Mary was bored. It wasn't like she had nothing to do, there was always work to be done for her classes, but she wanted to do something else.

Originally she had planned to be on the quest by now, but all students were required to stay at the academy as a powerful and aggressive monster had been spotted nearby. Things like that were quite rare, but everyone who wasn't able to deal with these monsters was required to stay in the academy. The residents of the town and surrounding villages were highly advised to stay inside as well. Two teams had already been sent out to deal with the giant, so they should be allowed to leave within the week.

Mary decided it was high time she continued something she hadn't done since leaving the orphanage. It was time she restarted viewing the effects her magic had on the world, how it achieved what it did.

Of course she wouldn't be allowed to do that with any of her offensive spells, but she had plenty others to analyse first. She would have to do weak versions of the aggressive ones in her room or while they were travelling. She started with the spell that was responsible for the success of most of their missions. Casting a small version of the shield that hid their sound and smell she started trying to understand its interactions with the world.

She only had to analyse one part of it though, as she had to manually add the masking of their smell when creating it. That had been surprisingly easy, she only had to rotate the air inside of the shield once it entered it. Afterwards the spell filtered the smells that were not present on the outside and trapped them. The only thing she had to take care of when dispelling the shield was to create a strong gust upwards or they would be showered in a smell that made everyone gag. She shuddered when remembering the first time that had happened.

She didn't know how the sound was stopped though so she only cast the sound suppressing part of her spell. She did need a few hours to find out its inner workings, but was stumped when she did.

The spell didn't suppress the sounds, it trapped the sounds that entered the air from their side into a small bubble of air that it surrounded with a small void. Without any air to use as medium the sound dispersed in a matter of seconds.

That gave her an idea. If she could remove the air in a certain point in space,  she should be able to increase the amount of air in said space as well. Hell, she knew powerful fire mages did the same to their fireballs, they decreased the space a fireball occupied while using the same amount of mana to create it. As far as she knew that had two effects, firstly it increased the heat inside of it and secondly it made for an impressive explosion upon impact.

Without further ado, Mary started testing her idea. It quickly became apparent that she wasn't able to create a big enough explosion to damage anything while staying mana efficient. The mana increased exponentially with the density of the air. While still staying efficient she only managed to cause a small explosion over a few millimeters. That meant killing stuff with explosions like originally planned wouldn't happen anytime soon, but she could still salvage the spell.

It was the first spell she leant that would allow her to deal with big groups of enemies. It was also so brutal she would only use it absolutely necessary.

The spell she created would create hundreds of small compressed bubbles of air held together by her mana. Once her opponents breathed them in, the bubbles would lose connection to her mana and use the remaining man up in a matter of seconds. When the air was in their lungs the spell would be unable to sustain itself and explode, tearing her enemies lungs apart. The spell was next to impossible to defend against as well, there was little a breathing being could do to stop it, they needed to breath after all.

I wouldn't help against someone like her, small inner bleedings like this one were taken care of by her body in a matter of seconds, but the monsters that had such regeneration would not be targets of the spell anyways.

Mary really wanted to test a few offensive spells as well, but casting such spells in the confines of the academy was forbidden. She decided she would try a few weak versions in the confines of her room anyways, if could tone the weakest spells down enough they would only leave a small scorch mark on a wooden surface so there would be no physical evidence on the wall of her room.

Mary left the garden where she had been studying her spells towards her dorm. Like always after her runin with the prince, she had to kept an eye out for his team, they would occasionally follow her but they had yet to try and corner her again. She had to make sure to never take the same way twice, but with the park being as extensive as it was that was no problem.

Entering the dorm a few minutes later, she ascended the stair to the top level and went to her room. She could see her desk was full of books, ever since she had installed the stones that increased the ambient mana in her room she found herself enjoying reading here more and more. The relaxing atmosphere increased her speed of learning significantly while being able to make her relax better than anything else.

She started with a very weak version of the lightning bolt. With the amount of mana supplied it wasn't more than small spark.

It was frustrating, she knew the spell affected reality in way but just couldn't seem to see what happened. Mary felt she could be able to perceive what the spell did if she had a finer control over he mana. The only thing she knew about the spell was that it created a current between the point of origin and the target yet she was unable to see what exactly caused the current. Even with spells that boosted her perception beyond levels that would be useable in a fight she was still unable to understand the happenings.

Whatever happened was beyond her ability to perceive and was on a smaller level than anything she managed to feel yet. She felt she would be able to understand it once she advanced the control over her mana once again. It was frustrating really, her mana control had improved to a level where controlling it became near instinctual. Yet it wasn't enough as she found something that needed an even finer control once again.

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She now understood what her parents had told her when she was young.

‘You will always find control over your mana lacking. The only thing you can try is to improve it with each obstacle you encounter.’

A week ago, she had found a very good way on how to stem any frustration she had though. She had to concentrate on only that and had to blend out the world completely, but she had finally managed to cast the first part of the easiest dragonrune. A monumental achievement and most people had said it was the first and most important step on the way to become an archmage. First of all, she didn't need the gem they had been given upon entering the academy anymore. The gem only was there to help them really, it helped you to overcome any limitations on your mana pool if you had enough time to prepare.

