"Where is everyone?" asked Alwin.

"They left. Class ended a while ago," said Uchronia. "You were really into your training. Didn't you hear Milvus dismiss us?"

"Obviously not."

"Well, you missed lunch, but we can always catch dinner."

"I did? Wait, what time is it?"

"Half past six. I'm surprised you managed to focus for that long."

"Same. I guess I was just really into it. Wait, so why are you here?"

"Well, someone had to keep you company. Plus, it was a good excuse to get some extra practice in."

"Thanks? So did you manage to learn the Spirit Barrier yet?"

"Of course! Have you?"

"Only just. I can't believe I'm the last guy in the class to learn it."

"But, you're not. About half the class got it down today. Milvus said to continue practice tomorrow. Then for those who managed to learn it today, to just keep practicing it and Spirit Hands."

"So he's not going to teach us a new skill?"

"I don't think so."

"Aw, man. Anyway, let's go get dinner. If we're too late Gus might end up eating everything."

Uchronia giggled at Alwin's joke, and the two of them headed for the cafeteria.

---

The next day's class was boring, to say the least. To say the most, it was mind-numbing, and not the fun kind of mind-numbing. It was so painfully uninteresting, that Alwin nearly fell asleep more than a dozen times. Nearly. Each time he teetered on the brink of unconsciousness, a quick slap to the back of his head made sure that he was brought back to the land of the awake. Uchronia was a real stickler when it came to paying attention. She wouldn't dare allow him to sleep on her watch. But the only problem was that there was nothing to pay attention to! All they had to do today was just practice.

Practice, practice, practice. That's all it was. Practice, practice, practice. He felt like a broken record that instead of playing out the same couple of notes, he repeatedly cast the same skills over and over again.

Boring, boring, boring. That’s what it was. Molding out a pair of Spirit Hands before chucking them out of his core? Sure, it was fun the first couple of times. Now, it was just repetitive and monotonous. Creating a paper mache Spirit Barrier before trying to score a home run? Sure, it was exciting the first couple of tries. Now, it was just dull and droll.

On the bright side, his cast times were gradually dropping with each attempt. On the dark side, it was just so boring. So, so, so boring. Unfortunately for him, there was nothing he could do but spend the whole day practicing. He didn't even have the luxury of daydreaming. It was like Uchronia had a daydream detector built into her. The moment his mind ventured anywhere other than his core, she'd whack him on the head.

Why, oh why did she have to be the fun police? All he wanted to do was daydream about a bad guy barging into the classroom. While the rest of the students were paralyzed in fear, he would jump into action and save the day. A couple of Dark Tackles here, a couple of slaps with his Spirit Hands there, and he would be the hero of the hour. But with Uchronia's ever-watchful eye and that leaf tail of hers twitching like a radar, his daydream remained just that – a pipedream.

Oh well, enough complaining. Back to more boring practice. Hopefully, tomorrow would be much more interesting.

---

"Morning class. Hope you've all had a good rest. Today I'll be introducing to you all a new skill. For the past two days, we focused on the defensive Common skill, Spirit Barrier. But you know the saying, the best defense is a good offense. So today I'll introduce to you all an offensive Common skill, Spirit Blast."

Yes! More skills! And a fighting one at that. Wait, what's a common skill? Never mind that Alwin wanted to hit things. Dark Tackle was cool and all, but more offensive skills meant more ways to hit things, and hitting things was tight. Learning this new skill was going to be super easy, barely an inconvenience.

A whack on the top of his head brought Alwin back to reality. He turned to face his assailant, his ever-so-wonderful, ever-so-annoying friend, Uchronia.

"Pay attention," she whispered.

"Yes, mother."

Another whack by her leafy tail landed on his head.

"Ouch. What was that for?"

She glared at Alwin and he shifted his gaze back onto Milvus.

"Like Spirit Hands and Spirit Barrier, Spirit Blast is another basic requirement for young aspiring hunters to take part in the entrance exams. It's another simple skill so I expect you all to get it by the end of tomorrow's class."

Everyone's eyes were glued to Milvus. Even Alwin paid rapt attention, having learned his lesson the last time he wasn't fully focused also because it was an offensive technique. Who didn't want to learn that?

