Jiran and Olive flew toward Sophia until the short woman raised her head in their direction. Her aura wrapped around them, halting their momentum instantly.

"Go get changed, we don't have all morning," Her monotone gave Jiran no information to judge her mood.

Olive must know something I don’t, she looks like the reaper's scythe is inches from her neck.

With a nod of understanding, Jiran rushed toward the nearest changing room. Olive was already one step ahead of him. They changed in a flash and soon stood before Sophia.

Jiran thought he detected the slightest hint of dissatisfaction in her eyes just before he was suddenly pressed into her aura from all sides. It felt like he was a thousand meters underwater as pressure assaulted him equally from every direction.

He couldn’t move his body at all as the strength of her aura overwhelmed his muscles. Jiran activated mana forcing throughout his body. The mana spread through his limbs and pushed back against the unbearable pressure.

The pressure was so great that he had to force mana into his diaphragm just to breathe.

What kind of training is this? At least I don’t have to force my heart to beat too!

Sophia gave them several minutes to adjust to the strain, then moved into a stretch. She bent backward with one leg in the air, forcing her body into the shape of a T.

Jiran was able to copy her movement only after forcing his body to move with mana alone. His muscles were completely unable to fight off the pressure.

Every minute movement became important in the struggle for balance. The body's natural system of nerves and muscles communicating with the brain was useless since he was forced to use mana to move.

Jiran’s brain worked overtime while contorted in the unusual stretch. He understood that the slightest fluctuation in his mana would cause him to fall, or even hurt himself.

Again Sophia gave them several minutes to adjust before she tweaked the difficulty again. This time she slowly increased the pressure of her aura against Jiran’s knee on his planted leg. He nearly fell before matching her with his mana forcing.

Suddenly, the pressure against his leg lessened drastically. Jiran did not adjust in time and his own mana caused his knee to snap backward, completely destroying the joint. He fell to the ground, howling in pain while clutching at his ruined knee.

Even while overwhelmed with pain, Jiran focused enough to form a regenerative shaping and flooded it through his ruined joint. Through eyes bleary with uncontrollable tears, Jiran saw movement. Far too late to react, he was struck by a ghostly apparition Sophia had summoned.

The humanoid’s hand pierced his chest, sending waves of agony roiling through him once more before the summon vanished as if it had never been.

“Your enemies will not give you time to recover. After striking a blow they will capitalize on your weakened state to finish you off.

“The moment you are injured is the moment you should be focusing on your surroundings the most.”

Two more ghosts appeared, one on each side of him. They leaped with outstretched hands toward his head and chest.

In a desperate maneuver to not experience that pain again, Jiran used forcing to smash his good leg into the ground, sending him rolling backward. The two apparitions missed and instantly vanished.

Using the break between the next summon, he returned a portion of his focus back to healing his wounded knee. By the fifth wave of summons, he was healed enough to stand. The moment he was back on his feet, the newest wave of apparitions vanished.

For the next hour, they were repeatedly pushed to the breaking point, literally. Only to be attacked ruthlessly when they inevitably fell. Jiran wasn’t given a single moment of reprieve to check on Olive’s condition as he was constantly under threat.

When the pressure of her aura was finally released, both teenagers fell to their asses in the dirt. While panting from the intense physical and mental exertion, they shared a look of camaraderie. Their eyes were full of emotions expressing their common joy at surviving the brutal morning training.

“That’s enough for today. Jiran, your payment for this valuable lesson is to deliver this letter to Rokdo Pass,” She threw a small envelope in his direction.

He glanced at the name it was addressed to before nodding and standing.

“When does he need to deliver it? Rokdo Pass is all the way at the Northeast border,” Jiran appreciated Olive giving him the general direction he would need to travel.

“Today,” Sophia reiterated while she began to tap her foot in impatience.

“It has come to my attention that political maneuvering, caused by none other than yourself, has left the pass without leadership. The lower tier soldiers will likely be overrun and wiped out by tonight. That letter holds a talisman I created, which will hold the pass until replacement leadership arrives.”

Olive’s body stiffened at Sophia’s explanation. She turned to Jiran with wide eyes.

“We need to go immediately! If the graymin wipe out the soldiers in the pass, they will pour into the nearby woods where it will be nearly impossible to find them all. Several settlements rely on the Meldierr Expanse for wood and food. Those people will randomly come under attack, countless lives could be lost.”

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Olive was already racing out of The Garden, not bothering to change back into her academy uniform. Jiran followed behind the frazzled princess. A shout from Sophia easily reached his ears before he ascended the stairs leading to the surface.

“Same time tomorrow. I hope you’re late again, this was fun.”

Fun?! What are you, a sadist?

Jiran quickly caught up to Olive with his more powerful aura. He pushed against her own aura, increasing her speed to match his own. They quickly left the academy grounds and sped across the sky to the north.