Casting the manawell had been the hardest thing she ever had to do, it required two of the dragonrune after all. Now though, she constantly had a spell hovering above her shoulder. A spell which was only there to store any mana she inserted for later use. She could now add or withdraw mana at will.

Being able to cast that rune was one of the requirements for reaching the upper ranks in the adventurers guild as it allowed more control and had a great many uses when fighting intelligent monsters.

They were able to perceive mana a lot like her, so the manashields they formed were always fit for the spell flying at them. The ability to suddenly increase or decrease the power of a spell, would allow the adventurers to waste the enormous amounts of mana these monsters had at their disposal. It was one of the few ways to defeat an opponent with more mana than yourself, make him waste all his mana and outlast him.

A loud bang disrupted Mary's concentration and the rune dissipated into thin air. Just as she was wondering what had caused that sound, it repeated. Connecting her mind to Starshadow she could see what caused the commotion. Eleven giants, probably the tribe of the singe one that they had been warned about, were standing at the edge of the forest hurling literal boulders at the academies walls. They were obviously trying to haul them over the walls, but had been spotted in time to activate the academies magical protections.

The giants were in for a whole world of pain. You did not attack the town an archmage resided in without regretting it. Not that they would live long enough to regret leaving the mountains, the moment a giant left their ancestral home it would be killed.

A weak assault such as this wouldn't be able to penetrate the defenses of the walls even if kept up for weeks so she wasn't worried. At least until a twelfth giant stepped out of the forest. It didn't have any of the traditional weapons the race used and instead only had a young tree as a staff.

Giant shamans were very rare and very powerful. Their huge bodies were bigger than their normal kin, reaching up to seven meters in height. Being as huge as they were they held enormous mana reserves more than any archmage could hope to match. Their sheer amount of power made finesse unnecessary as they could overpower anyone in a one versus one fight.

Luckily there was only one shaman for every thousand giants and these mainly kept to the mountains they called home. Once in a while one of them started to move in richer lands though, something that ended bloody for the regions they visited until a powerful enough group managed to stop their ramage.

Luckily, this one chose the academy as its first target, something that would prove fatal for it.

Mary commanded Starshadow to fly as high as he could. She would not let her familiar in between a magical showdown if this magnitude.

Starshadow could see the runes etched in the top two levels of the academy come to life as the teachers arrived and started feeding their mana to them.

With the magical might of dozens of teachers the runes lit up the sky. Instantly all paths of retreat were cut off as a wall of earth rose to encompass the monsters. Or it would have or they didn't have a shaman in their midst. The shaman smashed his staff into the wall in front of him. With the power of his huge body and supported by its magic the wall was smashed into pieces.

Before the academies defenses could attack once again the shaman started his counterattack. Like all of his race, he wasn't one for subtlety. Shamans usually copied nature, understandable as nature was the most terrifying thing around.This shaman was no different, it copied the two most terrifying things it could imagine. Or a perverted version of them. Fire and lighting were both things nature produced that would terrify anything if they had to withstand it in the mountains.

First, it created a huge ball of fire. The magic expanded until the spell reached five meters in diameter. Afterwards the spell flew towards the protective shield surrounding the academy and exploded in an ear shattering explosion.

The second spell it cast was different. It seemed the world calmed for a moment before it was released. Than a bolt of lighting hit the barrier. It wasn't one like those Mary used. His spell was obviously inspired by the huge storms that would pass the mountains to the west sometimes. A bolt she had no hope of controlling and that would most likely just kill her. With a thunderous roar, a bolt of lightning with a meter in diameter hit the shield with a crack.

Mary was really glad she sent Starshdow to the other end of the clearing, that spell would have fried him if he was anywhere near it.

Normally the amount of mana used in the two spells would never be enough to damage the protective shields, but they weren't meant to withstand spells that contained as much mana as these two. The wards were meant to withstand a continuous barrage of attacks that were normally used in sieges.

Before the monster could attack once again, the tower lit up once again. It seemed the headmaster who was probably controlling the defense was done playing around and started to use a spell that was more within her speciality. Water started rising out of all of the wells within the city and the streams of water all closed in on the group of monsters.

The water was met with a simple yet powerful barrier.

That didn't mean anything though. Beasts as big as these needed enormous amounts of air, so all the headmaster had to do was stop the shaman casting spells and completely enclose the shield in water.

As it turned out, the giant didn't think the town would be able to mount an effective defense against the two spells as his shield gave out only three minutes afterwards, sealing the fate of his tribe as they were sliced apart by the spell the headmaster cast.

It was a gruesome sight.

Giants were powerful monsters, more than Mary’s group could deal with for now, but as there were twelve fresh corpses out there, Mary sent Starshadow in to eat to his heart's content, as he always enjoyed new tastes and this one should be to his liking.