The break passed by in a flash, leaving just a smudge in my memory. And just like that, it was time to return to classes.

Students trickled into theory class, slowly filling up the classroom. Nobody seemed very excited to learn- in fact, most looked like they just wanted to go back to sleeping. Mrs. Genia didn’t seem to appreciate that.

“Birux salai- flashfire!” She shouted loudly.

Casting this spell had a number of useful effects. Students who were awake and attentive had enough time to cover their eyes, thus avoiding any unpleasantness. Students who had dozed off were rudely awakened.

Thankfully I had been one of the former, which gave me time to wonder about the spell as Mrs. Genia allowed the class to recover. First of all, she had started with “birux,” which I didn’t recognize. Second of all, how was she able to use magic indoors?

I didn’t have to wait long for an explanation.

“For the next three months until the new year's break, we will be working on magic with greater spirits.” Mrs. Genia told us after the class had recovered. “The spell I just cast used a light spirit, which is a type of greater spirit.”

If I had to rank every class Mrs. Genia ever taught, I’d probably put that day’s one at second. Still, it would be a chore to recount everything she said word for word. Instead, here’s a nice summary of Mrs. Genia’s lesson:

There are three types of greater spirits- light, life, and spacial, all of which take many times more mana to use than the basic spirits. Space was particularly inefficient, requiring more mana than even heroes had.

Light spirits were summoned with birux, as evidenced by Mrs. Genia’s demonstration. Useful for illusions and communication, mages who mastered this could expect to be successful in the upper ranks of the army. I didn’t really expect to ever get up there, but it was nice to dream.

Life spirits were summoned with viwa, and were used for healing. It was extremely taxing on mana, so Mrs. Genia said that we probably shouldn’t rely on life magic too much.

We weren’t taught anything about space spirits, with Mrs. Genia just saying that we’d hurt ourselves if we tried manipulating them.

Exiting the dining hall after lunch, I realized that it had gotten a lot darker from when the day had started. Given the temperature, I assumed that it would start snowing soon.

I definitely wasn’t looking forward to learning to summon greater spirits in the snow- from what Mrs. Genia had told us, it was already going to be hard enough. From their facial expressions, I could tell that none of my friend’s were very happy about this either.

Luckily my fears were quickly put to rest.

Once the entire class showed up to practical, Mr. Donnel explained that during wintertime practical magic classes would be held indoors.

“We can practice summoning greater spirits indoors, since they can’t actually materialize physical matter like basic spirits can.” He explained.

Unlike how we had learned to wield the basic spirits, Mr. Donnel instructed us to learn light magic before moving onto life. The reasoning behind this was that the two were fundamentally different enough that barely any spells overlapped, so it would be more efficient to learn them one at a time.

Thus we began with summoning light, which wasn’t all that different from the basic elements. In Mr. Donnel’s example, a bright light had appeared where his wand was pointed. It worked like any normal light did, illuminating its surroundings. Mr. Donnel even made it shift through a couple of different colors, which was pretty cool to watch. However, It looked somewhat unearthly, with light just coming from nothing.

The whole process of learning to summon light spirits was as boring as could be expected. Summoning was fine (though tedious), taking just a couple of days to master. It was my first spell with light that caught me off guard.

It was a simple illusion spell- kizhe. Mr. Donnel had used it to make an apple look exactly like a crystal, and then instructed us to do the same. The whole class was pretty excited to try after seeing Mr. Donnel’s results.

The first few tries didn’t have any results, but that was to be expected. I got it around a quarterway through class, which was actually faster than most of the class.

“Birux kizhe- illusion!”

I got pretty excited when I saw the apple flicker into a crystal for a brief moment, even though I knew it was just an illusion.

What was less exciting and fun was the immediate drain on my mana. If I had to guess, I’d say that I had spent over a tenth of what I had on that one spell.

Because of the new wand, it wasn’t as bad for me as it could’ve been. As I saw more and more students successfully complete the spell, their surprise was visibly shown on their faces. A few looked as if they had been physically punched- I assumed that too much of their stores had been drained too quickly.

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“If you need to take a break, don’t be afraid to take one!” Mr. Donnel called out, leading to visible gratitude from some of the students.

After a month with light, we moved onto life spirits. Progress had been massively slowed down by the mana drain, so we hadn’t really learned many different spells beyond illusion. I developed a firm opinion that greater spirits were completely useless, at least for people like me.

Mr. Donnel hissed as he dug into his flesh with a knife. Say what you will about that man, but he knew how to make class interesting.

Mr. Donnel removed the knife once it had cut a wound deep enough that blood was visibly leaking out. Putting down the knife, he instructed us to look as he took his wand from his belt.

“Viwa- summon!”

The class looked on in awe as the wound began to slowly close by itself.

