-------------------Hervalle Empire, Hervalle Magic Academy------------

In the Hervalle Magic Academy, each Eagle student had their own townhome within a sectioned-off part of the school exclusive to Eagle students and faculty. The student's townhomes, arranged in a large circle, faced inward towards three buildings. The first was the Hillofull Food Hall, a place where the top chefs in the country would beg to work at. Hoping for the opportunity to serve and connect with the next powerhouses of the Empire.

The second building was the Astapor Academic Halls where study spaces and magical equipment were gathered alongside various accomplished mages to ensure Eagle Students had every and any resource they required to develop to their fullest. Finally, the last and most important building: the Justav Hervalle Lecture Hall. Named after the founder of the Hervalle Empire it was a place where being able to teach a course or even just the chance to visit as a guest speaker was a career-defining accomplishment for any in the Central Continent.

Aside from the prestige, the Empire spares no expense compensating various experts to come and speak at Justav Hall. These gestures the Empire makes toward their genius youth don’t go unappreciated. Since its founding, the Hervalle Empire has seen almost all Eagle Class graduates stay within the Empire managing to retain far more of their national talent than neighboring countries.

Christina, Avior’s old childhood friend, was currently seated in Justav Hall listening to a familiar guest speaker, Duvain Markun. Although it had been over a year since Christina attended his previous lecture it had stuck with her.

Duvain still had his grizzled look and seemed to have even added a scar or two to his collection. Most conspicuously he seemed to have aged significantly since they last saw him. His previous black hair now had visible strands of grey in it and his youthful face which previously seemed filled with energy despite its various battle scars now just seemed extremely weathered.

Christina exchanged a look with her seatmates Virgoh Grosslain and Victoria Begaul both of whom she had grown somewhat close with through their rivalry for the Eagle Classes top spot. Victoria’s normally emotionless eyes gave a knowing glint in response to Christina's glance while Virgoh responded with a raised eyebrow. Christina was about to ask Victoria what she knew when the willowy black-haired girl cut her off with a look that made it apparent now was not the time to discuss such a thing.

Slightly annoyed she’d have to wait to figure out the reason for their hero guest speaker’s apparent decline Christina focused her attention back to the front of the class where Duvain had begun his lecture.

His familiar grim voice sounded out in the hall “Some of you attended my lecture last year where I spoke of Mage classification and how each level of Mage usually met their end.” Seeing some nodding heads Duvain continued, “Today I’ll be clarifying the differences between Mages of each level and how just because a Mage is the same level as another does not make them both equal.”

“This difference has been readily apparent in the last two years as every battle with the scum of the Vernicus Kingdom reinforces this truth.” The students began to cheer but were quickly silenced with a wave of Duvain’s arm.

“In battle our Mages outnumber and consistently outperform the Mages from the Vernicus Kingdom. A Hervalle Mage of the 4th will almost always beat a Vernicus Mage of the 4th. This is because of three things: support, quality, and technique.”

“In regards to support, we equip our Mages with utility items such as potions which can allow them to fight in a prime state for longer periods. We also supply our Mages with 200 support soldiers at a minimum they can fall behind when necessary to help recover their strength in relative safety." Duvain's eyes worked their way through each student as he continued.

"For quality, our mages focus on expanding the size of their mana circuits and increasing the density of their mana. As a result a fireball from a Hervalle Mage of the 4th will almost always be launched faster and be far more potent than a fireball from a Vernicus Mage of the 4th who’s only focused on expanding their mana pool and nothing else." Duvain allowed for a brief pause before continuing.

"And then there’s technique. No other country has a school as dedicated to teaching magical techniques to as wide a population as ours does. Even a first year of the Sparrow Class has a better understanding of how to manipulate their mana element to fit a given situation or counter an opponent’s spell better than the majority of Vernicus Mages sent to the battlefield.”

Christina felt her fists clench under the table as she heard Duvain make a subtle jab at the Sparrow class. Avior was a Sparrow and she wasn’t someone who let anyone talk down to Avior. Even Victoria and Virgoh had ended up stepping lightly around the topic afraid to offend their friend who they found to have a somewhat unhealthy obsession with Sparrow class and the topic of mana potential.

Calming herself down, Christina focused on the material of the lecture. She mentally reviewed what she knew of mana pools, mana circuits, mana density, and magic control. A mana pool is the most basic requirement to use magic. A mana pool is simply the mana someone is holding within their body. Mages are divided in ranks based on the size of their mana pool. These ranks range all the way from the beginner Mage of the 1st all the way to the mythical Mage of the 9th.

The size of a Mage's mana pool required to be called a Mage of the 1st is exponentially smaller than it is to become a Mage of the 2nd. It’s the same when comparing the mana pool size required to be called a Mage of the 2nd with the exponentially larger mana pool required to become a Mage of the 3rd. This pattern of exponentially larger mana pools being required to climb to the next rank of Mage is continued throughout all levels of Mage ranks.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

This method of ranking Mages based solely on mana pool has been heavily criticized by annoyed Mages who feel the method is too blunt. Many desire for Mage ranks to take into account other categories to help define a Mage's ability, but despite the outcry an alternative system has never grown popular enough to unseat the current one although there have been a few notable attempts.

One of the most well-known was a ranking that didn’t seek to replace the old system, but act as a supplementary method. Designed by Grida Hillofull, a famed professor and Eagle class alum, it was meant to measure a Mage candidate's natural aptitude by inspecting their mana circuit size and prevalence.