What am I doing? It’s going to take all day to get there at this speed.

“Olive, stop.”

She came to a halt, standing in the air on a layer of pressure. She looked at him with annoyance, clearly not understanding why he would be wasting time when they had so far to travel.

“I can go a lot faster alone. I’ll go on ahead. You don’t need to come with me,” She bit her lower lip in disappointment while furrowing her brow in frustration.

Jiran instantly regretted his words after seeing how emotional she became.

This must mean a lot more to her than I thought. I don’t know why she wants to come with me so much but I’m not going to fly off leaving her looking like that.

Jiran closed the distance between them and wrapped her in a hug. He would have liked to enjoy the feeling of her pressing against him, but now wasn’t the time.

With a flicker of thought, his aura formed into a cone to break the wind. Blue flames erupted from beneath his feet, sending the two hurtling through the air. They broke the sound barrier long before reaching Jiran’s maximum speed. With Olive held close to him, he was able to fly at nearly his maximum speed.

Olive screamed as they tore through the air at just shy of Mach thirteen. Far faster than she could fly with aura alone.

We should be there in less than twenty minutes at this speed, so long as nothing attacks us. I’m glad she’s enjoying herself.

Jiran watched Olive’s face as her initial fear changed to excitement. Her large eyes and wide grin were a far preferable sight to her earlier disappointment.

“Thanks for letting me come!” She shouted over the incredible winds.

Jiran extended the cone in front of them around their heads so they could speak more easily. As the sound of raging winds died, he thought of a question that had been bothering him for a long time.

Lentin, that old bastard, always refused to answer any of my questions. Maybe Olive knows.

“Do you know what a magnifying glass is, Olive?” He held his breath, not wanting to give away how important the question was to him.

Olive thought with scrunched eyebrows for several seconds as she mouthed the unfamiliar word combination.

“No, should I? Glass that magnifies. magnifies what?”

“Dang, I was really hoping you had something like that in your lab. Or that you at least knew what one was. That explains a lot.”

“Are you going to keep being cryptic or explain yourself?” Her newest question was accompanied by a squeeze of her arms that were tightly wrapped around her chest.

Her strength was no joke. Jiran felt his ribs protest against her incredible tier five strength. He let out an undignified squeak while looking down at her in a panic.

“I’ll explain, I’ll explain,” Her grin turned evil as she realized the power she had over him at that moment.

Jiran nervously gulped before launching into his answer.

“A magnifying glass enlarges whatever is viewed through it. By warping the angle that light reflects off an object it can allow you to see more of that object and in closer detail than you can with the naked eye.”

He didn’t need to see her confusion warp into further bewilderment to know his explanation sucked.

He activated his fifth mana channel and pushed a tiny amount of mana through it. As the mana passed through the channel, it warped into light-aspected mana.

The new mana was able to easily warp the way light reflected between the two of them. The convex structure he formed in front of her face, which was only centimeters from his tracksuit, caused the fibers that appeared to jump out at her as they enlarged.

Olive jerked her head away from the magnified image before she realized what was going on. Then she released one arm from around his chest as she poked at the air and his suit before becoming enthralled with her own hand. Jiran gave her a few moments to examine her skin in close-up detail before he continued.

“That’s a magnifying glass. The question I really wanted to ask is if anyone had invented a microscope, which is several magnifying lenses working together to massively magnify an image.”

“Such a thing is possible? Why would you need to look that closely at something?”

“If you look closely enough at something, you can see what it's actually made of. What is a tree made of, Olive?”

“A tree is made of wood,” She answered hesitantly.

“Yes, but what is wood made of,” He responded with a quirked eyebrow.

“I… don’t know,” Her hesitant reply as she looked at him with overflowing curiosity momentarily took his breath away.

Wow, she's beautiful.

Clearing his throat, he continued.

“Wood is made of many things, all working together. Mostly it’s water, carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. As for why any of this matters, I’ll get there soon. First, we have to answer exactly what happens as a fire burns wood.

“All that carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen are torn apart, and the process of them being separated creates the heat. I want you to try forming a fire. Use an image of little things so small you can’t see them, being separated, and that separation forms the heat of your flame.

“Oh, make sure you use less than half the normal mana you would use for a fire attack.”

Jiran was glad he had remembered to tell her to tone down her mana. The girl's fire erupted from her palm a few moments after she closed her eyes to concentrate. The flames expanded to engulf two hundred meters beneath them washing over the air in a blazing inferno.

The kickback from the wild release of energy pushed them higher into the air as if Olive had just fired a bazooka from her raised palm.

She stared at her own hand as the fires she released vanished into the distance behind them.

“What just happened?! That was many times stronger than it should have been! I only used a little mana but it was bigger than any flame I’ve ever made.”

“Now you know why we want to look closely at things. The more we understand Madra and how she works, the stronger we can become.”