid metal cells, all crammed full with blistering enchantments. I had an awkward bed, a sink, and a toilet, all to myself. Not only that, but for better or worse, I was the only prisoner in the small building. It was peaceful.

  It was just so BORING.

  I tapped my foot faster.

  Since this was a video game, if people broke the Union’s law too much, the Union could just kill them, meaning there wasn’t really much need for jails.

  “VISITOR FOR GRIND!” A guard shouted, stepping into my cell. “YOU HAVE FIVE MINUTES!”

  “Finally,” I sighed, getting to my feet.

  He marched off, revealing the man behind him.

  Master Tentazui glowered. “I hope you have a good explanation for all this.”

  “I did something stupid.”

  “That much was already clear.” He pursed his lips. “Is that all?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “You didn’t throw yourself in jail to try and escape my lessons?”

  I blinked. “We already had lessons.”

  Master Tentazui entered the cell, chuckling without the slightest bit of humor. “Individual lessons, Grind. You passed your Exam.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  I blinked.

  “You can’t seriously think I’d get arrested just to skip a class.”

  “My lessons have a bit of a stigma to them, and others have tried similar things before.” He shrugged. “Since you’re already here, and in such an ideal environment, we should start.”

  He dropped to the floor, motioning for me to join him. We sat across from one another.

  The guard poked his head in the room. “Hey Sir, you have to leave now.”

  “I don’t think I will.”

  The guard audibly swallowed. “Understood.”

  He immediately scurried off.

  “It’s fun being a Silver,” Master Tentazui chuckled, this time with a little good nature. “However, alone, raw power is useless. Regardless how Xoiae feels about your abilities, you are exceptional in summoning, enchanting, and commanding. Now, tell me, what can you do with that?”

  “Well I can summon food and water—” I started.

  “In combat?”

  “Not much, really.” I let out a sigh. “If I focus, I can weaponize my aura, which gives a massive boost to all my stats, but that’s not really the command feature, since I’m pretty sure it works in the first area too.”

  Master Tentazui nodded, so I kept talking.

  “Beyond that, if a battle is easy enough I can use commands on the objects around me, but the moment things get beyond a hundred stats I lose focus.”

  “As I thought.” Master Tentazui smiled. “Currently, you have two powerful systems. First, an ability with unreal power, feeding off emotion highs. Second, impeccable use of the command feature.” He raised one hand, then the other, before meshing them together. “Do you know what the term multiplicative combat means, Grind? Additive combat requires you to have several means of attack. Multiplicative combat requires those separate means to be used in tandem with one another, creating results beyond their parts.”

  “Well, here's the thing,” I said. “The command feature can’t be used to make stats. What I really need is more mana, since my ability takes up such a ridiculous amount.”

  “No.”

  “Uh…no?”

  “Everything you just said demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of multiplicative combat. Brute force is not enough. Brute mana is not enough. It will never be enough. There will always be stronger enemies.” He looked intentionally into my eyes. “Have you heard yet? How much power was in that blast of yours?”

  I shook my head.

  “One. Hundred. Thousand. To be precise, one hundred thousand eleven and some spare change.”

  He leaned back.

  “That sounds like a lot, doesn’t it?”

  “It is a lot,” I stated. “That could kill the aviator queen in one shot.”

  “Grind, you spent one hundred thousand mana and you dealt one hundred thousand damage.”

  He waited until I was looking him in the eye, before holding up his pinkie.

  “I deal that same amount if I use one point of mana.”

  The breath left my lungs.

  “You mean—”

  “But that’s only issue number one,” he snapped. “The way you’re using that power is equally sloppy.”

  He summoned a can, tossing it on the floor next to my bed. “Hit that. Punch a hole through it but don’t break the actual can.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “Actually can’t. My smallest blast still does eleven thousand damage, and I can’t separate the blasts without giving them other targets.”

  “Am I an idiot?” Master Tentazui asked. “No? Then obey what I say. Fire at the can.”

  I took aim, creating the fields.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  One moment later, and the can was a bubbling puddle of molten metal.

  Master Tentazui summoned another can ontop of it. “As I thought. You don’t have one blast. You have a field, which each creates simple but abstract mana constructs. Ten mana holds the field open long enough to create a construct of ten mana. The field cannot be opened without a target, and you must open exactly a hundred and twelve fields, all spaced randomly around yourself, though I imagine you can select a general area where they should appear.”

  “I already know all that,” I stated.

  “Sure you do.” He flicked a rock toward the can, piercing it through the middle. “Now, if you had a special ability for smaller, precise shots, this task would be easy. But you don’t. It’s like you think this complex ability is just a big, stupid hammer. Understand your ability before you start using it.”

  He summoned a handful of dirt, throwing it toward the can in a flash. And yet, the dirt blew off, except for the center, where a hole was punched through.

  “Alternativly, you could try something like this, by reinforcing the outside with mental energy.” Master Tenazui stated. “But a technique to strengthen your enemies is beyond worthless. Haven’t you realized the obvious solution?”

  He summoned another handful of dirt, rolling his shoulder back, and hurtling it forward, breaking the sound barrier with an explosive burst of strength.

  And the dirt just stopped.

  It hung, frozen in midair.

  Master Tentazui got up from his seat, selecting one of the larger pebbles from the floating pile. He moved it against the can.

  There was a jolt of metal energy and the pebble regained its velocity, shooting through the can, vaporizing as it struck the enchanted wall.

  The can had only one hole punched through it.

  Master Tentazui waved his hand and the remaining dirt disappeared.

  “Now, punch a hole through the can.”

  I obeyed, summoning another weak blast. This time, I clenched my hand, locking the orbs in place as they manifested.

  And it worked.

  It just worked.

