As it turned out, several of the new members of the adventurer’s club were students in his solo class. Four of the nine, to be precise: There was Peter, the infuriatingly earnest kid, as well as Illivere, the stoic girl with the very important father. In addition to them, the wannabe Knight, Faron, was in the group, and finally there was Professor Giltblade’s spirit-blooded ward, Hanna.
Professor Thorne took charge after the students managed to absorb enough of the training exercise to continue on their own time. “So you brats want to become adventurers, huh?” He began, hardening his voice. “It’s hard, and involves learning many skills that don’t have anything to do with magic at all. This is in addition to your no doubt rigorous course loads, but adventuring is a dangerous profession.” He took the time to stare at each person in the eye. “You may be wondering why I called you newbies here without any of the more experienced members, and that is because much like real adventurers, you are expected to learn together and group up with your peers, covering each other’s weaknesses and coordinating your strengths.” He paused to look over the students.
Seeing that no questions seemed to be forthcoming, Thorne moved on. “In the army, we referred to adventuring teams as irregular forces, with various subcategories. This is to distinguish them from regular forces, which are trained to more or less the same standard. If you have a soldier in your army, you know about how they’ll fight, with the only question being that of veterancy, and armies are organized to make it easier on the strategists to know which forces are how strong. Adventurers, on the other hand, have no coherent strategy, skillset, or composition in common.”
Casimir found his attention wandering as the military man continued to wax poetic about adventuring teams, while giving them absolutely nothing useful when it came to actually becoming one. Still, he might as well make himself useful.
As was natural, his attention was drawn to the four students he knew first, as he evaluated them as a team. Faron was a strong-looking elf, darker skin than most elves that Casimir had seen, more like that bitter cocoa drink they favored rather than the more tea-colored he was used to. He was otherwise pretty normal-looking, brown hair and green eyes, normal elf colors. But he was big, so if he was intending to fight like a mage-knight instead of just emulating their behavior, with weapons and armor created, empowered, and manipulated via shaping magic, that would make him a fantastic vanguard for pretty much any team. Assuming Hanna was willing to lean into her bloodline, made obvious with her forest green hair, vividly healthy olive-colored skin, and bright green eyes, she’d be a superb healer, and doing that while still learning other kinds of spells… It would really depend on what kind of wizard she wanted to be, really. Illivere… The Archmagus was kind of notorious as a spirit-fetishist, siring all of his children with spirits rather than taking a proper wife, so she presumably had a strong bloodline as a first-generation spirit blooded, but what was her mana aspect? White hair, pale skin, and purple eyes didn’t exactly scream a mana type like Hanna’s does. But then again, Casimir wasn’t an expert on spirit-blooded aspects.
Was Thorne still yammering? “...particularly useful in rough terrain…” Yeah, he was. Casimir focused his attention on the stoic girl, attempting to analyze her soul’s mana. Whatever it was, she had tight control over every mote of mana, or there was an enchantment occluding his senses. She must have some protection imbued into that circlet she’s wearing. Normally, a novice wizard wouldn’t be able to control the natural leakage of mana that escapes every mana heart or is emitted by those with aspected souls, like spirit-blooded. That must be a high-quality concealment enchantment, much better than the one Casimir had in his choker to help him sneak up on mana-sensing monsters.
Moving on from the enigma, Peter seemed… thoroughly incompetent. However, he seems equally pliable and didn’t waver once when it came to putting in the work, so he could be molded into whatever his team ends up needing. He was on the scrawny side, his general scruffiness probably meant he didn’t have a family library with secret lore or powerful heirlooms, and his red hair, freckled pale skin, and brown eyes were thoroughly ordinary, so probably nothing special bloodline wise in either sense of the term.
The rest… Casimir knew basically nothing about. Two girls three boys, a dwarf, two humans, an aviost, and a second elf. The lack of information, if there was the intention to form them into groups, was unacceptable.
