No matter how many times I looked at the screens in front of me, I couldn't even begin to possibly imagine what I'd done to earn the latter two of the three titles...
Congratulations! For unintentionally ruining the hard work of your peers and driving many to despair, you have earned the title: "Bittersweet Nightshade"
Congratulations! For involving yourself in the love life of others and leading them to find happiness together, you have earned the title: "Love Guru"
Congratulations! For your magic somehow being mistaken as a fortuitous sign by a large number of people, you have earned the title: "Auspicious Omen"
"No seriously, what the fuck??" I was pretty sure I remembered everything that had happened yesterday, so I could sort of understand the "Bittersweet Nightshade" title, " Though I don't know how to feel about being called a poisonous flower, doesn't it make me sound like I'm some sort of evil vixen? The other two make zero sense to me though." The system hadn't prompted me to set any of them as my current titles the way it had when I'd earned the "Natural Disaster" title, likely because none of them would grant me any effects. "I wonder if only titles gained from like proper achievements and not just your reputation can give bonuses?" I mused to myself briefly.
I was back in my dorm room, although the dorms were really more like a nice three bedroom apartment than a dorm. As I'd later find out from Ella, a rather disheveled and irate Alysia had carried me here after our "tests" in the lab concluded, muttering something about how "the rest of the faculty would get it" or some such, scaring the poor girl to the point that she just stayed inside of her bedroom. My throat and sinuses still burned sharply as a reminder of what had happened yesterday. "What was it she'd given me?" It'd made me feel like how I imagined dumb college guys must feel when they're drunk, right before they decided to do something incredibly stupid like jump off of a roof. I surmised that lowering my magical inhibitions was either meant to make me less likely to cause any problems, or that it was necessary to get accurate readings from whatever diagnostic machine I'd been in. "Ahhhhhh man, why does everything I do that relates to magic turn out this way?" I pout before I decide to leave my room in search of food. I missed dinner yesterday after all, and for reasons I don't wish to recall, my previous meals of the day could've been considered to be missing as well.
I spot Ella's face peaking at me through the crack of her door before she disappeared back inside, "She probably just wanted to make sure I'm ok, but is still embarassed from yesterday. I need to properly apologize to the girl later." Princess Lumira didn't seem to be home at the moment, I couldn't see her anywhere nor could I sense her aura coming from her room, "Honestly I'm surprised the Prince and Princess are even staying in the dorms, and don't consider it to be beneath them. Maybe they wanted to just attend the Academy as normal students? ...would've been cooler if they were like in disguise though." It was probably fortunate though that they weren't disguised, the last thing I needed was to innocently befriend someone and then somehow be drawn into a political plot for the throne.
Making myself a simple sandwich, our kitchen having thankfully been stocked with various food before we moved in, I made my way over to the couch to eat while I killed some time before class. "Hmm.. maybe I'll read the book Lumira was reading yesterday?" I grabbed it of of the coffee table where she'd left it...
The princess was into 'Paranormal Romance' books it seemed.
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*Yawnnnn~* I stretched as I stood up from my desk. Class today had been much less interesting, although I finally had the names of all six noble houses as well as some basic info about them and their ranks. I looked down to my notes where I'd written them in order of their rankings:
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-The Elyir's (Daniel's family), known for their high affinity to the Light element and their healing abilities. Those born into the family have golden colored eyes.
-The Illionan's (my own family), known for their(our) high dual affinities for Air and Light and more specifically a proficiency in the use of Lightning. Almost all the female's born into the family inherit this talent, as well as the violet eyes which my mother and I shar. For some reason the males in the family weren't as likely to inherit these traits though.
-The Ashor's (Treyvor's family though he's adopted), known for their high affinity to the Fire element. The eye color of the Ashor's tended to be much more varied, as if to represent the temperature of a flame, ranging from red to orange to white, and even occasionally blue.
-The Kren's (Ella's family), known for their high Water and Air affinities that gave them a proficiency towards Ice magic. Their eye's are icy blue, almost having a glasslike quality to them. They were also apparently known for not typically showing their emotions, giving them their reputation of having "Icy" personalities.
-The Gallenti's (I suspect that muscle boy is from this family), they were known for their high Earth affinities. Their eye's apparently could be a multitude of colors, like the various gems one could find underground, most commonly though they resembled the light sandy brown color of limestone.