Mana circuits are pathways that direct one type of mana flow in the body. The wider a mana circuit, the more mana can be put through it. Mana circuits are generally widened through extreme effort and repeated use over a Mage's lifetime of using mana. If someone has a massive mana pool but only a few narrow mana circuits their large mana pool becomes useless as they’re only able to utilize a minuscule amount of that mana at any one time.

However, Mages can overcome poor mana circuit size through mana density. Mana density, also known as mana quality, can impact the potency of spells. A denser fireball will punch through a larger but less dense fireball, similarly a higher quality spell will generally be able to overcome a lower-quality defensive spell.

Shortly after Hillofull began to push her circuit method of ranking prospective Mages an unknown Mage from the Western Isles released a method to convert a small amount of high-quality mana into a large amount of low-quality mana. This resulted in Hillofull’s new system being abandoned as Mage schools didn’t want to risk turning away potential students only to find out later they had excellent mana density and as a result could easily overcome their mana circuit deficiency by utilizing the new method from originating from the Western Isles.

Of course just because it doesn’t affect their ranking doesn’t mean a Mage can ignore every aspect besides their mana pool. The best example being magic control. Magic control is the most nuanced area of Magecraft. As Christina’s basic technique teacher taught her when she was in her 1st year, magic control is more accurately called elemental understanding.

All mana is made up of one of the six elements: wind, water, earth, fire, darkness, or light. Each of the six elements of mana reacts differently to various situations and manipulation techniques. To manipulate earth mana one must be direct and steadfast in their application. In comparison, to utilize wind mana one must use a light touch and make many small rapid adjustments to most effectively guide the notoriously fickle air element into the spell to be used.

Each element has its own unique method to best handle it in a given situation to achieve a Mage’s desired result. To learn how to create the desired effect of a fireball a Fire Mage would need to learn what factors affect the direction fire travels and know how to effectively manipulate them for the spell to work. For this reason, although Mages are generally categorized by mana pool an opponent with a larger mana pool can be easily overcome if the opposing Mage’s technique is vastly superior.

After collecting her thoughts on the topic Christina returned to listening to the lecture. Duvain’s grim voice which had been giving a summary of the types of support we could expect if we became Imperial Mages after graduating in an apparent recruitment attempt, moved onto the true core of his lecture.

“Aside from the aforementioned factors which affect the winner when two Mages meet in battle, there’s also another easily forgotten aspect.” Christina along with the rest of the students gave puzzled looks as in their classes they had never heard of there being a factor beyond the scope of support, quality, and technique.

Seeing he had the student’s attention Duvain spoke a singular word, “Willpower.” After a brief pause, he continued, “Willpower, is simply a measure of how much someone wants something. For a mage in battle, this could be how much they want to protect their family, how much they want to defeat their opponent, or even how much merit and glory they want to receive after becoming a hero of the nation. The later example was my own for the majority of my career.”

Duvain’s grim voice seemed to take on a tinge of emotion as he pointed to a prominent golden shield medal on his uniform. “It wasn’t until the late emperor pinned this Shield of Hervalle award on my uniform in front of our cheering people that I realized what I actually wanted. Seeing the people of our great Empire crying with happiness as they learned the Empire had gained a new Shield to help protect them. Being the subject of that fervor in their eyes, our people focused entirely on me as if acknowledging then and there they would trust me to keep who they cared for safe. I knew from that day forward I wouldn’t live for merit or glory anymore, my life had a greater purpose. A purpose to shield the people, the people of Hervalle, from all harm no matter the cost.”

Christina and the other students began to cheer at the hero’s passionate speech, it was obvious just from Duvain’s appearance he had already sacrificed much for their sake, and from his heartfelt speech, they knew he was prepared to sacrifice even more in the future.

After the cheering died down Duvain ended with some closing words. “Not all of you will choose to be soldiers, but those of you that do must find a reason for why you fight. A real reason, a reason you’re willing to give everything for because if you don’t when you end up against an enemy who does have that reason, you’ll lose.” With that, Duvain left the classroom which had fallen into an uncomfortable silence as the students were forced to be introspective for a moment.

My reason? Christina thought to herself for a second before the clear image of a brown-haired village boy filled her head. Christina’s eyes narrowed as she reaffirmed the vow she had made two years ago. She would fight for him. Even if his magical talent was truly subpar it didn’t matter as she’d never allow him to be in danger in the first place. Armed with her purpose she readied herself to push herself even harder so she could grow strong enough to guarantee Avior’s safety.

After class, Christina, Victoria, and Virgoh went to the training field to work out some of the vigor they'd built up from Duvain's lecture. There Victoria told them some shocking news she’d learned earlier in the week. Duvain had successfully killed a notorious Mage of the 5th from the Vernicus Kingdom while severely outnumbered. It was rumored Duvain had paid a large price to finish off his opponent and as a result, his mana pool had receded from the 5th level to the 4th.

The news shocked Christina and Virgoh and they immediately began to question if they had the willpower to pay such a large price for their own goals. After a few moments, their pondering ceased with firm nods as they promised themselves they too would pay that price if meant their purposes were achieved. Victoria who had been watching her classmates' reactions felt a chill as she realized she’d have to work even harder now to maintain the top position in the class.