  I stared in wonder at them, sliding effortlessly at the slightest touch of my command, like melting ice. Mana is magic, tied to each person. While I was powerless to control the mana of others, my own mana didn’t have any such limitations.

  “Well?” Master Tenatzui asked, gesturing to the can.

  I took one orb and gave it a push in the right direction.

  The can crumpled up around the impact, breaking apart at the center. Even so, it remained standing.

  “Congradulations Grind,” Master Tenatzui said. “You now have an ability which can deal anywhere from ten to one hundred thousand damage. In fact…”

  He gestured toward the braces on my wrists.

  “Once you eventually grow out of those, I expect that damage will increase by several orders of magnitude.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Right now, you just need a little practice.” He clapped his hands, summoning a hundred more cans in a pile behind himself. “The orbs change based on emotion, but a simple command could fix them to any type you like. I expect that by the end of our session, you have full control of this aspect of the ability.”

  I beamed. “How long should that take?”

  “About eight hours.”

  …

  Seven and a half hours later, I lay on the floor, fighting for every breath, trying and failing to stop the room from spinning.

  Suddenly, Master Tentazui loomed over me. “Grind? Did you hear me? I want a seeking red and a lingering blue.”

  Two of my floating orbs shifted color, one turning into a blueish cloud and the other to a fiery red bolt. They snaked around one another, creating a helix.

  From our testing, we’d learned that the hue of the blast controlled the damage type—reds were electric-magical while blues used physical-impact. We found yellow a little later, which was fast with sharpened physical impact. I also figured out that the shade determines the shape of the blast, with white being incredibly dense and black as more of a drifting cloud. Even if a blast was pure white, if it was red made white, it’d have red properties dialed in to maximum focus. The reverse worked for black, naturally.

  It was at the purples that we were having trouble with.

  This helix, for instance, combined into a larger purple blast, before duplicating into two, then four, then eight blasts, each filled with two-three mana.

  If I tried to combine them together, they only separated.

  “This power doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?” Master Tentazui asked. “Yellow splinters.”

  Five yellow bolts rocketed into the mana, creating a web of glistening magical energy. On impact with the can, the yellow immediately vanished, all impacting the first target, while the purple lingered behind, outputting their mana as they burst out, covering the can like a jet of water, then popping like bubbles, flinging the can against the ceiling.

  In general, purple could have any sort of reaction in how it’d disperse the mana, depending on the red and blue that made it.

  If I used the right emotions to blend purple, I would produce consistent results.

  And consistency meant it could be useful.

  Even when purple split, I could use a faster-moving sprinter attack to target the mana in my own attack, causing them to shoot from orb to orb. When an enemy took damage, the yellow orbs would target them.

  Before the can hit the floor, I summoned a green orb underneath. Green orbs had all the physical impact of blue, with all the speed of yellow, creating an inefficient outward blast of mana in every direction.

  We also discover a way to make Grey orbs.

  Those were completely useless.

  They existed for thirty seconds, hovering slowly, then fizzled out with a sad grumbling noise.

  “In combat, power is important,” Master Tentazui stated. “Each of your orbs only has ten mana, and only outputs ten mana, no matter how they are used. Even if you always use the most efficient attack patterns, you will never get an output of more than ten mana. So you must make that mana mean more. Be precise. Feel out your enemies strength, then hit them with a full blast. If they have high armor, use electrical attacks. High resistance, use physical. If they have both, use yellow and pray you find a weak point.”

  The guard crept toward my cell. “Sir?”

  “What?” Tentazui asked.

  The guard flinched back. “Visitor. Sir. Some kid.”

  “Bring them in.”

  “Hey Grind, what happened?” Sip asked, wandering into our cell. “Hey Master.”

  Something registered in the back of his brain, and he froze up. “Oh! Master Tentazui Sir. Greetings.”

  “Hey Sip,” I called from the floor, where I was still catching my breath. “I got arrested.”

  “I can see that!” Sip hissed. “Maybe I’ll come back another time.”

  “No, no, he’s almost done with his lesson,” Master Tentazui stated. “And I’m sure he has a lot he’d like to show you.”

  Sip glanced at the top of the cell. “Are those orbs floating?”

  “Mhmhmhhm,” I groaned. “We’ve been practicing.”

  I used what little energy I had to make a blue, red, yellow, green, black, and white orb float around me, before harmlessly detonating.

  “Tada.”

  Sip started clapping. “Man, I wish I had a half-decent ability. Speaking of which, whenever you get out of here, there’s something we ought to look into.” he leaned close to the bars, whispering. “A certain Core. In the academy.”

  Master Tentazui raised an eyebrow. “That could be serious. Who is it?”

  “Just a rumor,” Sip muttered. He thought for a moment. “Though, it may be more. You’d know, wouldn’t you?”

  He brought his voice down low. “Headmaster Xoiae is an Ancient Core.” Sip cleared this throat. “Normally, I wouldn’t say anything, but when the futures of my fellow students are on the line, something must be done. Now, if I could have some financial compensation for this valuable information…”

  Master Tentazui was silent for a moment.

  Then a low, hissing sound escaped from his mouth. His hands tensed. And Master Tentazui burst into a long fit of wheezing laughter.

  “A Core!”

  “I’m serious!” Sip started, a bit taken back. “Very serious!”

  “A CORE!” Master Tentazui laughed, grabbing his sides. He sat up. “It’s because she’s inside all day, isn’t it?”

  “And she built the school with what, her mind?” Sip huffed. “Totally impossible.”‘

  The Master laughed a little louder, shaking the walls.

  Sip threw his hands in the air. “Oh, how would you know?”

  Master Tentazui quieted for an instant, only to explode into another fit of roaring laughter, during which he shouted, “Because she’s my wife!”

  // {Notice} //

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