-The Caireen's (Alysia's family), known for a high Water affinity. Their eye's are the various deep blues of the ocean. Despite being the lowest ranking of the families, the Caireen's held considerable sway in the capital, this is likely due to Alterron being built on three islands and surrounded by water.
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Looking back up from my desk where I was going over my notes, I saw Miss Alysia walking towards me from the front of the classroom. "I apologize for yesterday, the reaction your magic had was unexpected to say the lesat. However, I'm also here to tell you that excluding extreme circumstances, you are hereby not to go near any of the labs on the campus. For classes the require the use of a lab, you will be allowed to either sit out or watch from elsewhere via a [Scry]. Do you have any questions for me?"
"So that's it? I thought for sure you and I would be suspended at the very least.. did you know I got three titles from what happened yesterday? That can't be common right?" I chuckle nervously, fidgeting with my hair. I really hoped I wouldn't have like thousands of titles by the time I was older
Miss Alysia looks slightly pained for a moment, no doubt remembering yesterday's travesty, "Thankfully the Dean himself decided that we weren't to be punished, so we will not be held accountable for the destruction of the lab. We can go into more detail on how titles are earned during a later class; If you have nothing else to ask though, I have some things I need to take care of." After a moment she seems it prudent to add something else to her farewell, "Please do your best not to blow anything up or destroy anything, while your situation may be a bit unique, surely you can still manage to go a single day without wreaking havoc, yes?"
"Ahh-haha...ha ...I uh, promise to do my best?" I give my most earnest smile, trying to impress upon her my sincerity, "Seriously though, it's not like I wanted yesterday to happen. If anything she started it yesterday, hmph!"
She makes her exit, I watch her large hat for a moment as it bobs down the hallway before deciding that I would go to one of the Academy's public training fields to get some exercise in as well as practice using my mana. Although yesterday's events were slightly traumatizing, it'd given me the idea for something to try that was different than the way I'd been using my mana internally.
Standing in the center of the training field, with various training dummies dotted around me, I took a moment to gather my thoughts and control my breathing. Sinking deep into thought.
Although I felt incredibly powerful yesterday, the truth was that my mana was hardly in my control, that's why when I'd attempted to contain it within myself it just ended up condensing and pouring into my internal organs, "You know maybe I'm incredibly lucky that something worse didn't happen to me now that I think more about it. What if I'd flooded my organs with fire or ice mana or something?" Yesterday's experience had helped me to realize the pure nature my mana seemed to take the form of though; and while I had no idea how to turn that into a benefit for casting magic yet, I had come up with an idea for how I could maybe use it to enhance my body in a different way than father had taught me. What father taught me about utilizing mana to fight was a sort of passive body reinforcment technique, by being in control of the flow of your internal mana you could passively use it to boost your body's abilities. For example, if I were to roundhouse kick something normally; I'd start by generating force from the base of my body, rotating and shifting my center of mass to create torque which would naturally propel my leg around and out, while the muscles in my leg did the same. Just the pure technique alone could create a surprising amount of force, enough to potentially break someone's ribs. With mana though, if I did the same kick, I could not only break someone's ribs but also launch them away from me.
What I wanted to do now though would be more active instead of passive. Taking one last breath, and shaking out my limbs I began to practice. First I felt for my mana's normal circulation while I would attack or defend, then I began actively trying to manipulate it in time with my movements, "Almost like dad did that one time long ago when he knocked all the leaves off that tree. Circulate the mana like a second respiratory system, and then push and pull with it in time to the expansion and contraction of my muscles," It wasn't easy but I was progressively getting the timing down, I'd practically spent 13 years with only being able to fuck with my mana internally after all so it wasn't too surprsising that I seemed to be able to pick this up fairly quickly. As I got better and better at the timing, I could already feel how my kicks and punches were getting faster and stronger than before, rocking the magically reinforced training dummies back and forth with loud thumping sounds. "It's not enough to just do this though, since this is likely what any basic fighter in this world is capable of," with that thought in mind I began to pull at more mana from the sea of it in my core, continuously pushing it into the channels I'd been manipulating it along and forcing it to condense. My body began to steam, heat radiating off of me in waves as I reached even faster speeds and even greater strength, the dummies beginning to crack and deform from my blows. "Alright now lets see if what I really want to do is possible," I smiled as the sweat dripped down my face before I jumped into the air, launching into a front flip with my left leg brought high in front of my face in preparation to deliver a powerful axe kick. I then pushed all of my condensed mana out of my left foot as I dropped, the mana escaping my body with a sound like a blow torch, propelling my leg downward into the poor awaiting dummy below.