Thorne was still talking? What could he be talking about? “...kind of like an artillery formation run by a drunk wizard, now that I think about it.”
This can’t go on. “Alright, I think they get the picture.” Casimir said, interrupting the old knight’s attempt to talk about adventurers. After waiting a moment for the glazed over eyes to refocus, he began his own talk: “Now, while I’m tempted to arrange y’all in three man squads to organize things, three man adventuring teams generally aren’t that common. You usually see teams in the four or five man range. The ones I have seen usually got that way because there was a casualty, and they preferred to adapt rather than recruit a replacement.” The students seemed nervous at the reminder of how dangerous adventuring was, but they should be.
“First, I’m going to need to know what y’all can do.” How the hell should he do this? What’s relevant? Idea. “I’m going to introduce myself, and y’all should provide the same kind of information, okay?” The students seemed vaguely approving of the idea.
Okay, first things first: appearance. He propelled the rock that was hiding his stuff, splitting it before putting on his cloak, finishing off by striking a pose: “My name is Casimir Toomes. I am a curse wizard that prefers ambush tactics. I am proficient in dealing with material hazards, “ Which is an adventurer euphemism for traps… which is something they don’t know. “Traps, I mean. I’m experienced with disarming traps, picking locks, things like that. Useful when dealing with the intelligent kind of monster.” Like liches, or cults, or dragons. “I am comfortable at all ranges, and prefer a skirmisher role in battle. I do not have an inherent mana attunement. I struggle with fighting large groups or swarms.” Was that everything? Well, it’ll have to do.
Looking back at the students, Casimir smiled. “Okay, now it’s your turn.”
--------------------------
Casimir, now fully equipped once more, rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Okay, so we’ve got some holes here.” Faron was literally the only one of the group that was comfortable at close range. Well, there had to be an amendment to the procedure, they instead mentioned how they wanted to develop their skills rather than the current state of them.
“So the count is six wizards, two sorcerers, and a shaman.” Casimir said. “Okay, I knew this one shaman back when I first started that found spirits that were willing to fight physically as part of the spirit pact. He had a team of four spirits that acted as his group’s vanguard, collectively.” The Aviost shaman seemed rather intrigued at the possibility.
“Teach!” Peter said. “What’s a shaman?”
Casimir stared at the boy. “Okay, brief summary of spirit magic: Spirits can grant spells to people by bonding with their soul. This bond draws energy from the spirit mage, allowing the spirit to sup on that person’s mana over time. In return, the spirit provides their contractors with spell matrixes, handling the actually difficult parts of casting in the spirit mage’s place. Just provide mana and direction, the spirit handles the rest.” On review, some of the other students seemed to appreciate the explanation as well. “Spirit magic generally comes in three flavors, depending on the type of agreements made. A shaman contracts with any spirit they can convince, but avoid ones that demand they contract with no other spirit. A druid contracts with a group of spirits, referred to as spirit courts. Usually they’re associated with a particular location, and demand that they form no pacts with spirits outside of their group. Finally, a priest contracts with a single, usually powerful, spirit that they support exclusively.” Hm. Casimir probably shouldn’t be encouraging his students to offend priests… “They get really irritated when you call their magic spirit magic, though, pointing to the various nuances divine magic has that other kinds of spirit magic doesn’t have, but the only reason priests of less powerful spirits are called warlocks instead of priests is because of the politics of the whole thing.” Wait, that probably wasn’t very discouraging. “Don’t go around pissing off the priests. It’s not worth it.” There. Life lessons passed on. The funniest thing about the whole process is that the gods don’t even get mad if you acknowledge the commonalities. Luci’s insight into the nature of the divine pact…
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Moving on. “Okay, so I can probably get a letter to Gareth asking for tips about how you can find those kinds of spirits, so we have two vanguards… sort of.” Casimir used gestures to split the two vanguards from the group into two separate spots. “Life aspected mana can’t reliably heal spirits, so Hanna, you’re with Faron.” The girl jumped a bit as getting singled out, but quickly shuffled over to the elf’s side. “We have two aspiring enchanters, so Illivere, Foros, you two get split up.”
