While Ajax was shocked at the implications he also realized that most of the power presented from this discovery wasn’t something that could be used by most mages as it required a level of scientific knowledge they would have access to. The second part was that the power bestowed by such means might also not be as strong as he first suspected it might be.

One of the first things he tested once he got strong enough was throwing a stone and hitting it like a baseball with a bat. The reason for this was simple: he wanted to see if he could cause a sonic boom. Strangely however the sonic boom wasn’t produced, Ajax was surprised by that since the laws of physics didn’t seem to be changed so why would breaking the sound barrier not produce a sonic boom?

The only answer he could think of was that the presence of mana has an effect of the way physics work, a new factor that the people of Earth never had to deal with, as such all Ajax can do is test things to find out if they are affected by mana.

“For now I want all of you to show me the base version of your most used combat spell.” The instructor said.

The students grumbled at something so basic but they still complied quickly. What Ajax saw from most of them were a series of elemental bolts, the most common was a fireball but some used ice or earth. He wasn’t surprised to see that Lexi and Annabeth used wind and fire respectively, after all he had seen them even work together to combine their spells into a massive blast.

When it was finally his turn Ajax had a small dilemma. His most used spell was clearly his augmentation, but that came with a number of different elements. If he was to narrow everything down to one element his earth manipulation would have to be his most used spell but he didn’t want to work on this with earth.

In the end he decided to go with simply using fire augmentation to light his sword on fire, though he was careful not to burn himself.

“Interesting.” the instructor said as he examined Ajax’s blade. “There was no incantation but this also clearly isn’t just pure fire generation and manipulation.”

Ajax had no desire to explain how his Epic skill worked and he was pleasantly surprised to see that the instructor didn’t push him to do so either. “This might be a very good way for you to train your intent.” As he said he also extended a small armband towards him. “I will have to insist that you wear that as you do so, at least for the beginning.”

“What is it?” Ajax asked slightly suspicious of the item, he could feel a mana stone powering and enchantment with his [Sense Mana].

“It’s an item made to restrict the skill [Fire Aspect Mana], it should work with skills all the way up to level sixty, though that is as long as it is the only restraining enchantment you have on, the crafters haven’t yet been able to find out why they interfere with each other.” the instructor explained.

“But then why do you want me to use it?” Ajax asked perplexed. “I thought you said that manipulation through aspect mana skills was part of it.”

“It is.” the instructor confirmed. “But from what I can feel you are constantly supplying this spell with mana, this means that you are using that skill to control it and not your intent. I even suspect that this has probably pushed your skill quite high but unless you want to lose efficiency later on and with stronger spells you need to learn how to direct spells with your intent.”

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Ajax did admit that the instructor did have a point and strapped on the armband. The sensation that flooded him was weird. Despite the armband being almost loose on his arm it felt like it was tightly squeezed on. Not only that but feeling wasn’t one he could lessen or increase by flexing his arm, like an itch he couldn’t scratch.

For the rest of the training time all of the students practiced their intent. Some of them, like Lexi, had a very easy time using their intent allowing them to modify their spell visibly from one cast to the next. Clearly this wasn’t the first time they heard about the concept or practiced it. Others didn’t manage to get any serious progress, their spells indistinguishable from their base form.

“Don’t let yourselves be discouraged.” the instructor said as the class time ended. “It takes time to learn how to use your intent to morph a spell.”

Ajax did manage to make some progress, at the start he had trouble with even keeping the flames away from his hands, this incident made him swap the sword for a broad axe so that the flame would be further away from his hand. By the end of the lesson however he had managed to use his intent to keep the flames burning the handle of the axe.

With the class over Ajax went over to his office for a short but much needed break before he would go to meet up with the old librarian for their experiments with curse mana. Ajax thought that joining the mage side of the class was actually a good idea since despite only having five hundred mana remaining his stamina was still above seventeen hundred and that’s what he would need to use [Cursed Slash].

Thinking about it now, it was actually a good thing that a few of his classes were mostly refresher courses on what he had already picked up with only a dash of new information, between his delving crafting and now research he was very busy.

As he made his way up on the seventh floor Ajax once again felt the same two auras he did the last time he came here, one belonged to old Balthazar and the other to the woman he was bringing in to help with the experiments. Ajax also noticed that he couldn’t feel the headmaster's aura meaning that he wasn’t close at the moment, that or he had found some way to hide his aura.

“Ajax!” the old librarian greeted him excitedly as he entered. “Great to see you looking so much better now.”

Ajax gave a deep nod in greeting to the old man yet his eyes were inspecting the woman standing next to him. She seemed to be giving him the exact same treatment as he felt her gaze wash over him. Surprisingly [Enigma] didn’t trigger which could mean something good or something very bad.

“Oh, where are my manners?” the old man said with a bit of giddy in his voice. “Ajax met Evelyn, Evelyn this is Ajax. He will be helping with our research.”

“Evelyn of the Forth.” The woman said coldly as she extended her hand.

The name however was something that drew Ajax’s attention and made him freeze for a second. The name of the Forth wasn't really a name, it was more of a title. Of the elite squads under the command of the king the leaders of the top five always had their last names replaced with ‘of the Number’ for as long as they held the position.

This was meant as a show of devotion to the crown instead of whatever family they may have come from. While this didn’t mean that she had cut ties with her family or even prevented her from using her influence to help them it did mean that she had the option and full royal backing to do so. It also marked her as one of the strongest people in the kingdom.

“A pleasure to meet you.” Ajax said as he grasped the outstretched hand, his delivery a bit wooden however.

“Good, now if you’d both follow me.” the old man interrupted, “ This isn’t the place for such experiments.”

As the three of them moved through the halls of the Academy the old man decided to start discussing their topic of research. “So, which element do you think we should start off trying to see a reaction with?”

“Any of them will do, we will have to see how they all react eventually.” Evelyn said. “Though perhaps not holy as I doubt we will be able to get much from that interaction to start with.”

“I think fire would be a good place to start.” Ajax suggested.

“Oh, why is that?” The old man seemed very interested in why fire was where Ajax started off with.

“The imps inside the abyssal dungeon, I could feel that the way they were making their black fireballs was by casting a fireball with magic while generating curse mana with their arm movement. I think the curse mana simply attached to the fire magic and turned it into the black flames. I want to see if we can maybe recreate that.” Ajax explained.

“Hmmm, that does seem like a promising place to start with.” the old man agreed.

“If that works the same for us as it did for the imps I can already think of a few situations where this could be useful.” Evelyn said, a small smile briefly flashing over her lips for the first time since Ajax met her.