Teo and his friends were standing on the paved field behind school, used for sports classes and the breaks between lessons, waiting for their new instructor to arrive while rubbing their hands together in a futile attempt to warm themselves up.

From the 26 children in their class only 14 had applied for the new practical Magic course, the others were either afraid of embarrassing themselves or simply untalented in Magic altogether.

Since the second semester of school had already began and it had only been a week since New Year's, it was naturally freezing cold and the city was covered in a dense layer of last night's heavy snowfall. Even now a slight fizzle of white tufts could be seen raining down around them, yet the small plaza remained free of ice and snow.

Actually a few teachers had spent their morning splashing seawater at the field before drying it up with Fire Magic. They did not exactly know how it worked, but the method provided a long lasting and better result compared to simply melting all the snow using Fire Magic directly.

After waiting for almost 15 minutes, a familiar face came rushing over from the main building. It was their Elements teacher, Dexton Kasahara, easily recognizable by his wavy, blond hair and his green eyes, clearly identifying him as someone from central Kalar.

"Sorry for being late," he said and hurriedly fixed his scarf, that had slipped a bit while running and revealed a speck of snow white skin beneath it. He scanned through the crowd quickly and said,

"It seems that everyone is already here, good. Any questions so far?"

A corpulent boy wearing suspenders raised his hand. He was quite pale and it seemed, that not even his fleshy body could protect him from the biting cold. After a nod from Mr. Kasahara he began to stammer his question,

"I, I thought we were s-supposed to get a new te-teacher for this class?"

"You were. However, we could not find a decent teacher for the second years on such short notice, so I will pitch in as your instructor for the second semester."

It was no real surprise that the school had problems to fulfill the unexpected new regulations of the Magic Association. Magician's were rare on the Continent and so far from the bustling cities located in the center of the Continent, even Apprentice Magicians were a luxury good every school only had a limited amount of. For most classes this was not really a problem, as math, history, culture, music, sports and so on did not require any Magic skills or knowledge to teach, but a practical course about applied Magic techniques was a different story, for obvious reasons.

Mr. Kasahara was an intermediate rank Apprentice Magician who also taught them the basic principles governing the Elements, so it was comprehensible to install him as temporary instructor — the 'magical' teachers working at the school could be counted on one hand after all.

"If there are no more questions then we will start now," Mr. Kasahara said.

A low whispering went through the crowd of students, but they soon fell silent with the gaze of their teacher weighting on them.

"Most of you should have awakened their Elemental vision by now and have already somewhat practiced their foundational Magic, right? If anyone still has problems with these points, please stand aside for now and come to me after I finished explaining the main task for today," the tall teacher began his explanation, the left corner of his mouth twitching a little, when he saw a full 6 students stand aside and wait after hearing what he said. Usually the younger generation was very eager to explore their new abilities, so he did not expect this many to still be stuck on level zero, he quickly recovered though and continued with his instructions.

"The most important skill you can learn and that will help you in every situation, is to defend yourself in the face of danger, so we will start with that. Every idiot is capable of throwing his Element around, injuring not only others but even himself; we however, will learn how to protect ourselves from these idiots."

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The whole class chuckled at these words, but quickly turned silent again to follow the lesson further. Obviously no one felt addressed personally, even though most of them were on exactly that level.

"Defense is a rather complex topic, best learned through practice. Pair up in groups of two and try to defend yourself from your partners practice attacks in turns. Remember, I said practice attacks. Wait until your partner is ready and don't throw anything at them, that they can't handle, also try to help each other. I will be making my rounds trying to help anyone with difficulties and if I see anyone overdoing it I will gladly spar with him myself," Mr. Kasahara said in a clear and loud voice, causing everyone to straighten their backs and listen. The last words were followed by a particularly creepy smile, sending shivers down the students backs.

They quickly began to gather in groups of two and spread out across the field, while Mr. Kasahara gave detailed instructions about Elemental Vision to the group of slower students.

Teo had left the honor of forming a group with Angelika to Jack this time, after getting sufficiently puppy-eyed by the latter, and searched for another partner by himself. He ended up in a group with Darrell, the plump boy who had previously raised the first question and had an Affinity for the Earth Element.

It was an extremely unfair matchup, as the Earth Element enjoyed a huge natural advantage in terms of defensive capabilities, but Teo actually looked forward to the challenge.

At first everyone practiced his skills for a few minutes, warming up and getting ready for the task, then the first groups began to spar hesitatingly. Meanwhile Darrell had buried himself in a thick layer of rocks and earth, that he had slowly build up in this time, concentrating the Earth Elemental Threads in the outer layer as much as possible, in order to make it even harder and durable.

When Teo slowly began to get bored of watching other groups, he heard a muffled voice coming from beside him.

"You ... star... now."

Teo could barely make out a complete word, but he still got the message, he was ready a long time ago.

He had planned to start with something small, but seeing the human chestnut in front of him, he decided to get somewhat serious. The Earth Element really was unfair if it came to pure defensive ability, because even a weakling like Darrell could turn into a fortress if given enough time. A wall of earth would not require any further energy or concentration once it was built after all.

Yet all Teo could see was a perfect venue for target practice.

Having all the time in the world, (obviously Darrell wasn't going anywhere) he began to collect the Mana from the air around him and formed a small ball of energy in front of his chest. He would first test the waters with a basic Mana Bolt using less than half his power.

With a flick of his hand he let go and a bright blue glow flashed into the direction of the small hill that had formed on the practice field.

*Bam*

The effect was a bit underwhelming and the huge explosion of rubble, Teo had pictured in his mind, did not occur. A blunt impact sound, a few cracks here and there, a few small pieces of rubble flying a few meters away and a sizable cloud of dust was all he had managed to conjure. It was a hard nut indeed.

Seeing the small cracks slowly mending themselves as time passed, he got fired up a little and readied his next attack.

First he would try two consecutive Bolts of similar strength to his first one, maybe he would already be able to blow apart the weakened shell after cracking it with the first impact. Casting several weak Mana bolts simultaneously was already a trivial task for Teo and he attacked again after less than a minute, only leaving this much time for Darrell to prepare himself again.

*Bam*

*Ba-Crack*

His idea was quite good, as he really did manage to crack the thick shell apart this time, breaking off a piece large enough to see a shocked boy hurriedly repairing his shelter.

Three bolts would definitely be able to get the job done, but Teo had little interest in needlessly bullying his classmates. He just wanted to see what he could do with his skills.

After waiting for the opulent tortoise to retreat back into its shell, he began to prepare his third and final attack. He would attack using almost his full strength now, but still without using any special technique of course, the pure impact of the raw energy bundle would be more than enough. Additionally he aimed at the very edge of the mountain in order not to hurt his poor teammate accidentally.

This time Teo spent a few more seconds weaving his Mana Bolt compared to before, but was done very quickly anyway. The fist-sized Orb of energy hovering in front of him was exuding a natural aura of power, even though he did not even compress it that much. After carefully aiming on the intended spot he fired, and the raw energy charged forth like water from a broken dam.

*Swooosh*

This time the flash moved a lot faster, glowed much brighter and was accompanied by an audible whistling sound.

*BANG*

This was more to his taste. The right wall of the earthen shell was completely blown apart and small pieces of rock sprayed out, even hitting a few people who stood close by. Luckily no one was hurt, just shocked and a bit afraid.

Inside his crumbling shelter sat a deathly pale and trembling Darrell with his mouth wide open. He still had a ringing in his ears from the heavy impact and was gasping for air.

Obviously this had also attracted the attention of Mr. Kasahara, and he was not pleased.