The two wizards looked at each other, but rather than discussing things Illivere walked towards Faron’s group after seeing the indecision on the elf’s face.
“Any particular reason you picked that group?” Casimir asked. She was so hard to read…
The white-haired girl coolly met Casimir’s eyes. “Healer and knight is a time-tested combination. The superior option was obvious in comparison to the legion of maybes.” Yeah, that was definitely a line of logic that someone mainlining mind mana would use. But it’s her bloodline, so he couldn’t exactly tell her to stop.
“Right. Domain magic can work wonders with spirit allies, so Durna, you’re with Hashi and Foros.” Really, all Casimir was doing was trying to remember the compositions of veteran and elite-ranked teams and trying to figure out where the synergies were. “So we have the twin lightning sorcerers and the curse wizard. While normally I’d insist that overlapping specialties separate… You two are family and keeping those together is wise. Also, I happen to know that cooperative lightning magic can get crazy, so good job on picking that specialty.” Casimir doesn’t really work much with lightning mana, but there was this one pair of Aviost… “Hey Thorne, do you work with lightning mana? I don’t.” Sure, he could probably improvise a few curses with it if he had some on hand, but only simple stuff that didn’t need much accounting for the mana type.
"Lightning mana doesn't shape well." Thorne contributed. "It's wild and doesn't take to being controlled. Like water mana, you have to… lead it, making a path it wants to follow instead of pushing it." To demonstrate, he shaped metal mana to materialize a sword and then made the edge glow and spark. "Two-part shapings with metal are the most stable, and even then it's a struggle to hold it back so it doesn’t discharge the whole spell the first time you actually cut someone." He tilted his head, before flashing a grin. "Of course, when it comes to single-strike offense with shaping magic, accept no substitutes." He converted the spell-blade into wind mana and let it disperse, an advanced trick that the mage-knights use because it's easier than learning enough negative magic to reclaim it.
“Also, I’m going to have to do some research on making them proper sorcerers.” Casimir added. “Currently, they’re just stubborn wizards.” Some particularly arrogant wizards deride sorcerers for the lack of precision and versatility they have by only learning how to use a single mana type, but that limitation allows them to gain a rather large advantage in raw power, by attuning their soul to automatically convert and generate that kind of mana like a spirit-blooded does.
Thorne frowned. “You don’t know how that happens? We just need to find a lightning spirit willing to make a deal.”
“Not in Anima we don’t.” Casimir retorted. Needing a spirit to do magic for you? In the most magically advanced nation in the known world? Nonsense. “That’s just not a curse you use without triple-checking your work.” Well, you could, but then the resulting sorcerer had a pretty high chance of coming out weaker than you intended, or just reject the curse and end up severely damaging themselves from resisting it. Given that the amount of mana used in that curse could generally kill someone ten times over if you turned it to more conventional offensive magic, survival would be a lucky outcome for such an event. “I said I don’t usually work with lightning mana, didn’t I? I’ll need to read up on it.”
“Have you made a sorcerer before?” Thorne asked, looking skeptical. “You’re like, what, thirty?”
Casimir crossed his arms in annoyance. “Yes, I’ve done it before. No one gets past Standard rank without magic, “ Although there were plenty of ways to use magic without needing much education, they were just inferior to the refined expertise of wizardry. “...so I had to teach our staff fighter enough force magic to keep up with the rest of us.” Why David never just contracted with a church like his sister did never made much sense, but even neophyte sorcerers can apply large amounts of power to the simple spells, and it didn’t get much simpler than Wallop. “It’s a complicated bit of magic but it’s not like I’m innovating anything.” Come to think of it, how would one use lightning mana to create one of his… specialty curses? Well, that’s one way to learn a mana type.