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Alysia Caireen's POV:
I was sitting in my personal office going over some lesson plans for the following weeks when suddenly outside there was a brief flash of light followed by a loud booming noise and a plume of dirt exploding into the sky, shaking the windows of my office and even knocking a few papers and pencils off my desk. I sighed, "Please let that not be who I think it was."
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"Holy shit, that was way more powerful than I was expecting," I say panting as I crawled my way up the side of the 4m deep crater I'd found myself in after my kick, the training dummy I'd been aiming for was a barely recognizable mess at the bottom.
Congratulations! You have learned the rare body skill: [Mana Drafting]
By condensing mana within the body and pushing it out with precise timing, you can greatly increase your speed and power. This technique is incredibly draining for most though, with it often being saved as a trump card.
"Oh fuck yeah!!" I cheered out excitedly, "It says it's incredibly draining for most but I feel like once I catch my breath I could easily keep practicing it." I sat down for a moment to catch my breath, marvelling at the destruction I'd managed to cause with a mere kick. It looked like a mortar had fallen where I'd been standing, dirt and debris was scattered around the field, with a deep hole gouged out where my training dummy once stood. "Oh I've gotta master this skill ASAP, I bet I can become like a real life version of a certain anime firefighter boy," with these thoughts in mind, I would settle into a comfortable routine for the remainder of the week. Going to class in the mornings and early afternoons, then spending the rest of my afternoons practicing my [Mana Drafting], my legs tracing bright glowing mana through the air as I twisted and flipped in a flurry of kicks and blows, laying waste to the training field around me and leaving it looking like a warzone at the end of each day. Thankfully it seemed either the fields were somehow enchanted to repair themselves or some magical equivalent of a janitor did it at the end of each day, "If it's actually some janitor then I think I owe the poor bastard an apology."
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I woke up with excitement, today was the beginning of my second week at the academy!! And that meant proper lessons in magic. Finally!
I burst into Ella's room with a yell, the girl and I having made up before the end of last week. "Ohh Elly~ wake UP! The fate of my life may very well depend on this week's classes!" I launch a pillow I'd brought in from the living room at the sleeping girls head. She was a very deep sleeper though, so I had a feeling that somewhat drastic measures were about to be required.
"ummph- wha, what's going on?" The girl looks around bleary eyed, her blonde hair messily arrayed around her head, "Huh, Syl...? D-Did something happen? It's too earlyyyy~"
Before the girl could crawl back under her blankets and sleep, I pounced on her, my fingers wriggling viciously as I assualted her various weak spots. I'd learned the girl was extremely ticklish by chance the other day when I'd offered to help her tie up the back of a dress she'd worn and she'd burst into laughter when I accidentally poked her sides.
"Ahhh, w-wh-what are you doing?!? *haha* nooOOO, stop it~ *ahahaha* PLEASE!!!" The girls laughter soon turned hysterical under my onslaught, eventually deteriorating after several minutes to her gasping and wheezing for breath as she laughed so hard she couldn't breathe.
I ceased my torture, certain she wouldn't be falling back to sleep anytime soon. The experience was so therapeutic that I'd almost forgotten why I'd initially come in here to wake her up, "Elly today is important and I'm going to need your full support in case things start to explode, ok?"
The girls face turned startled as she wiped away the tears from her laughter, "E-explode?! Why would anything explode? We're likely just going to be told to practice some of our basic magic so Miss Alysia can gauge how best to teach us..."
She was right of course, that would most certainly be what we'd end up doing today. However, while that may seem innocuous enough, I had a perfect track record so far for my magic causing problems so I knew better than to just blindly jump into today's lessons. "You're right, things probably aren't going to explode... maybe," I laughed nervously, "...I'm sure nothing is going to go wrong."
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Alysia Caireen's POV:
"How had it all gone so wrong?" I thought to myself while I along with the rest of Class A were floating around in the air, along with any other loose objects or people that were in the nearby area, while the girl panicked below us. We'd already been like this for a few minutes at this point.