"Spirit Blast and Spirit Barrier are similar techniques, despite their different use cases. Their similarities lie in the way you shape your mana. For Spirit Barrier, you mold a hollow sphere of mana large enough to surround yourself. For Spirit Blast, you compress that sphere and fire it off like a projectile. Although they're both spheres of mana, the key things to take note of are the size of the sphere and the intent of the spell."

So Spirit Barrier but smaller. Seems simple enough. Hopefully.

"As you all learn more techniques you'll realize that there are different ways to mold your mana. Take Spirit Blast, for instance. It uses Spirit Barrier as a base. If I had taught you Spirit Blast first, you could easily shape a Spirit Barrier by expanding your Spirit Blast to surround yourself. It's all thanks to the mighty magic bestowed upon us by the Great Cornucopia!"

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Man, preachers were annoying. But, Alwin would let it slide... for now. Who cares about some lousy Corenucopia? That darn blasted thing that supposedly blessed him with a Core Skill couldn't even bless him with a usable Core Skill. The only thing that darn Devolution skill was doing was taking up space in his status.

Just like the past few days, Milvus hit a button under the teacher's desk, and all the students’ tables and chairs descended into the floor. Unlike the past few days, the floor didn't immediately close up. Instead, twelve wooden training dummies rose from the ground.

"Don't want any rogue Spirit Blasts flying all over the classroom, so try your best to aim at the training dummy in front of you."

Alwin stared at the wooden dummy in front of him. It was almost human-shaped, standing upright on a wooden stand. Constructed out of a thick piece of wood, with a smooth, featureless torso and no arms or legs. It wasn't a real human, but it would suffice. He couldn't wait to go out into the world and teach those humans a thing or two.

Alwin closed his eyes and focused his attention within his core. He felt his pool of mana, as clear and clean as ever. Within it, he materialized the tools needed to help shape his mana into Spirit Barrier: a pair of hands, a pin, and an orange balloon.

If Spirit Blast was just a compressed version of Spirit Barrier, maybe all he had to do was not inflate his balloon to its full size. The balloon puffed up a tiny bit before stopping until the orange balloon was roughly the size of an orange.

Maybe Alwin should stop skipping breakfast in favor of sleeping in or maybe he should just use a different colored balloon. One that doesn't remind him of food. There was one last option to explore, he could simply be lazy and endure the aches and cravings in his stomach. After one millisecond of considering the choices available to him, the last option sounded like the best plan, simply because he was already doing it.

Now back to the regular scheduled mana shaping program. Tear out strips of mana from the swirling nebula within his core, dip it back in, then paste it over the balloon. A tedious process, but a necessary one. At least it didn't take too long for Alwin to finish crafting his miniature Spirit Barrier. Smaller balloon meant less pasting, which also meant less time drying.

Now all he had to do was blast the ball of mana, and he'd be one step closer to blasting those pesky humans. His ever-so-trusty mental bat squared up against the much tinier ball of mana. With a swing, the miniature Spirit Barrier shot out of his core. That familiar sensation in his throat returned, but it felt different. Weaker.

A small puff of air left his mouth, while an equally tiny blast of mana manifested in front of him. The ball of mana wobbled uncertainly, sputtering through the air before vanishing entirely just a second after its release. It didn’t even make it halfway to the training dummy. Alwin stared in disbelief. What was that? That was utterly pathetic.

One more time. That was just a warm-up shot, and definitely not because he screwed up somewhere along the way. Inflate, paste, dry, pop, then swing. A puff of air left Alwin's mouth, and the same pitiful burst of mana appeared briefly before sputtering out and vanishing.

What was going on? What was happening? Why was his Spirit Blast failing, and why wasn't he experiencing that same compelling feeling to yell out his attack? Alwin let out a groan of frustration. Why couldn't this be easy?

"Looks like you aren't using enough mana, Alwin," said Milvus. "You’re on the right track with a good amount of intent, but the lack of mana causes the technique to be unstable, so just keep adding more mana during the shaping process and you should be good to go."

Before Alwin got the chance to thank Milvus, the triangular monster was already scurrying away to help another student in need.

"I don't get how learning such a lousy move is supposed to help make my Unstoppable Spear stronger," said Galeo the Furball.

"Who knows? But the way I see it your spear is more stoppable than unstoppable," said Tess the Leafling.

