Chapter 7

Az’s exhaustion passed quickly with a day of rest and he felt thoroughly refreshed as he entered the Body Enhancement and Physical Training class for the first time. The instructor was a harsh, but fair man that introduced himself as Mr. Torrent. He had the characteristic blonde hair and fair features that betrayed his origins as a native of one of the cities nestled in the nearby mountain ranges. His manner reminded Az of some of the soldiers his father had brought in to offer him combat training over the years. He spoke with an economy of words, imparting his knowledge in an efficient, curt fashion.

Torrent started the class off by running through the basic theory of using mana to enhance one’s physical capabilities and set the students running laps of the exercise hall as a warm-up exercise. Then, he instructed the red-faced and panting students to sit cross legged and focus on their nexus. He guided the class through drawing a trickle of mana from their nexus and running it through their bodies, the drawn power strengthening and enhancing muscle, tissue, and even bone.

Az savored the feeling of power coursing through his veins. He marvelled as his breathing slowed and his aching muscles were soothed, mana leaving a feeling of icy freshness in its wake. Mana circulated through his body in a steady flow of strength, and filled him with an almost irresistible urge to explode into action and spend the power flowing through him. Mr. Torrent explained that just circulating mana like this would slowly enhance a mage’s physical capabilities permanently. The effect was less pronounced than actually exercising while actively enhancing your body, but required much less of an expenditure of mana and put less of a strain on a mage’s nexus overall.

As the students sat concentrating on the flow of their mana, the teacher continued his lecture, “Mana is often described as being the divine made physical. Where mana passes, it leaves the flesh closer to perfection in the eyes of the Gods. A long-term body enhancer will find their body being slowly molded into physical perfection by their mana itself. Imperfections and deficiencies in the physical form will be swept away; the detritus of age burned out.

“Indeed, even an occasional practitioner of body enhancing exercises will possess a lifespan that surpasses that of a mortal man by a significant margin. That margin only grows as a mage develops in power and practice. Body enhancement is perhaps the most direct path to long life, even to immortality. That is not to say that a mage that focuses exclusively on spellcasting will be short lived. No, the very act of wielding mana to cast spells allows a mage to transcend the physical in some small manner, until the demands and dependencies of mortal flesh are cast aside.”

Az mused on his teacher’s words, sensing that they were of profound wisdom. His father had always said that there were many paths to immortality; every mage walked a different one.

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Az knew his father specialised in spells that were heavily aspected with shadow magic, as well as being one of the foremost experts in defensive spell formations; the entire city was protected from magical attack by a formation of his construction that spanned miles. On the other hand, Az knew that his father continuously performed body enhancement with his man regardless of what he was doing. Could he do the same? The concentration required seemed enormous, not to mention the mana reserves needed to maintain such an effort.

His understanding of how a mage could grow his power was deepening. The truly powerful combined all aspects of magic; body enhancing, spellcasting, even rituals or alchemy, these were all vital components of training that all served to increase a mage’s strength. Az felt that to focus exclusively on one aspect of magic to the detriment of all others was only limiting one’s potential, though his intuition could be wrong.

The rest of the class passed with continued body enhancement, interrupted for brief periods of intense physical exercise, after which Torrent allowed the students to channel some mana to replenish their reserves of energy. He had the students running laps of the hall, doing variations of on the spot exercises such as jumping jacks and lunges or anything that, as he put it, got the heart racing was on the table. Some of the exercises involved holding positions with muscles engaged, until the burning in one’s arms or legs became too much to bear and one could only collapse to the ground in a panting heap.

Exercise damaged the muscles, as Torrent explained, and mana most effectively reforged and strengthened damaged muscles, rather than hale ones. Somehow, mana identified strained muscles or bones as needing enhancement, more so than undamaged parts of the body. The exact mechanism eluded scholars of magic.

Az left the class feeling flush with the warm satisfaction of hard work. His nexus was only slightly diminished; the meditative exercise Torrent had set them to was a slow drain on their mana reserves, offset by the natural regeneration of their nexus. His body felt refreshed, though he noted a strange feeling of tiredness in his limbs that was not quite physical. A phantom sense of fatigue. Torrent had explained that while mana could keep a mage on his feet when a mortal man would have collapsed, there was no substitute for true rest. The body needed time to adjust and recover following the enhancing effect of mana. In a literal sense, the body enhancement was the reforging of a mage’s physical form and could place a great strain on the body.

There was only one more class scheduled for the day, one that Az had yet to experience. Free Spellcasting. Az had asked around about the class; the few students willing to talk to the clearly noble student that had become infamous for Zim’s treatment of him had not been of much help. It seemed the elective was only taken by a few students, those willing to gamble on a rather grandiose sounding class.

Az shrugged as he continued along the short walk back to his room; he would find out soon enough if the class had any merit to it, and if not, he would put in for a transfer. His current plan was to do some reading of a book he had checked out of the library; an entire work dedicated to the Force Lance spell and its variations. He aimed to try to practise the spell further before his next class with Zim. Whether fortunately or not, Az had attracted the attention of the battlemage, and he intended to capitalise on that opportunity. If Zim had been impressed in the last class, well, he hadn’t seen anything yet.

Yes, he would do some work on his understanding of the Force Lance, allow his nexus and body to recover from the morning’s enhancement, and then see what this “Dorian” had to offer.