Having noticed during the mishap at the lab how the girls mana didn't naturally shift to any of the natural elements like other peoples mana would have as it poured out of her, I'd pondered for a considerable amount of time on what spell she should easily be able to learn. I eventually settled on simple [Telekinesis], although technically it's considered to be a step above any of the most basic [Create Element] spells, it was a spell that was truly mana neutral. This meant that technically anyone who was awakened should be able to cast it, regardless of what form their mana took, and I deemed that important considering the girls situation. I thought that she should be able to cast the spell normally... "and yet here we are," I sighed, something I'd found myself doing a lot of lately.
Thankfully none of the student's were truly freaking out or in any immediate danger, if anything, the boys seemed rather happy about the whole situation as they tried to look up the girls uniforms. The girls of my class were in various states of embarassment, desperately trying to deny the boys any view that they shouldn't have had. Although things were ok for now, I had to figure out a solution to the situation before Syllara's mana ran out, her inability to control the spell after casting and simply lower us all to the ground was problematic. I couldn't just have her cancel her spell either as it would be less than ideal to have 30+ people just abruptly plummeting from the sky, while I was certain that I could keep anyone from dying, I definitely wouldn't be able to get everyone down without injuries. "Damn. Basic [Telekinesis] isn't even supposed to be usable on living beings, only [Greater Telekinesis] should be capable of something like this," I cursed under my breath. The solution may have been as simple as a single cast of [Featherfall] on all of the students and then having Syllara stop her spell. But layering spells was quite complicated and could backfire, especially if it was done in tandem with a novice caster, I deemed it too risky to do unless I truly had no other options available anymore. "Worst case scenario would be if I tried casting [Featherfall], it stops Syllara's spell, and then the feedback goes directly to me, preventing me from doing anything as all of the student's fall to the ground." I'm pulled from my thoughts though as the girl finally calms down and gets my attention.
"Miss Alysia I'll be back, OK? I'm going to go get a really long rope!" Syllara shouts up, sprinting off through the campus before I could stop her.
"Well this should be good, shouldn't it?" I can't help but laugh darkly at how I, someone who was considered by many to be a powerful mage, was at the mercy of a 15 year old girl.
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"Oh man I better hurry." I say with a gulp before doubling my speed in the direction where the shops on campus were located, in the central area of the outer ring of the campus. "Hopefully there's a supply shop I can find with a long enough coil of rope." After a few minutes of running, I find one of the shops I'd been looking for and burst through the door, surprising an upperclassman from the academy who apparently worked here, "I need a realllly long rope. Like long enough that I could easily tie over 30 people together... not that I'd do such a thing of course." I awkwardly smile at my upperclassman as he seems to freeze up like a deer in headlights.
"YOU!" he eventually yells out accusatorily.
"ME! ...wait what?" Did my reputation on campus already precede me to the point where random student employees would recognize me?
"I was one of the students in the lab that day.. I'd been working on my senior project, which you managed to completely ruin." The boy explains to me with a look in his eyes like I'd stepped on his pet hamster, smooshing it.
Not that I'd know what look someone would give if such a thing had actually happened.. cus it didn't. And if it did somehow happen then it definitely was the fault of the person who let their hamster out in the middle of the night. "I'm sorry but people have to get up and go pee sometimes... rest in peace Guppo the hamster," my well wishes for the definitely fictional and not dead hamster completed, I turned back to the boy before me, "Why were you even working on your senior project so early in the year, how big of a nerd are you? Anyways, look I'm sorry but I really need some rope. You can cry about your project later."
"Hey! I'm not a nerd! ...I just take my studies seriously is all," he protests, although he sounds more like he's trying to convince himself at this point than me. After a moment which he spends presumably wallowing in self pity, he grabs a long rope and holds it out to me, "Just.. just take it. Before you start shooting lazers out of your eyes or something."