“This would be faster with a dedicated spell, but this is the power of life spirits.” Mr. Donnel explained to the class. “Don’t worry- you don’t need to injure yourselves for today’s lesson. Just try to summon the spirits over your non-wand arm- you’ll know if the summoning works.”

As usual, it took me a while to summon the new type of spirit.

Mr. Donnel wasn’t lying- it was pretty obvious when I had succeeded. My entire arm immediately felt better, as if there was some sort of warmth coursing through it.

It was a pretty dumb decision, but I decided to try to do what Mr. Donnel had done, hurting his arm and then healing it.

I didn’t have a knife like Mr. Donnel, so magic would have to do.

“Deva errum- balde!” I made the blade as small as possible, trying to avoid detection. It worked fairly well, and nobody seemed to notice my spellcasting. The drawback was that keeping the magic so contained was mentally taxing, and as a result I accidentally cut a bit deeper into my arm than I meant to.

I winced at the pain, but it was manageable. Now for the summoning-

“Viwa- summon!”

It was great. I could immediately feel the pain disappear, and my would started to close itself.

Unfortunately, my excitement distracted me, preventing me from noticing my rapidly depleting mana reserves. And even once I did, I was too slow to sever the connection with the life spirits.

My world faded to black as my reserves bottomed out, and I fainted.

When I came to, I found myself in front of the entire class. Mr. Donnel was behind me.

I immediately knew what this was. Every once in a while, a student would carelessly use too much mana and pass out. Mr. Donnel would drag their body to the front before reviving them, making them an example to the class of what not to do.

And right now, I was that example.

“I want to make it very clear to everyone here that life spirits are extremely taxing on mana.” Mr. Donnel was announcing. “While spells can make it a more efficient process, always keep an eye on your mana reserves while using anything related to it.”

Mr. Donnel then spoke to me directly. “Have you learned your lesson?” He asked.

I nodded, too embarrassed to form words.

Luckily, Mr. Donnel was not a mean person. Having received an apology, he let me go without any more fuss.

To this day, I don’t regret my actions. Learning the painful effects of mana overuse during class, with an experienced teacher to heal me, was way better than any of the other ways I could’ve learned.

I was especially careful on the day we started spellcasting.

Mr. Donnel had brought in a large cage of mice, enough for the whole class. I was pretty used to animals like these, but I could see that some of the nobles in the class didn’t share my sentiment. Their uncomfort was already obvious after seeing Mr. Donnel brought in the cage, and when he opened it many of them openly flinched.

I was a bit confused, though not scared, at Mr. Donnel’s actions. Opening the cage would surely just cause a mess as the mice inevitably escaped.

However, instead of escaping as I expected, the mice didn’t move at all

“Everyone, come and take a mouse!” Mr. Donnel announced to us as he grabbed one of the mice. “One per person.”

I went up to the front of the class and grabbed one. I could clearly feel its heartbeat, meaning that it was definitely alive. That begged the question of why it didn’t move at all, even while having a clear path to freedom.

Curiosity got the better of one of my classmates, Sarah. I didn’t know her much, just enough to know that she came from a similar situation as Arnav did and that she specialized in fire. Nonetheless, I appreciated that she was willing to speak up and ask on behalf of the class.

“Why don’t the mice move at all?”

To nobody’s surprise, Mr. Donnel had expected this question.

“I was waiting to hear someone ask that. I’ve cast the spell marionette on them, which gives me full control over their bodies.” He explained.

He paused, looking around expectantly.

Suddenly one of the mice sprung to life, much to the shock of the boy who had been holding it. It quickly looked around, realizing that it was in the middle of a room of very large humans (at least from its perspective). It didn’t take long for it to scamper off the table.

“Viwa aputa- marionette!”

And just like that, the mouse froze up again. It even obediently climbed up the boy’s table to where he had dropped it.

“As you can see, life-type spells aren’t very effective against an unwilling creature. Your willpower will always be stronger than someone else’s within your own body- even a lowly mouse with barely any magic was able to overcome a rather expensive spell.”

“For this reason, life magic is primarily used for healing. For your first year, we’ll only learn the basics of the spell. If you decide to focus on life magic during future years, you can expect to learn much more.”

A cut appeared on Mr. Donnel’s mouse, stretching from its head to its tail. It appeared suddenly and without warning, and I silently sent a prayer to the gods that Mr. Donnel’s information about life magic had been accurate. The idea of having someone be able to control my body to the point of opening a wound out of nowhere was frightening.

“Viwa sanaji- heal.”

The cut quickly healed, leaving no trace that it was ever there. I noticed that the healing effect this time was a lot quicker than before, when Mr. Donnel had only summoned life spirits.

Learning and mastering heal proved to be the hardest task I had ever gotten that year, since it was both complicated and highly taxing. Luckily, we were given up until the new year to complete it.

And thus winter passed by. And just like that, the year was coming to an end.