"Maybe I'll poke your eyes out so you can't see it anymore."

"Now, now, fellas. Hold your horses. I'm sure this ain't some snake oil that Milvus is selling us, so I say we focus on learning Spirit Blast instead of having a showdown in the middle of class," said Flintlock the Furball.

"Fine!" said Galeo all huffy.

"Fine!" said Tess after watching Galeo get all huffy.

"Thanks, Flintlock," said Milvus. "Now if you all need any help, don't be afraid to ask."

Now that the disturbance was resolved, Alwin had the chance to gather his thoughts once more. Looks like his shortcut turned into more of a longcut. Within his core, Alwin inflated the balloon to its full size and applied a generous coating of his mana paper mache. Now with his Spirit Barrier completed, it was time to create his Spirit Blast.

Spirit Blast was a compressed form of Spirit Barrier, with the intent being to unleash it as a projectile. Alwin had gotten the intent part down, but compression was a different story. How would he compress it? Within his menagerie of mental tools, Alwin found himself devoid of any means to shrink the barrier. Well, almost devoid. He still had the most basic of tools available to him. His hands.

With no other choice, Alwin got to work. Using a pair of mentally conjured hands, he grabbed hold of the Alwin-sized ball of mana and squeezed. It was hard. So very, very, hard. Compressing it was one thing, but a uniform compression was another. Alwin had to constantly adjust his hands as he pressed down on the ball of mana. Left, right, up, down, left, right. His imaginary hands moved in a frantic dance. If only he had more hands, this would be so much easier.

Wait, a second. There was nothing stopping him from just conjuring up more mental hands. Alwin conjured up ten more pairs of hands, but quickly found himself overwhelmed, struggling to control them all at once. So, it looked like there was something stopping him from getting more hands on deck. Good thing Alwin was a lazy fellow. He knew how to work smarter, and not harder.

Pair by pair he arranged the hands evenly around the formed Spirit Barrier and locked them into position. Once all the hands were in place, there was only one thing left to do, push. Alwin issued the command to all of his hands to compress the ball, and they dutifully followed his instructions. The orb slowly but surely shrunk. From an Alwin-sized ball to basketball-sized, to volleyball, and finally down to baseball-sized.

His mental bat never seemed more appropriate than ever, and a part of him was glad that the information download he was subjected to left him knowledge about ancient human civilizations. To think that they loved to play with balls of all sorts of sizes.

After loading up his core with the intent to blast the ball of mana, Alwin swung his bat. The now-formed Spirit Blast escaped his core and felt his throat gurgle up with the all too familiar sensation, but this time it was filled with power. The words, "Spirit Blast!" left his lips.

The Spirit Blast manifested in front of him and shot out towards the wooden dummy. It struck dead center in the dummy's chest. The force reverberated through the dummy, causing it to shudder violently, but still, the dummy showed no visible signs of damage.

Alwin wanted nothing more than to destroy those pesky humans, and if he couldn't go out and do that right this instant, the least he could do was take his anger out on the wooden dummy. He fired off another Spirit Blast, and another, and another, and another, and another…

New Skill Learned: Spirit Blast (F)

Even after he had officially learned the skill, and his accomplishments had been recognized by the system, Alwin refused to stop firing off more Spirit Blasts. That darn blasted wooden training dummy, he wanted it broken, crushed, obliterated. Unfortunately, it had nary a scratch on it.

"Hey, it's getting late. We should head back."

Alwin turned to face the source of the voice and found Uchronia staring at him. He blinked, suddenly aware of the empty training ground around him. Where was everybody again? Did he really just spend the whole day hyper-focused on trying to destroy the wooden dummy?

"What time is it?"

"It's almost time for bed. If you still can't get Spirit Blast down, there's still tomorrow."

"I mean, it's already in my status, but I just really wanted to destroy that wooden dummy."

"Why?"

"Well... it's-it's-it's because... I just wanted to okay?"

"That's a weird goal. And I don't think the academy would use dummies that could be destroyed that easily. Especially not by a rank F common skill."

"I guess… but I'm still going to try."

"Well, you still have one more day to try. After that, I can't wait for Mr. Milvus to teach us something new."

"I just hope it's cool. Let's head back, and thanks for staying with me."

"No problem."