With rope now in hand, I sprinted my way through campus for the second time that day, moving faster than I'd ever have been capable of normally thanks to the mana coursing through me. If I hadn't been obviously in a rush and worried, I may have even found the experience relaxing, "Oh no, I'm starting to empathize with joggers, that's not a good sign. If I start getting up at 5am to go running, someone please put me out of my misery then and there." I breathed a sigh of relief as I got back to where I'd left everyone floating, thankfully they were still there, "God I don't know what I would've done if they'd just floated off into the sky like a bunch of balloons... would I have been charged with littering in addition to murder when they fell and died then?" Pushing my dark thoughts to the back of my mind for the moment, I took hold of one end of the rope and then tossed the other up to the teacher, who thankfullyu didn't drop it. "Tie it around your wrist or something and then toss it to someone else!" I yell up at her.
Miss Alysia seemed to catch on quickly to what I wanted to do, relaying my instructions to the rest of the students. It took a while, but everyone who'd been caught in my spell was eventually connected by the rope. I gritted my teeth, planting my feet firmly on the ground as I tried to drag the floating people lower, unfortunately all I managed was to lift myself into the air. "Fuck, of course it couldn't just be that easy..." it seemed that no matter how hard I pulled, their altitude remained the same, the people and objects caught in my spell remaining scattered roughly 10-12m above the ground. "Guess we're doing this the hard way then... Welp, Choo-Choo motherfuckers, Syllara's gonna take you on a ride." While I couldn't pull them to the ground, I was able to drag them around in the sky above me. And so drag them I did, mana condensing and coursing through my body causing heat waves to radiate off of me with the effort, I dragged them like some sort of massive daisy-chain of human shaped kites making its way through the academy, drawing many concerned stares and even some extremely confused waves from other students and teachers as we passed by. "God you're, *gasp* all so damn... *hnggg* ...heavy!" Eventually I arrived with everyone in tow at the pond which sat between the girls' and boys' dorms. It took me some time to get them all positioned so that everyone hung over the large pond, panting I sat down against a nearby tree, leaving everyone to just float there for a minute before I caught my breath. Standing back up I looked up above me to where Ella was floating, she was the only person who I'd left positioned not above the pond since I planned to catch her myself, "I can't have these perverted boys defiling a soaking wet Elly with their gazes after all."
"Alright guys, I'm gonna stop my spell now. Sorry about all of.. this." I say smiling weakly, before the air fills with various shrieks and yells as they plummeted into the chilly pond water below as my spell finally relinquished it's hold over everyone. Miss Alysia simply raised the water up below her before she fell very far, creating a platform with it which she somehow stood on before riding it like a wave over to the bank of the pond. I leapt up to catch Ella who let out an adorable squeak as she fell into my arms, her curled pigtails expanding above her for a moment before following our descent like some sort of slinky. I sheepishly smiled at her as she was doing her best to glare at me from in my arms, "Sorry Elly.. I honestly didn't mean for this to happen. The truth is I just seem to suck at magic, it seems like everytime I use it something ends up going wrong and I'm not sure what to do to fix it."
Her gaze softens after a moment, "*Sigh* It's ok Syl.. I'm sure you'll get the hang of it eventually. It's not like you're the only one who's ever struggled with their own unique magic or mana before after all." She starts to squirm in my arms, "U-um can you put me down now..?"
"Ah sorry, I thought we were having a moment," I laugh as her face blushes before setting her down.
It took a couple minutes, but eventually everyone had either swam their way to shore or been pulled to shore by Miss Alysia. She then raised her hands above her head, channeling mana into a silent spell, before dropping her hands and causing all of the water which covered everyone to fall to the ground before flowing back into the pond. Even the water absorbed by their uniforms was disposed of, leaving everyone completely dry. "So, I know this wasn't the original plan for today's lesson but I think it will give you all something to think about before next week begins. Remember this students, even when someone casts a spell you're familiar with, if you aren't familiar with the caster then you won't know exactly what to expect. This could be because they simply have above average stats, or are just making use of the spell in a way you've never seen. What miss Illionan cast today was a basic [Telekinesis] spell, but I noticed many of you started to panic when the spell didn't behave as you thought it would. I want you all to think on this before you participate in any duels next week, if your reactions don't change from how they were today, then when someone inevitably does something outside of your expectations in a duel.. you will lose. That is all for now, class dismissed." As the other members of class A began to disperse, Miss Alysia turned to where I'd been standing off to the side, "Miss Illionan, please come with me. It seems we need to reevaluate the manner in which we teach you, because honestly I'm out of my depth. I'd like to have your input for this as well though when we go to speak to the dean."