“Well, that’ll simplify things, if you can do it.” Thorne said, before clapping to seize the attention of the students. “I’m standing by Casimir’s assignments, and seeing as how lightning sorcerers would be excellent at ending a fight quickly, Peter gets put with the mage-knight and spellweaver. That puts you as a solid assault team, while the other team is more of an artillery team.”
Casimir considered trying to persuade the man otherwise. For a military irregular unit, having a defined role was good. For an adventuring team, on the other hand, it was less useful. No one can handle all challenges, and having the curse wizard added to the team that can already handle large crowds would be better when they ran into powerful monsters that curses were more effective against, while giving the team that had an effective front line the ones that could deal serious damage against all targets but were weak defensively would allow for them to take on a wider variety of jobs.
But then Thorne shot him a glare, and it was understood that his words were final. Besides, the current setup wasn’t necessarily final, and while ideally they would stay together for years to come, it was not required. Further, until Hashi actually contracted with spirits willing to travel along and fight personally instead of the mud and dirt spirits he currently had helping him out, his more terrain-oriented toolkit was quite suited to setting up targets for a pair of sorcerers who may not be capable at aiming their spells precisely yet.
“We’ll spend another half hour on the combat casting exercise.” Declared Thorne. “After that, we’ll call it early and let you kids get to know each other better. Once I’m sure you can fight without doing the monster’s job for them, we’ll get some over here for you guys to fight.” He turned to Casimir. “You can handle that part, right?”
“Easy.” Casimir replied. “A mind curse to lure them over, and however many debilitating ones needed to lower the difficulty enough for the kids.” There were some dangerous monsters in that forest, but nothing he couldn’t hex down to size.
---------------
“Hey, teach.” Peter said as Casimir was packing up his teaching materials for the day’s lesson. Illivere, Hanna, and Faron were behind him, idling until he had finished his question, as the group always left together since they were put in a team last week. “We were talking about adventurers, and we realized something: elite-ranked adventurers usually have a fancy title, right? Do you have one?”
Casimir grinned. “I do, in fact.” It was a bit grim, but it was fairly earned.
After a moment, Peter tried again. “What is it?”
“I don’t see how that’s any of your business. I’m on sabbatical, you know.” Casimir replied. “If I told you, you might do something untoward, like claim that you’ve been trained by me.” Peter flushed with anger at the strategic insult. “Now, maybe I could tell you…” Peter’s anger vanished into the ether as he perked up at such a simple thing. “...but only if your group became something I wouldn’t be ashamed to call an adventuring team.”
“We’re like that now!” Peter insisted. After only a week? Please. “Test us, teach! We’ll impress you, I know it.”
Casimir glanced again at the other members of the team. They were definitely paying attention, and seemed pretty resolved. “...Do you agree with him? All of you?”
All three, even Illivere, nodded at the question. “Progress has been rapid, Mr. Toomes. An assessment will allow us to see whether our efforts have borne fruit.” …Huh. That was surprisingly brief, for an argument from Illivere.
Standing up from his desk, Casimir started to walk out, gesturing for the students to follow him. “I’ve seen this before.” He said gravely. He just hoped his amused smile didn’t show in his voice. “Fortunately, there’s an old adventurer’s remedy for this kind of thing.”
“Remedy?” Peter asked, worried as the group followed him to the forest gate. “What’s the problem we need a remedy for?”
Casimir remained silent as Peter continually requested that he clarify his ominous statement, and when they had finally crossed the forest gate, Casimir turned to face them, face in a furious expression, arms tensed and loaded, legs spread and bent, every inch of him radiating threat.
To their credit, they actually assembled into a formation, Faron in front, Peter at his left, Illivere at his right, and Hanna in the back. Maybe they’re not hopeless. Casimir relaxed, and finally answered.
“As the expert here, I can only prescribe one remedy for this amount of ego: One asskicking. The treatment will begin immediately.” He gestured cockily at them: “Show me what you’re made of!”